Blog
Tuesday November 23rd 2010, 11:01 pm
Now that I’m finally back from all of the jaunting around Europe, which was fantastic, here is some news.
A bit of round table discussion at CBR about the release this week of Batwoman: Zero with some preview material to go along with it. The issue was written by me and Haden Blackman, with art by me and Amy (who did a great job of deciphering our words of inspiration). Then we have color by the incomparable Dave Stewart. It’s a bit of a tricky and experimental book, where Amy and I share art space together on almost every page. The end results are pretty unique and I’m really happy with the overall affect. It serves as very nice bridge from what came before on the first run in Detective Comics by Greg Rucka and I, and a primer to what is to come in February for issue 1.
And last week saw the release of Batman Inc. #1, which some of you may have seen that I did the cover for. I’m pegged to do the covers on that series, along with my duties on Batwoman, until I feel like it’s too much. I’ve done the first 4 covers so far and will begin previewing those shortly.
Art on issue 1 of Batwoman has been done for some time now, and now that my travels have ceased, work has commenced on art for issue 2. The scripts are done up to issue 4, and for issue 6 (Amy’s first issue). The first 2 covers are done as well, previews to come this weekend. I’m feeling like the work is turning out well and hope that you all will find some enjoyment in our efforts.
Saturday October 30th 2010, 9:12 pm
Apparently I was up for an eagle award this year, and won!! For Best Artist in one of the art categories. The Eagle Awards have been a long traditional award set representing lots of material from overseas, but there is quite a bit of American crossover. I remember seeing these mentioned all of the time on covers to Judge Dredd and things like that when I was young. Very excited to have won. So thanks to whomever voted for me.
Saturday October 30th 2010, 12:45 pm
Beginning this next week I will be making several stops in Europe, so sort of a mini-european signing tour. Locations and times are…
ORBITAL COMICS November 6th 2010 3pm to 5pm
8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7JA
FORBIDDEN ZONE November 10th 4pm to 7pm
25, rue de Tamines
1060 Bruxelles (Brussels)
ASTRO CITY COMICS November 12th 3pm to 6pm
74, Rue Military Hospital
59000 Lille, France
LILLE COMICS FESTIVAL November 13th and 14th for the entire event
Lille, France
Monday October 11th 2010, 12:22 pm
Greg Rucka’s newest novel based on his creation, Queen and Country, arrives soon and I’ve done a bookplate piece for it to be made available in limited numbers through Greg’s website. Below is the image for this and a link to his site to find out more information on how to get the bookplate and a copy of The Last Run signed by mister Rucka.
info at Rucka
I had a really good time designing this. It’s a simple idea, but just right. I don’t usually get to do things like this too often. So when Greg asked if I would be interested, I of course said yes. I hope you enjoy it and find that it compliments the story in the novel well.
Thursday September 30th 2010, 12:14 am
…is out now. Here is the art to the slipcase, it’s a wrap-around for it.
Monday September 27th 2010, 4:22 pm
This was done a short time ago for Robot 6.
Sunday September 12th 2010, 12:46 am
Everybody should read this book. Its a real eye opener.
Tuesday September 07th 2010, 10:47 am
at Tales From The Parents Basement.
Monday August 16th 2010, 12:32 am
I played hooky a bit tonight from work to go see Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I’m a big fan of the book, and O’Malley in general. So I really wanted to see this. Now that I have, I’m shocked that this movie is not selling through the roof!! This deserves to be a mega hit. Its fucking genius! Period! The book is genius too, and I was super impressed with how well it translated to film. The people who made this movie clearly loved the source and gave us something that matched the essence of the book. I’ve not seen anything like it. A truly unique film experience. Vivid and funny. I caught myself just purely smiling through almost the entire thing. It just feels good.
So this is my rally cry! Everyone to go see this movie! If you love the book, go see this movie. If you’ve seen the movie and love it, but not read the book, go buy it. Right now! If you done neither, go do both. Go. Right Now! Quit reading this!! And GO RIGHT NOW!!!!
Thursday August 05th 2010, 10:22 am
A friend of mine has a new web comics project starting to today. His name is Ryan Burton and he’s a talented writer. So check out his stuff…
UFO
Monday August 02nd 2010, 10:28 pm
Look everyone, I’m famous in my home town!
Local newspaper.
🙂
Friday July 23rd 2010, 9:52 pm
I’m here at NotCon, hangin’ with friends and family and I got two phone calls tonight stating I just won two Eisners, Best Cover and Best Artist. Now I’m feeling quite high at the moment, celebration ensues. I have to thank everyone for supporting my work this past year, it’s been grand. And I hope the new material coming soon will please just as much. Love to all.
Wednesday July 21st 2010, 9:37 pm
Black and white…
Color by me…
Text treatment by me…
Sunday July 18th 2010, 11:48 am
I found out over the weekend that Batwoman: Elegy has made the New York Times bestseller list for graphic novels. Very happy about this.
Monday July 12th 2010, 11:20 am
We seem to keep losing great artistic visionaries of late. Harvey Pekar has passed away. Very sad to have read this today. His comics were always very intriguing and uniquely rewarding, and Harvey clearly was an insightful man. His perspective will be sorely missed.
Tuesday July 06th 2010, 8:17 pm
Wonder Woman! A variant cover homage to Wonder Woman number one. The goal of this was to do a cover celebrating DC, there are several of these being produced this year by various artists on various titles across the DCU. Mark Chiarello asked me to do one of these months ago and I chose the Wonder Woman number one cover from the selection of choices that were presented from editorial. At the time I had no idea of the plans DC had with changing her classic iconic image, so this was not done as a statement about that. It’s just a bit ironic that this will be out soon now that they’ve revealed her new look. I hope I don’t get into trouble by saying that I think her new look is less than appealing. It seems that what made her iconic and instantly recognizable has been taken away. I can’t help but be a little sad about it. To me, Wonder Woman’s design is as relevantly iconic as Superman or Batman, there just seems to be something magic about it that works. I know there is a lot of concern that she doesn’t look politically correct when looked at through the corporate microscope, but the number of female fans that I’ve talked to about the new change exclaim to me just how much they loved the classic Wonder Woman design, and feel that this new version is a mistake. But I will reserve my judgment until I actually read the material the new look will be associated with and hope for the best. I’m just happy that I got a chance to draw the iconic version of her I know and love again. I do want to get other opportunities to find my footing with this character visually. I hope you all find this illustration worthy of the character.
Black and white version…
Text treatment by me. At the time of doing this I didn’t know who was going to be the artist, so thats why it’s left with just the writer be listed here…
Color by Dave Stewart
And here are a couple rough con sketches I did a while back…
Friday July 02nd 2010, 2:07 pm
These both were done by phone.
CBR
USA TODAY
Tuesday June 29th 2010, 10:48 pm
Today sees the release of the Batwoman: Elegy deluxe hardcover. I’m extremely proud of the work Greg Rucka and I did on this and even more so now that I’ve seen a copy of the hardcover version. It reads beautifully as a single body of work and has more resonance in this form than reading it one chapter at a time each month. It feels so much more like a book now than before, a more substantial singular reading experience, not just a collection of individual issues. I’m really happy with that aspect, it’s what we were hoping for and worked toward. My time working with Greg on this was a real pleasure that I will always cherish. I’m also amazed at how superior the printing is on this compared to the stapled comics. It looks so much nicer! Not because it’s larger sized, but because there is so much more clarity of detail. Dave Stewart’s colors have so much more vibrancy, and some of his special fx are so much more prominent. The tonal work I did on the black and white art shows up much better, in the stapled versions we had places where it was blackening in a bit, thats not happening anymore. Its very interesting to me, and a bit frustrating, just how much was being lost in places on those stapled versions. But it’s nice to see it correctly now. If you have the stapled copies and you do go and buy this as well, I think you’ll be very happy you did when you compare the quality of production. The book also has a very nice introduction by the wonderful Rachel Maddow, and there is some script samples along with black and white printing of some of the art. A nice package, especially when comparing the printing quality to the stapled comics.
The image above is the real cover for this, don’t believe anything else you might’ve seen for solicitations at various webstores. The cover is designed and colored by me, and I designed all of the text for it as well.
And in honor of this book coming out, below are photos that were taken a few months back at our local comic shop’s grand opening event. As you’ll see there was a lot of surprises and geek out madness to be had. The photos were taken by Daniel Kessener.
Heidi Kessener as Kate Kane
Batwoman attacks!! Heidi Kessener is under that mask and thats me she’s smacking around. The costume was made by Teresa Ozuna. She did a wonderful job I think!
She’s roughing me up!
She’s making me squeal now.
I’m done for!
Now that I’m beaten, she wants a signed comic, she won so I had to give in to her demands.
Local Forte business owner gets it!
Now they’re friends.
Batwoman and me posing with costume maker Teresa Ozuna.
Batwoman with our friend Christina.
Batwoman has made new friend.
And she’s made even more friends.
Batwoman is here with Red Sky Comics shop owner Mike Smid, he looks a little overwhelmed.
No one can get the drop on her.
She single handedly defeats Scott, Red Sky Comics business partner.
Victorious, Batwoman rides off into the night!
Tuesday June 29th 2010, 12:24 pm
…here.
Tuesday June 22nd 2010, 11:20 am
Well, it’s been a bit since my last post. I started the art for the first issue of the new project, finished the first issue script, and we had begun writing Amy’s first issue of her storyline too. Then my computer went out to lunch and never came back. So I needed to get a new machine it turns out. Production slowed way down because I’ve been without a new machine for a couple weeks, it finally arrived and we were up and running again. Then we started to run into editorial issues and so production slowed again, but hopefully all of those have been resolved now. More details on this later. And along the way we’ve lost our editor to Disney. I’ll be sad to see him go, we’ve been working together for a couple of years now and I’m having trouble picturing moving forward on this character without him. I’m starting to feel like a rock band that keeps losing it’s original members. It’s just, Dave, Todd, and myself left now. But the new blood of Amy and Haden should prove to be invigorating. We don’t know who will be the new editor for sure just yet, but production will continue anyway.
It’s been a bit crazy dealing with DC and not having my work machine and trying to get things done. But now we should be returning to normal and I can get back to posting here more often.
A week or so ago saw the release of DC Universe Legacies #2, which I contributed art for a variant cover and an 8 page story written by Len Wein. Its about the original old school 7 Solders Of Victory. I tried doing something different with the layouts of the story. I’m not too sure if works or not, I think it does just okay in spots but is really effective in others. It’s very busy I think. The story had a lot crammed into it’s 8 pages for the action, I think it would’ve benefited from having more room on the page count. It felt like a 16 page sequence crammed into 8. There is a lot going on in it as seen, but even with everything that is there I had to cut a bit from what the plot was calling for to try and streamline the action more. But I feel it still has some problems. Other than those concerns it’s an interesting experiment on layout and style manipulation, worth trying. If any of you have read it I hope you like it.
Below is the variant cover that I did for American Vampire #4 due out this week I think, presented in stages. This cover is being release as 1 in 25 ratio, so good luck finding a copy. Next week should see the release of the Batwoman: Elegy Hardcover, so I’ll be posting something fun for that soon.
Here is the rough sketch for the cover idea, done for editorial approval…
Here is the black and white version, I wanted an image that was equally strong in this form as well as color because I was really going to rely on the style of the drawing and rendering to carry the color idea through.
This is the color version done by me. I wanted the color use to be unusual. I knew I wanted to use red, white, and blue to be viewed on the cover in that order, from top to bottom of the image. This is the order that we refer to America’s colors in conversation in this country, so it was key to get that across. But I was also dealing with a western image, so using that palette was difficult. But ultimately the strategic placement of those colors and using them in a such surrealist way in tandem with the more traditional western looking comics art really gives it that psychological punch. Bringing it more into a horror concept beyond just the gore of the scene…
Then here is the final version with the logo in place…
Monday May 10th 2010, 5:16 pm
Well I’m sure many of you have heard the news that Frank Frazetta has passed away, truly sad. There was no other fantasy artist who could paint quite in the same way as him. His work has the same vitality as many of the great renaissance painters, only with brooding barbarians and mysterious captivating women rather than religious iconography.
My first exposure to his work was with his Conan covers, which I’m sure many of you discovered him in the same way. It was his images that really got me to pick up a Robert E, Howard book when I was younger, which forever immersed me into a loving relationship with great fantasy authors. There have been many artists to tackle Howard’s most famous character but no one quite did it like Frank. There was something visceral about it that really made the character become real on a visual level.
There just isn’t enough of Frazetta’s art in the world to satisfy anyone. I truly wish we could have more.
Friday April 30th 2010, 4:57 pm
Here is the variant cover for Batman Beyond #1. Presented in stages of construction. This one was a bit unusual because I had to draw it and then sort of take it apart and put it back together. I was a little worried about this one because I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do it after drawing. I knew that the inked version was far from feeling finished to me because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. All I knew is that I wanted to try out some different things stylistically than I normally do. So I winged a lot of it, trying out a different drawing look on Bruce Wayne, something less realistic. Same goes for the color processes, I approached it very organically, not knowing where it was all headed. Experimenting until I was satisfied with the results. I hope you find it interesting…
Here is the rough sketch for editorial approval
The black and white ink with wash and grey tone version
City back drop colored deconstruction
Old Bruce Wayne with minor design element colored deconstruction
Final color reconstructed version after lots of effects and additions
With logo added
Tuesday April 27th 2010, 5:17 pm
podcast here.
Sunday April 18th 2010, 11:06 am
Peter Steele, the singer of one my favorite bands died today. He was one of the creative forces behind the amazing Type O Negative. The initial report is saying that it was possible heart failure and that he had been ill. Its also been said that he’d recently been clean and sober for the past few years and was working on material for a new album, with their last being Dead Again. His brand of dark doomy metal with a twist of ironic humor will be missed.
Wednesday April 14th 2010, 10:19 am
can be found here.