"The Bone Wars"

Hello Fellow Range Riders:
Yee-Ha!!! I placed my first Comic script to an anthology of true-life comic stories. The book is to be between 48-54 pages and printed in a nice Hardback edition later this year. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. I've loved comics all my life (and still do for that matter) and have always wanted to write a comic book. Well, back in September of last year I was offered the chance to submit something and it was suggested that with my love of all things Paleontological that maybe the "Bone Wars" of the 1870's-1890's might be the ticket. So I accepted the challenge.
The "Bone Wars" is pure "Wild West" action if there ever was any. It concerned the rivalry between two Paleontologists; Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, and their ongoing feud and subsequent race to find and name the most dinosaurs. These two would stop at nothing to ridicule each other, claim jump, and even resort to rustling and demolition in surely what had to be one of the greatest stories of rivalry to come out of the latter part of the nineteenth century.
While researching this project I was amazed at some of the antics these guys resorted to in order to stake their claim in the field of Paleontology. At the time the finding and naming of Dinosaurs was relatively new, the term "Dinosaur" itself only having been coined in 1942, a mere 27 years before the beginning of the feud. At the time there was only around a dozen Dinosaurs named, and most of them were only from pieces of dinos. After the twenty some-odd year feud between Marsh and Cope an additional 130 species would be named between the two men.
It was hard to come up with the best things to write about (I only had six pages to work with) but in the end I tyhink I did a respectable job of handling "The Bone Wars." Luckily, my editor thought I did to and accepted the story and said that she loved it and that it required little editing. I was happy about that seeing as how it was my first comic script.
A few days ago I was sent a scan of a couple of the pages and I thought they were great. I can't wait to see the rest. I'm not sure when it will be released this year but when it is I'll let you know. Now it's off to write my first "Western" short story, "Gun Shy."
Have a Great Day and I'll se you on the Dusty Trail!!!
John (aka, The "Critter")