Combining  "Mask for Mardi Gras" with another page of panels from the Graphic  Novel Prologue, this might be my favorite of the posters kicking off  Cat-Tales 10th Anniversary tomorrow.

Capes, Bats, Cats, Covers... Not so much with The Closet

I certainly hoped to get in a quick comment on all the stuff that has been going on this summer which certainly warranted a purr or a scratch, but for which I didn't have time.  A metaphorical closet-cleaning to match the physical one.  Unfortunately for my mental closet but fortunately for Cat-Tales, there has been - yet again - too much going on to bother with the knucklhead stuff.

1.  The new Cat-Tale: Electron 29 hit the cyberstands last week,  and as anyone who has written Edward Nigma will tell you, he doesn't sit quietly in the back of your head waiting for you to finish other things before you start on his next chapter.  If you don't start writing, he'll start without you.  Meh. 

2. Wanders Nowhere has released a new installment of his Dracula in Gotham fic Capes and Bats.  Much as I want to gush, you simply will not believe me.  Believe the forum: "This little tale created an imagery and gravitas in the first chapter that the graphic novel storytellers of Gotham have been trying to do for decades" "Gorgeous prose" "Masterful".  'Nuff said.  Read it, just read it... in time for Halloween because we're not done yet and... Whew... *fans self*  just read, trust me.

3. We're getting ready to welcome a new artist into the fan art gallery, and that requires a little more work backstage than a busy girl could want in the midst of #1, 2, and 4.

4. EBOOKS!  Yes, the new ePub format is going to make mobile readers very happy and it's also given me an opening to redo the printable pdfs and kindle documents so we have some consistency.  Win-win, but it's the sort of thing where the first few will take a while, but taking the time to do them RIGHT will make everything go much smoother down the line.  In that spirit of doing it right, I want to give the individual story pdfs their own covers.  Right now, they use the square ones from the website and it's okay but the images are not made for the medium and it shows.  Now, I don't plan to do this for all the tales, but Cat-Tale #1 is, of course, a special case. So I have 4 possible covers up, and I am opening it up for a vote.  Please don't worry about the words of the title "A Girl's Gotta Protect Her Reputation."  They will be placed better on the final image, whichever it is to be.  Just vote for your favorite image. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This week in... Screw it, a love letter to Remidar

Don’t let anyone get away with saying comics aren’t an art form – and that includes the faux intellectuals who will sometimes allow that the stuff in that museum in Brussels is art, but not the lowly American stuff and certainly not anything pertaining to *sniff* superheroes.

The art of the comic is in the created colloid of words and visuals to create a new thing that is more than the sum of its parts.  I got my first taste when Thundering Monkey began using Poser to illustrate his favorite Cat-Tales moments.  Then Dorothy Rose got me into the hard stuff when she took the first paragraphs of A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation to create a graphic novel-style prologue for the CT series.  That brings us to last week’s addition to the fan art gallery.  This breathtaking jewel from Remidar:

That, my friends, is the work of a true artist.  See, for me, the art begins before pencil is touched to paper.  It begins with the sensibility that chooses that precise psychological moment.  “Just me, down here, with the bats.”  That’s just… damn.

And that’s why this week, rather than make a big todo about the reception of Chapter 5 (which Joker is trying to take all the credit for, btw, despite the fact that it’s the messages on Selina’s voicemail generating all the buzz), I’d like us all to take a moment and drink a virtual toast to our favorite artists. 

Words and pictures, guys.  Words and pictures.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.