Ok, so the site has been down for quite a while.

As many of you know, a while back several of my websites were hacked. In addition to that, recently, the server all my sites were hosted on crashed. In trying to restore my sites, several settings were lost, as were back posts and so on and so forth.

I’ve obviously take the site live once again, but as you can see, it’s not quite fixed yet. I just simply haven’t had the time to fix it properly, but I will eventually get it back in order. I apologize for the current appearance.

I am currently in the process of moving, and in a week I have to serve jury duty. So things are kind of in an upheaval at the moment. That said, we are moving forward with Wannabez soon-ish. As soon as I can get things together that is. But I am very interested in getting things off the ground sooner than later.

Some of you have asked about our Kickstarter project, and I assure you it will happen within the next couple of months if at all possible. I realize it’s already a year later than we had planned to start, but life happens.

I will have more updates soon as we do have some stuff in the planning stages. In the meantime, feel free to look back through the archives to re-familiarize yourself with Wannabez, and please let us know if you run into any problems with the site or discover missing pages or anything of that sort.

And as always, thanks for your support!

-Brant

If you haven’t seen on Facebook or in the forums, sadly our Kickstarter project will be delayed a few days at best. I’m hoping no more than a week, but we’ll see what happens.

Long story short, there was a detail I overlooked, or rather wasn’t aware of honestly, in the setup that is required, and it’s something that takes a process to verify and all that. So I unfortunately have to take care of that before we are allowed to move forward with the project.

Everything else is good to go, the Kickstarter page and video are all set up, so once this little detail is taken care of, at the push of a button we’ll go live.

Thanks for all your continued support, and I deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may cause anyone, including the members of team Wannabez.

Well, if the title of this post alone didn’t give you complete indication of what this post is about, allow me to expound.

As I mentioned last week, we submitted Wannabez to Kickstarter after a year-long process of getting the pitch ready. We happened to submit it over a holiday weekend, being Memorial Day, so honestly I hadn’t expected to hear back until late this week.

However, Kickstarter was very quick in getting back to us. They actually sent the acceptance email ON Memorial Day, so we’ve kind of been sitting on this news all week! Scott and Cary teased a little on Facebook, but nothing more than that. I don’t think I have even told my Comic Related partners the news yet, and I just had dinner with two of them a couple of nights ago!

So, that’s that, Kickstarter has approved the project, so we are free to start it anytime we choose and hopefully raise the funds to complete this first arc of the comic.

We have decided to go for 45 days and (tentatively) launch the Kickstarter project on June 30th. Once that date has been confirmed I’ll post in all the appropriate places, including here.

So, in just under four weeks our Kickstarter project will be live, and let me tell ya, we have some pretty awesome rewards for those who support us through it, ranging from exclusive computer wallpapers, to t-shirts, to signed books, to creative services!

Stay tuned right here for important updates as we near the launch of the project!

Hey folks,

I had to wait for something to happen before I could send in the pitch to Kickstarter, and thankfully that is done now and the submission has been turned in!

So now it’s a waiting game to see if/when they approve it.

I think you will all be pleased with the award incentives we offer for various pledge amounts. Don’t want to give too much away, but some of the awards include exclusive desktop wallpaper, original art, comic creating services, swag and much, much more!

We intend on running the project for 90 days whenever it starts, so we hope all of our fans will check out the pitch and help us out if you can. We are really passionate about completing this first story arc for all of you that have been loyal followers, and so we hope Kickstarter provides the means for us to be able to do that.

Stay tuned for more updates here, on Twitter or Facebook!

-Brant

Whew!!!

Only took several months to put it all together, but the Kickstarter pitch video is finally done!

Between being sick and working like a dog it has been a trying experience to say the least, but hopefully it’ll be worth the time and effort put into it as I was able to.

The quality of the video isn’t great, but it’ll do. I’m in the process of “publishing” the video now, then I’ll upload it for Scott, Ross and Lisa to check out and approve before sending it off to Kickstarter.

Hopefully soon we’ll have an approved Kickstarter project that will, again, hopefully lead to us being able to produce the rest of the story without further delays.

I’ll keep you all posted when I know more.

Brant

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates last week and yesterday. Last week, Scott was going to try to do an update with his Free Comic Book Day appearance, but got busy with work and preparing for a trip. Yesterday, I got ill and spent 10 hours in bed!

There’s also not a whole lot to report at this time, but I did want to pop in and let you know we’re still here.

I made progress on the Kickstarter video last night, piecing a bit more of it together. There are just two sections of the video I need to compile, but one of them is somehow incorporating a Powerpoint presentation, and I haven’t quite figured out how to do that just yet. I still hope to have it finished up by the end of the week and submitted to Kickstarter for approval.

Next week I’ll have a full blog post of some sort.

ELSEWHERE…

In the meantime, if you’re a wrestling fan, I’ve recently revived my wrestling blog at kfabe.blogspot.com

New Comic Day, a webcomic I letter and have written two strips of before, is fast approaching it’s 100th regular strip as today #97 is up. So check that out here.

And in case you missed it, Scott and I, along with Bill Gladman did a LIVE Zone 4 podcast that you can find here, and the edited version with proper music, intro and outtakes here.

Shout out to Spy6Teen who last week wrapped issue 2, so if you missed that you definitely want to take this short break between issues to catch up!

IN CLOSING

Can’t believe it’s almost summer already, and can’t believe it’s been in the 40s here this time of year! I hope the weather wherever you are is much better, and I hope everyone out there has a wonderful week. Check back for updates periodically, folks, we’re not going away, I promise!

Brant

Welcome back, I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. It actually stayed sunny for us for the most part for the first time in a week, though it’s back to storming now.

Big stuff going on in this country right now, so without going into detail, I would like to personally thank and give my support to the men and women of the armed forces.

Now, today there are no extras as I deliver an announcement about the future of Wannabez at this point. Before I do that, though, I want to thank each and every one of you who have been loyal and supportive of us and the project all this time. Thank you so much for following us on Facebook and Twitter, and for visiting the site as often as you do. It’s more appreciated than any of you will ever know.

When I came up with the idea for Wannabez nearly a decade ago it was my dream that it would reach a height where it was a recognizable property and people would really enjoy the stories we were telling. While it hasn’t reached the heights I know it’s capable of yet, you all have given me a measure of that success with your support, and I am incredibly grateful for that. So again, thank you.

That being said, after much discussion and contemplation over the past few weeks, yesterday I came to a decision. That decision is that, sadly, Wannabez is now officially on an indefinite hiatus.

What that means is basically we’re not sure at this point when it will come back. It will come back, and we’re all hoping for sooner than later, but it could be weeks or months, we’re not sure. I have to give major props to my creative team whom all have been working hard trying to get it there. But ultimately, schedules, finances and other responsibilities have pretty much sidelined all of us from being able to deliver the product in a timely manner. This is certainly no one’s fault, it’s just the situation we find ourselves in.

Thinking over this decision this past weekend, and then talking with both Scott and Lisa, I realized that to continue to promote issue #2 as coming soon and try to squeeze it out would only serve to string our fans along and frustrate us in the process, and that’s not fair to you or to us. When we launch issue #2 we want it to be the best work we can produce and not just thrown together because we find ourselves against a deadline we can’t currently meet. We also want to avoid at all costs having to take an extended break between issues like this again in the future.

So, we are going to take some time to clear our schedules and produce this comic the way you deserve to get it. I remain excited by what’s coming up in the series, and I know all of you will be too. We really amp up the humor and the action in the coming issues, and we feel to do them justice we need to take this time.

When Wannabez does return, we will be scaling back to a page a week instead of two pages a week as we did with issues #0 and 1, which in retrospect we wish we had done the same with. I will also no longer be updating this site twice a week. I am going to try to continue Tuesday updates of some sort, but not necessarily the extras we’ve been sharing of late. We’ll see what develops as the weeks go on as I do have some ideas.

In the meantime, I will be finally finalizing the Kickstarter pitch and hopefully getting that launched soon. To continue Wannabez we honestly need that Kickstarter project to be successful so we can keep Wannabez both consistent and free for you to view on the web. We have no intention on moving to any pay model on this site, no worries, but if you would like to donate anything at all we still have the donate button in the sidebar.

We’d also love to see your fan art if you feel so inclined. It will be featured on the site and I may even blog about it as well if we get any. We love feedback too, so here, on Facebook, or via the email or forums we’d love to hear from you.

We hope you all can understand our position and will remain supportive of us in this downtime as you have thus far. We also hope that once issue #2 finally does come out that you’ll jump back in and join in the fun once again.

With that, I would like to once again thank you all, your support of this labor of love for me and the others means more than you know. This decision was not an easy one, but I think it’s the best move for all of us so we can bring you this project in the right way. All I can say after that is stay tuned…

-Brant

So, I’m starting to run short on content for these posts, and it’s been a VERY busy week. Due to that, this will be a pretty short update.

A couple of years ago, before issue #1 was done and out, we took the first few pages of the issue and published a pencils and letters only special preview edition of the book in small format, primarily for Gem City Comic Con. On the back of this issue we ad a place for Scott to do a sketch if people wanted one. I think he did a sketch on every one of them we sold that day, and some since.

Well, we had some left over, and while I was set up at Comics 2 Games for some event, I had some on hand. I don’t recall if Scott wasn’t able to make it to that one, or if he was just running late, but regardless, I was set up with Wannabez and some projects I lettered. Next to me were Eric Adams of Lackluster World fame, and Uko Smith, who has worked for various companies including DC Comics.

Now, while I am somewhat of an artist (art is what I aspired to during my entire youth all the way to age 19 in fact), I’m not pro level and haven’t really kept up the craft for the past 15 years as much as I would have liked. But I had these books with the sketch area on them, and it was slow at first, so I figured I’d draw something.

I only did one drawing, and it didn’t sell, so I still have it. I did my version of one of my favorite characters of the series, Ignition. So without further ado, here it is:

Decent, right? I won’t be taking over art chores on the book anytime soon, but I thought it turned out pretty well.

THE CHIBIS

Tuesday I posted Chibi versions of the Wannabez characters that good friend Jackie Hernandez did up for us. Well, as soon as Lisa Moore, our esteemed colorist and good friend saw them she asked for hi-res so she could color them in her spare time as she too thought they were very cute! So color versions of the Chibis will be coming down the line! Thanks, Lisa!

CONVENTIONS

As I mentioned earlier in the week, Chuck Moore and John Wilson are headed up to CGSSS (Comic Geek Speak Super Show) this weekend. In fact, they left around 7am this morning! So if you happen to be at the show, please swing by the Comic Related table and say hey. You might even get your picture taken and featured on Comic Related!

For anyone out there reading this who may wonder why I plug ComicRelated.com so much, well, it’s because I’m a partner in the site, and my partners, including Chuck and John as well as Darren Mueller of Ringtail Cafe, are all great, friendly and fun guys, and we have a blast doing what we do for CR. So if you haven’t already, bookmark the site!

WEATHER

We have had some rough weather in this area the past week with wall clouds and funnel clouds, severe storms and some scary and much too close for comfort lightning. This lead to power outages, damages and so forth throughout the state – actually several states. Several storm fronts were moving all over the south and southeast. I was talking to Lisa, who lives in Texas one day and they had tornadoes touch down. We here in Kentucky were getting storms from St. Louis, Tennessee and who knows where else.

So my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in this and surrounding areas and states that have felt the affects of all this horrid weather.

WRAPPING UP

Not much else to report for now, so check back with us next week. And thanks for all the feedback about our schedules and so forth. Until next week, have a great weekend and stay safe!

-Brant

Welcome back, everyone, I hope you had a wonderful weekend and a very Happy Easter to all those who celebrate.

Short update today as it’s been a busy, busy weekend.

Good friend Jackie Hernandez had the idea to do Chibi versions of the Wannabez characters a while back. Scott went ahead and inked some of them, and I have to say they are pretty cool.

For anyone who doesn’t know what a Chibi is, it’s a Japanese art style the word in Japanese (if you can believe Wikipedia!) means ‘short person’ or ‘small child.’  So in manga and anime it has a similar meaning, simply being ‘someone or some animal that is small.’ So basically that’s what we have, cute little Wannabez! So without further ado, here they are:

These are Jackie’s blue line pencils.

And these are Scott’s inks of Dobey, Esmie and Streak.

So there you have it, cool Chibis of the Wannabez characters! Maybe we’ll do a special one-off side story in the Chibi verse with Jackie someday down the road… would you like to see that?

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY

Not much else to report at this time as everyone has been super busy. Lisa got in a bunch of Marvel flatting recently, Scott’s been tied up with the day job, other projects and the holiday weekend, and I’ve been doing a lot of lettering and podcast editing. We’ll get back on track very soon, though, and start sharing updates. We’re still very excited about the future of Wannabez, so bear with us, it’s gonna be worth the wait!

SUPER SHOW and BOSTON

While I won’t be able to go, Chuck Moore and John Wilson, two of my best friends and my partners in Comic Related will be at Comic Geek Speak’s Super Show in Reading, PA this coming weekend. So if you’re in the area or attending the show swing by the CR table and say hi! Tell ‘em Brant sent ya.

And good buddy Eric Ratcliffe of New Comic Day and Why I Love Comics will be at the Boston Comic Con this weekend, as will Tyler James, so swing by their set-ups and say hi if you’re hitting that show.

TOYING WITH THE IDEA…

When Wannabez #2 launches, we are toying with the idea of scaling our page updates back to once a week, being Tuesday, and I’d keep doing blog posts on Fridays. This would allow us to stay on top of the schedule better, but we’d really LOVE to hear from all of you if you’d be cool with that. Message us on the Facebook page, leave a comment here, or email wannabez @ brantfowler.com (no spaces) and let us know!

WRAPPING UP

In closing, as usual, have a wonderful week, thanks for all your support, and be sure to join us back here on Friday for another update!

-Brant