Zach Weiner over at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal asked if I could provide cover colouring for his upcoming book and, since I’m a big fan of his stuff and loved the cover concept, I jumped right into it.

He just posted a sneak peek of the final version up at his site. We’re both really happy with how the collaboration turned out.

Bring on the ridiculous asteroid-fueled apocalypse!

Click for a larger version

I just received this digital snapshot from the Image offices. The trade is printed! Look how wonderfully that spot gloss skull pattern turned out.

I cannot wait to see them in person. Skullkickers Volume 1 arrives in stores in just over a month! 144 pages of monster mashing for only $9.99

Have you pre-ordered your copy yet?

The 2011 Eagle Awards, England’s prestigious International Comic Awards, are now accepting nominations. Fans and pros alike can submit their nominations and the top 5 in each category will be placed up for the final vote.

You will have to answer a nomination survey and verify your e-mail address in order to nominate. It only takes a couple minutes though, so make your voice heard about your favorite comics from 2010.

If you feel like voting for Skullkickers in a few of those categories, I certainly wouldn’t mind. Tell your friends.

The 2011 Harvey Award Nomination Ballot is now available. Nominations for the Harvey Awards are selected exclusively by creators – those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit or are otherwise involved in a creative capacity in the comics field. If you’re a pro, you should nominate your favourites from 2010.

If you’re feeling so inclined, here are some categories that I think ye olde Skullkickers is most applicable for:

BEST LETTERER
Marshall Dillon. Marshall works his tail off on Skullkickers, providing the typical dialogue and sound effects, but also fun alternate narration bits, subtitles and more, enhancing the humour and improving the storytelling at each step.

BEST COLORIST
Misty Coats. Misty’s moody and dramatic colors give Skullkickers that extra kick every single issue. Flip through any of our 5 released issues and you can’t help but notice the quality of her palettes.

BEST COVER ARTIST
Chris Stevens. Chris’ Frazetta-esque covers are eye-popping and engaging, delivering the feel of an old fantasy paperback while never seeming old fashioned.

MOST PROMISING NEW TALENT
Edwin Huang. Edwin’s drawing and storytelling skills are well beyond his years and he’s getting better with every single issue.

BEST NEW SERIES
Skullkickers. We’re an ongoing now and people seem to be digging it. Comedy books aren’t typical award fare, but I think we’re delivering the goods with each issue. On time and high quality.

SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS
If we weren’t as applicable for the previous category, I hope you’d think of us as solidly appropriate here. 🙂

Skullkickers Volume 1 Emerald City Comicon Exclusive Hardcover Announced

Berkeley, CA – 2 February 2011 –

Image Comics and Emerald City Comic Con announced an exclusive hardcover edition of the SKULLKICKERS, VOL. 1 trade paperback will be available at the upcoming Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. Writer Jim Zubkavich and artist Edwin Huang have been handily bashing the heads of readers with their brand of dark comedic violence and high fantasy adventure in each issue of SKULLKICKERS, leading up to this collection of the series’ incredible first arc.

“We’re ecstatic to be launching the first SKULLKICKERS trade at the Emerald City show and wanted to make it extra special for people in attendance,” explained Zubkavich. He also added a piece of advice for the fans, “This limited run hardcover edition is a beauty and solid enough to work well as a monster bludgeoning device in a pinch. Don’t leave Seattle without it!”

Emerald City Comic Con takes place March 4-6 this year in Seattle, Washington. For more information about the show and the many Image creators who will be in attendance, visit www.emeraldcitycomicon.com.

SKULLKICKERS, VOL. 1, a rowdy 144-page full color trade paperback collecting issues 1-5, will be on sale in stores on March 9 at the low introductory price of $9.99. The hardcover edition will be available exclusively at ECCC for $25. Find out more about the world of SKULLKICKERS at www.skullkickers.com.

The nominations for the 2011 Joe Shuster Awards went up late last night and I’m happy to let everyone know that I’ve been nominated in their ‘Outstanding Comic Book Writer’ category for the work I did on Skullkickers and Street Fighter Legends: Ibuki.

The award ceremony takes place June 18th at the amazing Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo and I’m looking forward to seeing how everything goes.

Wish me luck, gang!

—

About The Joe Shuster Award
The Joe Shuster Award is a national achievement award program for Canadians working on comic books, graphic novels and webcomics and has no restrictions on language, content and/or genre. Creator nominees are nominated for their work during the previous calendar year. The Joe Shuster Award program is administered by the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2004.

Lots of love from people this week as we wrapped up the first story arc on Skullkickers. Thank you to everyone who has let us know how much they’re enjoying the book and telling their friends about the series.

Here’s our current schedule:

January Skullkickers #5 – wrapped up the first arc
February Skullkickers #6 – our short story extravaganza with guest creators
March Skullkickers Vol. 1 – value priced collection of SK #1-5 and the two Popgun short stories
April Break Month – our first break since the series launched in September. Promoting the trade.
May Skullkickers #7 – kicking off our 2nd story arc “Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood”

Some great reviews have come in from sites like Comic Buzz, From the Tomb, Multiversity and Image Addiction. It’s also Comics of Doom podcast’s ‘Pick of the Week’ (Skullkickers coverage begins at 20:50 in the podcast).

We’ll keep plugging away.

Skullkickers #5, the last issue of our first story arc, arrives in comic book stores today. All of us on the creative team are excited to hear from fans and retailers about what they think of the big action climax in this issue.

At the back of the issue is a special letter I wrote about the future of the series. You can check it out by clicking the thumbnail below –

Here’s the text:
Here we are – the first story arc of Skullkickers is complete!

The original “2 Copper Pieces” short story that Skullkickers is based off of was pitched to Image for Popgun v2 back in November of 2007. Just over three years later I’m writing this letter to you, our readers, as we wrap up the fifth issue of our ongoing series.

Yeah, ongoing. You can’t imagine how happy typing that makes me.

When I outlined the story for Skullkickers I made sure there was a back-up plan to wrap things up after five issues if sales came in where we expected them to. We’d tell one complete adventure of these two mercenary morons and that would be it. This issue is where things would have ended.

I probably don’t need to explain this to you, but the comic book industry doesn’t generally embrace new series with open arms. Titles launch all the time and the vast majority crumble under deadline or sales pressures. There was no reason to expect our book would do any better and I planned accordingly. As my Dad would say, “Plan for the worst but hope for the best”.

And the best is exactly what we received.

The best from the creative team, our publisher, reviewers, retailers and fans. Thank you, all of you. You’ve helped make creating this book an incredible experience and a highlight in my creative career.

Our little sword & sassery book has surprised a lot of people and done a pretty good job at carving out a tiny niche to call its own. The back-up plan has been filed away and is ideally never needed. Now we can dig in to a bigger epic story and poke holes in an even larger fantasy milieu. It’s gonna be a hoot.

Is there more depth coming? Yes, absolutely.

Now that the series is established we can plan ahead and do a lot more than I’d originally thought possible. A single ridiculous swashbuckling adventure is now the opening salvo of a much bigger story I have planned. Baldy and Shorty may not understand anything past the end of their weapons right now but a whole lot more is happening behind the scenes. These two monster killers are caught in a maelstrom of political and magical machinations that’s going to take them across this fantasy world and beyond. Just like this first chapter it’ll be big and loud, sarcastic and explosive.

The mercenaries will finally be named, the cast will grow, history will be explored, destiny will be foretold and monsters will have their brains squished in new and amazing ways. It probably won’t win us any awards for advancing the storytelling medium, but we’ll do everything we can to make it fun and well worth your $2.99.

I think comedy gets a bad rap. People feel guilty enjoying something goofy when there are deep and meaningful works they “should” be partaking in. Don’t get me wrong, I have a dozen ideas for stories that delve in to the depths of the human condition and make people cry bulbous tears of pure emotion, but Skullkickers is not that kind of book. This is a sugar shock of silly action carved out of my pre-teen enthusiasm for fantasy and over-the-top action movies. It’s built to make a 12 year old little Zub freak out with excitement and run around the house pretending he’s kicking an animated skeleton in the teeth.

Sincerely,
ZUB

I’m a guest writer on today’s ‘What Are You Reading?’ column at Robot 6, discussing a few titles that have been on my reading pile as of late. Click through and give it a read.