Category Archives: COMIC BOOKS

My First Two E-Comics–NOW AVAILABLE!

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BIG NEWS! My first two e-comics are available RIGHT NOW for download on the iBookstore for the iPhone and iPad for only 99-cents each!

The Kameoka Diaries: Volume One [ Direct iBookstore Link ]
The Kameoka Diaries: Volume One is a humorous (?) account of my experiences living and working in Central Japan, told over eight chapters. It includes an exclusive chapter not available anywhere else!

Young Men of a Certain Mind [ Direct iBookstore Link ]
Young Men of a Certain Mind is a slice of life comic about an unemployed graphic designer who takes a job as a night bellman to make ends meet. Drawn in 2003, it is a spiritual predecessor to my graphic novel Tonoharu. (Young Men of a Certain Mind is also available as a print comic here.)

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To get them, click on the links above.

Alternately, download the free iBooks app on your iPhone/iPad, open it and tap the “Store” button in the upper left-hand corner. Then search for “Lars Martinson” and that should lead you to them.

I’m really proud of these, so please do check them out (you can download a free sample if you want to get a sense of what they’re like).

And if you like them, please rate them on the iBookstore, and tell your friends. Thanks!!

E-Book Announcement

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I alluded to this before, but may as well make it official: I’ve been prepping two of my comics for release as ebooks!

The two comics are The Kameoka Diaries: Volume One and Young Men of a Certain Mind (tentative covers shown above).

At first, I’m going to release them for iphone/ipad, through the iBooks bookstore. I’ve been tweaking the underlying code for a couple weeks, and I’m delighted to say that I’ve finally got them working great on both screen sizes. On iPhones/iPod touches, you see a panel at a time:

And on iPads, you see four panels or eight panels, depending on how you hold the device:

Like I say it works really great on either device (on both Retina and non-Retina displays), and makes for the most pleasant way to read the books electronically. I’m planning on selling them for 99-cents each.

As for a release date, it all depends on when (if?) Apple approves my seller application, and then when (if?) it approves the books after that. I’m hoping to have them up sometime in April. But again, this has more to do with Apple than me. Stay tuned!

***3/31/2012 UPDATE***
Apple has approved my initial seller application! Now I just need to make fill out paperwork/sign contracts with Apple, make final tweaks to the ebook files, and then upload the files, and then wait for their approval on the books themselves. Again, I don’t know exactly when the books will be up on iBooks, but shouldn’t be more than a matter of weeks (probably)!

***4/6/2012 UPDATE***
Okay, I’ve uploaded the book files to Apple and am now waiting for approval. Assuming they get approved, they’ll probably be available on the iBookstore in 1-4 weeks. I will, of course, keep you posted!

***4/28/2012 UPDATE***
Just thought I’d update to say… nothing new to update! It’s now been three weeks since I submitted it, and the status remains that it’s still being reviewed. Many people on Apple forums report that it took about a month for their books to get approved, so maybe it’ll be up next week. No guarantee though, of course. Well, I check the status everyday, so I’ll let you know when it changes!

“Tonoharu: Part Three” Progress Report #2

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Progress Bar Key
Script/Story: The Story/Script for the comic
Artwork: The Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work for the comic
Final Edits/Incidentals: Post-Production Edits, Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.

(More information about Tonoharu can be found here.)

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I’ve just finished the artwork for page 39 out of a (projected) 117, which means the the artwork for Tonoharu: Part Three is now officially, exactly, ONE-THIRD COMPLETE! Hooray!

I won’t even make a wild guess about when Tonoharu: Part Three will be finished and available for purchase. I’ve missed so many self-imposed deadlines that it’s hard to say, especially now that I have a full time job again. In any event, it’ll still be a while yet, so don’t hold your breath!

One (small) piece of good news for those who are waiting for Tonoharu: Part Three: my job affords me a very generous 20 days of paid vacation. So far, after being on the job for almost seven months, I’ve used one of them. My plan is to take a whole month off this summer, and visit the US. Other than seeing old friends and family and such, I hope to devote most of that time to working on Tonoharu: Part Three. At best I might be able to finish ten extra pages or so, so I don’t mean to imply that a month of dedicated work will bring the book to the cusp of completion or anything, but hey, every little bit counts!

Oh, one more thing, in regards to The Kameoka Diaries, my new series of webcomics. You might be wondering if that’s slowing Tonoharu progress down even further. The honest answer is yeah, probably a bit. But actually, not too much. I tend to work on The Kameoka Diaries in places that I couldn’t work on Tonoharu anyway (cafes, bus stops, etc). Plus, I think it’s good for me to have something else to work on, to let off steam. If I never did any KD comics, I might have another 1-3 pages of Tonoharu done, but that’s about it.

Well, I’ll put up another progress report when the artwork for Tonoharu: Part Three is halfway done; probably show a couple of panels from the book then too. If you want more tedious, frequent updates, I tweet whenever I finish a page, so follow me on Twitter if you want. Peace!