Indie Comics Magazine #1Media Release -- Gary Scott Beatty has been producing comic books since the underground days of the 1970s. Now an 8 page story from his Jazz series will appear in the new Indie Comics Magazine, scheduled for preorder in Diamond Comic Distributors' January 2011 Previews catalog and available only through Previews. The done-in-one tale features Beatty's cool jazz pianist Dean Fontessa from his Xeric grant winning book Jazz: Cool Birth.

"After years of working in a grunge style, I'm now fascinated by the flat, design oriented jazz albums of the 1950s," said Beatty. His Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with art and typography based on '50s album cover design, earned him a Xeric Foundation Grant in 2008.

The first alternative comic Beatty produced (They were called "underground" then) was on his high school's ditto machine, after hours, without permission. He colors, letters and produces comic books and magazines for a diverse range of companies and has written for Comic Buyer's Guide.

Beatty studies album cover design, television program title artwork, and common illustrations used in everything from health booklets to instruction manuals from the '50s to develop a style unique to the new millennium. "I swear it's harder to illustrate in this style," he explained. "When you're drawing realistically, you have real objects to look at to let you know when it's right. With my design-oriented style, there's nothing in reality for reference. It just has to feel balanced, slick and communicate the right mood."

The artist's tools are modern and digital, but the process of pushing things around on the page remains the same as 1957, said Beatty. "Artists used to work with T-squares and triangles, tracing paper, ruling pens and brush, preparing work for rotary letterpresses and similar hands-on intensive printing methods. That's where the style developed."

Indie Comics Magazine will feature 8 full stories from 8 different independent comic book creators. Short biographies and contact information are included with the stories so readers can easily seek out more of the creators' work. Beatty features his three done-in-one comic books at http://aazurn.com.

Indie Comics Magazine is available only through the Previews order magazine at your local comic shop. Information about Indie Comics Magazine is online at http://indiecomicsmagazine.com.