Congratulations to Andrew for winning our Batcave Beach Chapter 2 contest! Read his entry on his website: apquinn.tumblr.com.

Thanks to all the readers who participated! Be on the look out for another contest posted soon.

I just wanted to remind everyone that there is only one more week until our contest ends to win a free signed copy of “Batcave Beach Chapter 2″ before anyone else. There has only been a handful of entries so you have a good chance of winning. Learn more here

Also I’m excited to announce that we will reveal the cover to “Batcave Beach Chapter 2″ tomorrow! Stay tuned!

Sorry it’s been a ghost town here! We totally thought we could run this website (plus 2 others), work on Batcave Beach, work on our daily comics, write music, write screenplays, paint, eat, sleep, drink and still work full-time jobs. Ugh! The result is that we are going to have to eliminate some other projects and focus on Batcave Beach exclusively for a while.

We unfortunately did not finish Batcave Beach Chapter 2 by our projected deadline. Melinda did not have enough time to work on it. Hand painting 65+ pages is a lot to do! But I can guarentee it will be worth it. I am extremely proud of how the next chapter is turning out! Our new (more reasonable) release date is November 15th. The contest is extended until then as well.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. If you want to see Batcave Beach Chapter 2 in progress or just say hi come visit Melinda and me at the Portland Zine Symposium this weekend.

- Aaron Whitaker

P.S. We are in process of setting up a Kickstarter to raise money for printing costs of future Batcave Beach issues. I will let you guys know more soon.

Sarah over at The Daily Crosshatch (a very awesome comic blog) was nice enough to write a review for Batcave Beach Chapter 1:

“Whitaker’s story is couched nicely into Boyce’s colorful, clear art. The book is beautifully drawn, colored and assembled. It’s all handmade by the two of them. Even the corners are rounded (nice!). The production quality is high inside and out. I really hope the other issues live up to this tremendous first issue of Batcave Beach.”

Read the full review (Warning: SPOILERS)

DIGITAL COPY: Batcave Beach Chapter 1 is now available as a digital PDF as a temporary fix for international readers or a cheaper (it’s only $2) way for people to test the series.

CONTEST: Want to win a free signed copy of Batcave Beach Chapter 2 the second it rolls off the presses? Check out our contest page to see our current contest.

SECRET EMAIL LIST: Shhh… We added a sign up form in the sidebar to the right for our secret email list. This way we can let you know when the next issue of Batcave Beach is finished as well as send some secret exclusive promotions.

REVIEW: Dylan of Sparkplug Comics wrote a very nice review of Batcave Beach: Chapter 1 on his comic review blog Further Examination. You should definitely check it out. Thanks Dylan!

Well that’s it for right now. Melinda and I are off to the NW Sasquatch Music Festival for some camping and drunken concert dancing! When we get back we will start on some web exclusive Batcave Beach Prologue comics.

-Aaron Whitaker

I have finished the script for the second chapter and I’m really excited how it turned out! With the introductions now taken care of in the first chapter we can really dive into the story and characters while getting some awesome horror-action-comedy along the way. We hope to finish this issue by the end of August (but don’t hold us to it, because this one is a bit longer than the first one).

I thought I would write quickly about storyboarding since that is the phase we’re in now. I’ve handed the script off to Melinda. She then reads through and divides the script into sections and assigns them a number which corresponds to a panel. The panels are then laid out into pages so each page ends at a good spot, there is “breathing room” for your eyes to rest and scene changes happen at page breaks. If she needs to visualize a panel she may draw a quick sketch in the margins or do some practice drawings in her sketchbook.

Here is an example of Melinda’s process from the first chapter:

I fumbled my way through making another site! Now Melinda needs to get in here and make this place look beautiful. This blog will be a source of Batcave Beach awesomeness such as, exclusive web only comics, concept art, progress reports and my attempt to come up with all 873 index cards mentioned in the comic. Bookmark us! We really appreciate everyone’s support in getting this self-published comic series started.

- Aaron Whitaker