Right up to date . . . that same publisher contacted me again in 2004. They were planning a complete revamp of How to Draw and Sell Comic Strips for Newspapers and Comic Books and would I be interested in being involved. Well, of course I would. No writer wants to see his baby turned over to other hands so, naturally, I agreed to do the work.
The idea here was to restructure the title completely. There would be an extensive cull of the History section of the book, and I would need to update the "How to" sections to take account of just how much digital technology had infiltrated even the comics industry. Then I'd need to completely overhaul the pictorial content of the book.
It was hard work. The biggest problem was that the publisher had limited budget for picture material. Astonishingly, the comic companies wanted paying for any artwork we reproduced in the book. I say "astonishingly" because here was a book that was advocating the artistry of comic books, hopefully encouraging new artists (and writers) to seek to improve their art to the point where they might be able to make a worthwhile contribution to the artform.

I mean, I could understand Marvel and DC wanting to charge us if we were reproducing whole stories, but I just can't get my head around how an isolated page of artwork has any commercial value. With sales the way they are, I'd've thought the publishers could use all the PR they could get.
So I went around the majors to seek out independents who were publishing great work. First stop was two of the best around - William Tucci, writer/artist/publisher of Shi, and Joseph Michael Linsner, writer / artist / publisher of Dawn. Both creators couldn't have been more helpful. Also, my old friend Brett Ewins came through with some great Johnny Nemo artwork and thus we were able to feature some truly gorgeous pages in the book and stay within the the publisher's tight budget.
The other thing that was different was that I took material that we hadn't included in the printed version of the book - for whatever reason - and posted it to a dedicated How to Draw and Sell Comics website. Hopefully, readers of the book will enjoy the extra examples of fine comic art they can now access with the click of a mouse.