Zub Tales

Quite a whirlwind this week trying to get caught up on emails and work after Seattle and prepping for my road trip next week to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for back-to-back gaming events with Founders & Legends and Gary Con, celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons and TTRPGs. If you’ll be at either convention, let me know. I won’t have a booth or table, I’m there to run and play some games, do a few panels and interviews, and otherwise hang out with friends and enjoy. That said, if you have any of my books, feel free to bring them to either event as I’m happy to sign them.

While I was away last week I received notification that my YouTube channel finally reached the threshold for the YouTube Partner Program (ie. I will start receiving a portion of ad revenue generated from video views), which was nice. I haven’t had time to post many videos lately, but past ones about art and writing continue to get traffic. Here are some for you to check out if you’ve never seen them before. Watch and share:

Making Comics – Dialogue Order and Page Thumbnails
Making Comics – Outlining Your Story
Making Comics – Page Turns and Pacing
Making Comics – The Power of Short Stories
Making Comics – Writing Conan the Barbarian

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Coffee & Heroes – Part 2

Speaking of YouTube, a few weeks ago, I had a wonderful time talking with the owners of Coffee & Heroes in Ireland all about my career in comics. It was a great chat and covered so much ground that they’ve split it into 3 parts.

Here’s part 2, where we cover omnibuses, Rick and Morty VS Dungeons & Dragons, Thunderbolts, Avengers: No Surrender, Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk pitch, Avengers: No Road Home, the zen of Chip Zdarsky, and more!

(And here’s Part 1, if you missed it.)

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Conan Noodles

UDON Entertainment is now offering an exclusive variant cover for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #9, the first issue of The Age Unconquered, our epic third story arc. Cover artist Ickpot has taken an anime approach to the Hyborian Age and it’s a pretty fun fusion of styles. Get your pre-order in before they’re gone.

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The End That Was A Beginning

Over on my Patreon– The full scripts for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #24 + 25, the final issues I wrote on the previous run before the Titan relaunch.

There are now over 300 scripts in my Patreon archive, available for the price of a fancy coffee.

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Current + Upcoming Releases

• Savage Sword of Conan #1 – released February 28th.
• Conan the Barbarian #8 – released February 28th.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Fortune Finder #5 – releases March 20th.
• Conan the Barbarian #9 – releases March 27th.
• D&D Young Adventurer’s Guide: Artificers & Alchemy – releases April 16th.
• Savage Sword of Conan #2 – releases April 24th.
• Conan the Barbarian #10 – releases April 24th.

Upcoming Appearances

March 16-18, 2024	Founders & Legends	Lake Geneva, WI, USA
March 21-24, 2024	Gary Con	Lake Geneva, WI, USA
April 25-28, 2024	Calgary Expo	Calgary, AB, Canada
June 7-8, 2024	Howard Days	Cross Plains, TX, USA
August 1-4, 2024	Gen Con Indy	Indianapolis, IN, USA

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Links and Other Things

• On Valentine’s Day I cooked the best steak of my life, a medium-rare dry-aged rib eye that Stacy and I could not get enough of. The cooking technique I used is called a Reverse Sear and, if you haven’t tried it before, I highly recommend it! J. Kenji Lopez does a great job covering the process here.

• Brian Lagerstrom‘s cooking channel is great in general, but his new video with Easy Techniques to Make You a Better Cook is extra sharp, a solid summary of useful techniques I’ve incorporated into my cooking approach over the past few years.

• Todd Klein has posted up his entire Art and History of Lettering book on his site and, if you’re a fan of comics or a creator looking to enhance your knowledge about the medium this will absolutely hit the spot.

• NASA has created their own tabletop RPG adventure? Seriously…check out The Lost Universe on the NASA website. It’s absolutely free.

Jim