Khan Sketches

I drew a book for Moonstone Comics called KHAN. It was a sword and sorcery style book witten by Tom DeFalco. I drew the first issue and penciled the second before they cancelled the book! So here I am with 23 pages of un-inked pencil pages. I don't mind the wasted effort, just the wasted time. Maybe I'll have the book inked and it may see print. Until then, here is a sketch.

New Gallery

I went to a gallery opening on the West side of Los Angeles last night. It's a big, beautiful, U shaped space with a back patio. The space was great, and the art was excellent! The wildest part of the night was it's location. The gallery was across the street from the Mar Vista Bowling alley. I used to bowl there every Wednesday some years ago, and the neighborhood has really improved.

After the gallery show I had a drink at another new attraction on Venice Blvd., Club Good Hurt. They feature unsigned bands on the weekend. Cool! The bartender girls dress in dopey nurse outfits and they can't make a decent martini. Bummer.

Ad Agency

About two weeks ago a got a cold-call from an Ad Agency I won't name. The woman left a message about finding my work on the internet and wanted to know about my availability. She saw some art I did a year or so ago and kept some samples around. Neat!
She called about my availability, but I'm kinda busy these days. I did two spec frames from a script she sent just to show her that I would like to work with her in the future. I can't tell you what the product is, you'll have to use your imagination!

Costume Design

Congrats to me! I am working on a Star Trek Story for TOKYOPOP. I won't tell you the story, but it does involve a beautiful space princess! No shock there! I'm looking forward to drawing the story, so I am getting some character designs together.

I have to create the Princess. I'm not a fashion designer, so I think it's a cross between a Prom Queen and a Paegent Contestant. I don't want to put some crown on her, but a headdress would be appropriate. Oh, I don't know. Opinions are welcome!

Drawing of the day!

This is a frame from the Jersey Boys show. I haven't seen the show lately so I don't know when it pops up.

More Dollar Comics

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am buying some old comics at my local shop. Some guy sold his collection and The shop is selling most of them for a dollar a piece. This is is a bonanza for me because most of the books are from the Eighties and the unknown collectors buying habits were similar to my own.

The early eighties were a very furtile time for Independent books! There were more than one distributor and the direct market could give you exposure. I remember in High School, hearing about a new comic called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was such a big deal, but I thought the art was heinous. I shouldn't talk. My art back then was just as bad. Anyway, The book was a direct market smash and it inspired all kinds of artists and publishers.

This image is of a book called The Survivors printed in 1983. It looks like it was created by just one guy in a studio and printed as a labor of love! I can relate! It was published by Steve Woron out of Connecticut, and I wonder what happened to him. Is he in the business or gone on to another field? If you are out there Steve W., know that you have a fan. Independent publishers rule!

Help!

I checked my TokyoPop blog and I saw this stat! Please someone visit it so I can get rid of this profile viewed number!

Star Trek

I did some Star Trek samples for a job. It's the drawing of the day!

Morgan Freeman

I found this snapshot in a magazine. I wonder if J. Aniston has seen this coaster.

Final Salute

Okay. Captain America is dead. I doubt the Simon and Kirby creation will disappear forever, The character has always changed with the political climate. He was at times a commie-basher, a nomad without a country and a weapon against terror. The problem I have with the news of his death is the dopey storyline that brought him there.

I have been reading the current Captain America series since issue one. The stories have been very good and well drawn, but I gave up on the book when the Civil War storyline started. If you don't know it, the Civil War plot is about having persons with superpowers register with the government. Some Heroes are for it and some are against it. Nice enough idea, but I knew things were heading south when Spider-Man registered and disclosed his secret identity.

The whole Civil War storyline saddens me because it seems like the inmates are running the asylum at Marvel right now. No one seems to be protecting the characters for future readers and the writers have more power than they should. I read a NYTimes articlethat had a quote the publisher Dan Buckley. He said "Sometimes stories just take you places" Maybe he's right. But killing Captain America takes me somewhere I don't want to go.

How do they get out of this one?

I want to read more about this before I comment. So please stay tuned.

Sketch of the day!

And what is the sketch of the day?

Dollar Comics

I stopped by my local comic shop and theyv'e had a bunch of new back issues. About a dozen new long boxes in new bags and for sale for a dollar. The manager told me that they bought someones private collection. The shop pulled the rare books and put the others out there priced to sell. I love reading comics. I noticed that this guys collection looked a lot like mine! I wonder when I might let go of my collection.

Editorial in 1990

I spotted this Bullpen Bulletins from 1990. Dwayne McDuffie leaves Marvel and Tom Brevoort takes his place. Tom used to be Marc McLaurens assistant! I think I was at VALIANT at the time so I missed the shuffle. It was always interesting to see the Editorial cards shuffling back then. I remember dating a girl who started as a secretary at Marvel, and when she got an assistant Editor job, she kept her secretary salary. It was more than the normal assistant starting pay and it caused a commotion. I wonder how Marcus remembers it.

Allen's Page

My friend and fellow blogger Allen Gladfelter posted a blog last week, Feb 17th. He's working on a comicbook and he had an issue with a page he was working on. He drew the page, but he thought he could have done better. He put it out there for public comment and I think he was brave to do that.

I think Allen is an excellent artist! He constantly works on improving his art and I can relate. Take a look at his blog Click Here As for critiquing his page, I did a few sketches. In the early days of my blog, I used to comment on other peoples art. What an ego! But this is not some mean dress-down of his art, just a response to his blog.

1-I changed the camera angle. The Hero looks in the window, and is surprised by a guard! I put the guard inbetween Hero and window. The hand touches the window showing interest.

2-Turn the head of the guard. Allens' page lacks close-ups and if there is any dialogue, you should have at least one head shot. Also, I show The Hero reacting in the BG.

3-The guard has a weapon and he is about to use it! I put the gun in the foreground. The Hero reaches out at the reader/camera.

4-I sketched 2 ideas for the fourth panel, 2 camera angles. The Hero gets his hands on the Guards throat and takes the weapon in the same move. The guard is supposed to hit the ground, and I address that in the next panel.

5-I put the camera on the ground to show the knocked out guard and the victorious Hero. The low-angle shows the Hero dominating the frame. Other guards enter the scene and it looks like they don't have a chance.

It's up to the artist to decide lighting and everything else. So there is my two-cents and I hope I was able to help.

Sketch of the day

And what is the sketch of the day?

Time to drink!

My local comic shop does not carry CRACKED Magazine. It does not mean that it has stopped publishing! Look at the aggressive AD Promotion going on in the bars! They are looking for the over 21 demographic, and I have taken notice.

My Weekend

I planned a trip to NYC to spend some time with a friend, D.K. I didn't call any other friends to hang out, so I apologize to anyone I did not see over the weekend. It was a coincidence that there was all kinds of Comic book related action going on during my visit! I can't recap the entire weekend, so here are a few high points!

I went to the Illustration House early Friday with D.K. I found out that they were offering some Michael Golden art for sale, and I wanted to see if any of it was in my price range. I was out of luck. The Golden cover on the flyer was listed at $6,500 and the beautiful Alex Ross paintings in the photo were listed at $115,000. Wow.

The New York Convention took place at the Jacob Javits center starting Friday. D.K. does not work in Comics, but she was into seeing what went on at such a place. We stopped by the Con and It was a lot cooler than what I expected. It was a mess last year, but very nice this year. There were so many people that I haven't seen in years! D.K. was impressed by my old school Marvel background and she even bought a bunch of books!

I had some excellent meals and travelled around the changing city. There's a place in Tribeca called Dylan Prime that serves a nice steak. D.K. and I also ate some Korean Fried chicken on 35th Street!

On Saturday, I returned to the Con and hung out with my friend Rob. He had a booth with Tokyo Pop but we walked around the show. The original art prices are just as ridiculous.

NYC was cold and windy. My trip there was fun and relaxing!

Revisions!

I am working on my Western book and I'm taking time to streamline a few pages. The top panel shows our hero Anuteh in an old West kitchen. It's a messy place with a lot of activity going on. The top panel was the original and the bottom is the revision. I made the change for a few rew reasons.

I wanted to show that Anuteh is covered in blood and grease from working in the kitchen. The top panel has her in a patterned dress that is just too busy. Plus the BG has too much going on. Anuteh is in the center, but she gets lost within the details of the room.

In the lower panel I wanted to show how she would have become so messy. Skinning rabbits or cleaning game. The kitchen staff back then got dirty. Also, I left out the Bg wallpaper pattern and put the focus on Anuteh. The lamp in the upper left gives the colorist something to work with.

So I will keep working! I hope to be finished with the entire story and have it out this year.

My new Ipod!

I have had an ipod mini for a long time now. I bought a bunch for Christmas gifts a few years ago. I kept one for myself, But I never considered using it until recently. The blathering at work made listening to my own music a lot more appealing, so I took time out to download some tunes.

I love my Ipod mini! It's easy to use and I was able to upload some songs and get rid of old CDs. But some guys at work told me not to throw out the CDs in case my computer crashes. That's the reason for using ITunes and my Ipod! Less CDs! I am happy to get rid of the discs with one good song and ten crappy ones.

Yesterday, the cassette tapes went, now the CDs are on the chopping block.

Ebay

So I blogged about the Kotzky daily page on Ebay. I guess I wasn't the only guy watching it. I did not get it. The final bid was $130.00. That's a reasonable price.
Maybe next time!

Original art

I am brousing the EBAY original art listings and I am saddened by the high prices! The was one guy listing a blank page for $200 Dollars. Has the Original comic art market gone crazy? I understand if you have a nice piece and you want to make a profit, but some of that stuff is ridiculous! By contrast, I found some excellent Newspaper Comic strip art, that could be bought for 50 bucks or less. The drawing above is from an Apt. 3G daily strip. Drawn by Alex Kotzky. Excellent work and within my budget!

What bomb scare?

I must admit, I am pleased to hear that a Cartoon Network VP was fired over the marketing stunt gone wrong. When I read the first report on Friday, I thought that someone has taken the mistake in marketing seriously.

I know that the report said 'resignation' but when you leave at 5:00 on Friday, I say 'Firing'. My point is the removal shows that the corporation that owns Cartoon Network is taking responsibilty for the mistake.

I think I would be a mean boss.

New from TESHKEEL!

Have you bought the latest issue of The 99? If you have not, this is what you should look for. I recently did some work for TESHKEEL Comics and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Reference part 3

Let's say you are drawing a story, and the main character has to carry the unconscious love interest to safety. So now you have to draw some guy lifting a girl. Do you look for a couple to pose for you while you sketch it out? No! Go to you Reference File! Love love my magazines and over the years, I have been able to clip some useful shots.

Need a hotel room?

It's that time of year! I tried getting a hotel room in San Diego for the Comic-Con and guess what happened? I got a room. It was harder than ever to do, but I did it. I started the speed dialing at 8:59 and I got the booking agency at 9:44! I stayed on hold until 10:02. I booked my acommodations at 10:15. Thank goodness I took the day off from work. I talked about the lack of hotel rooms last year on this blog and I hoped that more hotels would be available. It seems like just enough rooms were available.

Reference part 2

Yesterday I talked about reference and how to use it. In this post, I show it in practical use. In the Kolchack book, I had to draw the character in a plane going home. The tough thing about drawing the inside of a airplane are the seats! The shape of the seats are kind of odd. I was lucky to find the right ref for the interior of a jet. This really isn't some kind of industry secret. Every artist should know how to look for and use background and location reference.

Reference and how to use it

Allen Gladfelter has a neat post on hisblog about drawing locations. If you've never lived in NYC, a place like Grays' Papaya or Central Park can seem as exotic as the Valley of the Kings in Egypt ( I should say that I've never been to the Valley of the Kings!).
Allen really got his locations right on the money using the right reference. His script said New York and he did his homework.

I recently drew an issue of Kolchak, The Night-Stalker where the writer put a scene in a Motel room. He described it as an older place, Clean but with furnishings from the Carter Administration. Sounds simple enough, but If you fake it, people notice. I am a big fan of reading Magazines and I was able to dig up some excellent reference. Everybody should have a reference file and having it made my job easier.

Bad day

I had the most tiresome day dealing with the most tiresome person. I had to do some Storyboard work to day and the lady I dealt with could not figure her way out of a unlocked room if she had a map and a guide dog. I'm just tired and venting. The upside is tommorrow is the Big Game! Footballs' season ending show in FLA!

Brenda Starr by Joe Kubert

Brook Shields starred in the movie adaption of the newspaper strip Brenda Starr! It was part of a wave of comicbook movies that came out in the 80s. Films like Popeye, Supergirl and The Conan movies. Some were excellent and some were never seen again. The Brenda Starr film disappeared but this piece of artwork remains. It looks like the plot of the film in 12 panels. Drawn by J. Kubert, he does a great Brenda Starr!

Rick Parker

An Old friend from my days in NYC has taken up teaching! Rick Parker has a comics workshop and there are still a few spots left! It's on the East coast and I can't make it. Rick is a very talented artist and you may remember his work on the Beavis and Butthead Comic from the 90s. He has also done a fair share of matchbook covers as well!

ZULU

There is an old movie about the British army and their battles in South Africa called ZULU. The movie is really good and I recommend it to everyone. I talked to a friend about it and I remembered the recent PBS show Guns, Germs and Steel based on the Jared Diamond book. Check this link to read the theory of how Europeans colonized the rest of the world.

One episode shows how the Zulu warriors had a superior battle plan and used drugs to psych themselves up for battle.

Back to the West

I have spent the better part of Six Months working on Kolchak, The Night-Stalker. I was very happy doing the book and the first issue will hit the stands next week. Now that it's all done, I can complete the sequel to one of the best reviewed Graphic Novels of 2006. The Eisner-Nominated Gunpowder Girl and The Outlaw Squaw!(The nomination was for best letterer, but I won't complain!) Read the reviews!

Images of Chewbacca

There were a lot of photos of Chewbacca published as the third Star Wars movie came out. These are 2 of my favorites!

Tale of the tape

I threw out all of my old Music cassette tapes today. They were victims of technology. I used to play them in my old 1997 Altima on the commute to work, but when I traded it in for the 2004 Altima, I got the CD player. I thought that I could not give up the old comedy tapes like my Abbott and Costello and Sam Kineson tapes. Now I can listen to them on the Satellite Radio. When my small cassette player broke, I ran out of excuses. If I really wanted to replace my old Wendy and Lisa tapes, I would have done so by now. The clock is ticking for my CDs. Ten more years and I will buy myself an ipod!

Art on Ebay

I decided to visit Ebay to see what's available. There is a lot of original art on the auction site and it's high quality! I saw entire 6 page EC stories by Wally Wood, some sweet MAD magazine art and a few Ross Andru Spider-Man Pages. What reaaly caught my eye was this Earl Norem painting. It was published by Marvel for one of the Savage Sword books, I can't remember which one and the seller does not say. It would have been cool to show the published cover next to the painting, but the seller did not do that.

It looked like the "seller" was really an auction house. They seem to have the best stuff! Pieces like the Spidey pages and all the covers were so expensive, I could not look at them for very long for fear of burning my eyes! There were some newspaper daily strips that were undervalued. A lot of Flash Gordon strips that could be bought for fifty bucks or so.

The Norem painting is okay, The focus seems to be on the giant about to kill Conan, but it's nice work. I followed it's auction and the winning bid was over $3,000 dollars!

Sketch of the day!

I first posted this sketch on my Tokyo Pop Blog! I wish that everyone who reads this blog would check out the other. So this is the sketch of the day!

The old-fashioned Fanzine

It used to be that if you picked up a fan Magazine about comicbooks, You would only read about comicbooks. No glossy photos of movie stars and no ads for DVDs or game systems. I used to enjoy WIZARD magazine when they had more preview art or a good interview. Now that they've started putting actors on the cover, I can't take it seriously as a comicbook fan mag.

I'm buying a lot of the TwoMorrows publications. They print BACK ISSUE Magazine and ROUGH STUFF Magazine. Two of my favorites. Back Issue deals with comics of the 70s and 80s, and Rough stuff talks about Penciling and Inking. Bob McLeod edits Rough Stuff and he gives a bracing critique! Very good stuff. If I want to know the latest in the comicbook biz, I'll go on the internet.

The above image is the cover of Amazing Heroes. An Old-fashioned Fanzine from 1986!

TV Guide

TV Guide covering comic books? It's true! Especially when it's a comicbook about Battlestar Galactica. I have not seen the new TV show, but I hear it's pretty good.

Alan Davis

I'm posting pencil copies of 3 pages of Alan Davis art! It's from the first issue of Excalibur by Marvel Comics and I had so much fun reading the book. Way back when, a freelancer could walk around the Marvel offices and check out the latest art. When I heard that Davis had sent in some new pencils, I had to make some copies. I was such a fan! He's such a great artist and I learn so much by looking at it.

Robot Fighter

I worked for VALIANT Comics in 1990. Jim Shooter started the company after he was fired from Marvel. I was working in the Marvel bullpen when the news came down about Shooter, and I wondered what he would do next. I was also inking backgrounds for Bob Layton at the time and he was in the office that afternoon. I really did not surprise me that Layton would join Shooter in his Valiant venture.

The first books for Valiant were Nintendo Comics. Books that featured Zelda, Captain N and The Mario Bros. I worked on that stuff and I was there to see the prepartion for the super-hero books. Jim had some great plans for the next line of books! Trading cards, zero issues, retail promotions and T-shirts. I worked with Art Nichols, the Art Director at the time. He had previously worked at Continuity Studios and he knew how to get the most out of every pencil line! Art penciled and inked the first two drawings, but I think Paris Cullins and Bob Layton did the art revisons on the final drawing. The color was by Janet Jackson.

I left Valiant in late 1990 and never had a chance to work on the Super-Hero stuff. It must have been fun...at least until Shooter was edged out and Layton took over. That's another story.

Best sellers

This is something new for me. the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly has a list of top selling Graphic Novels and Comics. It has nothing to do with Diamond or Wizard Entertainment. It seems like they got their list from Midtown Comics in NYC. That store has a great location (40th street ...I think) so it's a short walk from the EW offices.

My question is: Entertainment Weekly has a lot of readers and they when they report on something they can affect it's popularity. Why do they trust Midtown Comics to decide the best sellers? Did they call the Manager and ask for a report? No offense to Midtown, but couldn't EW call St. Marks comics located in the Village or some other place? Am I missing something here? I guess that's more than one question.

Congrats to the books on the list. I just wonder about the accuracy of this list.

Gambit art

This page is from a GAMBIT mini-series drawn by Lee Weeks and Klaus Janson. I don't remember exactly when I made this copy, but I was living in NYC at the time. I have always loved Lees' work. He really put a lot into his pencils and it shows. It's rare to see a page half inked. You can see a little of the inkers thought process and maybe imagine his next move.

Slow day

It's another slow day at the office and I find myself wonder if I should leave early to take in a movie or something. What I do instead is search the web! i found this UK based website that's similar to YouTube, but totally uncensored. It's called LiveLeak.