We’re  coming back. Sorry for the delays. Our personal lives, and professional lives have been crazy. We’ll probably have some news for you on some published work here soon. In the meantime Light Years Away  will be back on Saturday.

Things got a little shaky and hectic for us last month. Middle of June my longtime girlfriend, Olivia, and I split, leaving me in a mad dash to sort my life out and find a new place to live. At the same time Adam’s lease was up so he was also moving.

As it turns out, disentangling the last 5 years of your life from someone else is not easy and I haven’t had a lot of time for comics. But its done now and I am moved in. Adam is in his new place too, but no sooner than he got moved he crashed his bike. Into a thorn patch. Hands first into a thorn patch. Drawing hand mangled. The guy had to perform surgery on himself to get the thorns out. He is just now able to draw without pain again.

So, currently we are gearing up for comic con…tomorrow. Expect full con reports from me. And in the immediate future here’s what you can expect from us:

• Prizes from the Light Years A Day event will be mailed out as soon as we return from the con
• Light Years Away will resume and finish book 1 before summer’s end
• Fat Baby will resume immediately as well.
• We will take a short break to conceptualize some things for book two and then begin publishing.
• Expect announcements on a few new projects soon.
• Expect a site re-design before year’s end.

Exciting stuff. We are so sorry for our absence guys. Sometimes real life gets in the way and flings breakups and thorns and shit at you. You do what you can.

Adam: What is your reaction to Josh’s piece

Adam: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zg0UA1ktQc8/TAlE6_2zHnI/AAAAAAAAAeU/5PhzAUfqM2Y/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-06-04+at+1.24.04+PM.png

Ethan: Josh’s piece is funny, but ultimately loses favor for not including stab master arson. quite fond of it, but would have liked to see more of an original piece from him

Adam: I agree. I’m awed by how well he remixed this scene using CB4, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed knowing that he could have done something equally as funny using an original piece.

Ethan: Really, though he picked a perfect page to remix

so major recognition there

Adam: definitely. Possibly a good idea for a remix contest down the line.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v191/deluillus/cryuncleyouant.png

Next up is Kate Z

Ethan: Kate Z’s entry blows me away, original take on one of the characters, and on concepts from the story. High end execution, Davis’ facial expression is great. Smooth action line to figure. Very very impressive,

Adam: It turned the idea of the Little Black Ants on its head in a great way.

I loved the use of the knockout x’s as well. Great sense of motion.

It is a bit cool to see characters I’ve created through the work of other people, must say.

Ethan: I do, however, want to state that the tattoo is not cannon

Adam: Yes. His black ant band is actually located on his penis, not his arm. Just to be clear.

Ethan: but yeah, really cool to see an original interpretation of one of our characters

Adam: Yeah, great great piece all around.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ofc2tPper1Q/TAn4Pcko27I/AAAAAAAACHM/O3VymtZVknE/s1600/LYAD_contest.jpg

Next up is Eric Schuster’s sketch.

Ethan: Love this one, concept is great, Milo’s face is awesome

Realistic battle damage Milo

now with home suture kit

Adam: Yeah, this is one that I think had the most character and narrative to it

You get a perfect picture of exactly who this guy is and what he’s been through in one image.

His stance is pretty unassuming He looks meek if it weren’t for his body being littered with the signs of fighting

Ethan: Yeah, more than any other piece you can tell he really thought about the character and presented something that, while we haven’t seen it in the comic, totally is part of this character’s life

Adam: Granted, Milo never really gets hit in this story, save for being dialed into unconsciousness by the guards and the control bracelet

But the drawing perfectly portrays a guy that gets pulled into messes out of his control.

Ethan: for real

Adam: http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc159/sticman77/vagabond.jpg
Now to Guhn “Gang Bang” Chang

Ethan: haha, much love for the Colin Lovejoy/ Andrew W.K. Mashup

Funny, but a clear example of how men with beards are stereotyped in this country.

Adam: Everyone knows that Colin Lovejoy likes to PARTY HARD

Or is that KICK HARD?

Ethan: it’s both

Adam: First one, then the other.

I think I’d give it higher marks if he didn’t clearly swipe the last panel of page 60 for Lovejoy’s face.

Swiping kills, kids.

Ethan: hahah

Adam: If Mr. Chang shows up in comics later reusing my panels, I’m going to have to call my lawyer.

Which is unfortunate, because Guhn Chang is my lawyer.

Up next, we have a three piece entry from Brad Bentley

http://picasaweb.google.com/b2thrad/LightyearsAwayContest#5479766465856222018

Ethan: Bentley’s entries are funny, and the execution, for the style he was going for, is very high. He had a clear concept, kids art of something kids shouldn’t read, and he pulled it off well.

Adam: I particularly love the self-insertion with the high five between himself and Clipper

Who WOULDN’T want a high five from Clipper?

Ethan: Now some nit-picky details:

Adam: Except with his safety arm. I imagine a high five might set off its release trigger

pink electroreactive bath all over the place

Ethan: Clipper’s safety limb is only worn by him in prison, the second he gets out, he would be sporting his full custom cybernetic limb replacement he had when he got pinched.

Adam: To be fair, they haven’t seen what his real cybernetic limb looks like

Ethan: So I would have liked to have seen an original take on what that would look like, from a 26 year-old- imitating a 5-year old

Adam: Most likely, the prosthetic arm will also be pink.

Because Clipper rolls like Cam’Ron

Ethan: But a technical plus for Bentley is that every time Clipper punches a guy he is literally punching them to a moon

Adam: Brad also correctly assumed that Clipper sports more chains than China has people when he’s free.

So great job all around

AND THE WINNER IS

Ethan: For me, that standout was Kate Z, I loved all the entries but her’s was the one that really floored me. Plus she gets points because, I believe, she is the only entrant that we don’t actually know in real life, which is way cool.

Adam: Agreed. While I love the other entries, I think she went beyond the others in terms of concept and execution.

It’s a gorgeous piece unto itself.

Ethan: Yeah, without knowing the character or anything about it, I would be attracted to it as an illustration. Knowing Davis only makes it better

Adam: So, congrats to Kate Z! Shoot us an email and we’ll get rolling on your prize package. And big thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. All of you will get a signed Light Years Away print for participating. Big ups to you all!

Ethan: For real, and don’t forget to tell us who you want the original illustration of. (I hope its Clancy)

• Draw a piece of art featuring a Light Years Away character.
• It can be an illustration or narrative flow, we don’t care.
• It doesn’t have to be great art, it just has to be our favorite.
• Deadline is one week from today.
• Open to everyone including, friends, family and past winners.

The Winner shall Receive:

1. An exclusive 11×17 print of the Little Black Ants squadron photograph
2. And original piece of art from Adam featuring a character of your choice from LYA.

A Prize!

Link your to your piece in the comments of this post, and good luck!

You know the ones.  The guys who carpetbomb their webcomic across every forum, every discussion board, and every blog in the entire comics web community.  We loathe being those guys.

But we love it when our readers do it for us.

So, this giveaway involves a little street team mentality.  Go to your favorite comics site/blog/store and tell people there about Light Years Away and where they can find it.  It doesn’t have to be long or involved, just a quick name drop to get people intrigued that might not know about the comic yet.

The FIRST 5 PEOPLE to post 3 different links to places they posted about Light Years Away will get a signed & sketched Light Years Away poster print!

Some rules:
• Twitter and Facebook posts count, but only one or the other.  You can post to both, but only one will count toward the link total.
• New posts only, please.  Sorry to cut out the older links posted by some of you guys.  We love you for it, but we gotta start on even ground.
• No previous winners are eligible (sorry Barry).  Same goes for close friends and family.
• All links must be posted to the comments section of this blog entry for ease of verification.
• You can stump for us out in the real world as well!  Just post a picture and an anecdote of you getting the word out along with any posts you make about the comic.
• The contest WILL REMAIN OPEN until all 5 prints are claimed, even if Light Years a Day has already concluded.

You guys have already made this our best week ever, so help us continue to blow the roof off of this joint!  Good luck!

-Adam

Find it. Post it in the comments on this blog post, and win this page of original art:

http://www.floodworks.net/webcomics/lightyearsaway/26

Go!

UDATE! Barry (sounds like a pretty cool dude) Wins! He spotted a missing Puritan armband.  More contests to come dudes.

LYA Page 55

Click to Visit Site

Now  comes the bit where we ask for something in return.  Adam and I both work full-time day jobs, Adam is a graphic designer for a local alternative weekly and around press time this job demands a lot of hours.  A page of Light Years Away takes Adam about four hours to layout, ink, color, letter and post online.  So Adam is going to be killing himself this week (especially with one of the upcoming pages…) to put these out.

In return, all we ask is that you tell people about us. Telling a friend is great, posting a link is better.  We want more readers guys, we want our hits to soar to new heights, and we think we are worth it. Send out a tweet over twitter, use the #floodworks tag.  Tell your friends about us on facebook, if you post on a forum, let people know about us there. Do whatever you want.

Adam, and I love what we do, we want to share it, and we need your help.

Here's a Banner that you can use.

If the event is successful we will probably do it again every couple months, also we aren’t ruling out the possibility of FAT BABY A DAYBY.

Adam and I will also be giving away some original art from Light Years Away as part of the Event. Follow us on Twitter for details:

http://twitter.com/EthanEde

http://twitter.com/Arosenlund

Thank you guys so much for reading our comics. Stay Tuned, it’s gonna be an awesome week.

-Ethan

I’m sure you’ve noticed that updates on both Fat Baby and Light Years Away have slowed down somewhat in the past couple of weeks.  Ethan and I have been making some moves lately, both preparing for Stumptown and some other stuff.  We’ve got a lot of exciting things happening behind the scenes, so once we have something to announce officially, you’ll be the first to know.

I’m getting back into it, but I also want to take the opportunity to announce an event we have coming up right here on the site:

LIGHT YEARS A DAY

That’s right.  For one week in May, we’ll be putting out a page of Light Years Away out for every day of the week.  Sunday through Saturday, you’ll get yourself a fix of LYA.  We’ll talk more about it once we get a little closer to it, but in the mean time, we’ll be getting back to our regular update schedule.  Thanks for reading, and welcome to any new readers coming in from meeting us at Stumptown!

This is a photo of us at the booth taken by Ocean Yamaha (that link will take you to his entire flickr set of the con.)

We also want to say thanks to Brandon and Lukas from www.witchdoctorcomic.com who we tabled with. These dudes are awesome dudes and they do great work.  They were both great  in  introducing us to other creators, making us feel welcome, and even at selling our book to people. Check out their comic Witch Doctor sometime.

Anyway the fest flew by like crazy, and Adam and I are back hard at work on more comics. Hopefully we will have some news soon on that front for you as well.

Thanks again to all you folks that made this last weekend amazing for us.

Another, and unexpected, result was the outpouring of Light Years Away love that we got. Thank you to everyone who told us that they loved the comic and didn’t want to see it end. We love it too, and it isn’t going anywhere.  Feel free to leave comments here anytime and let us know what you think of what we are doing, we love to hear from you guys, positive or negative anytime.

Adam and I continued the prank over our twitter accounts, posting further pictures of ourselves with Bad Boys 3000 stars:

Adam and Terry Crews

Ethan and Will Smith

Our Twitter accounts can be found here: http://twitter.com/Arosenlund http://twitter.com/EthanEde Give us a follow for more floodworks updates and news.

So, if you are a new visitor to the site that got linked in yesterday, please hang out a minute and check out our comics:

http://www.floodworks.net/webcomics/lightyearsaway/1

http://www.fatbabycomics.com/

And know that, even if we were offered mega jobs elsewhere, we would still make time for Light Years Away and Fat Baby. Not even Terry Crews could steal us away.