Well, another busy weekend. The first section of the new Episode of VIETNAM STORY has been sent to GL and also placed on Point Man's Privy. This first section of the story contains the first "real ads" to be 
placed in one of my online comic books. 

You will probably have noticed, if you paused on the Home Page that there is a matching ad for Toy Chest and Collectibles there, with a link to their website. This is the first of what will be many ads, part of a growing relationship between the SSCC  Ohio and TC&C.

It is our hope that these ads will in some small way help to grow Cory's business and that we will have his support of our events for the foreseeable future. Cory is a first class individual in every respect and we are really happy to have him onboard for the 2011 November Ft. Thomas show. We have no idea whether the advertising will have any effect at all - this is an experiment to be sure, but if it does well for Cory, I believe that we will expand the practice to include our other event vendors if they so desire.

As a grocery advertising guy (for the past 30 years), it is really exciting for me to be working on something different and new and this is a great opportunity to do something with art that doesn't take the shape of soup cans, heads of lettuce or cereal boxes.

The newest episode of VIETNAM STORY is called THE BUILDUP. It is divided into six sections and will unfold both on GL's Ultimate Soldier Unofficial Fan Page as well as my own site, Point Man's Privy. The first section of the story is already posted at my site and GL has the files as well, hopefully to post this week. The story is milestone for me because it is my first use of my FIREBASE COOPER diorama, which I previewed at the 2010 Ft. Thomas show. I am hoping that we can even use that as an advertising point for this year's show, you know something like, "Come see Firebase Cooper and the actors of Vietnam Story". I have thought that it might be cool to advertise a seminar for this year's show on Storytelling and Creating Comics. Comic Life, which is one of the programs I use has just upgraded to a new version for MAC and the word is that it will be available for PC for the first time this year. Without a doubt, it is the best in it's class of program and that is going to be welcome news for folks that are struggling with their online graphic novels. I am pretty excite about the news for a number of people.

This is a sample of another ad page that is in the first section of the new episode. I had hoped that I would be able to run my comics with the ad pages at the OSW site as well. This is up in the air at the moment. The OSW group have some rules about advertising and this is a borderline issue. I have made the request and their staff is reviewing it. I would hope that they would see it as being part of my online magazine and let it fly, if not, I will have to drop them as  place to post. I hate to do that because I think I would have a much larger audience by adding that site, but I will not violate their rules obviously and I will not run the comic without the ads. Well, we'll see how that plays out shortly.

...OTHER NEWS...
I am still messing with the SSCC OHIO FORUM idea. There is a problem. You cannot upload pictures to the forum with the free version of the software. The best you can do is link to pictures that you have already online elsewhere. I just don't think any of us are going to be happy with that setup. The upgrade version unfortunately is $6.95 a month and I am just not going to put out $84 a year of my money to pay for the software. It is time to explore some other options. I am sure that there must be some out there, I just don't know what they are. I will keep you all informed of any developments.

I don't know how many people saw these last week. Okimbored had some in progress shots of his sd.kfz 222 and early war SS Troops on the Six Division and GL's and they looked great. I have swiped some of them to drop into the blog as I figured he wouldn't mind. These shots are from GL's as I couldn't get onto the Six Division. Don't know what their problem is today.

Wish that I had thought to get the additional pictures of the armored car on Friday because there were a couple of new angles I hadn't seen previously and they really did a nice joy of showing you the overall vehicle. No doubt about it, it looks great and I sure wish I had one in my German motorpool. Of course I also wish that Okimbored had built it for me so that I didn't have to go through the pain. It really looks sharp man, I sure hope you will be able to attend this spring's Battle of France shoot.

His troops look outstanding as well, the vehicle crew is really sharp and his infantry troops look exactly like some pictures I have in a Verlinden book. Really, really nice. Where did you get that camera in the camera case? That is like one of the coolest details I have ever seen.

Well, that is it for the UPDATE tonight. It has been a while since I have been regular at this. I will try to do a little better at that going forward. Until next time, have a good one!