All this thread and no one's talked about what's inside the book… the comics!

Then again, most of us don't even KNOW what's inside the book…

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to reading it though :)

Finally got my books today. Woo! ^_^
I like the small digest size for the book – the manga stories look really nice in the small size. The toning in my comic came out better than I expected. I was scared there was going to be a lot of moire going on, but it's pretty much beyond perfect to what I was aiming at! What kind of printing did PS use?? I want to use these specs for future reference when I start making comic pages again so I can keep this consistency.

I'll try to find out, Knuckles. This was printed in Canada, so I assume moose were involved.

I got my copies today and haven't had a chance to get very far into the anthology. Some of the stories I remember from when I was helping BK with it, some of them I don't recognize at all.

I personally like bigger books, but this is pretty high quality in spite of that, IMO.

My story “The Point Of Some Return” is missing one of my pages smack dab in the middle of it - so a few setups and gags are not there unfortunately. So, to read it in it's full glory, people are going to have to wait a bit, or buy it on my store.

But it's a good solid book, and if I have any say in it, all those problems we've had - deadlines, content and updates not happening - won't happen for the next one.

…though I don't think we're ready to talk about the next one yet. :)

Finally got mine in yesterday; great work all around. A little sad that it's so much smaller than the previous two books (just makes it look a little weird next to them on the bookcase), but it's still great.

Slight problem, though…


so… yeah.

Edit: Also, there's a strange sort of honor about being the last story in the book.

Well that sucks :/ Sorry to see that they screwed you over like that, Inkmonkey… I'm wondering if the people thought there was something controversial about your story, maybe? :/ That's the only thing I can think of, really why they would do that.

Ink, which way was it supposed to be? Was there a typo on “Nightmare” or did they erase art from your page to remove the “mare”? The first I could just credit to sloppiness, not any effort to screw anyone. The second would be very odd.

I've read the book now, both the stories I remember from way back when the project was started and a few I don't remember at all.

Very nice work everyone.

I liked seeing skoolmunkee's work again. Her sarcastic wit is always a joy to read.

It is my goal to have a much tighter editorial control over the next book. I don't know if anyone reading this remembered the work we did on the first two anthologies, but I have always tried to be very careful of the presentation of other artists' work. I've also tried to make sure that small typographical errors were addressed before printing. I wasn't involved in putting this book together, unfortunately, but it is my hope to be much more involved with the next one.

Someone just accidentally added the word “Mare” to the first page there. It's supposed to be “Night on Hell Mountain” (a play on “Night on Bald Mountain” ) . In the table of contents it's correctly labelled “Night on Hell Mountain”. I'm guessing it was some kind of typo myself.

Aw thanks Ronson :)

I just got my books today! So I've only started reading them.

They left our author profiles out of this one… but that's ok I guess.

Ronson's was the first story and I could tell there were pages missing, there were a couple of weird jumps between pages that didn't make much sense, like one character thanking another when that was the first time we'd seen them. Obviously the new character did some thing thank-worthy… but whatever it was, I'll never know :)

I too agree about the editing, I want to be more involved with the next one too. There have been a couple typos I've seen so far and that's not the best impression to leave in a printed book :(

Well, for the next book, does PS have to be the ones to control it? or can we do it ourselves like we did the first two books?

We are in the process of discussing exactly how these anotholgies should be handled.

I'm personally of the impression that if the DD admins aren't involved in the book - and none of us were involved in the end result of this book - then I would just as well not have them made, because of the mostly small (but several large) errors in this one. I just think that if there are going to be misakes, they should be OUR mistakes. :)

Very true. And I trust you guys that you can get the job done right the first time. We didn't have these problems before for the first two books.

Yeah, hope you guys can get in control.

Also, when will it be time to start submissions for DD Anthology #4? And how does one get in?

I don't think there are any plans for book 4 right now. When there is, I'm sure the DD admins will let everyone know well in advance.

Oh my GOD! Guess what came in the mail today? My ten copies of the anthology.

*FAINTS!*

Ronson
I'm personally of the impression that if the DD admins aren't involved in the book - and none of us were involved in the end result of this book - then I would just as well not have them made, because of the mostly small (but several large) errors in this one. I just think that if there are going to be misakes, they should be OUR mistakes. :)

You know, they actually printed to wrong title page for my comic in the book… This after I contacted two people about getting the correct title page in, and uploading my entire set of pages again without the incorrect title page. Somehow they still printed the wrong one, and I was pretty upset… until I heard your comic was missing pages. That would be far worse and I'm sorry to hear that it happened.

I fully agree with you about keeping the DD admins in control of the editing process. The thing is, at this point I'm sure I should just be grateful that it even got printed. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it did. And I'm 90% thrilled with the results.

Hawk
I fully agree with you about keeping the DD admins in control of the editing process. The thing is, at this point I'm sure I should just be grateful that it even got printed. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it did. And I'm 90% thrilled with the results.

Part of the reason I want to maintain admin control over it is because Platinum, as a business, had some people come and go that were in charge of the project. As a result, the anthology book was handed off (and sometimes handled carelessly) until it eventually got printed.

With the admins involved, We have a consistent set of hands on it and a bunch of folks that are directly in contact with all us Duckers.

So it's settled then :P Ronson is now in charge of vol. 4

Okay everyone. Here's an easy correction to make to my comic. Just a little splash of White-Out or a dark pen will do the job…



Thankfully, even though the wrong URL made it into the book, it redirects to the right one. I'm not sure why my DD URL isn't there. Every draft I have has it. I guess I goofed somewhere.

WOW, that page is hard for me to look at!

I'm feeling very depressed right now.

Three years ago I managed to get into the Drunk Duck Anthology, and struggled to get a story put together in time for the first “do-by” date. And that passed. . . and passed. . . and since then I have kept as close a tabs on the existence of the book as I thought I could. I've replied to Black Kitty's emails with always a “YES! Please keep me in the loop!” When I had assumed a last year that the book was never going to be published I started posting the comic pages on one of my DD comics, and then took them down at her request (LINK).

And now it appears that I was dropped at some point. . . I only ran across this by deciding to read the forums today (I admit that I rarely do). And there's my main character in the back of the cover, singing away, and I never got an email about including my story. And since I'm not on the authors' list it looks as though my story isn't there at all. I would have been overjoyed to be kept in the book, or at least informed that it was happening, even if my story could no longer be included.

Anyway, I'm sure that this isn't anyone's specific “fault,” but I'm pretty sad that my work and hope has just gone “splat.” I just wish someone had contacted me.

Okay, I'll stop ranting and just kill off a character to make myself feel better ;)

As you've probably read, there were a lot of editorial problems with the book. I'm not sure how a comic company managed to put out a book in such a slipshod way, but several of the contributors are unhappy by being left out, pages missing, wrong titles, etc. I mean, how do you just forget to include people?

You're on the list of people we're trying to get answers about ‘why weren’t they included in the book? They kept in contact and said yes to things'… everyone we ask goes ‘Gosh that’s terrible! I'll ask some questions and find out!' And while I don't doubt the genuine concern of the people asking on our behalf, we never hear anything back no matter how many different people we bug about it. :[

So yeah. You're unfortunately an example of why we want to keep the books in DD hands from now on. I'm sorry. :[

skoolmunkee
… everyone we ask goes ‘Gosh that’s terrible! I'll ask some questions and find out!' And while I don't doubt the genuine concern of the people asking on our behalf, we never hear anything back no matter how many different people we bug about it. :[

What really pisses me off is that I went well out of my way to communicate with people to make sure that my entry was correct. I thought I might have been paranoid, worrying that they'd somehow screw up my entry, but clearly I wasn't. My concerns were well placed.

Seriously, I thought that being the squeaky wheel would have gotten me some attention. The only way I could possibly have been more annoying about it is if I had flown out there and knocked on the front door of Platinum Studios personally. Sometimes I wonder if my persistence prevented me from being dropped from the book entirely. Even if I probably drove Carly nuts.

What really irks me is that I asked so many times if I can somehow be given thumb nails of my pages to MAKE SURE they were right, and every single f***ing time I asked that, my channels of communication went silent. I NEVER got an answer to that. Each time, I was told to just resubmit my pages, because that's probably the only way to be sure. Well, that obviously didn't work. I can't tell you how angry that makes me.

I could sense that I was attempting to communicate through a chain of about five people, as the message that needed to get through was being dropped about half way. It was like throwing blindly into the dark. And I know it's not the fault of the person with whom I was directly communicating, although I think I may have gotten snotty with the wrong people anyway.

I try to look at the bright side, that my comic is more or less intact, barring one small gaff (the name of the city is wrong), because it is pretty close to what I wanted, but after being promised the moon, being told that the Platinum deal was going the make the book EVEN BETTER, and having to wait three years for THIS, I'm just a little bitter.

And I don't even know if it's appropriate for me to express this, because all things considered, I got probably the best results of all people who got shafted on this. After reading everyone else's complaints, I've realized that mine is the least screwed up.

Still, this is the most incompetent thing I've ever been involved with.

D0m
I picked up the book and looked on the back when I was in my comic shop, and it costs ten dollars, or something. That's nuts. :(

I work for a publishing company and if you consider the costs of producing/printing a book, ten dollars is a really good price. Especially if the authors/artists didn't have to donate anything, which I am not sure if they did or not. Even so, it's cheap.

I feel much better with the book being in DD hands of people I know rather than a third party. But hey, this was a learning experience for us all.

Thanks for the reply, Skoolmonkee. At least I can go ahead and post my story here on the Duck, so it can finally be seen! Let me know if you need any extra people to rant at PS wit you guys! :)

Hey Guys,
Been holding off on a reply on this ‘cause I don’t work for Platinum anymore, etc, etc… but I personally just wanted to say I'm sorry for anything that went wrong with your stories. I've been in anthologies and had pages left out/reorded so I know how you feel. Not going into details, I took on this project with less than a month before it was scheduled to go to print. I didn't have any creator contact info (thank you for all your help BK) or any “layout” of what was supposed to be in the book. I just went offa what I had and all the help BK gave me.

Again I'm really, really sorry. I don't want anyone to think I didn't care, or wasn't listening. It was a lot to manage, too little information, and too little time.
:(

I don't think anyone was blaming you, I think it was more about how a company that does comic publishing didn't give proper time/attention to something they were publishing. You'd think they'd know they can't just shove it through the pipe….

skoolmunkee
I don't think anyone was blaming you, I think it was more about how a company that does comic publishing didn't give proper time/attention to something they were publishing. You'd think they'd know they can't just shove it through the pipe….

I think part of it was that, from an outside perspective, the product is already “done”. The pages are drawn, the cover is colored, biographies were written, etc. Some of that didn't actually make it into the actual book, but it was out there somewhere.