PixelStrips.com Webcomics Launches
September 23, 2005 Raleigh, NC - PixelStrips.com webcomics is open for business! PixelStrips.com is a subscription-based comic community featuring the best horror, sci-fi, superhero, and manga comics online. Updated weekly, with new comics added all the time, PixelStrips.com is your one-stop-shop for online comic reading!

According to Kevin Volo, PixelStrips.com's creator, "With the cost of printing and shrinking distribution options creators are taking to the web. Artists can create and display art instantly, and reach a wide and diverse group of readers. PixelStrips has put together eclectic collections of stories and art styles that make it the most diverse webcomic site online. With work that ranges from the haunting horror comic, Melinda, to the hilarious Hambone, by Robert Ryan, we aim to open up the world of online comics to everyone."

"I wanted to have a mix of art and stories on the site. I wasn't just looking for the typical hero stuff, although we do have that, but I also wanted to bring in traditional Sunday comics, Manga, Sci-Fi, and good old fashion adventure serial stories. I'd love for people to go to the site because they love Manga, but end up getting hooked on something like Carnival of Cabbage, a hilarious look at office life," continued Volo

Creators are side-stepping long established publishers and costly printing fees and are getting their work directly to the people using the web to display their comics and cartoons. "It's like blogging but with art," said Volo. "Creators can display their art online for the world to see with instant feedback. We are also seeing that the medium is starting to gain the respect it deserves with the addition of an Eisner award for webcomics and the fact that several online comics over the past few years have gotten print deals."

By subscribing to PixelStrips.com you have full access to the site and it's ever-growing archives. Another benefit is the "Extras" area featuring wallpapers, pinups, scripts, character/comic rough sketches, and subscriber only strips.

"I got the idea while watching a DVD for the extras area," said Volo. "I was going through the extras on one of the Lord of the Rings DVD's and was blown away at how much we didn't get to see in the movie, and how some things changed from the rough sketches to what we saw on screen. I realized that the same thing happens in comics. I have a folder of character sketches that show how the character was developed, as well as comic rough sketches. Why not share the development process with everyone?"

PixelStrips.com has an amazing talent pool of established artists like Winston Blakely, inker for Valiant Comics who worked on numerous titles such as Eternal Warrior, Ninjak, Bloodshot, Hardcops and Solar, Man of the Atom. PixelStrips.com is also the home of hot up-and-coming new talent like Victor Poon (BUREAU 13) Randy Gentile (NYcomix), and Husk's artist and colorist John Rauch who's the colorist for Transformers: Robots in Disguise and Snake Eyes: Declassified. In addition to the best online comics available, PixelStrips.com also features great articles, interviews, and discussions on the forums. Great webcomics, comics, and tutorials.

PixelStrips.com is owned by Kevin Volo. He is the colorist for FC9's Genie, Alias's Ted Noddleman: Bicycle Delivery Boy, and his own web comics Husk and Big Iron. Some of Volo's other work includes Image Comics' Noble Causes, Round Table of America, Invincible title, and numerous editions of Angel Gate Press's Black Tide.

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Christian Barratt Joins Pixelstrips.com

January 14th, 2006 Raleigh, NC – Pixelstrips.com, a web-based comic community has added the hilarious comic from the down under creator, Christian Barratt,  ‘SAM AND SAM’.

‘SAM AND SAM’ follows the adventures of Samuel, a six year-old boy, after an ancient samurai warrior suddenly appears beside him at the park one day

The samurai – whom Samuel names ‘Sam’ – is not eager to play babysitter to a tiny child and leaves to discover why he was brought forward in time by a thousand years. But he soon learns that he may have to rely on little Samuel if he wants to survive in this strange world of make-overs and Microsoft.

According to Kevin Volo, PixelStrips creator, “ This is one of those submissions you can’t believe you get. A funny, touching story that really reminds me of classic “Calvin and Hobbs” strips. It’s a great comic.”

“That’s the thing I love about this business, there are no borders. Christian is a comic creator who lives in Perth, Australia. He saw we were looking for artists and sent in a proposal. I grabbed it the second I saw it!”, continued Volo.

PixelStrips.com is owned by Kevin Volo. Kevin is the co-colorist for Speakeasy Comic’s Athena Voltaire, the colorist for FC9's Genie, Alias’s Ted Noddleman: Bicycle Delivery Boy, and his own web comics Husk and Big Iron. Some of Volo’s other work includes Image Comics' Noble Causes, Round Table of America, Invincible title, and numerous editions of Angel Gate Press's Black Tide. Great webcomics, comics, and tutorials.
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“Marketing Your Comic” a free e-book on Pixelstrips.com”

February 27th, 2005 Raleigh, NC  - Have a great comic, have a great site, now how do you get people to see your work. That was the idea behind the free e-book, “Marketing Your Comic” on the web comic community site, Pixelstrips.com(www.pixelstrips.com).

Many artists and creators are using the web to get their work out there. They create something; they build a site and upload all of it, and wait. Just because you post your work, doesn’t mean they will come.

According to Kevin Volo, PixelStrips.com’s creator, “We get a lot of submissions and the majority of the artists say that they want to get more people to see their work. They know that a web comic community will help them. But what about the people that want to keep their work on their own site and give it a go? Kevin continued, “I wanted to develop an e-book that could help artists, giving them ideas on how to increase traffic to their sites.”

Part one of “Marketing Your Comic” is out now on Pixelstrips.com as a free download. It can be found on the homepage and also in the articles area of the site. You can also find this information in episode 2 of the Pixelstrips.com Podcast located in the forums, and iTunes. Great webcomics, comics, and tutorials.

PixelStrips.com(www.pixelstrips.com)  is owned by Kevin Volo. Kevin is the co-colorist for Athena  Voltaire(www.athenavoltaire.com) , the colorist for FC9's (www.fc9.net) Genie, Alias’s Ted Noddleman: Bicycle Delivery Boy, and his own web comics Husk and Big Iron. Some of Volo’s other work includes Image Comics' Noble Causes, Round Table of America, Invincible title, and numerous editions of Angel Gate Press's Black Tide.

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Anchorage Press Article

Vol. 15, Ed. 5 February 2 - February 8 2006
Lee Post's Your Square Life celebrates all the underdogs, and those uncomfortable moments you'd like to pretend never happened.- By Lori McAllister

Lee Post presents a retrospective of his comic, Your Square Life, along with newly colorized strips, poster art and original work for sale. For more info, contact yoursquarelife@gmail.com and visit yoursquarelife.blogspot.com and www.pixelstrips.com.

Lee Post's unsuccessful campaign for high school class president featured his vow to care about all his classmates, even the ones who wet their beds. When his classmates later elected him homecoming king, he was crowned with a “weird little Styrofoam crown” because the real one wasn't shipped in time. At a recent office party gift exchange, Post received a pair of novelty glasses and a calendar with pictures of cats behaving badly. The glasses included a neck strap because, says Post, “they weren't nerdy enough without it.” This is the stuff his Your Square Life is made of, a comic strip that Post describes as a snapshot of “the more depressing, kind of awkward moments of life.”

Post, 30, is not gloomy. He's not, unlike his many recurring characters, a lonely, friendless hermit. He doesn't work at the Homer library, and he's definitely not a woman (two of many assumptions he's had to correct). If you only know Post from his comic strip, which runs in The Press and UAA's Northern Light, your ideas about him are probably dead wrong

Most of his characters are unlucky in both life and love, but Post has been married nearly three years. He met his wife, Alex, two months before they wed. They're happy. They're cute. They finish each other's sentences and call each other “honey.” They have a tank of pet hermit crabs, and last summer they bought matching electric bikes. Before Alex moved into his cozy Turnagain duplex, Post painted the bathroom a bright sky blue, then stenciled cartoonish sea creatures onto the walls. A sad-looking sea turtle that Post says he painted while Alex was visiting family in her native Ireland mopes above the mirror. Two googley-eyed fish kiss below a heart inscribed with the couple's initials

Post's Your Square Life characters, however, are a sad assortment of bored office workers, clueless losers, unlucky superheroes and a robot that's programmed to love you. You may pity them, ridicule them, sympathize with them or relate to them, depending on how honest you are with yourself. Post once received fan mail from a girl who said she read the strip every week and felt like she was reading her own thoughts. She also said that no one else at her work thinks the strip is funny - but then, no one at her work thinks she's funny, either.

Mostly, Post says, people don't know him from Your Square Life. He's been a Juvenile Intake Probation Officer with the State of Alaska for six years, and his coworkers are often surprised to learn he's an artist. Sometimes he gets the urge to put a photo of himself in the strip, “like, 'Hey look at me, it's my strip and I'm famous,'” he said recently. Instead, he'll draw a cartoon version of himself usually mumbling cynical, self-deprecating things. One strip says, “I bought some tires today. Now I have four snow tires. It is less exciting than it sounds.” In the last frame, four rubber tires are stacked around him; only his eyes peek out. The last sentence? “Getting old sucks.”

In real life, Post is friendly, well read and articulate. He's hospitable, doesn't swear, and has a neatly trimmed beard and dark, closely shaved hair. He gestures with his hands and arms when speaking. He says he enjoys his job with the state but, due to the sensitive nature of what he does, he keeps his address and phone unlisted. “It's this mix between blatant fame-grabbing and trying to stay as anonymous as possible,” he says.

Post was born in Anchorage and raised in Palmer, where he was in Colony High's first graduating class. (His parents, Lee and Diane Post, still reside in Palmer.) Your Square Life started as a zine Post decided to put out when he returned to Alaska from the University of Washington, where he studied psychology and cognitive neuroscience; he says he wanted to retain his drawing skills, though he's never taken a formal art class. The strip has been running in the Press nearly four years; Post estimates this week's strip (see page 52) is number 210.

“Two hundred eleven,” Alex says.

Alex frequently chimes in with relevant bits of information like this. She seems to be the business manager in their relationship. She keeps track of dates, numbers, and intricate details. Post regularly asks her if she remembers when an event happened, and she always does: to the year, and often to the day. Post says he almost always asks Alex for feedback about the strip before he sends it in. Because he's colorblind, she usually helps him with anything he does in color.

“We finally found a program that labels all the colors,” Alex says. “We used to have fights where I'd be screaming, 'THAT'S FLESH TONE!'”

Their home, while tidy, is crammed with stuff. Besides the fish stencils, the bathroom has a transparent blue, bubbly toilet seat and a freestanding toilet paper dispenser. Framed art hangs on every wall in the house, everything from Post's large, intricate insect drawings to a Cat Power concert poster to black-and-white group photos of strangers collected from thrift stores. Their movie collection includes boxed sets of "Kids in the Hall" and "Arrested Development." Bird curtains hang at the window. Between two black leather couches is a coffee table Post says he bought at Bishop's Attic for $5. He sanded it, repainted it, arranged a collage of magazine cutouts on its surface, and lacquered the whole thing. He used to work on furniture a lot, he says, but hasn't lately because his latest home lacks a garage.

It's Post's small office that is the most surprising, and it's obvious he's proud of it. A large bookshelf holds complete volumes of graphic novels (Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes are currently his favorite cartoonists). An entire shelf is a shrine of sorts to Kinder Egg toys. His L-shaped desk is completely free of clutter. It seems too orderly for an artist's workshop. Post rifles through portfolios filled with drawings, ideas and past comics; everything is organized neatly in a large filing cabinet. As he talks, he grabs books from the shelf: books about birds, street signs and karate. He says he rarely lacks subject matter for the strip, but the books, which he buys from thrift stores, sometimes give him ideas.

Your Square Life is not Garfield. It's usually cynical, sometimes sad, occasionally hilarious. “It's just kind of an odd, organic little entity,” Post says. “Every now and then I try to screw it down, like, 'OK, I really need to make it funny.' I'll have friends that'll tell me they get it, like, 40 percent of the time.” Usually when he tries to be funny nobody understands the joke, he says, but when he's trying to get across a serious point, people find it hysterical. “Over time I gave up trying to have people get it. I just kind of put out what's out there, and some weeks it's funny and sometimes (it's) not.”

Though Post says he's not a goal-oriented person - which seems unlikely - he set five goals that he hoped Your Square Life would help him accomplish: meet women (he was married within six months), get an article about himself in the Press (done), have his own art show (coming up this weekend), put on a play based loosely on the comic (his and Duke Russell's Simple Dating System ran at Out North's Under 30 last year), and be recognized at Bosco's comic store, which happened recently. “I figured if I do a comic strip I should be recognized at the comic book store,” he says.

Post also set a few loose rules for the strip: “I don't use anybody I know. I don't use stories directly. I'm not one to overhear a conversation and put it in the strip.” One strip, however, came verbatim from a brief conversation he and Alex had one night, he says: “Whatcha' doing?” “Hating you.” “Anything I can do to help?” “No, you've done enough already, thanks.”

He also tries to include a punchline each week, which he says is sometimes the hardest part. “It's almost like doing a little haiku... Some weeks I may want to write, like, three paragraphs, but physically it won't fit.”

Post hopes Your Square Life will eventually bring him some measure of recognition. At his first real art show, which is at Noble's Diner, he'll be selling his comics, in color, for $15 each, or two for $25. On one of his websites he says he hopes the show will “increase my fame a thousand fold, from 'minimal' to 'vaguely think he may be important somehow.” Yet Post says that if he were a character in his own strip, his lack as yet of great fame would be fitting. His business cards show a down-on-his-luck superhero in a wrinkled sweat suit and tennis shoes. That's part of Post's charm: He takes life's losers, the awkward, un-cool parts in all of us, whether we see them or not, and elevates them to the status of comic strip superstars.