2008 where the grass is greener
This page is a news blog about the latest happenings at Iberian Press, posted irregularly by Suzy Dias. Check in to read the real life saga of a small press (that would be us) as it tries to break into the comic/graphic novel market. Our highs and our lows...hopefully more highs than lows. Click here for the 2006 News Blog, 2007 News Blog or www.myspace.com/SamuraiElf.

July 14
The new website is launched! Complete with lots of images and info on Bull's Eye (vol. 2 of Samurai Elf). The Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese versions of the site are still in the old style, but we'll get to that eventually. We wanted the English version up and ready for everyone to see. Hope you like it!

July 7
We finally received advanced copies of vol.2, Samurai Elf: Bull's Eye! We printed with Quebecor and the sales people were great, but the printers, although nice, were so slow. It took a few times before the gallies were presentable (pages missing, cut terribly, pages too small, etc). All typical stuff in the end, you just have to stay on your toes to catch it all. Now we're sending it out for reviews, another nerve intensive exercise. Luckily with vol. 2, we already have contacts from vol. 1 who are happy to review our book, which is music to our ears. It's one thing to complete a book, it's another to get it into peoples' hands.

May 26
The hard part may be over, but getting the gallies back from the printer looking correct has been a bit of an ordeal. It came with colors so faded, it looked like the printer was running out of ink, pages misplaced and even missing pages. The second round brought the correct pages, but they were too small - about 85% smaller than the PDFs we'd send them. Let's hope the 3rd time's a charm.

May 15
It's official. Let the champagne corks fly! Vol. 2 of Samurai Elf is now off to the printer. YEEEHAAA! Let the party begin. We're so happy it's over...I mean beginning. Now all the marketing fun begins. We have some good contacts for reviews, one in particular that I won't mention so I don't jinx it. Now that we have a better idea of how this 'publishing thing' works, we're going to take advantage of sending out advanced copies for reviews of vol. 2.

May 8-12
We got 2 new reviews from Geeks of Doom!
Geeks on Samurai Elf: Set Apart (vol.1)
Geeks on Alric the Wild comic (Comic Con Exclusive)

Here are a couple of older reviews for vol. 1. It's funny to hear where the reviews assume the story is going. Ah, assumption. How wrong they are...although Broken Frontier was quite insightful.

Broken Frontier
The Pull Box
Book Loons

April
The NY Comic Con was fantastic! We met tons of new people and some very good contacts. Miguel is a big fan of Manga Studio by Smith Micro. They were so impressed with his work in the Comic Con samplers for Samurai Elf and Alric the Wild! that they will soon feature Miguel's work in their client newsletter and add his work to their site. Very good news indeed!

March
On the business side, Samurai Elf is officially a registered trademark with Iberian Press. We can officially use the little ® mark beside our title.

February
It's a new year and there are so many opportunities for Samurai Elf. Volume 2 called, Bull's Eye, is nearly complete and we can't believe it! Things took longer than we originally anticipated, but then again, what else is new when it comes to publishing? We'll post some sample pages here and on our myspace page. We've been getting such great feedback from our ecomics from all around the world. It's amazing what happens when people start to pass our site around. The net is a beautiful thing!

We're gearing up for the NY Comic Con from April 18-20. Woohoo! We'll be selling an EXCLUSIVE sampler with an ALTERNATE cover, so if you're at the Con, come on by our table and say hi. It's a 52 page full color comic. The cover will be posted here as soon as Miguel completes it.

Flashback!
May 16/07
Miguel Guerra wrote, illustrated and painted, Bedbugs, a short story in the July issue of Heavy Metal Magazine! On sale now. We're all very proud of him! For a preview, click on an image below or go to http://www.metaltv.com/.

**We'll be submitting plenty of new short stories to Heavy Metal in '08.