April is the cruelest month -- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Spring may be the designated favorite among the Season Mafia, but I'm with Eliot. April makes me uneasy. Waiting to see which deciduous plants are still alive, wondering if we'll get one more rain before the hot dry season gets in full roar, cringing at the wind that always comes with the advent of warmer temps, and rising anxiety over a quickly passing year with nothing accomplished outside of work deadlines met; all of it comes together to make me blue. And then there's allergies, and taxes, but taxes come all year when you freelance. April just requires more paperwork. And kleenex.
Work is still a shadow of what it was a couple of years ago, but is picking up. Which is good, even if the income to work ratio continues to rise (fall? whichever one mean I'm getting less pay for more work). So far it's still enough to pay bills and buy art supplies. I picked up a new title to letter from VIZ, and I'm still on board for Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, whenever the next volume rolls around.
I've also been offered a 3-volume Neon Genesis Evangelion series from Dark Horse, my first lettering job for them. I'll start that shortly, and it will make an interesting change from the traditional FX-replacement lettering I've done for VIZ. For this series (and some others) DH doesn't require replacement of the Japanese FX. Instead, the letterer creates a small english-language version done in a similar style and places it near the original. So the problem of covering FX and retouching/replacing art (for which see example above) will be eliminated or greatly reduced. The page rate is slightly less than what I'm currently getting for what requires much more work, so I'm cautiously optimistic. (In fact, it's a dollar a page more than what I was getting for One Piece, which was the most time-consuming book I've ever worked on.)
I'm also doing an occasional color story for BOOM! Studios DIsney line, which makes five publishers for whom I have colored Disney ducks and mice (and assorted other characters) since 1986. Gladstone, Disney Adventures, Egmont, Gemstone and now BOOM!. I'm taking a guess but I may hold some sort of record for being the person to color the most Barks stories, many of them repeatedly. This is also the first coloring work I've taken on since Egmont's Carl Barks Collection wrapped up, so it's been kind of fun, since I have more free rein than was possible with the CBC.
Here's hoping this 'economic recovery' actually trickles down to the real world so people can get jobs again--and buy more comic books and manga. Yes, I am selfish that way.
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