Web Guy On Paper


Once it was web-only, but now that’s changed. As longtime readers of this blog know (if the two years I’ve been posting entries to it can be considered a "long time"), I spent much of 2006 drawing a 14-installment webcomic at the behest of Adobe Systems, Inc.
My strip was called *Mark the Art Guy* and it was commissioned by Adobe to tout, hopefully in an entertaining way, the merits of what was at that time Adobe’s most advanced bundle of magical graphics software, Creative Suite 2. That incarnation of Mark the Art Guy was created solely for web display and could only be viewed by visitors to the Adobe’s web site. But now, in celebration of the recent release of Adobe Creative Suite 3, the newest incarnation of its flagship software, Adobe has decided to bring out an appropriately updated version of my Mark series—this time as an honest-to-god 16-page comic book printed on actual paper.

	Since I grew up reading comic books and launched my adult career drawing them, I’m pleased to finally have Mark available as a tangible work of art that I can hold in my hands and thumb through.

		Unfortunately for your chances of doing the same, the comic won’t be showing up on the shelves of your neighborhood comic book store. It’s a promotional giveaway that exists to be handed out to design pros who wander up to Adobe’s booths at big trade shows like Macworld Expo. Design professional are Creative Suite 3’s targeted consumers, after all, not the blog-reading hoi polloi like you!
	That’s a shame if you were secretly hoping to get your hands on this comic as simply as you can cop a copy of one of my books. On the other hand, you may just happen to know some graphics geek who makes a habit of attending such software-saturated mass gatherings. If you do, ask him or her to keep an eye out for the Adobe booth so that you, too, with your friend’s help, can view Mark’s misadventures creating logo art for the Happy Sow Purse Works as they unfold on beautiful white paper stock. SPECIAL TIP FOR MY DEVOTED BLOGPALS: Despite the fact that CS2 has now been supplanted by the new CS3 upgrade, some (though not all) of the original CS2-oriented Mark episodes can still be viewed by clicking here. If you’re curious to see what the series was like in its initial form you may want to grab a look before somebody at Adobe wakes up and deletes these on account of outdatedness.