ORDER NOW--RHA Spotlighted in PREVIEWS!

The new Rob Hanes Adventures, Vol. 0 trade paperback is now available for pre-order from Diamond Comics Distributors. The upcoming title, scheduled for release in September 2010, is spotlighted in the current July issue of Previews, Diamond's retailer and consumer order catalog.

See p. 332 of the current issue under WCG Comics (item # JUL10 1161).

As noted in my initial announcement, the trade paperback (ISBN 978-0-9845769-0-6) consists of a full-color cover, six complete stories, and 140 black and white pages. The stories have been re-lettered for the release, and the volume will retail for $15.99.

Anyone interested in purchasing the trade is encouraged to order it through the Previews catalog, available at all comic-book retailer stores, or by asking their local retailers to stock the book by ordering it through Diamond Comics Distribution or Haven Distributors.

To find a comic-book store near you, use the online Comic Shop Locator Service.

RHA in FULL COLOR!

A full-color special edition issue of Rob Hanes Adventures will be available for the first time ever from WCG Comics in July 2010! (Cover pictured at right.)

The book will debut at the San Diego Comic-Con, scheduled from July 22–25, 2010, then will be available for sale at the WCG Comics website only. (WCG Comics will be at Booth K1 in the Small Press Pavilion of the Comic-Con.)

A preview of the issue is available here.

The color edition was made possible by long-time RHA fan Barry Gregory, co-founder of Ka-Blam Digital Printing and its sister storefront site, IndyPlanet. Although Barry is a long-time fan of the series and the classic black and white look that is the series’ signature style, he always wondered what it would look like in full color—so naturally he took it upon himself to color a story in its entirety, which was a complete surprise when he sent it to me!

Though the story featured in the special issue, “The EC Express,” originally appeared in Adventure Strip Digest #2, in full color the story looks fresh and new.

More details as we get closer to the San Diego Comic-Con!

Spring Cleaning (Part I)

Like many people I did some much needed spring cleaning during the recent Memorial Day weekend. This year's spring cleaning finally led me to begin re-organizing and taking inventory of comics that have been sitting in storage in old Xerox boxes for years, if not decades, which I have lugged around with me from move to move.

While the process was not as time-consuming and arduous as I feared, I nevertheless have opened each box, sorted out and consolidated issues by series, re-packed them back into new comics storage boxes (as pictured at right), then carefully inventoried the contents of each box. I've always considered myself a reader, not a collector, so most of my comics are unbagged—over the years and as part of the current process, I've bagged some comics that I deemed valuable or that had some personal importance to me but for the most part the majority remain unbagged. (As one can imagine after so many years, some of the comics are no longer what one would consider "mint" condition!)

As I was recording the contents of each box, it occurred to me that I needed a database system that would enable me to sort my collection not just by box number (yes, I uniquely numbered each box for tracking purposes), but also by title so that, at some point, I could get a "big" picture of my collection and begin consolidating runs together—as a result of my haphazard storage of my comics, a lot of runs and series were spread out over several boxes. So one of the satisfactions of the process has been consolidating series together. I could have easily created a spreadsheet for this purpose, but decided to see what resources were available online for managing comic-book collections.

There are a lot of well known comic-book collection database systems—the most notable being a commercial desktop software program called Comicbase. You simply bring up an item in the database, specify you have it, and save to your user file. But being the cheapskate I am, after a quick Google search, I came across and settled on a comparable free online "cloud" application for organizing your comic-book collection called StashMyComics. The site has free registration, and all user database collections are stored at the site. However, you can also back up and download your "stash" to your computer as an Excel file, either in its entirety or by the user-defined categories. The categories function sold me on the site—I use the feature to organize my collection by box number. In Excel, it's a separate column that obviously allows me to sort my collection by category/box number if I wish.

I must admit what also won me over was that I even found my own books, Rob Hanes Adventures, in the database!

Of course, such a program is only as good as its database. Since Comicbase is a commercial program with a subscription option, it has resources to keep its database updated, and it regularly does so for subscribers.

StashMyComics depends on an active user community to keep its listings up to date. For the most part, I have so far found StashMyComics to be fairly comprehensive, with about 95 percent or more of my collection in the system. (I created a separate spreadsheet for titles not in the system that I can merge with the master list if needed.)

I actually brought Rob Hanes Adventures up to date in the system and added cover images. This turned out to be a good test of the system because the turnaround for the images and the issue updates to make it into the system was only a few days!

Included with this post are some images of some of the books from my collection.

NEXT: An overview of my collection and my long term plan for it.

Coming this September....

It's official! The first volume of a projected series of trade paperbacks collecting the entire Rob Hanes Adventures series is scheduled for release September 2010.

Rob Hanes Adventures, Volume 0 will compile the complete 4-issue run of Adventure Strip Digest, the series' original home before being re-booted as Rob Hanes Adventures. After that, the current series will begin to be collected.

A preview of the front and back covers plus about 20 pages is available here (or by clicking the image at right).

To bring the quality of the art and stories up to par with the current series, the stories in the volume have been completely re-lettered by Johnny Lowe, replacing the original hand-lettering of the original stories.

The volume is projected to be approximately 144 pages with a cover price of $15.99.

For the official press release, click here.

Rob Hanes Adventures to be Collected in Trade Paperback

Earliest stories digitally re-lettered for debut edition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Though Rob Hanes Adventures is one of the longest running independent comic-book titles still in active publication, the series has never been available in trade paperback format—until now.

WCG Comics announced that the first volume of a projected series of trade paperbacks collecting the globe-trotting action-adventure comic-book series will be released in September 2010. The first volume—Rob Hanes Adventures, Volume 0—will collect the complete 4-issue run of Adventure Strip Digest, which was the series' original home before being re-launched as Rob Hanes Adventures. The next volumes will begin collecting the current regular series, Rob Hanes Adventures. Series creator Randy Reynaldo acknowledged that the anticipated collection was long overdue and was in response to requests he has received from both longtime readers and others interested in checking out the series.

A preview of the front and back covers and sample interior pages may be found at WCG's Facebook gallery preview site for the book.

The trade paperback is obviously now a widely accepted format for comics," said series creator and writer-artist Randy Reynaldo. “I’m glad that comics fans will have a new way to discover the series.”

In addition, exclusively for this new release, series creator and writer-artist Randy Reynaldo has completely re-lettered the stories being released in the first volume. To do so, he turned to a collaborator for the first time in the series' history, letterer Johnny Lowe.

“The earliest issues were done ‘old school,” meaning they were hand-lettered on the original art,” says Reynaldo. “Now that I’m re-issuing the stories in trade format, it seemed right to re-letter these issues to bring their quality up to par with the current series and make sure they meet the expectations of today's comics readers.”

Since the 1990s, cartoonist Randy Reynaldo has kept alive the tradition of high adventure and the globetrotting soldier of fortune in his acclaimed independent comic-book series Rob Hanes Adventures. The series features the adventures of an international troubleshooter/spy and modern-day soldier of fortune who works for Justice International, a worldwide private investigations and security agency. The series provides a modern-day spin on classic high adventure comic strips like the Spirit and Terry and the Pirates. WCG Publisher Randy Reynaldo said the planned trade paperback collections will give readers a convenient new way to discover and to read the series from the beginning.

Reynaldo projects collecting the series in four-issue increments. The first compilation, volume 0, will collect the stories that appeared in Adventure Strip Digest starring Rob Hanes, the original title of the series that ran for four issues from 1994 to 1996. (The title was afterwards re-booted as Rob Hanes Adventures.) The next trade to follow, volume 1, will commence with the current series, collecting issues 1-4 of Rob Hanes Adventures. Twelve issues of Rob Hanes Adventures have been published to date. A previous trade paperback from 1996, The Rob Hanes Archives, collected the earliest stories that appeared as a zine title. The earlier trade was funded by a Xeric Foundation award and is still available.

Letterer Johnny Lowe’s credits include Existence 3.0, Forgetless, Morning Glories, and Strongarm for Image Comics; Free Realms and Garrison for Wildstorm;  Mr. Stuffins, Caped!, Nola, The Anchor, Shmobots, Swordsmith Assassin, The Calling, Pale Horse, Hawks of Outremer, Codebreakers, Amory Wars, and several Warhammer titles for Boom Studios; Logan’s Run: Lastday for Bluewater Productions; educational comics for Layne Morgan Media; and 11 comic adaptations of The Boxcar Children book series. 

Reynaldo is a Xeric Foundation grant recipient and a past nominee for the Russ Manning Award for Most Promising Newcomer, which is awarded annually with the Will Eisner Awards. In 2006, WCG Comics celebrated 15 years of publishing.

Rob Hanes Adventures, Volume 0, will retail for $15.99, and be available at comic-book stores everywhere served by major direct-sale distributors. Fans interested in purchasing the trade are encouraged to ask their local retailers to stock the book through their distributor.

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