Free Comic Day Reminder: Saturday, May 2nd

Howdy Folks!

Just a quick reminder, we'll be at Comic Relief (click the link to read our updated bios) in Berkeley, CA on Saturday, May 2nd for Free Comic Day. It's a very brief, low key appearance...but we got a nice time slot: 11am to 1pm. Since we're just a peanut operation, we can't afford to give away full issues of our comic (neither do most of the big publishers that participate) and we didn't have the time this year to create a custom mini-comic but maybe we'll do that next year...

However, we did put together a small brochure to help us promote our book (they'll be included in the Free Comic Day baggies that the guys at Comic Relief will be giving away...it'll be chock full of free comic books). The brochure doesn't offer too much in the way of new material but we are treating it as a coupon for a discount for our upcoming shows. If you bring a copy of the brochure to our table at Super-Con or Fanime this year, we'll give you 20% off one of our prints. So if you're in the neighborhood, drop by and get your coupon...not to mention the bag full of free comics!

UPDATE: We're listed on the official Free Comic Day website under California / Comic Relief!

- Joseph

The BIG One.

Howdy Loyal IITS Readers,

I got some super cool news to share with you: Genevieve and I were accepted for a Small Press table at Comic-Con 2009! I'll spare you all the details but we didn't want to announce it here till we were absolutely sure we got it. Well, I spoke to someone there just the other day and we've confirmed that they weren't pulling our leg...we're in!

The news was a bit of a surprise to us, we originally thought we didn't make it in...but now that we know, we're going to be committing a lot of our spare time into improving our existing book for the show. Due to time constraints, I've decided that the best thing to do is to polish what we already have and only create new pages and content if we have time to spare.

Loyal readers and followers of our work need not worry...we want to create some really cool promotional items for Comic-Con and whether you come see us in San Diego or cheer us on from the comfort of your home, we'll have the new items for sale at our IITS Online Store. So even if we don't have a completely new book...you'll have some neat stuff to look forward to. In fact, after Super-Con, Fanime, and Comic-Con...we hope to grow our fan base larger and that will get us one step closer to justifying the manufacture of Kayli "boob gel mouse pads".

Hey, you gotta set goals for yourself, right? =)

- Joseph

Neko Kayli...Wins!

Hey Faithful IITS Readers,

"Neko Kayli" won the Kiriban Vote contest with a whopping five (of eleven) votes! Wow, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Anyway, thanks for your votes...Genevieve will get crackin' on that as soon as she can. =)

Thanks to everyone who checks back on us every once in awhile and especially to those of you who have spread the word about our book. It seems that word of mouth from our friends and fans has made the most difference and we appreciate all your efforts to support us.

In other news, we got all our May events confirmed...we'll be at:

Comic Relief in Berkeley, May 2nd from 11am to 1pm for FCD!

Super-Con in San Jose, May 16th & 17th in Small Press!

Fanime in San Jose, May 22nd - 25th in Artist Alley!

If you're planning on attending any of these shows, please drop by our table to show your support, we'd love to see you!

- Joseph

1337th Hit Kiriban Update

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Comic Day!

Hello IITS Readers!

Hope you enjoy our most recent comic. It's a lead-in to some future material that we'll try to get to you as soon as we can...

(click to enlarge)

Good news! I have one of our three upcoming appearances confirmed. Genevieve and I will be at Comic Relief in Berkeley as part of a group of Bay Area comic creators promoting and signing our respective books. The event is on Saturday, May 2nd...sound familiar? Sure it does! It's Free Comic Day! We're currently slotted for an 11am to 1pm appearance. If there are any changes, we'll let you know when we send out the reminder.

If you're a follower of our IITS blog ("IITS Readers" on the sidebar) and show up to support us, Genevieve will do a super special sketch for you! Oh, Genevieve, if you're reading this...if any IITS Readers show up to support us on Free Comic Day, can you do a super special sketch for them? =)

- Joseph

1337 Kiriban and Interview Update!

Hey guys!

Thank you all again, for visiting for the first time and/or coming back to check on our updates from time to time. As a show of appreciation, I would like to do a kiriban sketch for when we reach 1337 hits. We are about to breach the 1000th mark--last I checked it was 940! (Our little inconspicuous counter is below the IITS Team list on the side bar there.)

Whoever is our 1337th visitor gets to request a quick personalized sketch, which I will post on this site. Send a screenshot of the site with the counter visibly saying 1337 to Joseph and let us know which IITS character you'd like to see, what he/she/it is doing, wearing (what? a Behemoth suit, you say?), etc. Of course, sometimes we like to put our own spin on things, so be warned! XD Yup, and don't forget about the characters that we have yet to see more of: Manty and the Behemoth or as Kayli calls him, "Beheemo."

Finally, I don't think Joseph will let me post naked Gordos. XD

On another exciting note, our interview is now up on the main page of DarkDiamond.net, an awesome news & reviews site for anime, games, and other cool stuff! YAAAY! Many thanks to our friend, David "KidKobun" Bruno for organizing the questions and posting the interview on his site! ^___^

Click here to read the interview!

~Genevieve

[Joe's Edit]: Hey everyone, hope you enjoy the interview. Just a quick note, if you win the kiriban contest, please try to be tasteful in your requests and keep in mind that we can't make it too elaborate. We want to be able to do one for each milestone we hit so there's always a chance for someone else to win in the future. The kiriban is only a digital prize, we won't be actually mailing anything out. Naked Gordo's are fine but will not include the "full monty". This is like the legal info they spill out really quick at the end of a radio commercial. Anyway, in the event that no one claims the 1337th hit kiriban prize, Genevieve and I will come up with a few ideas of our own and readers can vote for it on a poll. How's that sound?

Secret Interview! *UPDATE*

Genevieve and I were interviewed recently by...oh wait, it's a secret...mainly on account that the interview isn't up on the site yet. As soon as I have a link for you, I'll let you all know. Check back later!

UPDATE: Hey everyone, I was just informed that our interview will be up tomorrow morning instead of today. Sorry for the tease...I know you were all looking forward to reading about us...talking. Hmmm, well...we're gonna have a pretty neat update pretty soon...but I'm gonna let Genevieve tell you about that one. =)

- Joseph

[Gen's Edit]: P.S. I've put up some of the sketches for the XFIRE gang in the previous entry below!

Visit to XFIRE Offices

As PC gaming fans, Genevieve and I were excited when Yulius, an employee of XFIRE, offered to give us a tour of their offices. XFIRE is basically a chat program that allows you to send and receive chat messages while you're playing a PC game...unlike other chat programs which will either just not be able to alert you or even kick you out of the game. It can also automatically download patches for you and has a lot of other neat features that PC gamers might find useful. Genevieve and I use XFIRE quite a bit and it's helped us out a lot when we were trying to get some obscure games to work over direct IP...

Genevieve: "What's your IP again?"
Joseph: "Hang on, I think I gotta open some ports..."
Genevieve: "I hate this game already."

What does this have to do with Islands in the Sky? Well, as I left my place to go meet with everyone, I grabbed a copy of our comic on a lark and showed it to some of the XFIRE crew when we where having lunch at a local Chevy's. As it turned out, there were quite a few comic geeks there. In fact, some of them heard we'd be at WonderCon and were actually looking for us at the show, though they couldn't have been looking TOO hard since we never saw them...

Thanks to Yulius for treating all of us to lunch, to everyone at the XFIRE offices, to the XFIRE gang that went out with us to Chevy's, and thanks also to those XFIRE people who ordered our comic from our site on the same day! We hope you enjoy the sketches Genevieve did for you. =)

Oh yeah, for more on XFIRE, check out the site at www.xfire.com.

- Joseph

[Gen's Edit]: Earlier, I posted the photos of some sketches I finished for the guys at Xfire, but Joe said it might spoil the surprise. I will post them again after a few days! ^__^

[Gen's Edit]: Last night we met up with Yulius, Janelle, Darren, Sal and Chad from XFIRE to have dinner and dessert downtown. We had an awesome time--great food, fun company! Thanks so much guys!

Here are the sketches in a few of the books now that I can re-post:

The Future of Islands in the Sky

Hey IITS Readers,

In a short time, Genevieve and I will be starting work on finishing what we started with the first issue. The book is missing backgrounds and a lot of other details that we want to add (including color) and all this requires a lot of work. Regretfully, that may mean that we will, at least initially, have less content to post on this site. Don't worry though, when we can, we'll give you some sneak peeks at what we're working on.

We've got some events we're going to attend in an IITS capacity pretty soon. Currently, there are three events in May alone. We still need to work out a few details but as soon as things are more solid, we'll let you know.

If we stop posting three times a week, please don't get worried. Islands in the Sky is alive and well, we just need to focus on getting the book done and that will take up a lot of our time. Please keep checking in, either through your Google Dashboard (if you're following the site) or just in your spare time throughout the week. We promise to keep you all updated and get Genevieve's awesome art to you as often as we can. Thanks for your support, everyone.

- Joseph