The long awaited (release has been pushed back several times) cover art book for Fables has come out today. It compiles all the amazing and moving covers that James Jean has done for the series, issues 1-75.  The cherry on top that is really making me squeal with happiness- each and every one is accompanied by sketches and progress shots. Yoyza.

Every Wednesday since I've been traveling, I've searched out the local comic book purveyor to see if this book had come out, and the wait has been more than worth it. James Jean is a jewel of an artist- creepily beautiful, deadly sexy, and intriguingly surreal; his art knocks my socks off every time.

For some reason, Amazon has the release date as next week, but your comic book shop should have it now.

As anyone who's hung out with me for more than a short while knows, I'm a long time Tori Amos fan. Well Tori's latest project Comic Book Tattoo is an intersection of two of our favorite worlds here at The Steampunk Workshop; music and comic books.

From the Amazon product description:

Over 80 of the best creators from every style and genre have contributed over 50 stories to this anthology featuring tales inspired by the songs of multi-platinum recording artist, Tori Amos! Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman and an extensive roster of talent, Comic Book Tattoo encapsulates the breadth, depth, and beauty of modern comics in this coffee table format book.

Oh I do hope the first Tori song I ever heard Spark is among them!  Oh and Happy Phantom and Sweat Dreams and and  .  .  .

Here's an interview with Tori From the folks over at Comic Book Resources :

The always interesting and oft times quirky Married to the Sea does Steampunk.

I'm telling ya, getting made fun of is one of the important milestones on the path to world domination.

The always-awesome webcomic Questionable Content has been running a short series of fictional (but for how long?) band "Society for Creative Rock Anachronism". He's only 2 strips into the story arc at the moment, but apparently response has been, well, wide-eyed geeky obsessive enthusiasm. Go check it out. Maybe we'll force a t-shirt out of him.

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to introduce you to Meredith Scheff who will be doing a series of articles for The Steampunk Workshop where she will "go exploring in the jungles of maker workshops; and share the images with you, the hopefully regular reader."

Meredith describes herself as "a cartoonist, maker, geek, and general silly person. She avoids everyone's advice and continues to live happily in San Francisco, no matter how tired of Top Ramen she may get. She is in her thesis semester for illustration/sculpture at California College of the Arts. Her website, until she builds a better one, is satiredun.deviantart.com."

In addition to her series Meredith has agreed to develop a regular cartoon feature for the Steampunk Workshop and I've asked her to do a bit of lampooning of all of us Steampunks - if you are as curious as I am as to what the result will be get thee to the front page and sign-up for the mailing list or grab the feed! - Jake von Slatt

I have been having great success etching brass plate with a solution of copper sulfate and an electrical current.  The depth, quality, and speed of the etchings have been quite controllable and it seemed to me that I might be able to etch completely through a piece of brass.  This capability would allow me to make pieces of several layers of brass, so I devised a design for a test case.