The new story, and MASKS Volume 2 begins …?

Awesome art by Derrick Fleece. More on this later.

So in case you missed it (for some reason Facebook only let about 40 of you see the link), I posted a brand-spanking-new story over on Pocket Coyote yesterday. I was originally going to call it “Ghost Dance,” but it went in a different direction and ended up with the title “Brothers in Arms.” Same story, different title. Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, it’s over 5,000 words long and introduces three(!) new heroes in the Masks-verse.

No, they’re not taking over the series in Volume 2. But each of those three guys will be important in Rae’s and Trevor’s next adventure.

The first new guy we meet is Clayton Ross, a.k.a. the Black Mask. He’s the guy we get the word mask from, sort of like how modern English speakers got superhero from Superman. And for someone who basically defined what it means to be a mask, he’s rather … well … human. And grumpy. And sarcastic, but by now you guys know to expect that. He’s a trenchcoat-and-fedora hero, not a cape-and-tights hero, and he apparently spends most of his time punching mobsters in the face and taking their stuff. (In this story, he’s somehow acquired a rather luxurious private plane—and in 1947, having a private plane of any description was pretty impressive.) He’s spent the last few years creeping around Europe, punching Nazis in the face, and he’s fresh off using his skullduggery skills to gather evidence for the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg. Now he’s back in the United States, and he’s uncovered something that gives even him the creeps. Someone has been keeping a mask—or “mysteryman,” as they’re called in Ross’s time—prisoner, trying to figure out how his powers work. Ross wants to break the guy out, and to that end, he’s recruited the kid.

“The kid” is actually almost 30 years old now—Ben Wise, a.k.a. Eagle Eye. He got into the masked-hero game when an eccentric inventor paid him a hundred bucks to strap on an experimental flying harness and jump off a roof. (It was the Depression. Don’t judge.) Ben got hooked on the rush of flying, and the next thing you know, he’s gliding over rooftops looking for muggers to beat up. Sometime in the 1930s, he ran into the Black Mask and teamed up with him several times. Later, Eagle Eye volunteered for service in World War II, and some bad things happened to him overseas. When Ross finds the young man he’ll always think of as “the kid”, he’s trying to drink himself into a stupor. But Ross needs the kid sober if they’re going to pull off a superhero-style heist …

The third side of this triangle is a bit more mysterious, and he’s important to “Brothers in Arms” mostly because of his absence. First identified as the Big Guy, he’s a well-known mysteryman who teamed up with the Black Mask and Eagle Eye and was the major reason they got along before the war. The Big Guy had a great sense of humor, he was bulletproof, and he was the sort of fellow who’s friends with everyone within a few seconds of meeting them. Ross and Ben miss having someone around who can laugh at the bad guys, and they’re not sure how to do this team-up thing now that the Big Guy has gone missing in the bombing of Dresden. But the Big Guy still has a few secrets in sore …

So what does this have to do with Masks volume 2, you ask?

Well, each of these three men—the Black Mask, Eagle Eye, and the Big Guy—has a role to play in the story. That’s not to say any or all of them actually appear; the Black Mask, of course, was famously blown up ten years ago, and Eagle Eye’s a very old man if he’s still alive, and the Big Guy, well, was in Dresden. But they cast long shadows, and those shadows begin to gather in the first chapter of Volume 2, which goes live tonight at midnight Pacific time.

Yes, you read that right. Volume 2 starts tomorrow. Only on Pocket Coyote. The first chapter is called “Transformations,” and it throws Rae and Trevor into a new and dangerous situation. A major supervillain has died, and the executor of his estate is selling off some of his most treasured and esoteric possessions—including one object that Trevor desperately needs. He and Rae must go undercover at an auction full of villains in order to get that precious object. If they’re recognized, they’ll be dead before they can reach the door. And there’s someone there with an agenda of his own, someone who’s nothing but trouble for our young heroes. Oh, and somebody wears leather pants. I’m all about the value for click.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an illustration to finish …  

How to make your own MASKS T-shirts (and other stuff too)

Okay, here’s how I put together the T-shirts the stylin’ Masks Posse wore to Comic-Con. These directions tell you how to create the image on a black T-shirt, which is considerably harder than on a white one. All images referenced in this post are available in this Photobucket album.

1. Snag the image of Rae and Trevor holding hands—either full-color or black, white, and red. Save it to your computer.

2. Open it using the GIMP image manipulation freeware (available at http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/The_GIMP/gimp.html)

3. Copy the image (right-click + “Copy”).

4. Open a new image in GIMP of the same dimensions (my version was 4844 x 5358 pixels).

5. From the “Layers” menu, select “Add Alpha Channel.”

6. Also from the “Layers” menu, select “Color to Alpha” and set the color to whatever the background color of your image is. (In my case, it was white.)

7. Paste the Rae-Trevor image onto your new image.

8. Now here’s the tricky and time-consuming and crazy-making part. Using the Eraser tool from the main GIMP toolbox, erase all the parts of the image that aren’t Rae and Trevor. All that uniform white around them? Erase as much of it as you can, keeping as close to their bodies as you can without erasing the figures. You will see a checkerboard pattern emerge as you erase the black. Everywhere you see checkerboard, you will have a transparent image. So erase everything you don’t want to see on a shirt.

9. Save the file as a PNG file, and jump through any hoops GIMP makes you jump through to do that.

10. Go to http://www.cafepress.com/make/custom-t-shirts.

11. Click on whatever T-shirt you want to design. I created this design for a black T-shirt, so I recommend something that comes in black. There are sizing charts and whatall—just pick what you like, click on the shirt, and go to the shirt designer.

12. Upload your image to Cafepress. If it’s too big, go back to GIMP and re-save your image in a smaller size.

13. Add the text to your shirt. I used the Chandler font in a dark red for “MASKS” and in white for “Truth / Justice / Secrets.”

14. Drop your image onto the shirt and pull it around and resize it until it’s where you want it. The pattern will let you center your image, but please note that Rae’s and Trevor’s hands are slightly off-center because Trevor’s throwing arm sticks out a little more on his side. I chose to center their hands over the S in MASKS, and centered the text. Don’t go outside the boundaries of the design area on the shirt. Nothing outside that box will print.

15. When you’re satisfied, click “Done” and order your shirt!

TO DO THIS ON A WHITE SHIRT:

Just upload the image and add the text. No muss, no fuss.

TO MAKE BUTTONS:

The button images are available too. Upload them to either Cafepress or Zazzle.com (the site I used this time around), center and jigger them around until you’ve got what you want, and then order as many buttons as you can stand.

There. You are now the most stylish walking billboard in town!

Requiem for an ink-stick

I am down to my last pen.

This is really quite traumatic for me. When I say my last pen, I don’t mean just any pen—I mean my pen. I may use dozens of pens in a given day, but my pens are different. I am very choosy about my pens, and I have found God’s own pen. And now I am running out of them.

My drug—er, pen of choice is the Sanford Liquid Expresso, Extra Fine Point. Perfect for writing and my feeble attempts to draw, its archive-quality ink never fades and makes even my handwriting look good, and its porous tip mimics the action of a fountain pen without forcing me to buy, and learn to use, a fountain pen. That means it writes so smoothly that it takes me an hour of scribbling to get writer’s cramp, even if I’m writing a fight scene. (Fight scenes mean I can’t sit still. If I’m hand-writing one, my pen carves deep grooves in the paper and my fingers go white at the knuckles and lock in place. If I’m typing one, I twitch in my seat. I once sprained my ankle while writing a particularly dramatic confrontation. I kid you not.)

I am not alone in my love of my pens. The reason I’m down to my last pen, less than a year after buying a fistful and guarding them like nuclear launch codes, is that nobody can leave my pens alone. I cannot, in good conscience, refuse to lend one to a friend—and they’re so perfect that I cannot, in good conscience, refuse to give one to someone who for one reason or another needs a truly perfect pen. I bought my father a box of them for Christmas just so he’d stop stealing mine. (I think arthritis is setting in.) Now the local art-supply store that has been selling me my beloved pens has closed, and no one’s answering e-mails through their website. Sanford is shutting down the Liquid Expresso line. I am bereft. And my very last pen—the medium-point felt-tip Expresso that I bought by mistake but that still writes more smoothly than any ballpoint, gel pen, or what have you—is sputtering as its ink runs out. I watch it miserably, mourning its passing. Don’t leave me!

It seems silly to get this worked up about a mere ink-stick. But I’m hardly alone in the obsession. Anybody who writes a lot—I mean really writes a lot--knows how important the right utensil can be. Nicole is fussy about her pencils and art pens; musicians are fussy about their instruments; I am fussy about that perfect line on a page, so smooth and easy that I no longer have to think about the process of writing (turn the tip this way to make sure it crosses the T) and can just let the words flow out.

I used to hand-write all my stories. The first 90 or so of the 100 stories that make up the foundation of Masks were composed longhand in a spiral notebook with a ballpoint pen. I couldn’t concentrate when I was sitting at a keyboard, possibly because I had failed three successive typing classes and would have failed the fourth one if I hadn’t thrown the assigned typing exercises out the window and spent 45 minutes a day typing my own handwritten stories into a computer file. Now, however, I literally can’t write fast enough to keep up with the words flowing out of my brain--unless I am using one of my pens, my perfect, nearly frictionless pens.

So now I must trust Amazon to distinguish between mere Fine Point and the sublime Extra Fine Point, and try to figure out whether something called a Liquid Flair is some kind of replacement for a Liquid Expresso. I have sent pleading emails to suppliers in the U.S. and Canada, researched variations on the trade name, and generally spent more skullsweat on these pens than I have on my taxes. Because taxes are once a year, and writing is every day! I’m willing to buy a box or two—heck, if I had the money, I’d buy a case. It seems excessive, but people have been asking me for weeks to sign zines for them. I firmly believe that if someone is going to go to such trouble for an autographed publication, or meet all kinds of crazy contest requirements to win one, the ink on that signature should not fade before the year is out. I have notebooks more than ten years old. I know what lasts and what doesn’t.

Hmm, maybe I can steal one of Dad’s to tide me over …