All of us here at Tall Tale Features are very happy to present the newest member to be added to our roster, the talented and funny Mr. Jonathan Lemon! You may already recognize his name from his brilliant syndicated comic Rabbits Against Magic which you can read over at GoComics. For those of you meeting Lemon for the first time, you can get to know him through his very touching bio over on the Cartoonists page.

Lemon stuck his foot in the door to Tall Tale Features a while back by playing roving reporter for Tall Tale Radio on more than one occasion (you can find those episodes next to his name on this list). Apparently, no amount of slamming would get him to remove that foot, so we figured we might as well just let him in. As it turns out, we are all very honored to have him on the team and feel he’s going to be a great addition to the site.

So please join us in giving him a big warm welcome! Oh and drinks for everyone! Lemon’s buying.

“Promise me you’re never going to do this again!”

That’s what my wife Erin said to me over the phone as soon as she found out. And after she screamed with delight. My response?

“You got it.”

This month has been a whirlwind of hard work and emotions for me and my family. In my adult life, I learned a long time ago what it really means to work hard for something. You almost have to not care about the outcome. You just do the work that needs to be done. Focus on that and, even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll at least know you did everything you could. Most of your satisfaction will come from just knowing that, no matter what the result.

But…sometimes things come together perfectly and you win one! Now that’s a sweet feeling. MONSTERPLEX has been a 2 year journey for me. 2 years. David came on around the same time, and Mike about a year later. Having now won…I’m still in a kind of shell-shock.

I’m still there and if there’s one feeling that’s overriding all others it’s this: gratitude.

You are all awesome. If someone asks you today, “Are you awesome?” You will be able to say “Yes, I am awesome.” If that same person fires back with “How do you know?” you will turn to that person and say, simply, “Because MONSTERPLEX won.”

I really, truly feel as though this win is because of all of you. I wish I could thank you all individually, but there’s no way I possibly can. There’s too many of you! We’re humbled by that. Truly humbled. We could not have done it without all of you and I’m just so amazed by how everyone came out to support us. I see all of you as a part of this thing with us.

I do need to name at least three people that were INTEGRAL to this success:

To our wives Erin, Tracy and Lauren. They took this journey with us, fought for us and, in some ways, it meant even more to them!

Also, thanks to David Schlotterback and Michael DeVito for doing this thing with me. They make it look like I can write.

To that I would also like to thank my girls, Elora and Cami for putting up with Dad spending hours at the computer and in the bedroom doing interviews. I hope they enjoy Monsterplex for many years to come.

Now…a lot of you are asking, what’s next? What’s next is that we’re going to disappear for a little while. Maybe 2 or three months. During that time, we’ll going to be heavy into production on MONSTERPLEX. Then, soon, Monsterplex will restart on Zuda and you’ll get one new page a week for one solid year. We have a contract. We will fulfill it. (We will be paid!) We are excited.

During that time, we hope the popularity of MONSTERPLEX can grow. If it does sufficiently, DC/Zuda will renew our contract and maybe one day you’ll see it in print! We hope so! This thing is for real now and we want to make good on the promise we’ve shown this past month.

But besides all that…we think you’re in for a real treat. We have a fantastic, fantastic story planned. It’s got twists, turns, suspense, cliffhangers, romance, violence, comedy, monsters galore, mystery…man, MONSTERPLEX has it all.

Stick with us. It’s gonna be one heckuva ride!

One more time…THANK YOU!

More later. Much more.

-Brock

P.S. Keep your eye on the blog, you never know when it might update!

The Legend of Bill comic book, issue #1 is HERE, and it’s SHIPPING out to pre-order buyers! Support Legend of Bill (and its creator) and get YOURS here if you haven’t already! No waiting!

http://tinyurl.com/yc7p5on

The book features nearly 50 pages of goodness: The first 60 webcomics (all in full-color for this edition as many early ones were black and white), a 6-page comic book format story that has never been seen before, a short story with original illustrations, some awesome pin-ups by some fave webcomic and graphic novel creators, guest strips by top names and a sketchbook section to boot!

Artist Editions get all this plus an awesome MAP of the realm of Bill that you can follow along as well as a hand-drawn original sketchcard! You’ve seen my plethora of endless sketches – now you can own one! Cheap!

NEW YORK Apparently, the Los Angeles Times never learned the lesson that you Do Not Mess With the Comics Pages.

Following Tuesday’s debut of a newly reconfigured L.A.Times, with the paper itself an inch narrower from a foot wide to 11 inches (but the type size in stories and photo captions remaining the same), readers are making their feelings known about the redesigned comics page. Among the gripes: the strips are too small (a common complaint among newspaper readers these days); a banner ad that readers are finding intrusive; and the crossword is no longer below the fold, “but has the fold smack dab in the middle of it!” one reader writes.

To the paper’s credit, the L.A. Times’ comments blog has included many of the complaints sent to readers representative Deirdre Edgar. Check them out, here.

“I hope you are sending subscribers magnifying glasses so we can read the comics now that you have shrunk them,” one reader writes. “You do realize that your readers are demographically older and have to wear reading glasses already. So having to read even smaller comic typefaces is annoying to say the least. What is the plan for the comic pages — the LA Times placeholder seems to indicate that you will be adding 2 more comics. The wider margins seem silly when compared to the smaller size of the comics. You definitely should make an effort to enlarge the comics again.”

They’ve also picked up on two features, Dustin and Pickles and dropped six: Get Fuzzy, Lio, Raising Hector, Scary Gary, Sylvia and Watch Your Head. The changes are set to go into effect on Monday, February 8th.

Okay, now for my big announcement.

Every month DC Comics (publisher of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc.) pits 10 comics against each other on their webcomics site, Zuda. For a few weeks, people are invited to rank, vote on and praise or damn the comics until one emerges victorious (read: most popular) and the creators of said comic are offered a one year contract to keep making it.

On Monday, Feb. 1^st at Noon Eastern Standard time, my submission, MONSTERPLEX, went live on the Zuda site. You can go check it out right here, right now.  Together with artist David Schlotterback (my office mate) and colorist Michael DeVito (Publisher of Th3rd World Studios, the company that publishes my comic, The SuperFogeys), I’ve created what I think is a great comic. I hope you agree.

I hope you agree because this is where you come in. I would like you to join me on TEAM MONSTERPLEX. Between the great work my creative team has done on MONSTERPLEX and the power you hold as one who can access the interweb, I think we can win this thing. We can’t do it without you.

To assist in these efforts, I’ve established a blog at  http://monsterplex.blogspot.com/ . There I’ll be updating every day (sometimes multiple times a day) with news, link to reviews and interview, sketches, and behind-the-scenes looks. You’ll also find a fuller version of this post with full details about how you can join TEAM MONSTERPLEX!

It’s gonna be an interesting month, that’s for sure. I hope I can count on your support!

-Brock

I’d like to throw out a very special thank you out to my TTF sister Irma Eriksson, for making the website as pretty as it is.  We hope you enjoy the new page.  Check out the reviews.  Join the forums.  This is as much YOUR site as it is ours.  Have fun!

So, on February 1st, be sure to tune in to this page and check out some new features.  Til then…be patient!  Thanks for stopping by.

And now some nonsense paragraphs for testing purposes…

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