Announcing The Weird A-Coloring to Al Coloring Book and Weird A-Colored-In Art-book!
I belong to a number of Facebook groups devoted to “Weird Al” Yankovic. I even started my own in the form of Squeeze-Heads: Re-Visiting Al Yankovic's Albums From a Weird, Happy Place, which you are totally free to join!
That’s because I am a big “Weird Al” Yankovic fan, of course, as well as a “Weird Al” Yankovic collector. I even built a modest but tasteful shrine to the man and his music in my home. I don’t have the biggest or most impressive “Weird Al” Yankovic collection but I do have something that no other fan or collector has in autographed copies of the covers of the multiple books I have written about, and with, Al.
But I also belong to these groups because I am what I am going to punishingly and punningly call a Weird Altrepreneur in that I run a thriving small business writing, publishing and selling books about Al’s life and career.
In one of these groups someone posted an Amazon link to a “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book. That struck me as a neat idea but the coloring book was a sorry piece of work. It wasn’t even a real coloring book, just a bunch of smudgy reproductions of photographs of Al .
I found myself thinking that was a shame, because a real, artfully done “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book would have a definite audience, including me and my art-crazed, extremely talented, “Weird Al” Yankovic-loving six year old son Declan.
Then I realized that I had recently published a 500 page book about “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life and career (The Weird Accordion to Al: Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition) that contained over 80 amazing black and white illustrations from the great Felipe Sobreiro.
Without intending to, I had essentially created a “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book within The Weird Accordion to Al. As a proof of concept for a potential “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book, Declan and myself spent some time coloring in Felipe’s drawings from The Weird Accordion to Al.
I am not exaggerating when I say that listening to “Weird Al” Yankovic on Alexa while coloring in illustrations from The Weird Accordion to Al provided literally hours upon hours of wholesome family fun.
Inspired, I asked Felipe if he would be interested in turning the rough clay of his illustrations for The Weird Accordion to Al into a spiffy new coloring book for kids and adults alike and he hopped onboard immediately.
At every step, the coloring book has gotten more ambitious and involved. The coloring book won’t just feature Felipe’s illustrations from The Weird Accordion to Al: he will be radically revisiting and revising his old artwork to make it trippier and more coloring book-friendly but he’ll also be created something like two dozen original illustrations as well.
A project that we are calling The Weird A-Coloring To Al, because I am desperately, hopelessly in love with terrible wordplay will have captions by me and a setting AND a premise.
The Weird A-Coloring to Al invites you inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Al, which is just like that other Rock and Roll Hall, only better, because it is devoted exclusively to “Weird Al” Yankovic.
It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Al’s gala opening and YOU are a VIP guest at the first museum where you HAVE to write on the walls (or at least color them) in order to help your pal Al in his various misadventures.
It’s gonna be great! It already is! But that somehow STILL wasn’t enough! Felipe is a colorist by trade, with impressive credits with Marvel and Star Trek comic books to his name so I convinced him to do a SECOND, largely NEW version of the book where he would color in his illustrations for a signed, numbered, exclusive hard-cover variation limited to 270 copies with entirely new captions from me.
A hardcover, colored-in version of a coloring book might sound weird. It is! In this world at least that is a very, very good thing.
Hurts him bad, in a tender location.
As a publisher, I create the “Weird Al” Yankovic books that I want as a fan and a collector and I could not be more excited about both of these projects.
It’s a whole lot easier to be a salesman when you believe in yourself and your wares and I believe in this crazy idea and its glorious possibilities.
But it will take money and time and a whole lot of work to make this happen, so I implore you to please consider pre-ordering The Weird A-Coloring to Al and/or the Weird A-Colored-In Version in order to make this glorious dream an even better reality.
Once the 270 copies of the hardcover are sold there will never be another printing. These are the only 270 that will ever exist so if you are a “Weird Al” Yankovic collector I encourage y’all to get them before they’re all gone.
He met him in a swamp down in Dagoba where it bubbles all the time just like a giant carbonated S-O-D-A.
I’m also working on The Joy of Trash for later this year but this will thankfully entail a lot less work, as it is largely Felipe’s baby and I am one hundred percent certain that we’ll be able to execute in a timely, professional and satisfying fashion.
Because more “Weird Al” Yankovic in the world can only ever be a good thing!
Pre-order The Weird A-Coloring to Al/Colored-In version here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weirdaccordiontoal/the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books
Pre-order The Joy of Trash: Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s Definitive Guide to the Very Worst of Everything and get access to original articles AS I write them and plenty more bonus stuff like exclusive cards featuring Felipe Sobreiro’s amazing artwork for the book at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/cart
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace