Help my friend Kickstart his "Heart!"

Hi Gang! It's been a while since I've updated. Been busy paying bills and working on new projects and prepping for C2E2 and MoCCA. I'm also passing along a message from my good buddy Justin Castaneda, whom I will be tabling with at E5 at C2E2, April 13-15. Please check it out. The kid has a lot of heart. Get it? I made a funny! Wow. Tough crowd. Hi friends of Apooka! My name is Justin Castaneda and I am the creator of the When I Was Little picture book series. Mike and I met at the Space convention in Columbus, OH. We have been table-mates at comic conventions every since. Mike was kind enough to have me do a guest post because I have a new book project I am raising funds for thru Kickstarter. The way Kickstarter works is it funds creativity. It accepts donations to help creative people get their passion projects made. Artists, writers, and filmmakers can set up a Kickstarter campaign and by supporting them and their work, you get rewarded! For instance when you donate to my project, you can receive a signed copy, sketch cards, digital prints, buttons, custom art and a lot more. So the name of my new book is called, Heart. Heart is a story about love and acceptance. This book has been a labor of love for many years. I really believe in this book. It's been an idea birthed through the struggles I had growing up trying to find where I fit in. I had difficulty making friends and I thought for the longest time it's because of who I was as a person. I thought if I changed who I was I would find my place. It wasn't until much later when I learned all that was non-sense and the most important thing I could ever do was: To Be Myself. It's a bit more expensive to release a hardcover children's book than I had anticipated. I didn't want to cop out into doing it as a softcover, it's not meant to be that way. With the help of some fellow creatives that gave me an extra push, I started this Kickstarter campaign: www.kickstarter.com/projects/justin-castaneda/sharemyheart I hope you can help support the book and the message this book gives. I thank you for your time and consideration and thanks again to Mike for letting me post on his website!

How I spent the end of my Summer vacation

Hello! It's been a while since I've updated. September was an insane month. Here's how it went down, er up. You get the idea. First of all, to the dude who purchased from us at Detroit Fanfare... You left some items behind (that you paid for in full) and we feel terrible about it! So please email me at: mikerroll@gmail.com with a list of the items you purchased, amount, and where you are from, because those are the only details that we remember. Ok on with the show! Detroit Fanfare was awesome! We had a great time, Jon and I shared space with our friends Joe Foo and Justin Castaneda, we hosted Justin & Nicole and we all ate too much at a local all you can eat sushi bar. It was awesome. The show awesomeness started with us being placed next to Ethan Nicolle artist of Axe Cop who was as you would expect, a very cool dude. This show had eveyone! Kevin Eastman of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame was there. Ryan Lee was there too and I got a nifty sketchbook with niftier sketch from him too. Was good to see you again, been too long. Also was the first purchaser of Dedford Tales by Brandon! Williams & Ray Goode and Scott Hall's Rubber Teets. The show space was huge! Finally we can say we did a comicbook show in Detroit! Thanks to Tony, Dennis & Gary for putting on such a great show, we are looking forward to the next one!

Apooka at the Zombie Slumber Party also debuted at Detroit Fanfare! This one was down to the wire but we made it.

SPXPO was also yet another great show. Very busy and full of cool stuff. We shared space with Joe Foo (our 3rd SPX together!), Justin Castaneda and Kelly Tierney.

Disney World! Spent a week in (hot) sunny Florida! It was awesome! Finally... as a few of you know out there I've recently became engaged! And that's about it. Now back to work... Promise more activity on here in the future. +Miker

Kids Read Comics 2011! The kids ARE all right!

Howdy all! We had a great time at Kids Read Comics this weekend, thanks to all who stopped by to say "hi!" Special thanks to Tina and Joe Foo for being super fine tablemates and thanks to Dan, Dan, Edith and Jerzy for all of your hospitality and hard work. It was a wonderful event and we were lucky to have some nice Summer weather. "Fishing for Comics," "Quick Draw" and a sketch I did for Brandon were some of many highlights from this weekend. It was a real blast to be around such creative writers and artists.

Taking a break from cons until September when we hit the road for SPXPO and the Detroit Fanfare after that. Next stop for us is the Train Festival 2011 in Rock Island, IL where the hard cover version of The Trains of Christmas children's book will debut!

Stay tuned, more to come! There may even be an Apooka update in the near future!

Motor City Day 3

WOW this show went by fast! Special thanks to the Tower of Desmond for coming in to help us today! I did one commission today (Batgirl) but didn't get chance to shoot it. So instead we've got some nice pix of the table, new banner stand, and a rabid Apooka fan! Thanks for stopping by Ashley! Thank you to everyone else who came by and thanks for all the wonderful comments, I don't know what else to say, I'm actually kind of speechless.

Ok, next stop is Kids Read Comics in Chelsea, MI June 18 and 19. This is a FREE event and if you've got little ones we strongly urge you to please come on down! Please tell your friends too! We'll be there with workshops and some cool giveaways as well. So hope to see you there!

The table! With banner stand!
Apooka fan Ashley
Myth Busters Approved!

Motor City Comic Con Day 2!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by today, we greatly appreciate it! We finally got the banner stand up and going today which was a good thing since it place was PACKED and it helped people find us. Got a couple things up for today. We reprinted Apooka The World's Most Adorable Zombie (Book 1) with a sleek new cover, there's also an updated "the end"/last page with new art. Only 2 sketches to share from today's action but they are "keepers." An Apooka in a book which we sketched in our first Motor City Comic Con three years ago! Special thanks to Lee for your Dex Starr request, we're still enjoying the Dex sketch Justin Castaneda did at C2E2. Day 3 starts at 10AM, we're at table 2053 and witness the Tower of Desmond! Hope to see you there!

Apooka Reprint Cover
Apooka sketch
Dex Starr sketch

Motor City Comic Con

Well day one of Motor City Comic Con is in the books. Pretty good crowd for a Friday. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! Come visit Joe Foo and myself at Table 2053. Here's some sketches I did at the show, apologies in advance for the poor iphone camera quality.

Supergirl
Niko Fett (Hopefully I spelled that correct)
Han Solo taking out the trash
Hula Apooka!

Happy Mother's Day / Post FREE Comic Book Day / Pre Motor City Comic Con

Apooka's excited. Aren't you?!

Happy Mother's Day to all you motha's out there! Kids, show your mother some respect today and everyday!

Hope everybody got their free comics yesterday! We had a great time at Green Brain Comics yesterday. Thanks Dan and Katie for having us, you certainly know how to throw a great party, I'm still not sure what was in that bottled beverage you gave me. I was fortunate enough to share FCBD table space with artists Jerzy Drozd, Mark Rudolph, Christian Slade and Jesse Rubenfeld. Real nice group of people, heck, even that Jerzy guy! Just kiddin' Jerz, keep up the great work! And thank you to Nancy for the nice plaques, we loved em!

Finally, Motor City Comic Con is next weekend. Yeah I know that came up fast. So if you're in the neigborhood please stop by and say "hi" to myself and Joe Foo. We look forward to it! I'm not sure where exactly we will be, we don't have the floorplan yet. Hopefully we'll get that up in the next post. Hope everybody has a great week and Happy Mother's Day!

Joe Foo's cool poster for Motor City Comic Con!