Blog
Saturday April 03rd 2010, 12:39 pm
…so to speak I guess. As of this weekend Greg Rucka, who I’ve enjoyed working with very much, has announced his intentions to leave DC Comics, and in turn leave Batwoman behind. I was afraid something like this was going to occur but held out hope that it wouldn’t happen. That DC and Greg could come to some sort of agreement, apparently not going to happen. So what does this mean for Batwoman and the project I’ve spent a decent amount of time and thought on? I don’t know. I do know that DC is firmly committed to this character from what I hear from them. So where does all of this leave us? I believe DC will want the character to continue somehow. In what form? I’m not sure, but she’ll be back, I’m sure of it. This character has too much potential to just go by the wayside. So we should be hearing some sort of news at the appropriate time I assume.
In the meantime I’ve had to take on some other work while all of this is coming down around me. These consist of several covers and some smaller story projects. I’m doing variant covers for American Vampire, Tom Strong, Batman Beyond, Wonder Woman, and DC Legacies. I’m also working on one of the DC Legacies co-features, a story based on the original Seven Soldiers Of Victory and is written by Len Wein, I’m about half done with it. The mentioned above variant cover for DC legacies is for this story. The other thing I’m working on is another issue of Jonah Hex, which I’ve been itching to do ever since the first one I did that came out last year. I love this book! So I’m thrilled to be doing another issue Justin and Jimmy and I’ll be providing the cover to that as well.
I will post some images from some of these things soon, but let’s start off with the Tom Strong variant, this is for the new number 1 issue that is just now being solicited, The regular cover is by Chris Sprouse of course. The main thing I wanted to do with this was get it to feel like a propaganda poster design. I hope you all will like it…
Tuesday March 30th 2010, 8:02 pm
Finally have a breath for a moment to update the blog. The Emerald city show in Seattle was an amazing show. It was non-stop action and a very large show. It seemed to me to be about the size of Wondercon in San Fransisco but almost ALL COMICS! What a breath of fresh air to attend a large show and have the focus be completely comics. There needs to be more shows like this. It also seemed to me that the fans were just as excited over this, proof that comic conventions don’t need to feel the need to bring in this array of stuff that really shouldn’t be at a comic convention in the first place. It was a lot of fun, Jim and George Demonakos did a brilliant job.
The Comicpalooza show in Houston was nice too. Quite a bit smaller but the people we met there were so nice and happy to see us. This show is only in it’s 3rd year and from what I understand was VERY tiny to begin with. But really this was their first year trying to do something of stature. With the right efforts this show could be one of the bigger shows in the south. Wendy and I got to meet some very lovely people, hang with friends Ryan and Liz who live in the area. We hopefully made some long time new friends too, Ben Templesmith, David Mack, Jim Mahfood, Andy Kuhn, Ethan Van Sciver. We also got to see our longtime friend Paul Benajmin. We were also very fortunate to have met Bernie Wrightson and his lovely wife, Liz. They were the sweetest couple and we enjoyed the long late night conversations we had them, and now feel glad and lucky that we can call them our friends as well. It was a real thrill to meet someone as legendary as Mister Wrightson. Never thought I would have the chance to meet him let alone become friends with him and his wife. I managed to get a page from his new project called The Ghoul. That will go up in my office as soon as it’s framed. I seem to be slowly acquiring a small original art page collection. I never intended to get into that side of collecting but seem to have sort of just fallen into it anyway.
Here is a new link to a brief interview I recently did here.
Next week we leave for Boston for another show, so if any of you are in the area please come and see us.
Below is the next cover in stages…
Black and white with greytones
Color of the inset image by me
Adding the design in color by me
and finally the logo and text treatment by me
Friday March 05th 2010, 11:57 am
Wendy and I just got back from our trip to New York. It was an amazing time for us because it was our first time visiting there. We completely fell in love with it, the atmosphere and energy of the place, and the people. Everywhere we went in the city the people were so nice. We got to check out the DC offices for a day and meet a lot of people that we only usually speak with on the phone or email. Had some meetings with my editor Mike Siglain and Dan Didio about future possibilities.
We spent some of the time doing the tourist thing but for the most part we just walked around everywhere and took it all in, to get the feel of the place. Central park with the snow still fresh on the ground was stunningly beautiful next to the city skyline. Lot’s of amazing food too. Just a wonderful trip. There was so much to see with such little time that we clearly only scraped the surface of what the city is about.
The convention went well and was a lot of fun, met lots of wonderful fans and did a few drawings that turned out okay. Had dinner with Ivan Brandon, his fiancee Christine (I hope I got that right), Andy Macdonald, Cliff Chiang, and couple of other folks that unfortunately I don’t think I got their names (my bad).
The signing for Forbidden Planet was great and pretty busy with such short notice for us to be there. Thanks to Jeff Ayers and the staff. Everyone there was so nice, it was a real pleasure. I would love to come back and do it again sometime.
Below is the cover I did for issue 862 of Detective Comics, which features the second part of the arc by Greg Rucka and Jock. I hope you like it…
Black and white with greytones
Colors by me
Logo and text placement by me
Monday February 15th 2010, 4:18 pm
Only a couple weeks away, so it’s a bit short notice. See some of you there hopefully.
Forbidden Planet
Wednesday February 03rd 2010, 12:49 pm
Volume 2 should be available for pre-order at finer shops everywhere. Below is the cover art for the book, the slipcase art will be shown at a later date. Art and color by me…
Monday January 25th 2010, 12:31 pm
I stumbled across this (see link below) the other day and was extremely impressed with it. A good read and thought provoking and a good push on the boundaries of storytelling. There are a couple of small references to some of my works as well, which makes it nice too 😉 but that is not why I’m mentioning this. I just think it’s good stuff from the fringe of independent comics reality. The author isn’t trying to sell it either, just has a paypal donation button. If you find it worth your time, send’em a little something, I certainly did. Enjoy…
Godshead
Saturday January 16th 2010, 1:26 pm
Another new convention appearance for later in the year has been added into the schedule section, this one will be in Spain.
Here is the cover to Detective Comics I did for issue 861 by Greg and Jock in stages…
The rough concept for the covers of the next 3 issues were presented to me by the editor, a simple design idea encompassing all of the issues for this arc, tying them together thematically, as you will you as they are released. Here is the first one in black and white with tones…
Digital color by me…
Logo treatment by me…
Monday January 11th 2010, 9:33 pm
I’ve added some of this year’s convention appearances to the schedule section. if you’re going to any of these please stop and say “Hi”
Below is the piece I turned into DC a short bit ago for the upcoming Milestone Forever specials.
Black and white with greytones…
Color by me…
Friday January 08th 2010, 1:44 am
Art for Detective Comics #860 (Batwoman 7) will be available in the store on January 10th at noon California time. Now for your enticement…
Thursday January 07th 2010, 11:28 am
here.
Thursday December 24th 2009, 12:05 pm
Monday December 21st 2009, 11:19 pm
…IS OUT THIS WEEK!
Now that this 7 issue run is complete, there will be some news coming, hopefully soon, about the future of Batwoman, and about mine and Greg’s involvement with her. It’s good!!
Below is the cover to #860 in various stages of progress.
Stage one is ink, paint, and color pencil
Stage two is colorizing the ink portion, tweaking some of it that I had felt needed it, and then digitally melding the painted area with the colored ink line work for the transitional style effect. I did some very minor color enhancement to the painted area as well.
Stage three is applying the text treatment
Monday December 14th 2009, 2:10 pm
This was originally done for an Italian magazine that came out earlier this year but has now been translated into english here.
Tuesday December 08th 2009, 9:35 pm
Art for Detective Comics #859 (Batwoman 6) will go up for sale on Thursday December 10th at noon California time. And for your enticement, click away…
Sunday December 06th 2009, 11:45 am
Quite a few weeks ago I blogged about 2 postcard sized images for something called Caped Crusaid that I had done. This is a charity event that helps Crusaid. The pieces, along with a few others are being used to raise awareness through a display at Orbital Comics, now being auctioned off through ebay to raise a little money for this cause.
The auction items, along with my two of Batwoman and Batman, can be found here.
If you like them, please bid and help a good cause, I believe the items will be up for the next 8 days. So please take a look. Let’s see how much we can raise.
Visit the following places for more information on ways to get involved.
Orbital Comics
Crusaid
Thank You.
Wednesday November 25th 2009, 1:12 pm
…IS OUT NOW!
Monday November 09th 2009, 11:12 am
Art for Detective Comics 858 (Batwoman 5) will go on sale November 10th at noon California time. Now for your enticement…
Friday October 30th 2009, 11:45 pm
…can be found here.
Tuesday October 27th 2009, 11:44 pm
…is OUT NOW!
Be prepared for something of a switching gears feeling when entering into this new issue. I purposely made a major art style shift as the story begins to explore Kate’s past and the origin of Batwoman over the course of the next 3 issues. I felt this was really the best thing for the visuals to feel right and make sense thematically, particularly as we jump from the past to the present and back to the past again. I hope you all will enjoy it as much as I did drawing it!
Friday October 09th 2009, 11:15 am
Art for Detective Comics 857 (Batwoman 4) will be available in the online store October 10th at noon California time. Now for your enticement…
Wednesday October 07th 2009, 10:30 am
Here is a nice multi-article devoted to Jim Steranko’s Red Tide.
Steranko is a true master and one of my biggest influences. His work is always engaging the brain in ways different than most other comics. His sense of composition and pacing is superb. I cannot recommend enough that his work make it’s way into your collections if it hasn’t already.
Friday October 02nd 2009, 10:09 am
This was done a few weeks ago and now has been put up at Newsarama.
Monday September 28th 2009, 12:13 pm
This Wednesday, at finer comic shops and bookstores everywhere, will see the release (according to Wildstorm) of Absolute Promethea Volume 1. I received my copies Friday so it should be out this week as noted on the Wildstorm website. Unless of course the information on their site is wrong, which on occasion has been known to happen.
Seeing this book brings a lot of different feelings for me. It has been a full decade since this material was originally produced and strange seeing it again in a form that forces me to examine just how much I’ve grown as an artist. I can see so many things that I would do differently now, but that was then and this is now, criticism in hindsight. I have to keep telling myself that it has been ten years, so of course I’m going to take issue with some things, but it just doesn’t feel like it has been a decade. I think this is due to when working on the new slipcase art and wraparound cover for the book and the interior design pieces, it was like going into a timewarp, putting myself back to then. So seeing this new volume has a fresh relevance for me. It’s not that I’m trying to degrade my own work, or to say it wasn’t worthy, it’s just impossible for me to not look at it with my current level of knowledge and thought. Reflecting on the material in analytical ways. Even with this perspective in my mind, I recognize this material as the beginning of a coming of age for me, the beginning of finding my footing in the realms of art. I certainly had been doing professional work for awhile when Promethea first came along but I feel that certain things were set in motion, certain things were released in me that allowed me to try and reach for greater potentials. This new Absolute Edition is a landmark in time, a statement of beginning growth of the mind. It was very personal work for me and so I tend to look at it in intimately critical terms. But I love it in all it’s beauty and flaws.
I’d like to briefly talk about some new things done for this book. There is the new art done for the slipcase which is printed with gold ink on a mat white finish, the result looks nice and unique. The book itself has new art for the cover, a wraparound psychedelic image with intricate spot varnishing on a mat finish. There is no dust jacket with this edition. I decided that it just was too large in size to accommodate a jacket. I’ve got other Absolute editions that have dust jackets and I found it cumbersome, so I felt it best that we not bother and just place the art onto the hardcover itself, I really like the way this came out. There are new endpapers designs by me and new chapter head designs by me as well. These new chapter heads were fun and deceivingly simple. but as the chapters progress over the course of all three Absolute Volumes, these chapter head images slowly puzzle together the Qabbalistic Tree Of life, and also have other images that appear and disappear with each new chapter. the image above is the backdrop art for these chapter head designs. These were a lot of fun and a lot of work. And lastly, there is a very nice afterword by my friend and author Brad Meltzer, best known for his work at DC Comics and most notably for his recent best selling novel The Book Of Fate. You can find more about him at BradMeltzer.com
To those of you who have already read Promethea and plan on buying this new edition in order to experience it again in a new way, I thank you, I hope you will find enjoyment from it for many years to come. To those of you who may be picking this up for the first time, welcome and I hope it tickles your brain in ways you might not expect.
bad fuzzy photo…
Saturday September 26th 2009, 1:06 pm
…in stages.
Stage 1-  rough layout sketch provided for editorial
Stage 2- inked drawing of top portion of image (to be colored in photoshop)
Stage 3- painted panel to be used as bottom portion
a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhw3/3955970573/” title=”B-DC-859-cover-salesA by JH Williams III, on Flickr”>
Stage 4- both images combined together digitally, slight digital color enhancements of the painted panel,  final color of top area mixed with the painted panel to form a melding of the two. this required to extend portions of the paint textures into the more flat looking style using photoshop paint tools.
Stage 5- placement of logo and text to finalize the design
Wednesday September 23rd 2009, 12:13 pm
…OUT NOW!