FEEDING GROUND _ Solicitation Update

Some additional backstory: initially, the Archaia website listed the book a 48 pages (accounting for a flip book in which the book is reprinted in Spanish) for $3.95. One problem, our first issue has 28 pages of content (x 2 = not gonna fit). Then, I went to the Previews site (the distribution catalog for comic sales) and discovered that the book was listed at $5.95 (!) and my jaw dropped. After a fitful night's sleep and some phone calls, Archaia is more than on top of resolving Diamond's typo.

In fact, the book will be 64 pages at $3.95. Holeee Mackerel! We were already planning on including some extra content (pin-ups and articles a la Ed Brubaker's incredible Criminal) but I could not hope for a better package for this book. Thanks and cheers to Archaia for taking a chance on us.

One artist that we already have lined up to do some additional art is friend Tom Forget. His work is the best kind of lurid pulp and a great match to the heat of our material. Warning, most of his images are Not Safe For Work but are perfect for your basement office.

FEEDING GROUND ISSUE 01 _ Solicitation

HERE IT IS!

Conceived in the summer of 2008 by Swifty Lang and Chris Mangun, pitched at NYC Comic Con 2009, this puppy has been in production all last year and now has a release date of the last week in September 2010, published by the good people at Archaia (home of "Mouse Guard" and "Fraggle Rock" and some of the highest quality comics of all genres).

Flip the book over, and it's such an amazing decision on their part to include the entire issue in Spanish!

Thanks for your support - please tell your local comic shop to order you a copy today!


FEEDING GROUND #1 (of 6)

Retail Price: $3.95 U.S.
Page Count: 48 pages
Format: saddle bound, 6.625” x 10.25”, full color
Written by Swifty Lang
Illustrated by Michael Lapinski
Cover by Michael Lapinski

This new series is ripped right out of the real-life drama unfolding on the Mexico-Arizona border. FEEDING GROUND reaches a large and diverse audience no matter your personal point of view on the issue. In this factious story, a famine caused by Blackwell Industries drives Diego Busqueda, a noble “coyote,” to lead a band of Mexican border crossers across the unforgiving Devil’s Highway, a desert cursed with blistering days and deadly nights. Back home, Diego’s daughter Flaca discovers that something hungrier prowls the factory fields. Stalked and persecuted, can the Busqueda family maintain their dreams of immigration or will the horrors of the desert tear them apart? Also included is 24 pages of bonus content in Spanish!

T +13 (Contains material suitable for teen readers age 13 and above)

FEEDING GROUND - Cover Development

Michael here:

Early on, I became fixated on an image for the series that would have its own iconic weight worthy of images like those used for Jurassic Park and Jaws. What I wanted was a Dia de los Muertos animal skull devouring the sun and a silhouette of one of our lead characters. Not surprisingly, people mistook the skull for that of a dinosaur.


I tried a fix in which I altered the skull to seem more like a spectral image, some heatstroke nightmare.


Ultimately, we decided to continue to work the image and communicate the following qualities: horror, Mexico, family, border crossers (our family starring as the silhouettes in the Border Crossing road signs), and unbearable heat.

The following two covers seem a little too much like old Del Rey paperbacks in their layout but pointed us in the right direction. The skull from below may seem a little literal as a "feeding ground" but still appealed to me too much to abandon. Also lost the "Western" treatment of the title in favor of something more industrial.



And this last rough was a bolder departure in which I mined the design elements for a full cover spread.


The final version will be publicized shortly and I think it hits the right balance of what we're going for and will hopefully stand out on the racks. We've also struck on an overall treatment that is more like a woodcut print that, along with the skull motif, should carry over to all six issues of the mini.