Welcome to day 4 of our introduction to THE UNDERGROUNDS. As I did yesterday, I will start with yet another character introduction. So far you have had the chance to meet Dracula, Frank, and the Wolfman. Who could possibly be left? Why, The Mummy of course!

Yesterday, I got the chance to introduce you all to two of the five writers that will be penning our comic. Today I want to introduce you to the other three writers that will be working on THE UNDERGROUNDS: Derek Johnson, Michael Fountain, and Marcel Losada.

Derek Johnson received his BA in English from Hamline University in Minnesota, and his MFA in screenwriting from Chapman University located in the much warmer Southern California. Derek is currently up in Hollywood, making movie magic, but he has taken time out of his busy schedule to write THE UNDERGROUNDS.

Michael Fountain has a BFA Theater Technology from Chapman University. Mike has written several plays as well as several short films, but to date, THE UNDERGROUNDS is his first comic book work. Mike is currently hard at work at a number of projects, but if you want to get in contact with him, he suggests you try his facebook page. He eagerly awaits pokes.

Marcel Losada has obtained his BA in English Education from Cal State long beach, and currently works at shaping the fragile young minds of the next generation. Marcel is also a newcomer to the field of comics but has a great deal of experience in poetry and short fiction. Marcel also has a deep love of all things food; when asked what food he enjoyed, he simply responded “Everything!”.

Tomorrow you get to meet the last of the regular characters on THE UNDERGROUNDS, and get to know series artist Daniel Touchet a little better. If you missed any of our previous character introductions, you can find them at the links just below.

Dracula

Frank

The Wolfman

Welcome back to my week long look at Semantink’s new web-comic, THE UNDERGROUNDS. In the past few days we have all gotten a chance to meet several of the characters from THE UNDERGROUNDS by way of their Monster Match profiles. Monday we got to meet Dracula, yesterday we were introduced to Frank, and today we get to become acquainted with the Wolfman:

Now, I also promised a little more information about the talented people working on THE UNDERGROUNDS, and since I am no liar,  today I want to give you all a little information about two of the fabulous writers working on this project, Joe Pezzula and James Ninness.

Joe Pezzula got his BA in English from the University of Albany, then went on to get his MFA in scriptwriting from Chapman University. Joe has mainly worked up in Hollywood the last few years, but has decided to take his first shot in the field of comics with THE UNDERGROUNDS. If you want to read some of Joe’s short stories, you can find them here. Joe also loves pie and homemade meatballs. Don’t get between Joe and his meatballs.

James Ninness is a name that you have heard of if you visit this site often. James received his BA in English: Creative Writing from Cal State Long Beach, and is also the writer of Semantink’s inaugural title, MYTHOI. However, no one project can keep James occupied, so he got involved with THE UNDERGROUNDS (not to mention a great deal of other projects I am not at liberty to talk about). If you want to check out James’ work on MYTHOI, you can read several issues for free here or if you want to check out some more of his musings, you can check out his blog, The Word Ride.On a more personal note, James likes sushi eaten off of brightly colored midgets.

Check back tomorrow for more on THE UNDERGROUNDS, and if you missed out on meeting Dracula or Frank, fear not I’ve put links in just below.

Dracula

Frank

Yesterday I was pleased to introduce you to Semantink Publishing’s brand new weekly web-comic, THE UNDERGROUNDS. Today I wanted to continue to whet your appetites with a little more information about our new series. First up, I want to show you the official UNDERGROUNDS logo. Anytime you see this bad boy, monsters, caffeine and hi-jinx won’t be far behind. Enjoy!

I also wanted to introduce you to another of the wonderful baristas that you will meet when you stop into THE UNDERGROUNDS. Yesterday, we all got a chance to meet Dracula via his Monster Match survey, and today we geet to meet Frank.

Stay tuned all week for more information about THE UNDERGROUNDS, including more character profiles, information on the writers and artist, and a little behind the scenes of how the comic came to be.

Oh, and if you missed the introduction to THE UNDERGROUNDS, or a chance to read Dracula’s Monster Match survey, you can check it out here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to share some very exciting news with you all. One week from today (that’s March 1st for all of you without a calender handy) Semantink Publishing will be offering a free weekly web comic to all titled THE UNDERGROUNDS.

THE UNDERGROUNDS is a comic strip that takes some of your favorite classic monsters, characters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy, and The Wolfman (as well as everyone’s favorite vampire hunter Van Helsing) and puts them to work at a coffee shop.

The strip is written by Marcel Losada, Michael Fountain, James Ninness, Joe Pezzula and Derek Johnson, with art by Daniel Touchet.

Now that you know about our latest project, it’s time to introduce you to the characters you will be seeing there every week. Each of the monsters that work at THE UNDERGROUNDS recently filled out a very telling dating survey for Monster Match, and I thought I would share their answers with you. Today we get to learn a little bit more about Dracula:

From today until Friday I will be introducing you to a new character each day. Enjoy, and mark your calenders for next Monday and THE UNDERGOUNDS #1!

Benjamin Glibert

Good Morning!

As we head into the weekend (yay Super Bowl!), it is time for another edition of Odds and Ends. Let’s see what’s going on in the world of comics:

Super Sunday: Comics Alliance is ramping up for the big game in their own way, throwing out rosters for a would-be DC/Marvel Super Bowl. It’s odd but funny.

Catching Up: IGN runs down the last decade of X-Men continuity to get you ready for this year’s X-event. Thanks IGN!

Worse Than The Clone Saga: For all you cinephiles out there, The Razzies have announced their nominations for the worst of 2009. As a special treat to commemorate the new decade, this year’s Razzies actually include categories for worst of the decade.

Waxing Marvel: Jason Karouac and Lee Rodriguez from Panels on Pages sit down for an interview with Marvel’s Uber-editor Tom Brevoort. The whole interview is available for your listening pleasure here.

Why Haven’t You Read This?: Semantink put out it’s latest MYTHOI comic, MYTHOI Birth: YUKI. Why have you not read it? There are Yetis and scantily clad women kicking butt.

Thanks for stopping in folks, have a great weekend, and check back tomorrow for Geek of The Week!

Happy Monday everyone,

Hopefully everyone had a fun weekend, and got to watch that Arizona/ Green Bay football game yesterday. Today I am back with some more interesting tidbits for you from around the internet, enjoy:

Aftermath comics: DC has announced part of the aftermath of BLACKEST NIGHT, and its a new bi-weekly series called BRIGHTEST DAY. You can read up on it here.

Caw-Caw!: John Malkovich has confirmed he will be playing the Vulture in the upcoming Spider-man 4 according to this report on comingsoon.net.

Kick Ass!: The movie based on Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.‘s comic book, KICK ASS, has a new and hilarious trailer up. You can check it out here.

For the man who has everything: Marvel has unleashed their newest version of Iron Man’s armor, this one is designed by INVINCIBLE IRON MAN writer Matt Fraction. Oooh Shiney.

If you like loin cloths: Seth Green put together a He-Man themed art show in LA this past weekend. Newsarama has a great interview with Green you can check out, with links to some of the art from the show.

That’s it for today folks, Sgt. Angle will be back with us tomorrow for more cinematic goodness. Thanks for stopping in!

Good  morning folks,

Last week I took a look back at all that was in comics over the previous decade. This week, I thought I would look to the future (don’t worry, I wont be nearly so long winded this time). Today, I want to look at some of the things I am most excited to see show up in 2010. Unlike last week, I wont be limiting myself to just comics, anything and everything that seems neat to me is fair game.

NEMESIS: Mark Millar and Steve McNiven pair up again in 2010 to put out NEMESIS through Marvel’s Icon imprint. The story has been pitched as “What if Batman was the Joker?” which doesn’t quite make sense, but upon reading more, I like the tag line that Millar uses, “What if Batman was a total C*&t?” Anything this team does turns out to be awesome, so I am in.

Bioshock 2: The first game scared me. No really, I had to play with the lights on, on account of the creepiness. This year, the sequel comes out, with players getting to be a big daddy (that big honkin’ thing in the picture with a drill hand). Certainly I will be safe if I am a big daddy, right?

Iron Man 2: The first movie was great, and just going by the trailer, this one looks just as good. Two times as many Iron mans (iron men?), Mickey Rourke looking all crazy and Russian, and Scarlett Johannsson in leather as the Black Widow; yes this movie will rock.

Longbox Digital: Longbox has been touted for the last year or so as the thing that will revolutionize digital comic book viewing. Is this the year that comics on the computer become the norm?

American Vampire: Vampire stories are a dime a dozen these days, so why should I get all uppity about this Vertigo vampire book? STEPHEN KING! That’s right, the master of the horror novel is actually creating original comic book work. Sign me up!

Marvelman: Whether it’s just reprints of the impossible to find TPBs or (gasp) new work on the character, I can’t wait to see what Marvel does now that they have the rights to Marvelman. Oh, and if Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore want to come back to write the character, that’d be alright too.

Mass Effect 2: When Mass Effect came out a few years ago, I was blown away by the RPG. I was given a whole Universe full of different alien races to interact with, and a choose-you-own-adventure style plot, it was awesome. So, will the boys at BioWare be able to top their initial 2007 offering? I don’t know, but I’ll be the first in line to find out.

Tron Legacy: The original Tron came out the same year I was born. Growing up, I always thought Disney’s black-light sci-fi extravaganza was a fun ride, and this year, we finally get a sequel! It looks like there will be a lot less black-light this time though.

Hitman Monkey: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well folks, that’s it for today. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Happy New Year everyone!

I don’t have anything fun and exciting to share with you all today, but I just wanted to extend my thanks to everyone in helping Semantink grow over the last 6 months. We have some exciting things coming up for the company in 2010, and as soon as I am allowed to, I will tell you all about them, but suffice it to say, 2010 is going to be big for Semantink.

I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year’s eve, and hopefully, no one has to work to early today. Thanks for stopping in folks, I’ll see you tomorrow.

P.S.- I hope none of you ended up like this last night:

Greetings Semantinkers!

Ben was kind enough to let me share the exciting news — Vito is here!  Jed and I have been working very, very hard to push ourselves with each issue and we’re both very proud of MYTHOI Birth: Vito — I hope you like it!  Vito is the smallest of the MYTHOI gang, but he’s also the most gruesome…  If you like vampires, Gothic culture, or anything Brahm Stoker, I think you’ll find Vito an entertaining read!  If you like Twilight, well…  I’m sorry?

There are a few viewing options at your disposal here.  Option 1: Go here and download your very own copy of Vito as a pdf — for free!  Or for the viewing method preferred by many of us here at Semantink, you can go here and check it out on ISSUU!  Either way, be sure to check it out and as always: LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!  The best publicity is word of mouth.  We want you guys to enjoy it and tell your friends, remember: it’s 100% free!

I’m honored that you’ve taken the time to check out the beginning of a story I’ve invested the last four years of my life into.  It’s very exciting to see Jed breathe life into these characters and even more so to hear back from you guys about the good times your having reading them. You guys are the best.

Benjamin’s also asked me to mention that Semantink is currently being “re-imagined.”  I’m not privy to all the details, but I do know that the site will be relaunching with all new designs and a complete interface overhaul.  I think I’m allowed to tell you that they’ve just finished negotiations with a new team of bloggers to be producing new content every day, as well as production on a yet-to-be-titled web comic, released every Monday.  All of this coming to you in mid-February…  So stay tuned and hold on to your butts — good stuff’s a-comin’.

Keep on keepin’ on!

James Ninness

PS: In case you haven’t figured it out already, there is something else going on between the pages — here’s a hint: read the ads.  Have fun!

Semantink.com

Good Morning folks!

I hope everyone got their share of turkey, family and shopping this weekend. If not, there’s always leftovers and cyber-Monday. Anyway, today I thought I would share a few various nifty-cool things I found floating around the internet:

There’s a fun little article over on Comic book resources interviewing Christos Gage about his new book: DANTE’S INFERNO. A comic based on a video game based on a book? Crazy! The cover art looks awesome though…

Of late I have been gushing over how much I like J.H. Williams III. Over at Thought Balloonists, Charles Hatfield does a much better job of gushing than I do. Very pretty pictures!

Ron Perazza, one of the big wigs over at Zuda comics compiled a bunch of tweets about creating comics for all those aspiring creators out there. You can find it on his website here.

There is a great list over on Comics Alliance about the Punisher’s most ridiculous moments. Priceless!

If you liked my little Black Friday special over the last week, IGN has actually put together a nice comic and toy buyer guide video.

A few other notes for everyone:

MYTHOI Births: VITO is almost here, and it looks (and reads) fantastic! I know it’s still a few weeks away, but I’m all geeked about it. What will you do with yourself for the next few weeks? Well you could always go back and check out MYTHOI Births: WIGLAF again, you might have missed something…

Finally, I’m going to be giving out awards for the year, but I’m looking for categories. If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for stopping in folks, see you tomorrow!