Hope you have a Happy, Happy Holidays!

Pop is in NYC today for the Gears of War 3 Release event at Best Buy theater Timesquare. Please stop by if you’re in the area!

Below is a summary of the event:

New York: Best Buy Theater
1515 Broadway (at 44th St.), New York, NY 10036
Monday, September 19, 8pm to 1am EDT

Performance by VMA Best New Artist Nominee, Big Sean

Meet the game’s developers, including Cliff Bleszinski, Rod Fergusson, Karen Traviss, and others!

The first several hundred fans in line will be able to get hands-on with “Gears of War 3” before it hits shelves at midnight

Compete in tournaments for exclusive prizes

Fans in the New York area will also be to participate in a scavenger hunt to secure VIP access to the event and win coveted Gears’ swag. Check back here later in the week for more details on the scavenger hunt.

One lucky fan will win a custom “Gears of War 3” chopper built by ”American Chopper’s” legendary designer Paul Jr.

Check out the custom chopper built for “Gears of War 3” by Paul Jr. and get his autograph

A limited edition Gears of War 3 comic book cover will be available as well as a signing by its illustrator, Pop Mahn

Look for appearances by Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson, exclusive giveaways, and live radio with Hot 97’s DJ Cipha

Well, the gossip around the water cooler is that Tokyopop will be closing its US publishing arm come May 31st.
It’s a precarious time to be drawing funny books, without a doubt! Layoffs and reorg’s dot the landscape as comic companies strive to stay afloat and retain profit margins.

It sounds bad, huh? It probably is. However, there’s a silver lining to all things bad and worrisome. You just have to know where to look. Do I know where? Hellz nah. I’m a half empty kinda guy.

Actually, I’m not. I’m a rather foolhardy optimist. And I know that life is a constant pendulum of ups and downs.

Comics will come out of this economic hardship leaner, meaner and filled with more consumer friendly, entreaties fulfilled goodies than you can shake a stick at.
Probably.
I mean, companies competing for your hard earned money all have to navigate the sad and dangerous maze of business viability.

So- TOKYOPOP US is closing down shop. I have to figure out what that means, contractually, for BLANK, the co-owned property I created for TOKYOPOP which saw an abrupt stop after one volume. Let me say, however, that if the ownership comes back to me, I’ll be releasing here, the 50+ pages of Volume 2 that never saw print. FREE. That’s right. Just like in Braveheart: Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (dom)

And better yet, I am now able to pursue other means of getting BLANK’s stories out. To all of the fans who’s contacted me about the continuation of the book. There’s now a chance! Wheeeee!

Silver lining. Check!

I like Final Fantasies. Why? Because they seem just that much more special because they’re “Final”. Being that there are 14 of them out or coming out now, they don’t seem very Final, huh?

This is art for a FFXIII pitch that failed… epically. Yes, epically.

“Pop, why did it fail epically” you may ask. (in the case you think that you didn’t ask, you did. Seriously. You did.)

Well, friends, this piece failed Epically because I wanted to use the word “Epic” somewhere. It’s the new “Tubular” but saying that this piece failed “tubularly” just doesn’t have the same literary bite nor eloquence as “epically”.

Yeah, I’m a writer.

Prose rolls off of me like raindrops. Or late spring showers. The light airy scent of which carries wafting through the breezy meadow gardens of deleterious, contravening disgorge. See that?

Sheer poetry. Yeah, I rock. Epically.