Special Feature 1:

The Dixonverse Annual

by Michael Hutchison

At long last, a private project revealed!

This page contains PDF downloads, for which you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The "Dixonverse Annual" was a project begun in late 2000 by a group of online acquaintances over at Chuck Dixon's web site, Dixonverse.com. We decided to print a small ondeadtree comic book for the enjoyment of Chuck and the rest of our gang when we met at the annual Chuck Dixon dinner held each year after the Wizard World comic book convention. In the end, we printed a few dozen copies to pass out (and keep a few for ourselves).

Over the last year, I've had requests for copies, but we haven't any plans to reprint. The printing was all at our own expense, as we were handing these out for free, of course. And I'd like to specify that we were just doing this project for fun. There was absolutely no profit made, nor did we have any intention to actually publish this as a bona fide comic book. The use of DC characters was because it was a special project dedicated to Chuck Dixon, writer of Batman, Robin and Nightwing stories. (The Elongated Man story was because, of course, in my years on the board it was quite clear who my own favorite was, and everyone expected it.)

I'll have a few more comments about the project in a moment...but here are the links.

Each link is to a PDF file of about 5 megs. Feel free to share these with friends, with the caveat that proper credit and rights still belong to the authors and artists. Also, if anyone would offer to provide mirror space for these three files, I'd be glad to give your site a plug here.

STORY #1: "A Quiet Night Amongst Friends" featuring Nightwing and Robin. Written by Jesse Stratton, pencils by Chris Franklin, inks by Mitch Ballard, letters by Ethan Colchamiro. Tim Drake and Dick Grayson have a guys' night out on the town, leaving behind the costumes and the car. But a group of car thieves have other plans.

STORY #2: "Classic Locked Room 2.0" featuring Elongated Man. Written by Michael Hutchison, pencils by Brian White, inks by Jim Coder and letters by Ethan Colchamiro. Ralph Dibny's old friend, a reclusive millionaire, is trapped inside his high security estate, and Ralph must find out how he's been poisoned.

STORY #3: "Teenage Wildlife" featuring Batman, Robin and the Condiment King. Written by Scott King, art and letters by Ethan Colchamiro. The deadly Condiment King attacks, and it's up to Batman and Robin (Jason Todd) to stop him!

The cover is pencilled by Chris Franklin, inked by Ethan Colchamiro and colored by Mitch Ames. Chris did the art on the contents page.

The "Chew Fly, Don't Bother Me" advertisement for Fanzing was written by Michael Hutchison and the art is by Bill Wiist.

The project was originally intended to be done in time for Wizard World 2001, and instead it wasn't done until Wizard World 2002.

For me, this was a dream come true. If my wannabe comic book career goes nowhere, this may be the closest I ever get to actually doing an Elongated Man story. Also, it was a chance to prove to myself that I could tell a good mystery in 8 pages. (The old backups in Detective Comics usually had 10 pages, so I had to shave 2 pages off of that!) Maybe that's all it is.

Or maybe someone will bring it to the attention of Detective Comics backup series editor Matt Idelson and say, "You know, when this next run on Josie Mac is over..."

Okay, maybe not. But I can dream. And if Matt Idelson is out there, my e-mail address is fanzing@fanzing.com!

In any case, if you liked the stories here, you'll want to keep an eye out for the upcoming "Fanzing Presents: Job Wanted" comic book, which is an actual self-published comic. I have a 14-page space mystery story. You'll also find the work of Chris Franklin and Ethan Colchamiro (from Story #1 above), as well as a packed cast of talented Fanzingers.