AD NAUSEAM

The Spectre

2011-12-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Suze and I are back in Richmond and back at work though Suze is working from home with a horrible cold she picked up in North Carolina. Poor girl can't catch a break. I haven't caught it yet but I feel a watery, itchy tickling in my sinuses that can only mean one thing. I guess it will be a while before we'll feel like things are getting back to normal. As her Dad used to say, we've robbed this train before. But every case of grieving is different. And none of them are any damned fun. Our last day in North Carolina was pretty horrible for reasons I won't go into. Suffice it to say a wretched two weeks ended on a really sour note.

Suze has lost her Christmas spirit this year and that makes me sad because she's always been such a Christmas person. She absolutely adores it. And since I'm the Scrooge, I rely on her to keep me upbeat during this time of year. So I'm taking it as a challenge. I vow to get her in Christmas mode by the 25th, even if it kills me. And she just might.

I haven't had time to work much on drawing HMDH lately, obviously. With Christmas upon us, that may have to sit a while longer. Ugh. I'm this close to posting the scripts online and calling it a day.

I've decided to start sketching again. I stopped because work was getting so crazy I wanted to simplify my life and eliminate any stress that I could. But I've realized I've been eliminating all the things that make me feel like I'm more than just someone's employee and that's no way to live. So I'm going to draw when I can and not put any pressure on myself. I need some cheering up myself and this is the way to do it.

That said, I'm posting a drawing of the Spectre I did before Thanksgiving with the intention of posting it over vacation. I drew it, scanned it and saved it. And forgot to send it home. Then, before I got back to work, we got the news about Suze's Dad. I'd almost forgotten I drew it. I like it, especially considering it had been weeks since I'd drawn anything before that. I hope you like it too. In fact, I hope you like it so much that…

…you'll want to buy it. My Rom drawing auction hasn't caused much of a stir so I'm going to throw this drawing in as a bonus to whomever makes me the best offer on the Rom drawing. I'm still leaving the minimum at $50 because it's for a good cause. Come on. You know you want to pretend you want it.

Okay, that's all I've got. Hopefully, I'll have another new drawing soon.

Later.

Missing Richard Craig Lemons

2011-11-30T20:06:00.001-08:00

Suzanne has said that we are now officially retiring from Sunday nights. This past Sunday, we lost her father Richard, quite possibly the greatest man I've ever met. He'd been ill for a while but this was still completely sudden and unexpected and we're all still in shock.

Mr. Lemons was always the coolest guy in the room, no matter what room he was in. Part Ernest Hemingway, part Santa Clause and part Ben Kenobi. When you say someone is "a good man", you're talking about him. He was the kind of guy you aspire to be but you never can because you just aren't cool enough. He was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, for Pete's sake! What hope do the rest of us have?

My mother-in-law likes to tell me I passed the "Richard Test" but that's news to me because I never realized I was being tested. That's because that's the kind of man Mr. Lemons was. I'd been "taken home" to meet my share of parents before I met Suze and in every case I could tell the fathers were wondering who this shabby-looking art student was and that they were just biding their time, hoping their daughters would lose interest. But with Mr. Lemons, it was different. He treated me with respect and kindness from the minute I met him, even though I had a lousy job and no real prospects. His respect was mine to lose. I never had to prove anything to him. His daughter liked me and that was good enough for him.

Not that I didn't try constantly to impress him. I was incredibly intimidated by him the first time we met. Suze drove me down to Williamsburg, where her parents were living at the time. They were Carolina folk and were not happy to be living in Virginia but had been transferred here when BASF bought the company they both worked for. We pulled up to a gate to the neighborhood with a guard house and Suzanne had the guard call up and announce us. I looked at her slack-jawed. "You've got to be kidding!" I was already nervous. But, by the time we pulled into the drive of their beautiful two-story brick house with the manicured lawn, I was practically a puddle in the seat.

But the Lemonses, particularly Richard, were nothing but welcoming to me. No appraising stares. No trick questions. No backhanded compliments. They sat me down, handed me a beer and made me feel at home. And Mr. Lemons spent the next 20 years making me feel that way. Never once in the entire time I knew him did he ever make me feel like I wasn't good enough for his daughter. Turns out the gated community wasn't something they'd wanted to be a part of but a lot of the transferred employees were living there. The whole gate thing wasn't their style at all. Mr. Lemons was a farm boy that had worked his way up in life through hard work and scrappiness. He didn't put on airs and didn't care for people who did.

Over the years, intimidation gave way to respect and admiration, then affection and finally love. I've had a lot of heroes in my life and I decided long ago that your heroes always let you down. But Mr. Lemons never did. He was a wonderful man that had so many great qualities. And he was true to the end.

He was such a considerate and thoughtful person. Whenever we went down to visit, he would hand me the Sports Illustrated Magazine he'd invariably saved for me because it had a Packers article in it. He'd always make sure to have my brand of coffee or rum or beer or whatever he thought would make me happy. He would grill the most amazing steaks and chicken you've ever eaten and then tell everyone I did it because I came down and stood beside him while he cooked. He'd always make sure I got the biggest steak in the bunch too.

He loved his NC State Wolfpack (his alma mater) and was delighted when he found out I "rooted" for them before I'd ever met Suzanne. (I liked that their colors were the same as my high school's.) We would have the best time watching the games with him and, if we weren't down there, he would call us to let us know the game was being televised.

I've always hated martinis because...well, because they're terrible. But her father could make the most spectacular martinis. They were ungodly good. We always called him "Bartender Rick." I think he was proud of that.

He had a catchphrase. Each night, when he got tired, he would stand up and say, "Well, you can stay up all night if you want to..." and then sing a rousing verse or two of "Goodnight, Irene." It made us laugh every time.

He was such a patient man. When we got down to the house 3:00 Monday morning after we got the call, Suzanne's sister told us how her husband Scott had said that he felt like he learned something new from Richard every time he came down for a visit. And I had just been thinking that very thing on the drive down. Because Suzanne's dad knew so many neat things. And he never judged you for not knowing. He would show you how to tie a knot in a rope to keep the boat secured or just the right way to throw an anchor or how to steer the boat. And he would never get angry if it took you ten tries. Or if you forgot everything he showed you between visits. He'd just laugh and show you again.

He could get angry like anyone else. But I never once heard him raise his voice in anger. He didn't have to.

He had this one mannerism that I loved. If you asked him a question about something he felt strongly about he would pause and kind of half-shrug, half-tilt his head and cut a sideways glance away from you. Then explain it to you, trying to sound like he wasn't an expert but you knew damn well he was. I would sometimes ask him a question just to try and get him to do it.

He never made me feel bad about myself for not liking to fish or hunt or for not knowing how to work on cars. One time, I went out on a fishing trip with Mr. Lemons and Suzanne's Uncle James. They both dressed in thermal underwear (It was December.) but, oh, I knew better. I just put on some jeans and a sweatshirt and jacket. And froze nearly to death. I had the gut shakes so bad, I thought I would die. It was ridiculously stupid of me. James has teased me mercilessly about it ever since. But Mr. Lemons never did. Not once.

The thing I remember most about him was the way he moved. He had this calm deliberation about everything he did. At first I mistook it for just slowness. But over time, I realized that he didn't waste a single movement. Everything he did, every gesture and action, was thought out beforehand. It was almost a metaphor for the way he lived his life. Every decision was thought out in advance. I came to love that about him and would just watch him move and admire it. I wish I could do that. But I'm too impulsive.

The only time I think I ever impressed him was our last visit in September. Mr. Lemons and I shared a love of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. We were watching a John Wayne movie that I hadn't seen. A character actor came on-screen and Mr. Lemons said, "Who is that guy? He's in a lot of these movies." I said, "Ben Johnson" without missing a beat and he looked at me like he was seeing me differently. A kind of "You're okay, kid" look. I played it off because knowing an actor's name isn't really that big an accomplishment. But I cherish that look he gave me.

I could go on and on but it's very late and I'm very sad and I just want to go to sleep and forget this week ever happened. If just for a while.

It feels strange to have this much affection for the father of your wife. You're not supposed to like your in-laws, after all. But I really did love that man. But he was so cool that I could never bring myself to call him "Richard", to his face or otherwise. And I knew he didn't like me to call him Mr. Lemons either. So I would play this game where I would have to word my sentences with creative uses of pronouns to avoid either one. I don't know if he picked up on it or not but now I wish I'd just called him Richard. Even just once. But...you didn't call the Fonz "Arthur", did you?

Good night, Richard. I'll miss you more than I can express.

Bill Mantlo

2011-11-16T08:32:00.001-08:00

Yep. You've seen this drawing before. Bear with me.

Thanks to some of Bill Mantlo's other fans at the John Byrne Forum, I was recently reminded of his plight and the struggles his brother Mike has endured in order to care for him. One of the members at the JBF posted this link:

http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2011/11/07/tragic-tale

It's an in-depth article about the Mantlos and the shortcomings of our healthcare system. It's a long, difficult, heartbreaking read but I highly recommend it. Another JBF-er did some research and came up with Mike Mantlo's contact info. I emailed him yesterday and he's an incredibly nice, positive guy. I'd really like to help him in whatever small way I can. Which brings me to the point of this post.

A couple of years ago, Todd got me in touch with the nice folks at SpaceNite, the people that commission and auction off art featuring ROM, SPACEKNIGHT, (one of Mantlo's most popular projects for Marvel) for his benefit. Though I'm basically nobody, they were enthusiastic about me inserting myself into their project and I drew the above picture for them to auction off. It's pen and ink on 11x17 bristol. Through some snafu involving miscommunication, we never did close the deal and the art is still with me. As far as I know, there aren't anymore SpaceNites in the works and I'd hate for the drawing to go to waste.

So in addition to what I'm going to send to Mr. Mantlo myself, I'm hoping someone will offer me something for this piece. Whatever I get will go directly to Mike Mantlo for the benefit of his brother. If anyone reading this is interested, please send an offer to me at DELETETHISmafus@comcast.netDELETETHIS and the art will go to the highest bidder. Though I don't expect the world to beat down my door, I did spend quite a bit of time on this so I'm going to start the bidding at $50. Since traffic's down the last couple of months since I took a break, I'm going to give it a while and close the bidding at noon on December 15th, 2011. If I haven't gotten any offers by then, I'll let you know and will then take whatever I can get. Deal?

Wish me luck and please keep Mike and Bill Mantlo in your thoughts over the holidays.

Astonishingly, I may actually have a new drawing to post soon. Later.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T05:37:00.001-07:00

I had a great time with Rod and Leanne Hannah this past weekend. I was so happy they were able to come down for the Virginia Comicon. I also had fun hangin' with my friend Maddie McCants at the 'Ringo Scholarship table. We had a better-than-expected fundraising weekend so, combining that with what we brought in at the terrific Greenville show a few weeks ago, we'll be able to kick off the holidays with a sizable contribution to the scholarship fund. That thud you hear will be our contact at S.C.A.D. fainting. Thanks to everyone who donated and/or bought something.

Have a fun and safe Halloween, everyone!

Va Comicon Halloween Weekend

2011-10-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's official. I'll be setting up for the Scholarship Fund at the VA COMICON here in Richmond next weekend. That will be Halloween weekend, in case you missed the title of this post! I'm so excited. I'm looking forward to all the folks in great cosplay outfits that will likely be there. Brett's throwing a costume contest this year and the winner gets $500!

Rod and Leanne Hannah of BlueMilkSpecial.com will be there. In fact, they're staying over at the Ringo Ranch so it looks like there will be a Hammer Horror Film Festival going on. I can't wait.

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Still inching along with the layouts for issue 1 of HAND ME DOWN HORROR. I've also been trying to loosen up with some character sketches but it's been tough. I really want to draw this thing myself but if I want it to be read before I die, I may have to hire someone to draw it for me. I'm hoping it won't come to that. I'm too much of a control freak.

Here's a little teaser, though. I guess it's okay to post it, even though I'm light years away from being ready to publish. I think it's a much better representation of the tone of the book than the previous attempts I posted. I hope you like it.

That's all I've got. I hope to see y'all at the VA COMICON next weekend! Later.

Still Kickin'

2011-10-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Technically, I'm still on my break from the blog but I did want to post something to let anyone interested know that I'll be representing the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund in Greenville, NC this coming Saturday (October 8th) at the City Hotel and Bistro. Our friend David Tilley has kindly donated us space at his comic book show there this weekend. This is our first time setting up in Greenville so we're looking forward to meeting some new friends and hopefully seeing some old ones.

Coincidentally, my sister-in-law lives ten minutes away with her family so Suze will get some much-needed time with our niece and nephew and her sister Jennifer.

—————————

If anyone cares, pencil HAS been put to paper on THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR. While the going has been much slower than I'd hoped, I'm encouraged by the fact that I've begun and that I'm happy so far with what I've done. Hilariously, I've already deviated from the script as early as page one. Damn artists, always changing things. Mostly I'm just shifting angles and adding things to give background characters something to do. I'm trying something new (for me, anyway.) Instead of completely finishing a page before moving on to the next, I'm doing detailed half-size layouts for the complete first issue before I move on to lightboxing/penciling. Then, I'll pencil every page before inking and so on. Hopefully, this will keep me focused and moving and a faster pace.

While I'm enjoying seeing how my story is going to turn out visually, I have to say I much prefer writing to drawing. After eight full scripts and a rewrite, I had much more confidence in my writing than I do in my drawing. I'm so tense and draw so infrequently that it's hard to build up any consistency of style or any real confidence. Not to mention how difficult it's been drawing with my face two inches from the paper. (Not a consideration when writing.) The good (no, GREAT) news is that after Charlie broke my glasses while we were on vacation, I broke down and got bi-focals (those Invisi-line thingies) and now I can see enough to draw without leaning right over my hand. It's a huge relief. Maybe I can start reading more now too. I can't express what a pain that's been and how liberating these new glasses are.

Back to the book, I also have an official, finalized logo which is nowhere near what I posted before. It's much more playful and appropriate for the material. It's also something I think will stand out on the racks. Maybe if I'm feeling brave, I'll post it later.

I'm busier than ever and every moment I have to draw is spent on HMDH so, sadly, no sketches to post but we knew that. Still, all work and no play and all that so, for fun, Suze and I have been watching TRUE BLOOD on DVD. A coworker has the first three seasons on disk and she was nice enough to loan them to me. I've been wanting to watch the show for a while but I didn't want to spend our NetFlix rentals on endless TV show disks. Now we can just zip on through and hopefully catch season 4 on OnDemand. I have to say I'm really enjoying the hell out of the show though I'm amazed at how outrageously naughty it started out. The guy playing Sookie's brother either loves his job…or hates it. Then, halfway through Season 1, it seemed like the writers got caught up in the story and forgot to be raunchy. I'm a horror junkie and I like nekkid wimmens so I know why I'm enjoying it. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out what the attraction is for women. I guess there's the romance angle with the dark, mysterious and handsome vampire but that is such a small part of what goes on. With all the graphic sex and gore, I figured women would run screaming. Shows what I know about women. I've had that damned theme song (BAD THINGS) stuck in my head all weekend. It's a great song, though, so that's okay.

On regular TV, we've been enjoying the return of THE MENTALIST, FRINGE, FAMILY GUY and I'm looking forward to the new season of HOUSE. And, of course, there's football. My Pack is 4-0 and if they can stay healthy, they have a great shot at returning to the Superbowl this year. Suze and I are two-thirds of the way through THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy on audio book (we listen on the way to and from work) with a couple of books sent to us by Todd waiting in the wings.

Okay, I've got to run home now and get some things ready for planting grass seed in the morning. Rather than kill myself on the entire lawn this year (with no result) I've picked a small area of the yard and am working the hell out of it. If this works, I'll do that every year until the entire lawn looks good. Though, the way I feel today after just working a 20-foot by 20-foot patch all day yesterday, I may not even survive that.

Later, and I hope to see at least some of you in Greenville Saturday.

Four Years.

2011-08-12T10:39:00.001-07:00

I have mixed feelings about continuing to mark this day. While I still enjoy posting on Mike's birthday, this is a day I'd just as soon forget. But I realize there are a lot of folks out there thinking about Mike today and I wanted you to know I'm with you.

I've actually been thinking about Mike a lot lately. He's never far from my thoughts at any given moment but lately...I don't know. It seems like every movie I see or book I read reminds me of him in one way or another. Suze and I recently managed to squeeze in a viewing CAPTAIN AMERICA. I was so blown away with well-realized the Avengers universe is in this series of films and it popped into my head that Mike passed away before the first IRON MAN movie came out. He would have loved all of these movies (especially THOR, I believe) and would have gotten such a kick out of the fact that they were being done. I'm so sad he never got to see any of them.

Mike loved movies as much as I do. And lately, I've found myself, through no conscious effort, watching a lot of the stuff we grew up watching and enjoying together.

I checked out the miniseries SHOGUN on DVD from our local library a couple weeks ago. I wasn't even aware it had been released. But the minute I saw the box, memories of sitting in front of the TV every night for a week with Mike flooded into my head. This was back in 1980 so I was 12 and Mike was 17. As a teenager, Mike was fascinated with Japanese culture. This was probably because of Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL stories. It was perfect timing. We absolutely loved the miniseries, absorbing everything. We even started humming the theme song for weeks afterward and speaking the few words of Japanese we'd managed to learn. I devoured the set, watching it every free minute instead of doing a million other things I should have been doing. And I felt like Mike was watching it again with me. I had a smile on my face that whole week.

Mike was really into Karate and took lessons for a while. He and — because I emulated him in all things — I started watching every Chuck Norris movie that came out. They ranged from awful to watchable but Mike took me to every one. He even got to meet Norris once when he came to speak at Mike's Karate dojo. Feeling nostalgic, I recently picked up a bunch of Norris' DVDs on Amazon cheap and started watching them again. They're just as awful as ever but it was nice to relive those memories of going to see them with my big brother.

The last movie I ever saw with Mike was a showing of LAND OF THE DEAD in Charlotte during the Heroes Convention. Mike and I were both Romero fans from way back and we jumped at the chance to see the movie together. Unfortunately, there were some loud guys talking in the row behind us and while Mike just ignored them, I couldn't take it. I got up and moved down several rows and so we didn't really see the movie together. If I had known...

Anyway. I miss Mikey more than ever. It doesn't sting quite as bad as it used to but as time goes by, I'm reminded of him more and more often. Everything I see, say or do seems to bring back memories. I guess that's a good thing. I just can't believe it's been four years since he left us. Suzanne and I were talking the other day and we agreed that it feel like he could just walk through the door this Thanksgiving and we almost wouldn't be surprised. It's like he's not really gone.

Certainly, I miss his work like any other fan. But I am especially missing just being able to pick up the phone and talk to him and seek his advice. He could make me laugh like nobody else could. And I loved how I would know that Mike was on the other end of the line when Suze picked up the phone because of how he would get her laughing until she "tee-heeed."

Worst of all, now that it's been four years, we've gotten to spend more time with Charlie than Mike did. That just seems wrong. As much as we love Charlie (and we love him dearly), he will always be Mike's "little buddy." Hell, Mike even drew him into the last work he completed. :)

So, thanks everybody for the kind thoughts today. I appreciate it more than you can know.

Taking a Break

2011-07-20T15:29:00.001-07:00

As my work schedule has gotten worse and worse over the last few weeks and shows no sign of letting up, I've decided to take a break from the blog for a while. Not a permanent one but...for a while.

I'm most of the way through my last page of the PERHAPANAUTS assignment and plan to start inching my way through the HAND ME DOWN HORROR as soon as possible. Between that, the scholarship and finding myself in need of a lot of training to stay relevant in my job, the added pressure of trying to post something of interest on a regular basis has stolen some of the fun out of it. Though I'm still a "compulsive doodler", it's been weeks since I've even been able to pick up a pencil at work. That's not likely to change, frustrating as it is. I'm going to devote what little energies I have left at the end of the day to getting my book drawn and doing some other things I've been putting off.

Thanks for indulging me all this time. I'll certainly check in from time to time to announce when and where we'll be representing the scholarship fund and hopefully to share some HMDH artwork. But it will be on a much less regular basis. Hopefully, I'll see you around Todd and Craig's blogs.

Sadly...later.

Batgirl

2011-06-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

I really don't feel like whining about how much I've been working. Though I could.

Instead, I'll mention how I took great pains to clear this past weekend so I could work on my remaining PERHAPANAUTS pages and that worked out really well. One more page to go and that one looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Just for shiggles, (that one's for you, Ricky) I did the math on how long it's taken me to do this assignment, per page and, if I applied that math to THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR, it would probably take me 132 years to draw that. I don't think that will actually be the case, though. I plan on doing much simpler drawings and not noodling the backgrounds so much. I guess that's because I'm going to be inking them instead of Christian. As I've sent each 'HAPS page to Christian, I've gotten a response from him in the vein of, "OH COME ON!!! SERIOUSLY?" Dude is going to be living with a ruler in his hand for a while.

Speaking of HMDH, though I've not come anywhere close to meeting my schedule of starting the art on it this past January, I can say with some satisfaction that my rewrite has gone well and I'm pretty much done. Most of the dialogue got rewritten. The very first scene was re-conceived and some plot holes were fixed. Except for a few tweaks to some heavy-handed dialogue that I can do while lettering, I think I'm good to get started when I'm done with the 'HAPS. I'm much happier with it now. Still not completely satisfied but I feel like I've taken it up a notch above where it was.

Also, I want to say that I've been getting quite a few emails and Facebook notifications from folks since Heroes and just have not had any time to respond to any of that so I apologize. I'll get to that as soon as possible.

Lastly, the sketch above was done while I was waiting around the other night at work. Been pulling some all-nighters lately and that's got me back to sketching. I liked how this started out but by the end, I wasn't as happy with it as I'd hoped. Still figuring out how to draw women. And I was too damned tired to figure out the background.

Okay, that's all I've got. I'm exhausted. Going to bed early. Later.

48

2011-06-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of the things people mention most when we talk about Mike is how much they miss his laugh. It was a good one. Hard to describe. He was very unselfconscious about it. If something struck him funny, he just cut loose. Sometimes, if he wasn't laughing uproariously, he would do this "ssss—sssss—sssss" thing that sounded like a snake with hiccups. The one that always got me, though, was when he'd laugh, seemingly forever, then repeat whatever it was that cracked him up in this high-pitched wheezy voice and then go off in gales of laughter again. For instance, if he was watching OFFICE SPACE:

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…ha ha ha…ha.ssss—ssss—ssss—ssss…

"Lumbergh f***ed her!"

"AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…."

It was very endearing. Well…except this one time.

I've mentioned the trip to Italy we took with our parents and Suzanne about 10 years ago. I hate to fly under the best of circumstances but the flight to Milan was almost unbearable. Suzanne, Mike and I were in the center section with me in the middle. Suze was sitting next to a guy who was sniffing and wheezing and grunting like he had the Black Plague. The screens for the in-flight movie were embedded in the backs of the chairs so if the guy sitting in front of you put his seat back, you were out of luck. This was the case with me. By twisting my head at an unnatural angle, I was able to catch an occasional glimpse of the movie but I couldn't sustain it.

Mike was more fortunate. He was able to watch his movie just fine and that movie was GALAXY QUEST. "Oh, cool! I haven't seen this!" I told him he was in for a treat because it was hilarious. Apparently, Mike agreed.

I had taken off my headphones because they were pointless without being able to see the movie. But Mike had his on. Remember that scene in JERRY MAGUIRE where Tom Cruise is singing along to a song we can't hear and screwing up the lyrics? He thinks he's doing a great job but, to us, he sounds terrible.

For anyone not watching the movie, there was the not unpleasant hum and creak of a large aircraft cruising along broken by the occasional cough or whine of an unhappy child. Then it started.

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…ha ha ha…ha.ssss—ssss—ssss—ssss…

"Hell of a thing!"

"AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…."

…..

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…ha ha ha…ha.ssss—ssss—ssss—ssss…

"That's not right!"

"AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…."

…..

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…ha ha ha…ha.ssss—ssss—ssss—ssss…

"…By Grabthar's hammer!"

"AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…."

Every head turned toward Mike. He had no idea how loud he was being and I don't think he would have cared if he did. He was having the time of his life. He watched the entire movie like that while I slumped down in my seat trying to be as small as possible. Once in a while, someone would catch my eye and I'd shrug and shake my head. "Never met this guy before…"

Finally, mercifully, the movie stopped. Mike took off his headphones and said, "That was a great movie. I can't believe I've never seen it before."

Things went back to normal. But it was a long flight. And, wouldn't you know it, there was time for another movie. There were actually "channels" on the screens so you could choose between three different movies. Mike put on his headphones and chose…GALAXY QUEST. I thought we'd be okay, though, because he'd just seen it. No way would he find it that funny when he already knew the jokes.

Wrong. Apparently, it TWICE as funny.

Want to try and guess what he watched on the flight back? I bet you'd be right.

That was one of those excruciating experiences you think will never end. And then it does. And you laugh about it for the rest of your life. So, yeah. I miss Mike's laugh too.

Especially that one.

Happy Birthday, Mikey.

Wieringo Animal Shelter

2011-06-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been much too busy lately between work, parental visits and achieving true manhood by switching out the alternator on our Suburban all by my lonesome to do any sketching but I did want to share something with you.

A week or so ago, I had the pleasure of representing the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund at the quarterly Va Comicon here in Richmond. I love the Va Comicon because it's a fun little show and Brett treats us REALLY well and we don't have to travel. I get to sleep in my own bed at night and don't put a lot of miles on the cars. But the best part is getting to hang out with some familiar faces like Shelton (Heroes) Drum and Marc (Baltimore Comicon) Nathan without them being under the pressures that their respective conventions place on them.

I was visiting Marc at his booth when one of his guys came over and shook my hand. He was a fan of Mike's and wanted to ask my opinion of the tribute to Mike that was in one of Marvel's recent comics. I told him I hadn't seen it. It was apparently in one of Marvel's current crossover tie-ins (FEAR ITSELF: HOMEFRONT #2) and, well, I don't read that sort of thing anymore. But the fellow (I'm sorry to say I've forgotten his name) was very excited about it and told me the exact issue to look for.

I proceeded to check every dealer at the convention and, despite finding some other fun stuff for myself, I couldn't locate the book. So, immediately after the show closed, I drove over to Nostalgia Plus and told Marvin what I was looking for. He located it in 30 seconds and this is what we found inside:

I'm not sure who to thank for that...the writer, the artist or even the letterer. But it's a wonderful tribute and one I think Mike would have just loved. So "Thanks!" to whoever was responsible.

Pretty cool, right?

2011-06-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

We're back from our trip to the 2011 Heroes Convention in Charlotte. Just walked in the door, in fact, and it's really great to see Charlie. He's so happy we're back. I'll probably post a more detailed summary later in the week but I have some email to catch up on, lots of unpacking and I really need to collapse for a while before work starts back up tomorrow.

First, and most importantly, I'd like to officially congratulate Nicky Soh, our second recipient of the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund at S.C.A.D. He was one of three finalists given to us to submit to our panel of judges (thanks, folks!) and it was a very close vote. All the finalists should be very proud of their accomplishments. I wish we could give all three of them the scholarship.

Nicky Soh is very deserving of this award. Unfortunately, with the convention moved up a few weeks this year, Nicky wasn't able to make it to the announcement Saturday night on such short notice. Hopefully, he can attend next year. Good luck, Nicky. You deserve it.

As for our last (or, rather, first) recipient, Rae Rochelle, she has now graduated and I can't wait to see where she goes from here. I hope S.C.A.D. will keep us up on how she's doing. She was the speaker at the S.C.A.D. scholarship dinner (which we were sadly unable to attend) earlier this year and we received a copy of her speech from Karla Geibner, our contact in Savannah. It really choked us up. She's a great person and I'm so glad she was the first person to win the scholarship. I think Mike would be very proud.

Before I sign off, I want to thank everyone who stopped by and donated money or items for sale to the fund or bought something from us. We got some incredibly generous donations from passers-by, friends and pros alike. I can't thank you all enough. Your continuing generosity keeps us going. I'd thank you all by name ( I remember each and every one of you.) but I don't want to embarrass anyone. Just please know how thankful we are.

I also want to thank all the people who stopped by or emailed us or posted here and on Facebook with their condolences about Toonces. Everyone was very understanding and went out of their way to make sure I didn't feel like I was being perceived as the "crazy cat guy." We weren't sure we were ready for Heroes after we lost our little guy and especially were worried about leaving Charlie alone for 3 days but once we got to the show, everyone really cheered us up and we had a great time. It was fun seeing all our "regulars" and all of Mike's friends. ( I guess, after all this time, I really should start calling them "our" friends since they've embraced us.)

Thanks also to our friends Don and Kelly McCants who kindly stopped by over the weekend and checked in on Charlie and hung out with him for THREE HOURS so he wouldn't feel so lonely.

A huge thank you to Shelton Drum and his Heroes crew who hooked us up with a great spot next to our friends Todd, Craig and Nick, along with our new friends Gino and Scott. Also, he deserves a medal for putting up with my annoying emails and phone calls while he was swamped with convention business. Thank you, Shelton!

Finally, thank you to Casey Jones who generously spent hours this weekend doing sketches for us to sell for the fund when he could have been making money for himself. He's such a great and talented guy. And he loved Mike. He's doing a great job keeping Mike's memory alive and telling great stories about Mike's professional days that even I didn't know. I'm so grateful for that. If you're interested, (and why wouldn't you be) click the Artamus blog link on the right. Thank you so much for everything, Casey.

Okay, more later.

No More Miracles

2011-06-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

This is a very long story and certainly nobody is required to read it. But Toonces was a sweet and faithful friend and he has more than earned a proper memorial. I make no apologies. This is more for me than anyone else anyway so feel free to skip this and I'll see you after the Heroes Convention.

Next month, Toonces would have been officially 20 years old. That's a good long run for any cat. But I don't think any amount of time would have been enough for us. Everyone thinks of their pets as special but in Tooncie's case, it was true. Because he wasn't a pet. In a house with no children, he was our family. He was a tiny, sweet, gentle, loving little guy and I will miss him always. Suzanne says he finally used up his nine lives. And that sounds about right.

Everyone that met him instantly fell in love with him. And everyone had a different name for him. I called him "Tooncie", "Boose" and "Li'l Buddy". Suze called him "Puss", "Tig", "Tigger Bumps" and, because of his small size (he was all fur and only 8 pounds of it at his heaviest) her "tiny little sweetheart." Christian called him "Peepers" because of his big eyes and because it irritated Suzanne. My father-in-law is sort of a cross between Santa Claus and Ernest Hemmingway and while he loved Toonces, I think he thought his name was not quite manly enough. So he started calling him "Toon-Man." My brother Mike, who almost never called anyone by their real name, took to calling him "Woonces", "Woon-seshun", "Tarwoonces" and "the Mibian" for some unknowable reason. Suzanne latched onto that one and later started calling him her "Miracle Mib." There was a reason for that which I'll get to.

I first met Toonces when I moved to Norfolk, ostensibly to start a video production company with a college friend of mine. I'd made an off-hand comment to my aunt that I was thinking about getting a cat because I didn't want to be alone down there. I'd even gone ahead and paid the extra deposit on my apartment for pets, just in case. My aunt, being who she was, took my "what-if" as gospel and took it upon herself to find me a cat. Turns out the father of one of her friends, an old Lithuanian immigrant living in Sandston, had the horrifying habit of allowing his female cat to keep getting pregnant and then hunting for the kittens so he could drown them in a bucket. The mother cat got wise and found a hiding place for her kittens and the old man didn't find them until their eyes had opened. At that point, he couldn't bring himself to kill them. There were four kittens. Two girls and two boys. I didn't want a girl cat because I was afraid she'd get out and get pregnant before I could have her "fixed". So I picked one of the boys, a beautiful, grey-and-white longhair with blue eyes. The old man said, "no." He wanted that one. "Well, shit" I thought. That only left one choice. And he looked almost exactly like the cat we'd had as kids named Morris which I didn't really want. I had already decided on what I wanted to name my future cat and this little kitten, cute as he was, sure didn't look like a Toonces. This was not a match made in heaven, I felt. Still, it was this one or nothing. So I bundled up this tiny little cream-colored kitten and took him back to Norfolk with me, grumbling.

We had a rough start.

I'd never raised a kitten on my own and he was so tiny he was barely a hand full. Once I let him loose in my little duplex apartment, he kept crawling under things and getting stuck. I'd move the furniture and he'd run under something else. Finally, I took the advice of a friend and put him in the bathroom overnight to get acclimated. Bad idea. The screen in the bathroom window was ajar and he got out. The next morning I woke up and found him missing. I ran outside and looked all over, finally discovering him under the stairs of the apartment next door, shivering and terrified. I brought him back inside and admonished him. Over the next week or so, he peed on my favorite chair, pooped on the carpet, knocked water over on some of my drawings, shredded toilet paper all over the apartment and knocked the trash over, getting chicken bones all over the place. I was having dinner one night while talking to Suze on the phone. Tater tots and ketchup. Toonces jumped onto the table and dragged his tail through the ketchup and started slinging it all over the room while I held the phone in one hand and tried to grab him with the other. Worst of all, there was a body of water nearby and the area was infested with mosquitos and fleas. They found Toonces. He had them so bad he was miserable.

Suzanne finally came down for a visit to meet him. I'd made him a bed in a box with the side cut out. On the top, I'd put a "sign" that read "Toonces, the cat who could take a nap." When she walked in while I was a work, he was asleep ON TOP of the box. She fell in love immediately but he wanted nothing to do with her. It took several visits for him to warm up to her and even then it was only after she spent hours combing fleas off his face and dunking them in the "flea vat", as I called it. An old margarine tub filled with alcohol. After that, he loved her like crazy. I'd finally had enough of the fleas and tried rubbing him down with flea-killing foam. He immediately tried to lick it off which I was afraid would make him sick. So I tried to wash him down in the sink. He freaked out and clawed his way up my face, over the top of my head and down the back of my neck. I had to peel him off and toss him into the chair he'd once peed in.

This wasn't working out.

I had about given up on our relationship when, one morning, I woke up and was heading to the kitchen to make coffee. There was a huge spider sitting on the floor just inside the bedroom door, blocking my exit. Suzanne will tell you I am terrified of spiders to the point of genuine arachnophobia. This thing was the size of a silver dollar, black as midnight and all angles. It was staring at me. I froze. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid if I moved, it would be on me in an instant. Suddenly, in a blur of beige fur, Toonces came out of nowhere and slapped the spider hard with his paw two, three, four times! Then he leapt back, never taking his eyes off the spider, which was stunned and twitching. I grabbed a ream of typing paper I kept around for drawing and dropped it on the spider. Toonces and I locked eyes. He'd saved me! I started laughing and picked him up and hugged him. And that was the moment it happened. We were best friends for life.

The job didn't work out and I ended up moving back home to Lynchburg with my tail between my legs. Dad wasn't thrilled to have a cat in the house and set strict rules for where he was allowed to go. But mom was secretly delighted. He took to mom and I was dismayed to see that he was in danger of becoming "her" cat. I'd found a job as an Art Director for a first aid kit manufacturer. Which is a huge laugh but I won't go into that. After about nine months of that, I got a job back in Richmond working as Production Manager for a graphics service bureau. I rented a room from my aunt but had to leave Toonces behind. I visited him at my parents' place as often as I could. Suzanne and I eventually got engaged and, when we finally got married, it was time to bring Toonces to Richmond. Mom was devastated. She had become so attached to the little guy that it was like losing an arm when I drove off with him. I feel terrible about that to this day. But Tooncie and I were best buddies. He had taken to spending every minute possible in my lap. He was a cold natured kitty and I tend to give off a lot of heat. I'd been wrong. We actually were a match made in heaven.

Tooncie settled right into his new life with me and Suzanne in Richmond. We were renting a nice little brick rancher in the western part of the county that Suzanne had shared with some roommates until we got married. Their lease was running out and they had both made other arrangements. Despite seeming to like his new home, he picked up an old habit of sneaking out.

One Christmas, he got out the night before we were going to drive down to spend the holiday with Suzanne's family. He was gone for hours. Searching the area turned up nothing. We decided I would stay behind and go to work on Christmas and print up flyers and search the neighborhood. We were hugging and crying on the couch when we heard an almost imperceptible meow. We looked up and saw Toonces looking in at us through the storm door. He had an expression on his face that was like he was saying, "Damn, y'all. It's cold out here. You going to let me in or what?" Our relief was indescribable.

The next time he got out, he ran up a tree in the front yard. We didn't have a ladder so I had to back my truck up to the tree and use that as a boost to climb up after him. I took a pillow case and put him in it. We could see the outline of his head moving back and forth and the effect was so comical we laughed ourselves silly.

Eventually, we bought our own house just down the street. A new, slapped together thing of only about 1,000 square feet. But it was enough for the three of us. Tooncie found lots of high places where he could watch things happen (and we had no idea how he could possibly have gotten up there) and there was a big bay window overlooking the back yard so he could watch squirrels and birds.

Despite his small size and his fastidious, quiet nature (he rarely meowed, only chirped) he was fearless. He got out of the new house one day and as we were chasing him down the front steps, a bluejay dive-bombed him. He barely flinched and went on the offensive, missing the bird with one lightning-quick swipe by a hair. The bird left him alone after that.

One of my favorite memories of all time occurred in that house. My mother, for some reason, hates to impose on anyone in any way. For the longest time, whenever she'd visit, she'd bring her own everything. Water. Towels. Snacks. Even toilet paper. I don't want to embarrass her but we were really scratching our heads on that one. Money was tight but we weren't destitute. One day after a visit, I found a roll in a plastic baggie in the guest room. Shaking my head, I took it into the living room to show Suzanne. Toonces came running up to me in a playful mood. In the picture above you can see the hallway behind him. Since it was the most open area of the house, we would throw things — usually a ball of tin foil or paper or a cardboard tube — down there and watch him chase them. Something made me get down in a center's stance, holding the roll of toilet paper like a football. Tooncie came up beside me, curious. I yelled, "Hike!" and stood up, going back for the pass. And damned if Tooncie didn't run down the hallway. When he got halfway down, I threw the roll to the end of the hallway. Tooncie got there just in time, leapt into the air, spinning around midair to face me...and batted the "ball" out of the air with both paws. I howled with laughter. Suzanne and I took to doing that with him as often as possible. He would do it once...and only once...every time. Then he would run off and do something else as if he was saying, "I don't like to repeat myself." When we told Suzanne's parents, they didn't believe it. So we said, "Go ahead." And he did it for my father-in-law which delighted him no end. I was so sad when, one day, he decided his football career was over and that was that.

After five years or so, the little house got to be a burden. Whenever we'd have Thanksgiving dinner, either Mike or my parents would have to stay in a hotel because we only had one guest room. And our combination kitchen/dining room/laundry room/catfood-and-water area was driving us crazy. Plus, we realized, there just wasn't any room for Toonces, now past ten years old, to get the exercise he needed to keep him healthy. He was always a light eater but he was getting lethargic. We were both making better money at that point and moved into the larger house we're in now.

Shortly after we moved in, Washington D.C. and Richmond were plagued by two assholes with a rifle that the media dubbed the Beltway Sniper. The whole thing seems kind of dreamlike now but at the time, we were genuinely terrified every time we went shopping or filled our cars up with gas, never knowing if we'd hear the shot that got us. One weekend, we were out shopping for things to spruce up our new fixer-upper and had gone to Target and Lowe's and Home Depot, all in the northern part of Henrico, about five minutes from Ashland. That was the day a man was shot and nearly killed by the sniper at the Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland. When we heard the news, my blood chilled and Suzanne was inconsolable. We both felt like we'd almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. I was trying to comfort Suzanne. I turned off the T.V. and suggested we play the board game SORRY! to take her mind off it. She agreed. Toonces, always able to read our moods, decided his mommy needed him. While we spread the game out on the couch seat between us, Tooncie jumped up and positioned himself at the board between it and the back of the couch, looking at it...and us...with curiosity. Suze and I looked at each other, laughed shakily...and dealt him in. And he played! He got the yellow pieces and, I shit you not, he pawed his pieces every time they came around to him. I won't pretend he moved them the right amount. But it was like he was playing the game. We laughed and laughed. And you know what...? HE WON.

Tooncie really took to his new home, which was a relief. He seemed more energetic, running up and down stairs and finding all new hiding places and perches. The previous owner had installed wide window sills on the inside for potted plants and they were perfect for Toonces. He was able to sit in various windows throughout the house and look out. In the springtime, we'd leave the windows open and he would squint into the breeze coming through, sniffing the air. He was so happy.

After a few years, though, he started to slow down. He was losing weight. He was fourteen and I started to get worried. Dr. Ryder, our vet, who comes to our home, diagnosed him with hyperthyroidism. She said that if we didn't do something, he would continue to lose weight until he died. We had two options. Medication or radiation. The medication was fairly cheap but if he was allergic, we'd have to stop. We started him on it and he immediately threw up and started scratching. That meant radiation. The radiation was $1,200 and it meant we had to leave him at the vet for several days because of the danger of exposure. The money was the easy part. We cried like babies when we had to leave him there in that strange place. But we brought him home and followed all the rules they'd set forth. We properly disposed of his waste. We used gloves. We petted him but didn't allow him to sit in our laps. Well...except...the day we brought him home, I was exhausted. We spent some time with him, trying to keep contact to a minimum. But then I went up for a nap. An hour later, I woke up there was Tooncie, asleep on my crotch!!!! At that point, we weren't yet trying for children but it sure gave me a scare. The good news was that the radiation worked like a charm. He was good as new, much more energetic and it was then that Suzanne started calling him our Miracle Mib.

After that, though Tooncie continued to show a little age if you looked for it, people were still shocked to hear he how old he was. It was like there was a portrait of him in the attic getting older. We couldn't be happier.

Then, in 2007, Mike died. We were faced with the difficult decision of what to do with Mike's cat Charlie. My father was adamant that we shouldn't bring him home. But Charlie was family and was so important to Mike. So we decided we had to try. My father warned that we were going to "ruin the last years of Toonces' life." How wrong he was. After a few weeks of getting the measure of each other, the two became cautious friends. Toonces actually seemed to enjoy having another cat around, despite having to compete for lap time, food and prime window space. We wished we'd gotten him a friend sooner. Toonces and Charlie chased each other around every night, delighting us with their antics and easing the pain we were in just enough. Tooncie started going deaf, eventually only able to respond to sharp whistles. But, otherwise, he was none the worse for wear.

Then Toonces started peeing everywhere, pretty much making Suzanne's office uninhabitable. At first we thought it was a reaction to Charlie but then Dr. Ryder told us he was in renal failure. We were devastated. She said it was serious and told us when it got bad enough, we'd have to give him fluid injections and all sorts of medication. We started crying again. How could this be? He still looked terrific. We put extra litter boxes on each floor of the house and they random peeing stopped. But nothing else happened. He didn't seem to get worse. He was drinking and urinating more than usual but after a couple of years without incident, we started to think we'd witnessed another miracle. He was the Energizer Bunny. My god, nothing could keep this little guy down!

One night, Suzanne and I were watching TV and I realized that Tooncie was facing away from us on his favorite perch, the two-seater in our den. That was weird. I tapped him on the "shoulder" and he jerked. But didn't look at me. I turned him around and waved my hand in front of his face. He didn't follow it. Horrified, I realized my little buddy had gone blind. The next morning, we found him upstairs in my office. He was able to get around, bumping into door jambs and feeling his way down stairs (a heart-wrenching sight) but he refused to give up. Still, he'd decided to make my office his base of operations, so we set him up with a litter box and food and water and called Dr. Ryder. Of course, by the time she got there, he stubbornly wanted to go everywhere in the house so we had to follow him to keep him from hurting himself. Dr. Ryder arrived and checked his blood pressure and eyes. She said his pressure was higher than any cat's she'd ever seen and it had detached his retinas. He was irreversibly blind and we HAD to get his pressure down. She prescribed medication that had to be given every day. The pharmacy was kind enough to realize we'd have trouble forcing pills on a blind cat and created a solution for us we could give him with an oral syringe. And so we did.

Things continued like that for a week or so, us struggling to medicate a blind and stubborn cat and watching him bounce off walls and get lost if we picked him up. It was breaking our hearts. Then he started getting better at moving around. I noticed whenever he changed rooms, he'd look up at the ceiling and realized he was probably able to still see a little light if it was bright enough and was using the ceiling lights to navigate and get his bearings. He was so smart. We started leaving the lights on all over the house, night and day.

Then, one day, when Suze and I were in the kitchen and I was walking from one end of the room to the other and I stopped in my tracks. Toonces had followed my path across the kitchen with his eyes. I looked over at Suze. She'd noticed it too. I ran over and moved my hand back and forth in front of his face. He watched it. Back...and forth. HE COULD SEE! We snatched him up and hugged him and laughed with relief. Dr. Ryder came over and examined him. His blood pressure was under control and — she couldn't believe this herself — his vision had almost entirely returned. She'd never seen anything like it. Another miracle. Suzanne said, "He just used up another of his nine lives. How many does he have left?"

Unfortunately, we would find out. Dr. Ryder had detected a heart murmur and recommended we take him to a feline cardiologist. We did and the prognosis was not good. After all manner of tests, the doctor told us that the walls of one of his ventricles was getting thicker from the high blood pressure...it had to pump harder to get the blood circulated...and that eventually a clot would form in there. He told us he was doing fine now but he wanted to see him again in about six months. He upped the dosage on his medication.

Over the last year, Tooncie's deafness and arthritis had gotten him into the habit of getting me up at 4:30 or 5:30 every morning. It wasn't to be fed. He just wanted us up with him. As soon as I got up, he'd start in on Suzanne who, fortunately, is a much heavier sleeper than me. It got so bad I would have to lock myself in my office a couple of times a week with the fan on to catch up on sleep. He was relentless. I was irritable and exhausted all the time. I could feel years dropping off the end of my life. But there was nothing to do about it. I tried locking him in the downstairs bathroom for a few hours once but he peed on the floor and I felt so guilty I vowed never to do it again. We tried throwing rolled up socks and squirting him with a water pistol. After he went blind I promised him I'd never do that again. I was so grateful when he got his sight back that I stuck to it. And "shushing" him didn't do any good. He was deaf. I had to do it so loudly, it scared him and woke Suze up anyway.

Nights were better. He would curl up on the two seater behind my legs and in the winter, we set up a heating pad which relieved his arthritis. Sometimes we'd have a fire in the fireplace and he'd curl up in the chair or on the floor next to it, one of his favorite spots. He looked older but still in great shape for an old, old kitty. Sometimes, he would even get in bed with us and Charlie and we'd be one big happy family. Six months passed. Almost time for his check up.

I woke up Tuesday morning and realized Tooncie had let me sleep until 7:30 which was unheard of. I looked for him and found him in my office, under a chair next to the comic boxes. It was one of his spots. He noticed me and yowled. This wasn't his usual "get up and feed me" meow. And certainly not the gentle chirp we'd come to love. Tooncie was in trouble. I noticed his front paw was at a weird angle and he couldn't put any weight on it. He was week and scared. I woke Suze up and we frantically called Dr. Ryder repeatedly, hounding her answering machine until she answered. She came right over as soon as she heard and confirmed our fears. Our sweet baby had had a stroke. I'm not going to go into detail but we did spend the entire day with him, loving him and taking him outside for some air and sunshine. We never left his side for 12 hours. He wouldn't eat or drink and couldn't seem to sleep more than a minute or so at a time. Then Dr. Ryder came back and thogh I thought I was ready, I wasn't. Our sorrow was indescribable.

The next morning, I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 4:30 and went downstairs. After I cried for a while, I had to laugh. He was gone but he was still getting me up early!

If you don't have pets or don't like animals, I don't expect you to understand. Tooncie spent 20 years making us happy when we were sad and seeing us through some of the hardest times we'll ever know. He was our child, our light and the reason we couldn't wait to come home at night. He was a funny and sweet and gentle soul. His quiet purr and sweet little chirps are what I imagine an angel's harp would sound like. He loved going on vacations to the beach with us, sitting on the back porch watching the seagulls and feeling the sea breeze blowing through his fur. He loved to climb onto my hip when I was on the couch. He loved tuna out of the can and rotisserie chicken and would beg for it without shame. He would roll over on his back, look you in the eye and reach out with one paw and break your heart. He would let Suzanne pick him up and hold him face-up (but tear me to ribbons if I tried it.) Then, he would turn his head around and look at me while she did it with this forlorn expression on his face as if to say, "Are you really allowing this to happen?" He had these cute little tufts of fur on his paws so that, when he ran around a corner on the hardwood, he'd just run in place for a while like a cartoon character and make us laugh until we cried. He played a game with Suzanne that we called "Bite the Mommy" that was the cutest thing I've ever seen. He had a way of entering a room that made you hear "Ta-daaah!" in your head every time he did it. He had a gorgeous ruff around his neck like a lion and poofy hair on his back legs that looked like he was wearing pants.

And a million other little things I hope I never forget.

July 1st would have been his 20th birthday and I really wish he'd made it.

So long, my li'l buddy. Everyone's cat is special. But not every cat is Toonces. He was our little Miracle Mib. He just ran out of miracles.

Toonces 1991-2011

2011-05-31T18:16:00.001-07:00

I'll post something longer in a while. I'm just not up to it now. Suzanne and I have lost our little buddy, our son, our tiny little sweetheart. Toonces is gone.

What Might Have Been

2011-05-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Well, shoot. I was one of those jerks saying that WB really blew it with the casting of the WONDER WOMAN pilot that ended up not getting picked up for next season. But now they've released some stills (I got these from iFanboy.) from the show and I have to say...wow. Adrianne Palicki looks absolutely stunning as the amazon princess. All the reviews I've read have really given her props for pulling off the role. Now I'm disappointed we won't get the chance to see it.

I feel bad for Palicki, too. I like her. She was the one bright spot in the terrible LEGION. I hope she can survive this and find her star-making role.

Have a great holiday weekend.

Later.

Goin' Back to Charlotte...

2011-05-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

It's official. Shelton Drum has graciously made it possible for us to represent the 'Ringo Scholarship again at this year's Heroes Convention in Charlotte June 3-5. We hope to make an exciting announcement there so if you're going to the convention, make sure to attend the art auction Saturday night.

We'll be setting up in our usual spot with the lovely creators of THE PERHAPANAUTS, Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau (and maybe Nick Cardy!) Just look for us under our new vertical banner (see above.) It's scheduled to be ready a week before the show. So cross your fingers.

If you think you've seen everything we have to offer, think again. Suze and I have taken another look at some of the artwork in our possession and we're in a better state of mind now and have decided to let more of it go. We're still not selling any of the TELLOS pages and likely never will but there will be some pages from Mike's final completed project, the SPIDER-MAN AND FANTASTIC FOUR miniseries he did with the inestimable Jeff Parker. And there will also be some pages that I'm just in love with that Mike did for his two-issue run on MS. MARVEL. Mike had a real fondness for the character as a teenager (especially when Dave Cockrum redesigned her outfit) and I think it shows in these pages. All these pages are inked and have some nice character shots so they'll be a little more expensive. But we won't be gouging. Mike would NOT have liked that. Even if you don't want to buy a page, please feel free to stop by and take a look. You'll see why I've been hesitant to sell them.

A quick aside about the SPIDEY-FF stuff. It's inked by Wade Von Grawbadger, one of my favorite inkers. I'd been a real fan of his from when he was inking Tony Harris on STARMAN. About a month after Mike passed away, I got an email from Wade telling me that he had some pages of Mike's from the miniseries and wanted my address so he could send them to me. I was blown away. I had just assumed that Mike had sold them off and forgot about it. Wade could have just sold the pages and I'd never have been the wiser. But he not only didn't sell them, he made a real effort to track me down and contacted me to return them. In our email exchanges, he struck me an extremely nice, self-deprecating and sweet person. I can't thank him enough for the effort he made. Because of him, I got to hold those beautiful pages in my hand and now we'll get to use them to expand the scholarship in Mike's name. So here's a great big public "Thank you!" to Wade Von Grawbadger.

She-Hulk

2011-05-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

She-Hulk. Just because. Four posts in one week. That must be some kind of record.

Have a great weekend!

Head Games

2011-05-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some head studies of three of the main characters in THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR.

First up is Prince Vlad himself, Dracula. He has several different looks throughout the story, including (as seen in the lower right corner) the historical Vlad. I didn't want to be strictly bound to the few existing portraits of the real man himself. I took my "post-curse" design and incorporated a few elements but I took some liberties with the hair (Draculea's appeared to be fairly curly in the paintings I've seen.) and changed the mustache. But I think you can tell who it's supposed to be at a glance. This whole exercise was sparked by a sketch I did last week showing a scene featuring Vlad from the first chapter. I've included that one as well.

Next is Dana Barnes. I think these drawings capture her character pretty well. She's obviously a little tomboyish but unmistakably feminine enough to catch Johnny's eye. A bit of a flirt but practical when she has to be.

And, finally, our hero. I think Johnny's hair still looks a little off. I'm not sure what it is. When I was writing the story, Johnny just always had long hair in my mind. I can't picture him without it. Hopefully, it's not too distracting.

Anyway, I hope you like them. Busy as I am, I'm on a real roll this week. Every free second, I've had a pen or pencil in my hand. It's becoming addictive. I just hope I can get some time at home so I can fulfill my obligations to Todd and Craig. I'm really feeling a little ashamed of myself!

Later.

Power Girl

2011-05-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was waiting for Suze to finish up work and ended up knocking out this Power Girl drawing in about an hour for no particular reason. I'm going to be getting very busy starting tomorrow so I wanted to get in as much work on it as possible and ended up pretty much just spitting it out. I think the quickness with which I sketched it helped in some ways and hurt in others. But I kind of like it.

I'm waiting for Suze again tonight and it's too rainy to limp (damned tendonitis) down to Legend again. So I'm sitting at my desk drawing character sketches for THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR. I spent some of the evenings while Suze was away tweaking a couple of the scripts and I'm really itching to start. I figured why waste time drawing superheroes so I got down to bidness. I'll post the results next time.

Later.

Wonder Woman

2011-05-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Suzanne's been on the road for work quite a bit lately. (Well. In the air, actually.) While she was in L.A. Last week, she had occasion to visit the fine folks at Warner Bros. and pick up a bunch of Wonder Woman swag in the gift shop. She's been a huge Wonder Woman fan since she was a little girl. I assume that originated with the Lynda Carter series in the '70s. (I was a big fan of Ms. Carter too but for entirely different reasons.)

With NBC passing last week on the new WONDER WOMAN pilot being shepherded by David Kelley, I figured the time was right for a drawing of the shapely amazon for my best girl. I have to admit that, beyond the old TV series and a few comic stories I'd read, I was never a huge follower of Wonder Woman.

Then Darwyn Cooke changed that when he did DC's NEW FRONTIER and showed me an all-new version of her that really resonated. This was a Wonder Woman I could get behind. (Shut up, pervs!)

She was curvy, tough, compassionate, warlike and cute, all at once. I loved the way he drew her. My tastes have always run to the, ah, rubenesque and here was a Princess Diana that could have been played by TWIN PEAKS' Sherilyn Fenn or a young Jennifer Connelly. Or even Elizabeth Taylor in her heyday. I'd love to see Hollywood be brave and take a chance on this version of her in this day of "thin is in."

I think they've missed two golden opportunities when they didn't make a movie with Catherine Zeta Jones who, sadly, is too old for the part now. And then they didn't steal Morena Bacarrin away from V for the TV pilot. As pretty as the actress is that they chose for the pilot, I don't think she was right for the part. Who would YOU like to see playing Wonder Woman?

Anyway, I hope you like the drawing. More importantly, I hope Suze likes it, since I'm giving it to her. This one was a toughie. I'm not that great at drawing women and I had a really difficult time with the line work as my vision has really been giving me problems lately. It's nothing serious (I think.) I probably just need some new glasses. Bifocals. Ugh. I'm considering Lasik surgery to correct the near-sightedness and then I would just need reading glasses for stuff close up. It's getting frustrating so I'll have to figure out something soon.

Anyway. Have a great Monday. Later.

PvP and Bucko

2011-05-05T10:07:00.001-07:00

I assume most of you are reading Scott Kurtz's online strip PvP (Player vs. Player) on a regular basis, right? If not, now's a great time to start because he's doing some of the coolest stuff he's ever done right now with the current LOLBat storyline. As Jack Nicholson says in THE SHINING, "GO...CHECK iT OUT!"

LINK.

And while you're reading online comics, it wouldn't kill ya to look into Jeff Parker and Erika Moen's fun little strip BUCKO.

Hawkeye for Heywood

2011-05-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

New rule. Don’t blog after 11:00 p.m. Whew. Care for some cheese with that whine? Sorry about that. After a nice overnight stay visiting my parents (requiring some fancy logistics in order to keep Tooncie properly medicated) my batteries are nicely recharged and I feel a lot better. Moving right along.

A while back, my buddy Mike (who posts as Heywood Jablomie...a screen name that cracked me up when I finally got it) emailed me. He had a DVD set he suspected I’d be interested in and offered it up. I was interested but I felt bad just taking it so he suggested I draw him something in return. He said he was on a Hawkeye “kick” lately and requested a quick sketch. Well, for what he was offering, I didn’t think a sketch on copier paper would be a fair trade so I drew this up on 11x17 bristol board and threw in some extras. I’ve long been a fan of the old Marvel Comics “floating head” covers and have wanted to draw one since I was a kid. When I “took over” for Mike, drawing for his friend Carlton (which lasted maybe 3 or 4 10-page comics along with a couple of failed long-form efforts) I managed to throw in a couple of them. Looking for reference for the classic Hawkeye outfit, I came across several old AVENGERS covers with the heads on them and knew I had to do it. I struggled mightily with the Scarlet Witch (I’m still bothered by her right eye) but the rest were a lot of fun.

I think the “Mike” influence is pretty obvious in the main figure but, to me, Iron Man looks like J.R., Jr. and with the Vision, I was trying for the Jim Starlin version. With Cap, that’s pure me.

I hope you like it.

Meanwhile, the trip to my old hometown, however brief, really got me re-stoked for the HAND ME DOWN HORROR. There were some character bits and parts I wasn’t satisfied that I couldn’t work out and some solutions actually came to me in my sleep. The story is set in a small, isolated Virginia town and getting back to Rustburg must have kicked something loose. It’s true what they say. You should always step away from your story for a while to recharge and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

Later.

Inspiration Overload

2011-04-25T19:42:00.001-07:00

I've been somewhat frustrated lately. I've still got two pages of my PERHAPANAUTS story to turn in. I'm still not finished with Heywood's commission. Don't get me started on being 5 months past my planned start date on drawing THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR. And I have no sketches to post, despite several false starts. Life has conspired to get in the way of any of my plans to draw.

Take tonight for instance. The plan was to come home at a decent hour and finish inking Heywood's drawing. But Suzanne and I carpool to work together to save parking costs and gas money. And today she was surprised with some after-hours obligations for her job and I was stuck killing several hours at my favorite watering hole (Legend Brewery) waiting for her to finish. I find drawing at a bar very difficult (as Christian can attest) and so I did what I usually do when I know I've got some time to kill. I printed off some online interviews with some of my favorite creators to read. The incomparable Darwyn Cooke. Chris Samnee. Dave Stewart.

Reading these interviews had the reverse effect I'd expected. They put me in a sort of funk. These guys are all so good and so passionate about what they do for a living and live and breathe their work. While very inspiring, it also served to emphasize that I am just not in that situation. I guess I'm going through a sort of mid-life crisis but I'm realizing now, more than ever, that I just don't have any passion for what I do for a living. Don't get me wrong. I'm good at what I do and grateful for the job. I think I've earned it and try every day to get better at it. But I don't leap out of bed in the morning just champing at the bit to go to work. I look around at the people I work with who get so excited when something is working right and I wonder why that's not me. It's got me thinking about how I ended up on this path.

Many, many years ago, around the time I was graduating high school, I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. It came down to two things. Drawing comics and being a police officer. I realized, thankfully, that I don't have the temperment, powers of observation or, frankly, guts, to be a good cop so it looked like it was comics for me. But Mike was going through some frustrating times of his own back then, languishing in a crappy job and extremely nervous about not making it into comics. We had the usual sibling rivalry that most brothers go through. As a result, he made one throwaway, offhand comment that didn't seem like much to him at the time. He said, "You only want to draw comics because I want to."

He meant nothing by it. He was just speaking out of frustration. But it had a devastating effect. Because I looked up to him and I wasn't sure if he was right or not. As in most tragedies, I have at least one fatal character flaw. When I feel threatened, I tend to bare down and think, "Fuck you; I'll show you." Usually, not really knowing just what it is I'm planning on showing. In this case, what I decided to show was that I could do something other than draw comics when that was what I really, really wanted to do. At the time I'd been really taken with some films like THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, RAZORBACK and BLOOD SIMPLE. I decided I'd go to film school. And, as a horror nut, I decided I wanted to be a horror movie director.

Somewhere along the line, though, I think I started to see my mistake and, in my senior year, I realized I'd just wasted four years of college when I should have been drawing. I had no real vision or philosophy when it came to film. It was a deficit that would plague me my entire time at VCU. Add to that my growing realization that I should have been studying illustration and you can imagine how I was starting to feel. One day, one of my few Illustration instructors (They were electives.) saw some of Mike's work on display in the hallway and told me, "You shouldn't bother. Your brother has it all over you." When I told Mike this, he was furious. Ever the protective big brother, he told me the teacher was full of shit but the words stuck with me. Not even the fact that one of my other teachers held back some of my illustrations to be placed in the school archives made me feel better about it.

After graduation, I got farther and farther away from doing what I really wanted to do and, eventually, I stopped drawing altogether. A quasi-video production job led to a graphic design job which led to an art director job which led to a service bureau job which led to where I am now, working at a mid-size, national advertising agency. It's a great living and a lot of people would kill me in a heartbeat to have my job. I should be doing backflips. But, then, there's those interviews. Maybe the grass is always greener. I know there were days when Mike was dissatisfied with where his path had gone, despite that fact that it was what he'd always wanted. But, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I wanted to work in advertising. It really is a case of falling into a good thing. I've always been lucky that way. Or have I? Because now I'm stuck. I make too good a living to walk away from it. Giving up a good thing just isn't in my nature. Another character flaw. But there's a part of me that just screams at me that I should take a chance. Take some real illustration classes. Learn how to draw better. And just do it.

We recently had a couple of people just up and leave. I asked them what they were going to do and their answer was, "I don't know. Do some things I always wanted to do." I told them, "Damn. I wish I had balls that big."

Who knows. Maybe I just need someone to tell me I can't do it. Then I could say, "Fuck you; I'll show you."

Black Lightning

2011-04-09T20:33:00.000-07:00

My last post kind of "sparked" this one. I'd mentioned that I wasn't really that into Metamorpho growing up but that's not entirely true. I'd forgotten about the Element Man's membership in The Outsiders. Back then, I'd found Dad's stash of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, DC's version of MARVEL TEAM-UP featuring Batman and an ever-changing roster of superheroic guest stars. I fell in love with the book and started buying up back issues by the handful at The Treasure Chest, Lynchburg's comic shop at the time. I also started buying the current issues as they came out. Almost immediately, the book was cancelled in favor of a new title to be called BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS. Batman was going to start a new team of misfits and mentor them. I was horrified. My favorite part of TBATB was seeing Jim Aparo drawing all those great DC characters. Now the roster was going to be fixed and full of a bunch of new characters I didn't care about. I knew about Metamorpho, of course.

But there was one character I was interested in. Black Lightning. Despite falling under the comic book curse of being an African American character with the word "black" in his name, I was drawn to the guy. It probably had something to do with his cool costume. Most of DC's B- and C-list characters had forgettable outfits. But Lightning had one that was on a par with some of John Romita's best designs. It also had the benefit of the brilliant addition of fake hair to hide Lightning's true identity. Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, Lightning didn't quite fit in with the rest of the team as they were portrayed as a bunch of misfit losers. I didn't see Lightning that way. As I recall, he was a teacher in his civilian identity that was trying to improve conditions in his inner city neighborhood.

I was hoping the sketch above would turn out cooler and had intended it to sort of work as a companion drawing to the Metamorpho piece but it didn't turn out like I'd planned. I'm a little embarrassed to post it but I don't really have anything else. I'm particularly humbled because I just finished reading Dave Stevens' final interview in the latest issue of BACK ISSUE! Stevens was a real artist's artist. It was never about money or prestige with him. He was always just interested in producing good work and improving himself. I think Stevens' ROCKETEER has some of the most beautiful art I've ever seen in a comic but he revealed he was so dissatisfied with his work that he went out and took dozens of courses in drawing and painting to try and improve his drawing. Reading the interview was so inspirational. I'm in my forties now but I want to run out and enroll in drawing classes.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. I apologize for the disjointed post. It's very late and I'm pretty tired. I've got a full day tomorrow but Heywood, I promise that includes finshing up lightboxing the pinup I promised you. Then I'll just have to ink it.

Later.

Metamorpho

2011-04-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

Whew. Generally speaking, my job is not that stressful. Exhausting, yes. But not stressful. There are usually so many layers of process between me and making a mistake that I have no trouble sleeping at night. But this week has been different. All the layers have been stripped away because of insane deadlines and outrageous workload and so my blood pressure is in the red zone this week. So I needed something to relieve the tension.

I haven’t had much drawing time lately. I made a deal with Heywood Jablomie to draw something especially for him but once that was laid out, I could only work on it at home. And it’s next to impossible to draw at work. But since I’ve had a couple moderately late nights waiting for Suzanne to get off work, I’ve had this chance to knock out a quick drawing.

Over on his Perhapanauts blog, Todd posted a great drawing of Metamorpho that Ramona Fradon had drawn for him. Literally, that was all it took. My pencil was in my hand in seconds. I’ve never been a rabid fan of Metamorpho but I have an affection for the C-Listers, both Marvel and DC. I picked up the Showcase edition of Metamorpho reprints a year or so ago and loved, loved, loved the artwork. But the stories weren’t really my thing. However, the great thing about comics is, even if the story doesn’t hold your attention, there’s always the chance that the artwork will. Ramona Fradon’s stuff is like nobody else’s and I could stare at it for hours.

If you think about it, Metamorpho is a really silly concept and wonky character design. But it works. That’s one of the great things about superhero comics. Pretty much all of it is silly. But it’s only when you try to take the silliness out of it that you notice it. Metamorpho is a fun character. And a hell of a lot of fun to draw.

Okay, that’s all I got. I’ve got to get home early and get some sleep. I’m running (Okay, walking. Well, limping.) in the Ukrops 10K tomorrow morning. After 10 weeks of training, I exacerbated a case of tendonitis (plantar fasciitis) in my right foot that’s so bad I’ve been limping around for almost a month now and had to see an orthopedist. After tomorrow, I’ll be taking it very easy. The plan was to run the race this year but that’s just not possible. So maybe next year. Cross your fingers.

Cross them as well for the VCU Rams basketball team. They’re playing in the NCAA Final Four tomorrow against Butler. After the race, Suze and I are going to grab a bite to eat and then sack out for a few hours and then try to find somewhere with an open table and a TV and watch the game. Unless you live in Richmond, you wouldn’t believe what this has done to our little town. This is unheard of around here. We just don’t see our schools or local sports teams in big national events like this and it’s really brought out the best in Richmond. The whole place has VCU-fever. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been waiting nearly 25 years for a VCU football team and maybe this will be the spark they need to make it happen. Not to get ahead of myself. So be sure to watch the game this Saturday and root hard for our guys Rodriguez, Burgess, Skeen and the rest. And if you need a laugh, check out this link to THE ONION that Christian sent me:

http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/ncaa-schedules-vcu-for-final-four-playin-game-just,19871/

I know they’re joking but I wouldn’t put it past the NCAA. They haven’t exactly been making a big deal out of our improbable run to the Final Four.

Okay, I’m out! Later.

FINAL FOUR!

2011-03-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Ram It, Critics!

2011-03-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

For a school whose alumni include David Baldacci, Stephen “Flounder” Furst, the band GWAR, Dr. “Patch” Adams, Mark Waid and, my personal favorite, Mike Wieringo...(not to mention having the distinction of being where I first met the lovely Suzanne)...VCU sure didn’t get any respect from the pundits when they were named an “at large” pick for the NCAA tournament this year. And this, even after they caught national attention when they knocked Duke out of the tourney back in 2007. It was called, and I quote, “the worst decision” the committee had ever made. People were shaking their heads and laughing. Well, who’s laughing now, suckas? For the first time in VCU history, we’re heading to the Sweet Sixteen, facing Florida State next Friday. If the Florida State coaches are smart, they won’t write us off as a chip shot. VCU has been wiping the floor with their opponents with their “Chaos Defense”, full-court press, spectacular three-pointers and mind-boggling free throw percentage. And nobody seems to know just what to do with my new hero, Joey Rodriguez. At 5’10”, he still manages to be everywhere on the court at once, powers unstoppably to the basket only to unselfishly pass the ball to a teammate who scores and gets in the faces of much larger guys, throwing off their shots. Is there not a place in the NBA for someone with this much heart and skill?

At least ESPN had the good sense to apologize:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/tournament/2011/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=6242035

Oh, and by the way...with the University of Richmond also shocking the NCAA, the little bitty city I live in now represents 12.5% of the Sweet Sixteen. As Charles Barkley put it, the city of Richmond now has as many teams in the Sweet Sixteen as the Big East Conference. There’s a real possibility that VCU and UofR could face each other in the next round. This town would explode.

Wow. It’s good to be a Ram.

Luke Cage

2011-03-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

I never knew what to make of Luke Cage when I was a kid. I loved the iconic look of him, courtesy of John Romita, all primary colors and buccaneer boots. But the villains he fought were so off-the-wall outrageous (Black Mariah???) and, like Thor, the way he talked was so foreign to me that Cage might has well have been from Krypton. I grew up in rural Virginia and our house was nearly a mile from the nearest paved road. The African American kids I knew in school and played football with never once, to my knowledge, referred to anyone as a "jive turkey" or "sucka." So, whenever I opened a Luke Cage comic, I was like..."What the hell is this supposed to be?" It was like watching a French film without subtitles.

But there must have been something there because the book lasted nearly 50 issues before it merged with IRON FIST (itself only reaching, what...15 issues on its own?) And it was nice to see Marvel producing a book about an African American hero who didn't have the word "Black" in his name. (Even as a kid that was glaring and I remember wondering if anyone found it insulting.) But then they went and made him an escaped convict. Sigh.

Romita's Cage design is so eye-catching, though, that I've been wanting to do a sketch of him for a long time. I mentioned that to Christian while we were at one of our occasional Drink 'n' Draws at Legend last week. He promptly loaned me Brian Azzarello's MAX CAGE miniseries. While I appreciated the loaner and loved Richard Corben's typically beautiful artwork and Azzarello's clever reworking of the FISTFUL OF DOLLARS plot, the character of Cage left me cold. It seems to be a recurring theme with Marvel's MAX line that they take a popular character, strip away anything "comicbooky" (ie. costumes and selfless heroism) and give them a shattered psyche. Throw in R-rated dialogue and graphic sex and you got y'self a MAX book. It was a good read but it sure wasn't Luke Cage. Gone was the yellow flair-collared shirt, wrist and head bands and chain-belt. This time, Cage's "costume" was a puffy vest, jeans and ever-present headphones. And there were f-bombs and n-words aplenty. Ugh. I get that this is a sort of "Elseworlds" Cage but...no, thanks.

Anyway, I hope you like the drawing. I loved doing it. And it went really fast. For me, anyway. I really miss this version of Luke Cage. I can see why Marvel has felt the need to redesign him but this look will always be Cage to me. I think it may be fun to try redesigning his costume for a modern audience and seeing if I can retain the feel of Romita's design in the process. Something to think about.

Later.

Daring Myself

2011-03-10T05:56:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is. Two weeks in the making (in two-to-five minute bursts). My perspective is a little wonky but, in my defense, I really only had room for the paper on my new desk and not much room for even the smallest of rulers. Still, it is a poor craftsman that blames his tools so I’ll own it.

I tried to throw a few curves at myself this time. Often, I get frustrated and resort to straight-on shots of my subject. This time, I "dared" myself to do something a little bit different. Not much but just out of my comfort zone. Wormseye view. Underlighting. Heavy backgrounds. It’s not my best drawing but I’m happy that I did it. I’d actually tried several passes at a different character in a much different setting then gave up and, for some reason, felt the need to draw Daredevil. Gotta run with the inspirations when they come. Because they don’t come often.

I hope you like the drawing. That’s all I’ve got time for. I am getting KILLED at work this month.

Later.

Um...yeah, I didn't draw this.

2011-03-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

Recently, NEWSARAMA ran a series of articles about the history of C. C. Beck’s Captain Marvel character. I noticed it because they used a blog sketch of the good Captain that Mike had posted on his site years ago. To tell ya the truth, it gave me a little bit of a thrill. I love seeing Mike’s work pop up from time to time and they had some nice things to say about Mike. Several installments in, they posted another drawing I’d never seen before that appeared to be inked by the great Jerry Ordway. But there was something familiar about the face so I clicked on it and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was another Mike drawing! I clicked the “like” button and thanked NEWSARAMA for posting the drawing.

Well, that started a long Facebook thread with Mike's friends about a wonderful drawing that Alex Ross whipped up of Mike lamenting his (sort of) famous decision to not draw an offered Captain Marvel series for DC at the time. (I vaguely remember Mike telling me he’d turned it down and that some folks were not very happy with him for doing so. But that was the extent of my recollection. Sometimes, folks mistakenly think that I'm an authority on Mike's career. I wish I was but we were living 100 miles apart for years and I only knew what he told me. Often, I would see covers he'd drawn on the stands and was as surprised as any other fan.) I mentioned that I remembered seeing the drawing shortly after Mike’s passing but that I couldn’t remember who’d shown it to me. Someone pointed out that it was not the kind of thing Mike would give away and asked if I’d checked in his art stash.

So I dove in to the artwork that we had stored away and there it was. I’d obviously realized what it was because I'd taken the time to put it in a protective sleeve. But, as I told everyone on the thread, I was in a different frame of mind back then so I hope I can be forgiven for forgetting about the drawing.

I love this drawing. Mr. Ross so perfectly captured Mike’s likeness and an eyewitness told me that he did it purely from memory. I’ve watermarked it because I have no way of contacting Mr. Ross and asking permission to post it. I hope he doesn’t mind. (Mr. Ross, if you see this and want me to take it down, just let me know.)

I’ve only met Alex Ross one time. Mike introduced us waaaaay back when MARVELS had first come out. It was at Heroes Con and I think it was Mike’s first Heroes as a pro. (I've had a rough week. Can someone do the math for me?) But I was so excited to see Mike and there was so much going on that, though I was gaga for MARVELS, the name didn’t quite sink in. I shook Mr. Ross’ hand and I didn’t exactly ignore him but, admittedly, I wasn’t very friendly. I only had eyes for my bro. Later, I saw Mr. Ross and Kurt Busiek together in the hotel bar. As I walked past the small table where they were seated, I noticed Ross was sketching on a pad. I may be misremembering but I believe it was some concept art for ASTRO CITY. But I recognized the art style immediately and slapped my forehead. “THAT Alex Ross! Crap!”

Okay, that's all I've got. Hopefully, I’ll post again soon with some of my OWN artwork. I’ve got a sketch in the works that’s going pretty well but my new work environment is really not conducive to frequent drawing.

Later.

Slam Evil!

2011-02-24T14:18:00.001-08:00

I really didn’t want to start off my first post in about two weeks with sadness but the news of Dwayne McDuffie’s passing really has me down. I don’t want to pretend that I knew the man or that he was something special in my life. That would be a lie. But he did make some damn fine cartoons and was, by all accounts, a hell of a fine man to know. I’ve read several interviews with him and he impressed me as an intelligent, thoughtful and talented guy. I find myself wishing that I had had the opportunity to meet him and tell him how much I enjoyed his work. That reminds me an awful lot of the sentiments I heard after Mike died. It seems to me that the comics industry has been losing a lot of really talented, really nice folks the last few years and losing them young. Mr. McDuffie was only 49 years old. The unfairness of that is staggering. And it’s a loss the comics industry can ill afford. There are some really nice remembrances on Newsarama (Tom Breevort’s almost made me cry) and Peter David said some really nice things about him on his blog. I can imagine what his family is going through right now and my thoughts and good wishes go out to them.
_________________________

We’ve moved into our new space at work. It’s...not horrible. I can’t lie and say I wouldn’t prefer my old spot with three walls and a window. But the current situation is workable. Though there’s zero privacy, folks are seeming to be respectful of each other’s space and that includes keeping their voices down. It’s like study-time at the library. Oh, well. As I’ve said, they can put me wherever they want, as long as the checks find me.

I’d tried to rush out a drawing before I moved out and, as a result, it came out pretty disappointing. It was a full-color marker drawing of my latest obsession, The Phantom. For someone with such a simple costume, it’s nearly impossible for me to get a feel for him. I was torn between trying for the classic Sy Barry look and going with something more...”me.” The result was about 40 sheets of balled up paper in the recycling bin. I finally finished the full-color drawing after stinking up the agency with marker fumes and shook my head. Then, once we moved, I stopped worrying about it and started drawing and you can see the result above. I kind of like it.

Recently, the 1996 Billy Zane film came out on Blu-ray and I snatched it up. Suzanne and I were probably the only two people who loved the movie when it was released. I was disappointed that the marketing department at Paramount at the time had pumped up the magenta in stills of the suit for some reason. That’s probably what kept people out of the seats. Because it’s a hell of a fun movie. It was written by the late Jeffery Boam, one of my favorite screenwriters and, though the film has it’s problems, it’s so much fun that I find myself smiling every time I watch it.

The reason for that is Billy Zane. I’m not sure why people have such a problem with the guy. He’s been good in everything I’ve seen him in and in this film especially. He famously pumped iron for a solid year to win the part without the help of a padded suit (Lookin’ at you Michael Keaton!) and completely inhabits the role. No brooding dark knights here. Zane’s Ghost Who Walks is a grinning, unselfconscious boy scout having the time of his life. His aw shucks attitude is completely without irony and he’s a joy to watch. The film has built a cult following over the years and I suspect in this case “cult” is code for “gay.” Because, I’m straight as an arrow but lets face it, Billy Zane makes the purple tights work. The costume designer did a great job translating the suit into the “real” world, really only sacrificing the blue-and-black striped trunks. Those trunks look great in the comics but I imagine they’re rather inexplicable if you think about them too hard. The result was still a little shocking but Zane really looks great in the suit and never once behaves as if he’s not doing a serious movie. In fact, everyone in the film seems to be taking the material seriously. Well, almost everyone. I don’t think Treat Williams got the memo. He camps it up like he’s in the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

I remember at the time Suze and I had been picking up the cheap Phantom skull rings at the 7-Elevens (I think) and I was just skinny enough that they fit. Suze would wait until a quiet moment when I least expected it and then stick her fist inches from my face and exclaim, “SLAM EVIL!” It was a ridiculous tagline that appears nowhere in the film but she would crack me up every time she did it. We had so much fun with those rings. Ah, back when we were so easily amused.

Before the movie came out, my only exposure to The Phantom was Mike’s collection of Charlton PHANTOM comics when we were kids. They were drawn by Jim Aparo and, after that, the great Don Newton. (Newton’s painted covers were SPECTACULAR.) The character has such an appealing, iconic look that the more outlandish aspects of his costume are easily overlooked. And his story and concept are so...neat. I can’t believe there hasn’t been more done with him outside the comic strip. No offense to Moonstone, but The Ghost Who Walks is an A-list character that deserves much broader exposure.

Since re-watching the film on Blu-ray, David Newman’s beautiful, underrated original score has been on heavy rotation on my iTunes. Like I said, it’s my latest obsession. If you’ve never seen the film, give it a try. And, if you don’t like it, I fear we may be cross.

Thanos

2011-02-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

I had so much fun drawing Darkseid the other day, I thought I’d share some love for his Marvel counterpart, Thanos. I don’t know for sure if Jim Starlin was inspired by Kirby’s creation when he birthed this big bruiser but there are some similarities.

I think I’ve mentioned Mike’s love of all of Starlin’s work back in the Seventies. And how he used to practically trace Starlin’s work in the WARLOCK and CAPTAIN MARVEL series in his developing years. When we were dealing with Mike’s massive comic book collection back in ‘07, his Starlin CAPTAIN MARVELs were some of the very few books I kept that Mike didn’t work on. I already had my own copies but these were special books.

It took a while for Mike’s love of Starlin’s stuff to rub off on me because I liked the more accessible guys like John Romita, Sal Buscema, Gil Kane and Ross Andru. At my age, I knew the art was good but it was a little over my head. And the stories...forget it. Now, though...man-o-man. Do I love that stuff.

I had a blast drawing this sketch. I don’t think it’s wishful thinking to say I see a lot of Mike in there. It probably has less to do with me trying to emulate him as it has to do with the fact that he was so influenced by Starlin. As I was drawing this, I kept referring to scans of Starlin’s work to get costume details right. I think it’s just a case of shared influences.

I didn’t ink it because my penciling has been suffering because I’ve been doing most of the drawing in the inking stage lately. Since I’m going to start back drawing the PERHAPANAUTS pages I still owe Todd and Craig, I thought it would be nice to get in some practice doing more detailed pencils.

Speaking of pencils...recently, through Rich Woodall and Rod Hannah, I became aware of Ken McFarlane’s ink job over my Hunter sketch from a couple years back. Christian had already given me a beautifully inked version that he’d done. Finding out that someone else had done the same thing was pretty flattering. And, to be honest with myself, Ken really improved the drawing. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me often and it’s the little things in life...

So, thanks Ken!

I’m hoping I can keep up the sketching but I just don’t know. Next week, we move into our new space at work and they’ve spent a lot of time and money removing as much comfort and privacy from our work environment as possible. We’re going from something like this:

To something more like this:

I’m hoping that, once I figure out my comfort zone, I can get my groove back. We’ll see.

Okay, that’s it for now. Later.

Pinch Me

2011-02-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

By kickoff, my belly was doing flip-flops. To be honest, I hadn't thought much about the Superbowl until today. I've had a lot on my mind and it really didn't seem real. The Packers had not had a stellar season, plagued by injuries and prone to penalties. But something happened in the last couple of games of the season. The Pack won when they had to and squeaked into the playoffs the second-lowest seeded team in the entire NFL. And they played like tigers. I'd heard people throwing around phrases like "most dangerous team" and "a team to keep your eye on."

I thought, "Really?"

Don't get me wrong. I believed in Aaron Rogers from the beginning and thought the Packers defense was on the verge of greatness. But I figured our time would come next season. Every week during the playoffs I thought to myself that this was a pretty good showing for a team with so many injuries. Just wait till everyone's healthy next year. But they kept winning. And then, suddenly, they were in the Superbowl. I was in shock. In a good way, but shock all the same.

And the game itself turned out to be a microcosm of the season as a whole. The Packers lost 3 of their top players by the third quarter. And still, they persevered. The Packers are not a second-half team and I thought we were done for at the end but, against all odds, they held on to win.

By the end of the playoffs, I sensed a lot of Packer fatigue in football fans and though the Packers are one of the most casual-football-fan-friendly teams around, I got the sense that a lot of people wanted them to lose. I just didn't get it and I was glad they were disappointed. They earned this victory, every step of the way, and I couldn't be more excited for Coach McCarthy and his young quarterback Aaron Rodgers. (Though I'm not too sure about his being named game MVP. I was thinking Jennings probably deserved it more.) I hope this doesn't go to his head.

And if the Steelers had won, my friend Paul and I joked that Packers receiver Jordy Nelson would have been named MVP for dropping 5 passes, including a sure touchdown.

I hope you enjoyed the game as much as I did. The Steelers are a great team and if you're a Steelers fan, don't feel too bad. They'll be back to the big game again soon. Tomlin is too great a coach for that not to happen. But this season, I say Mike McCarthy for Coach of the Year.

Okay, I'm pooped. Off to bed I go. Later.

Craig's Sketch

2011-02-04T15:06:00.001-08:00

Despite my recent scheduling wows, I actually find myself in the rare position of having two drawings ready for posting. I’m going to be frugal and save the first of them for next week, in case I get bogged down again. The second, you can see posted above.

Craig Rousseau, PERHAPANAUTS and KORVAC SAGA artist extraordinaire, gave me his sketchbook to look at the last time I saw him at the Baltimore Comicon. Inside were some eye-poppingly beautiful Avengers-themed drawings by such comics luminaries as Richard Case, Howard Porter and Eric Canete, among others. There was even an awesome Hulk drawing by PERHAPANAUTS colorist Rico Renzi. While I was wallowing in awe and envy, I dimly heard Craig say something that sounded like he wanted me to add one of my drawings to it. Turns out I wasn’t hallucinating. Craig actually wanted me to add a Mafus Special to his collection. And he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

I was incredibly flattered but also terrified. I spent more time trying to figure out how I could sneakily draw something on loose paper and glue it in than I did figuring out what to draw. Because I already knew what I wanted to draw.

Quite possibly my favorite issue of THE AVENGERS ever is Volume 1, number 160. Drawn by George Perez and Pablo Marcos with a story by Jim Shooter, it had everything a kid could want in a comic. Shakespearean melodrama, pulse-pounding action, costumed heroes actually in their costumes and, best of all, lots and lots of KIRBY DOTS! The story featured the reveal that the Grim Reaper was Wonder Man’s brother and was also the last time Wondy appeared in his classic costume. I was never sure what that strange design was on his abdomen but I fell in love with the character from the first time I laid eyes on him. He was always “my” Avenger. Well, until they gave took away his costume and gave him the ridiculous red safari jacket. In preparation for this drawing, I dug out an old copy and read it. Though some of the dialogue reads a little fan-fictiony, the story holds up and the art is as beautiful as I remember. There was something about the books Marvel put out back then that made even that single-issue story feel epic. If asked, I would have sworn that “The Trial” story was spread over three issues instead of the done-in-one that it was.

I tried to recapture some of the feel of AVENGERS #160 in this drawing. I was actually quite happy with the pen and ink drawing but I feel like it lost something when I colored it. There were some mighty fine color illustrations in Craig’s sketchbook and, to be honest, I was trying to live up to the standard set by some of those guys. I think I fell quite short but you can’t say I didn’t give it my best shot. I tried to get fancy, mixing colored pencils with markers. I probably should have experimented elsewhere. Thankfully, I stopped before I ruined it. I hope you like it.

This marks the last of my promised sketches and frees me up to wrap up the last few PERHAPANAUTS pages. After that...HAND ME DOWN HORROR!

And don’t forget to root for my Packers this Sunday. My stomach’s starting to turn over a little as we get closer to the big game. Thankfully, I’ve just found out I don’t have to work this weekend thanks to some meetings that got moved. So I’ll be watching with the rest of you.

Later!

Something, Something, Darkseid

2011-01-28T15:57:00.001-08:00

Over at the John Byrne Forum, the question was asked, "What are the 5 greatest stories ever told by both Marvel and DC?" I chimed in with my picks (to some groans after I list a couple of Alan Moore stories) but I was pretty happy with my list. Until I realized I'd left off Jack Kirby's NEW GODS saga! URG! I felt like an idiot! DC has been milking that puppy for years. Mike was a huge fan and I've recently seen the light and fallen in love with Kirby's magnum opus.

As punishment for my oversight, I decided to draw this sketch. I have had virtually no time off since I finished Rod's SOVENA RED drawing, working late nights and weekends or dealing with the sick relative I mentioned. But my drawing finger was really itching and since I couldn't work on Craig's Avengers sketch at the office, I decided to knock this out in my rare downtime. I figured it would take a couple of weeks of five-minute spurts to do it. Imagine my delight when it really came together quickly and I knocked it out in a day. Granted, it's a simple pose but those Kirby dots take a lot of patience!

Damn, it felt good. I'd nearly forgotten why I started this sketch blog in the first place. It was to give myself a creative outlet so my head didn't explode after spending day upon week upon year cranking out endless modern variations on the old Burma Shave billboards. I had a really good time drawing this and I think it came out pretty well considering all the stops and starts. It also helped to keep me in practice. Nothing is more frustrating than building up a head of steam and then losing it because I don't have time to draw.

I hope you like it.

Okay, gotta keep it short and get back to work. Later!

Whew!

2011-01-23T20:18:00.000-08:00

That was a nail-biter. As can be expected, I'm very excited to see my beloved Packers heading to the SuperBowl against the Steelers. That just screams football, doesn't it?

But I think we can all agree that this is the biggest story of the day:

Pretty dirty, Sanchez. Pretty dirty.

Moving On

2011-01-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

Last night's game goes to prove the old adage, "the best revenge is living well." Green Bay's breakup with their former quarterback was a long and messy affair but Aaron Rodgers has proved himself to be more than just "the rebound" while Brett Favre has become the cliched post-breakup ex-lover whose life spirals into a pathetic, depressing mess. Though they broke your heart, you take no pleasure in their troubles. You just wish they'd go away.

Rodger's performance last night, aided by some talented receivers, a surprisingly effective running game and (at last!) a fearsome defense, has been called already one of the best by a quarterback in NFL playoff history. I'm usually prone to flipping channels when a game is either not going my way or if the score becomes lopsided. Last night, I watched every single second, texting score updates to Suzanne who was out with friends. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

I can proudly say I was one of the few Packer fans who, after Brett "retired" the first time, was excited that Rodgers would get to step up. I'd seen him play during one of the few times Favre didn't finish a game. I felt like we had another good quarterback on our hands. Then Favre started his crap and I got angry. I just knew Rodgers would get fed up and go to a team that was willing to let him start. When other fans were crying for coach Mike McCarthy's head for telling Favre to at last hit the road, I was shouting, "YES!" from the rooftops. Like Troy Aikman last night, I think McCarthy should get Coach of the Year. Hell, I think he should get Coach of the Decade for having the foresight to give Favre and his inflated ego the boot.

And don't get me started on the ProBowl snub of Rodgers in favor of convicted dogfighter (Oh, that sounds too nice. How about we call him Purveyor of Animal Cruelty? Or maybe Man's Best Friend's Worst Friend?) Michael Vick. For some reason, whenever the misdeeds of Vick or Favre are brought up, 99% of sports announcers put their hands over their ears and start calling "LA! LA! LA! LA!" Seems like most of the fans and players are too, since that's who does the ProBowl voting. Two weeks ago, some were calling for Vick to be named League MVP. Outrageous. I think we saw the MVP last night, busying himself with picking apart the number-one seed Atlanta Falcons.

SOVENA RED

2011-01-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a while back that I had some “commitments” I needed to take care of before I felt comfortable starting on the drawing phase of HAND ME DOWN HORROR. (I have the first issue re-written to my (sort of) satisfaction and am ready to begin.) I just need to do a few sketches and finish my last few Perhapanauts pages. But there have been a lot of distractions.

I keep circling the blog sketchbook we’re working on for Mike’s scholarship fund but I can’t seem to get traction. I realized we needed to start at the beginning but Mike had migrated to a new blog halfway through and some of the content didn’t make it over. There were some scans missing and some entries seem incomplete. I’m trying to sort it all out while organizing the original sketch art for re-scanning. And there’s a LOT of it. So this is going to take longer than I’d anticipated. Please be patient with me as I’m basically doing this alone.

Along with the usual distractions of work and the holidays, I’ve also been dealing with a sick relative. I won’t go into detail because it’s a private thing but it’s been a sad, strange experience and I’ve been fortunate in my life that I’ve not had to deal with much of this sort of thing. But, as a result, I’m not sure what to do to make things better for this person. Suze has been amazing, as usual, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.

Still, I’ve managed to find some free time and so I’ve been chiseling away at the fun little side projects I’d promised folks I’d do. The first was last week’s THOR sketch. The second is the drawing you see above of Rod Hannah’s SOVENA RED character.

SOVENA RED is a great comic book idea Rod came up with and has been working on for some time. It’s a fun story (something we need more of in comics) and an appealing character. Things are starting to heat up now and Rod’s got some exciting things planned for Sovena, so do yourself a favor and head over to ONCE UPON A SUPERHERO and do some clickin’. There’s some great art on display by various talented folks. (My personal favorite is Mike Maihack’s pinup. I could stare at it for hours.) There’s also an 8-page preview for your enjoyment. And bookmark that sucka so you can keep checking in. Rod’s going to be making some announcements and you won’t want to miss them. While you’re at it, order a copy of the first Sovena Red story. It’s available in digital and print formats.

While I was working on this drawing for Rod, I stumbled across an inking technique that is probably so elementary that everybody does it without thinking about it. Yet it was something that had never occurred to me. I’d been having trouble with my linework and couldn’t manage to ink long lines without my hand starting to shake and giving it a wobbly look. So I was inking with the harder nibs and just going over and over a line to make it thicker in places. But I was bad at that too. Then, the other night, I took off my glasses (the only way I can ink now, is with my glasses off and my face inches from the paper) I held the brush pen a certain way, with the barrel pointing in the direction I was inking, and started moving (not from the wrist but from the elbow) and BOING!...I got it. I actually slapped my forehead when the realization hit me. I’d always held the brush like a pencil, straight up and down, tilting the barrel toward my body and baring down hard to vary the line. So, hopefully, this will mark an improvement in my inking technique. Or maybe not. But at least I won’t be so afraid to ink my drawings now.

I hope you like the drawing. Have a great week. Next up, a mystery Avenger for Craig Rousseau. If you knew where Craig wants me to draw this, you would pray for me. You would. Gulp.

Out Like a Lion...

2011-01-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

...In like a big #@$&ing carnivorous African feline. Since 2011 has come in, occupationally speaking, much the same way 2010 went out, meaning busy as hell, I didn't bother with New Years resolutions this time. I realize my chances of exercising more, drawing more or getting more done around the house are about as likely as my being elected President of the United States. So, rather than add any more stress on myself, I've decided not to worry about any of that and just do the best I can. Since I already have four presentations due this week at work (welcome back!) that probably won't amount to much.

That said, I did have this past weekend off and was feeling a little too lazy to get much done. So I spent the day at the drawing board finishing up a Thor illustration I'd been promising to Christian's daughter Lilah for about six months. Lilah is my goddaughter and so I took the promise seriously. But Thor is one of those characters you just have to "get" to be able to draw properly. And I really struggled with it. I was never much of a fan as a kid. He just didn't seem "superheroey" enough for me. He had long hair, bare arms, carried around a hammer for Pete's sake, wore a helmet that couldn't possibly stay on his head and talked like Gadzooks from "Rudolph's Shiny New Year." It took me, no exaggeration, about 30 preliminary sketches before I got a composition I liked enough to proceed with. And after a couple of false starts, about 30 more. Finally, I went back through the prelims and found one I couldn't remember why I'd rejected and went with it. And above is what I ended up with. I hope Lilah likes it. It's got some problems but still kind of like it. It's one of the largest finished pieces I've done at 11x17, full bleed.

I owe Lilahkins a debt of gratitude, however. Because, in the course of trying to get a feel for Thor, I've discovered some great books I'd, up until now, ignored. I've picked up some ESSENTIALS volumes and the recent "THOR: IF ASGARD SHOULD PERISH" hardcover featuring incredible John Buscema artwork. And I've been reading the recent series with Oliver Copiel's Thor redesign. And also Chris Samnee's overlooked, underappreciated THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER that all of you should have been reading but weren't. With the THOR movie coming out soon, I'm really glad I had a chance to discover how great all these old stories are before seeing Hollywood's version.

Anyway, I hope you like the drawing and I hope you had a great and safe New Year holiday. Next up, a Sovena Red sketch for Rod Hannah.

Later.

Happy Holi-Delays!

2010-12-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a great—and SAFE—Christmas this year. Mine was...interesting.

Living in the south usually has its benefits, particularly around the holiday season. While we have the occasional “White Christmas”, that usually just means a slight dusting of snow or maybe some dirty sludge left over from a very rare December snowfall. The worst I can remember was having to leave Mike’s house early on Christmas because of a treacherous ice storm. This year took the cake, though.

The last couple of years, Suzanne and I have been apart because we both want to spend Christmas with our own parents. We used to do Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with hers. But Mike’s passing changed things and I couldn’t bear the thought of my parents spending Christmas alone. This year, with Toonces needing daily medication, my parents decided to bring Christmas to my house and came up Friday morning. Mom brought all the fixin’s for a great Christmas dinner and we exchanged gifts next to our beautifully decorated tree. One problem. The storm hit bigger—and sooner—than predicted and Mom and Dad left after lunch on Christmas day to beat the snow home. So I ended up spending Christmas weekend snowed in, alone with the cats.

Granted, it was kind of neat at first. I spent Christmas evening doing things I would never get away with if Suze was home: watching a MOBSTERS marathon on the Biography channel, eating huge slabs of Mom’s chocolate cake for dinner, playing LEFT FOR DEAD 2 on the Xbox. But by Sunday morning, it had gotten old and even watching the Packers destroy the Giants while sitting in front of a roaring fireplace with a dinner of cake and eggnog left me feeling a little down. Suze had gotten stuck at the beach with her family and couldn’t come back until Monday. I was really missing her.

Suze got home about the same time I got off work yesterday and we hugged in the driveway for about 15 minutes. I was so glad to see her back home and safe. After three days apart, it really reinforced what’s important in life. PRESENTS!

After unloading her car, we finally exchanged gifts. Suzanne had read my mind (or, at least, my Amazon wish list) and had gotten me some truly wonderful gifts. Since, these days, it seems to be an online tradition to tell “what you got”, I guess it’s okay to post this:

A few months ago, Screen Archives released this re-recording of the CONAN THE BARBARIAN soundtrack. I usually don’t go for re-recordings but when I found out the story behind it, I had to have it. It turns out that composer Basil Poledouris was never happy with the recording used in the film because he had written the score with a much larger orchestra than the one that was hired. It had always been his dream to re-record the score with an appropriate orchestra. This was not to be as he passed away several years ago. (Remember the tribute drawing of Conan Mike posted on his blog?) His daughters Alexis and Zoe (A to Z...cute!) never forgot and Alexis engineered this new album to honor her father. It’s a terrific package and I’m sure I’m going to wear it out. Listening to it makes me feel like for the last twenty years or so I’ve been hearing his brilliant music through earmuffs. It’s a real revelation. I wish Poledouris was alive to experience it.

I’m a nut for Hammer Horror films. This book just came out this month and features hundreds of digitally cleaned-up posters from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s some really great artwork in here and some brilliant designs. A must for any Hammer fan.

SLEEPING BEAUTY has always been my favorite Disney film (followed closely by THE LION KING.) It’s not held in very high regard by Disney buffs because the story is a little simple and Prince Charming is considered a bit of a cipher. But the character design on Maleficent and the art direction of the film in general is just mind-blowing. It’s a real feast for the eyes. Somehow, my niece and nephew found out I wanted it (Suze swears she didn’t tell them and I certainly didn’t) and it ended up under the tree last night. Thanks, guys!

Having recently devoured all six volumes of the SCOTT PILGRIM graphic novel series, I had high hopes for the film adaptation. I’d had it on rental from NetFlix for a month but hadn’t had time to watch it. That changed when the snow hit and I watched it Sunday morning in front of the fire. From the very first few seconds when the Universal Pictures tag came up tricked out to look (and sound!) like an ‘80s-era Atari video game, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed. The casting is perfect all-around (I’m coming around on Michael Cera as Scott) including heart-breaker Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers. The problem with NetFlix (other than the annoying 28 day wait for new releases) is that now they’re sending out “rental copies” that don’t include any of the bonus features you get when you buy the films. WTF!!??? After that, they had the gall to raise their prices. But when I discovered the SCOTT PILGRIM blu-ray under the tree last night, all that flitted out of my head. Now I can watch the film in hi-def...and the bonus features too!

I’ve been concentrating on writing...and rewriting...my story and have let myself get rusty in the drawing department. So I’ve been trying to loosen up by working on model sheets of my characters. That led me to rediscovering a love of the old Disney animators and I remembered seeing these two books at SIGGRAPH last year. I put them on my wish list for later and Suze surprised me with them. They’re packed with the wisdom of a true master of gestural drawing, Walt Stanchfield. I can’t wait to dig into these.

Suzanne and I have had a decade-long tradition of buying each other calendars for Christmas but, for some reason, Suzanne forgot this year. Good thing Todd and Sharon stepped in and managed to get me exactly the calendar I’ve been hoping for. There are some great pieces in here and, best of all, the tops are perforated so you can take them out and frame them when the month is over! Thanks, Todd and Sharon!

Lots of other stuff from Suzanne, her family and mine including lots of warm shirts (thank you!) and gloves. Also some great DVDs (Foghorn Leghorn and Droopy Dog!) and books (BATMAN: STRANGE APPARITIONS from Todd, David Wellington’s werewolf sequel OVERWINTER and Michael Slade’s CRUCIFIED.)

Hopefully, you realize I'm joking about presents and that the best things I got this Christmas were time with my parents, however brief, and getting my wife back home safely. Other than that, everything else was just icing on the cake. (I hope you all got...and gave...some nice icing too.)

Later.

Round II

2010-12-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

I guess it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway. This has been the busiest month at my job in years. (I'm typing this at work at 11:00 at night.) I've done next to no Christmas shopping, there's a huge stack of unread books by my bed, I'm way behind on my email correspondence and haven't looked at my Facebook page in months. I had a setback on my weight loss thanks to the perfect storm of an all-nighter at work, a new Weight Watchers system to learn and not being able to get away from my desk for exercise. I gained 3 lbs last week. Fortunately, I've already shed most of it and have gotten back on track.

I don't really have anything to post but I'm afraid to get out of the habit. Especially now that the first draft of HAND ME DOWN HORROR is completed. Talking about it here keeps it "real" and I suppose guilts me into continuing.

I spent the weekend of the Virginia Comicon sitting at the Scholarship booth (thanks again, Brett!) making notes on a hard copy of my scripts. Seeing it all printed out like that gave me a little thrill. It's thicker than most screenplays, roughly about 200 pages. There were a few cringe-inducing parts but, for the most part, I was fairly satisfied with my story. I probably haven't been away from it long enough to be objective yet but I really need to get back to work on it.

Despite having next to no down time that isn't spent recuperating from all-nighters at work or just plain stress, I've managed to start the second draft. All I'm really doing is fixing some weak dialogue and correcting some contradictions that happened during the rush to get the story down. There are also some moments that feel forced and I want to go back and smooth that out. I have to confess to having lost some of the confidence I'd managed to built up. I punched up the action in the very first scene and was very happy with it. Then I hit a wall. I've rewritten one scene about four times now and it still doesn't feel right.

My problem is that I feel like my theme is a little muddy. I know what I'm trying to say with the story, I just don't know if it's coming across. There are very few expository scenes that don't have to do with the plot. So sneaking in philosophical stuff here and there gets awkward and sometimes feels shoehorned. I skipped ahead to the next scene and, again, was very pleased with the results. But this one scene just has me by the cajones. Oh well. It's not like I'm on a deadline. Though I'd hoped to be drawing by January, I have several other obligations to fulfill first, so I may have to amend that.

I actually have started doing some preliminary sketches of my version of Dracula. Now that the story is written, I have a better grasp of what he should look like. I think the look is much more refined than what I've posted before and his personality is really coming through. Hopefully, I'll get to the point where I'm comfortable sharing. I'm also fairly satisfied with the shot of the kids I posted a while back but there's still some room for improvement there. And there are about a hundred or so other peripheral characters that need to be designed. I never realized how much work goes into creating a comic book before you even start drawing the first page. Yeesh.

For anyone wondering how my little buddy Toonces is doing, he's great. The hypertension medicine has done wonders. His vision seems to be fully restored and he's got more energy than before. I also don't want to jinx it but the last couple of days, he's let me sleep until 6:00 a.m. Since he's usually howling at me to get up at 4:30, this has been a real treat. His appetite is much-improved and Charlie seems to feel he's well enough to chase around the house again. He's almost 20 now and I know nothing lasts forever but the way things have been at work lately, I'm so very grateful for this reprieve. Tooncie hates his medicine but I have no regrets about forcing it on him if it gives us more quality time with him.

Okay, that's it. I think I can actually go home now. So if I don't post again between now and Christmas I hope everyone has a great and safe holiday.

Later.

Early Christmas

2010-11-28T07:19:00.000-08:00

We had a great Thanksgiving. I admit I was a little down on the holidays this year and frankly couldn't wait for them to be over. With it looking like I'll be working every weekend between now and January and Toonces' condition, I'd had it. But then something terrific happened.

When Toonces' vet came over about ten days ago to examine him, she determined that he had detached retinas from his renal failure (a condition he's had for a couple of years) and that his blindness was permanent. But she also diagnosed him with one of the worst cases of high blood pressure she'd ever seen in a cat. She prescribed something for it and that was that. We watched him over the next week-and-a-half as he learned to deal with no vision and very little hearing. He bumped into things a lot, missed his litter box several times spent a lot of time sleeping in one spot, usually on the heating pad Suzanne set up for him. But he was getting around. We started him on his hypertension meds and the weird thing with his eyes being completely black stopped. The pupils contracted and we could see the amber-green color return around the edges.

Then, on Black Friday, I got the weird feeling that Toonces could see me. He was following me around the room with his eyes. We'd already determined he could tell when the lights were on or off and that the positions of various lights throughout the house were helping him navigate. We took to leaving them all on for him. (Not looking forward to the power bill this month.) But this was different. I walked up to him and waved my hand slowly in front of his face and he followed it. And suddenly we realized he wasn't bumping into things anymore. His vision had returned!

I don't think he can see as well as before but he can see enough to run up and down the stairs now and not bounce around like a billiard ball from wall to wall. It must have been the hypertension. Suze and I are so relieved we don't know what to do. He really is our little miracle cat. Every time we think the little guy is down and out, he rebounds. It's given me a new outlook on the holidays and I don't think I'll be such a grinch this year after all. And for that, I am truly thankful.

I hope your Thanksgiving was just as wonderful.

Later.

Brief Hiatus

2010-11-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

I'll probably be away from the blog for a while. With Thanksgiving coming up, a crazy work schedule and the VA COMICON coming this weekend, my plate is pretty full.

And, unfortunately, we just discovered that our little buddy Toonces is not only stone deaf, he's now completely blind as well. It's breaking our hearts and we're still figuring out how to make life easier for a cat that's effectively cut off from the world. The little guy has gotten us through some of the toughest times we've had. He was living with me before Suzanne and I even got married. So this is hitting me a little hard.

Hopefully, I'll find time to post a con report after the VA COMICON. If not, have a great Thanksgiving and try not to get trampled on Black Friday. Me? I'm avoiding that this year.

Later.

Scott Pilgrim

2010-11-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

So, instead of picking up this weeks new comics, I’m trapped here at work waiting on the proofing department (yawn) and I thought I’d knock out a quick post.

Just a quick heads up that we’ll be setting up for the ‘Ringo Scholarship at the VIRGINIA COMICON here in Richmond on November 20th and 21st. The show is really growing and has had to move to a larger venue up the street. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a great show and I’m very grateful to Brett for letting us set up. If you can make it, stop by and say “hi.”

Suze and I have reeeally been enjoying the new AMC show THE WALKING DEAD, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book. It’s the kind of must-see TV we haven’t seen since LOST ended. I even skipped the second half of the Packers game last Sunday to catch it. Not that it was much of a game. I caught Suzanne watching part of the show last week with her hands over her eyes, peeking between the fingers. Awesome.

I’ve also blazed through the last 4 volumes of SCOTT PILGRIM, the inspiration for the above sketch. I’d told Christian that I didn’t want to borrow his because I already have a two-feet-tall stack of his stuff. Plus, I had the first two volumes and wanted to buy the whole run. But then my friend Don offered the same thing and I figured it would be the only way I could manage to read them all before the movie hit Blu-ray this week without dropping 40 or 50 bucks all at once. I couldn’t read them fast enough. I’m not much of an indie comics guy but this series really struck a chord with me. I’m not even sure why. Scott Pilgrim is the kind of guy I would want to choke the life out of if I actually knew him. But Bryan Lee O’Malley manages to make him an endearing character. And, not being much of a gamer or anime fan, I figured most of the jokes would fly over my head. Not so. I laughed out loud quite often. O’Malley’s artwork started off a little weak in the first volume but, by volume 2, he was already improving by leaps and bounds. By the final volume, the art was sublime. I love his clever storytelling tricks like showing Scott’s brain cracking in two and a baby chick emerging to illustrate that Scott has grasped a concept. I loved the scene in which Scott asks why Ramona corrects him with “Evil EXES” every time he refers to her “evil ex-boyfriends.” (“You had a sexy phase?”) My only complaints with the series were that it was difficult to tell some of the characters apart sometimes and the ending was a little hard to follow. But the series on the whole was a LOT of fun. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. (And, yes, I realize I’m REALLY late to this particular bandwagon but what can I say?) I can hardly wait to watch the movie.

I’m itching to start the second drafts of my HMDH scripts and do some real drawing for a change but I guess all that will have to wait until this crunch at work is over. I just hope it’s not TOO long. Jeez.

Later.

_____________

Oh, and I don't do this often but please click on this link to Jackson (VENTURE BROS.) Publick's blog. He has a link to a bunch of eBay auctions. The proceeds go to help pay for some much-needed medical attention for a really cute kitty named Lola. Lola lives with two artists that work on the show and she has pancreatic cancer. I love the show and I love kitties so I thought I'd do my tiny little part and help steer any interested parties their way.

Done and Done

2010-11-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

Before I bore my three readers with my progress on HAND ME DOWN HORROR, I thought I'd post some cool sketches Mike did for one of his fans. I'm not sure when they were done but I was glad to see them. When I was in Baltimore this past August, I was given copies of the above sketches by that fan. (Thanks again, John!) Mike did tons of headshots for folks (just check out eBay if you don't believe me) and the Thor/Orion sketch seemed like something you could easily see someone asking for. The son of Darkseid and the son of Odin. Cool but standard. Then I saw the second sketch and laughed out loud. What an awesome request. You really don't see that every day. Space Ghost and A.L.F.

A couple of weeks ago, a high school buddy of mine told me about his love for the' 80s sitcom A.L.F. That reminded me of these sketches and I brought them into work to scan them. Mike really nailed both characters, don't you think? (Though I'm surprised he agreed to draw A.L.F., considering Mike's love of cats. A.L.F. had a taste for them, you see.)

———————————

Okay, here it is. I've actually finished the first draft of all 8 scripts for HAND ME DOWN HORROR. With my work schedule ballooning out of control (I'm typing this at work on a Sunday, actually) I'm frankly shocked I managed it. It has a lot to do with Jason Aaron's dialogue-first approach. But mostly it was panic. I saw my free time dwindling to nothing and figured it was now or never. Issue 8 is with Todd, Christian and Suzanne and I'll take their comments into the rewriting stage. Again, I hope to be done with that part by the end of the year and start page layouts in January. We'll see.

This morning, I decided to read issue three of COMPANY OF MONSTERS, Kurt Busiek's Dracula comic. I'd been putting it off for "plausible deniability" but now that I'm finished with HMDH, I took a chance. Sorry I did. There were so many similarities (right down to lines of dialogue) that I almost threw the book across the room. But I'm not changing anything. I'll risk the cries of plagiarism. I know better as do my three "editors". I think what it boils down to is that Busiek and I read all the same history books. At the same time. And he's a faster (and published) writer. So, eff it. I'll worry about that shit when it hits the fan...assuming I manage to get my book published at all. In the meantime, I'm done reading that book. With my workload, I don't need the added stress.

My story is more or less finished and that feels pretty good. For now, I'm going to enjoy it. Until I have to start drawing it...

Later.

Seeing Red

2010-10-31T15:29:00.001-07:00

I actually talked my way out of working on my absolute FAVORITE day of the year. To celebrate, I suggested Suzanne come with me to see PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2.

So, we're at the theater watching RED...

And we LOVED it! We only wanted to see it so badly because of the comic book series created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner (one of the nicest people in the world). But when the reviews started coming in and once I'd read the book and realized Hollywood changed virtually EVERYTHING, I was a little worried. But, let me tell you, we had a GREAT time.

If you've read the book, you realize it's a quick character study of an ex-C.I.A. operative who gets betrayed by his former employers. It's a great story, beautifully drawn by Cully but there's not a movie's-worth of material there. So I can see where all the fleshing-out was necessary. Somebody read the book, was inspired by it and bought the rights. The important thing is that it got Cully a lot of well-deserved attention and, damn it, the movie was FUN.

The cast is phenomenal, the action sequences are exciting and the relationships are engaging. Yes, the plot was a little convoluted but not hard to follow if you're paying attention. I honestly don't know what critics want from an action movie anymore. Suze and I had a great time and laughed out loud several times.

Oh, and Helen Mirren on the .50 cal. was freakin' HAWT!

Go see this movie, damn it. And happy Halloween!

Thing vs. Hulk

2010-10-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

With things (heh) heating up at work, I've not had much time to write. I'm working later and now on weekends again. (I'm trying desperately to NOT be at work on Halloween but...) I finished the script to issue 7 of THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR just before the big crush hit but, with one issue to go, it's a little frustrating to not have the chance to wrap it up.

The dialogue-first approach really came in handy (thank you, Jason Aaron) in writing up some tough scenes. Issue 3 and issue 7 contained a lot of historical references and were both research-heavy chapters. I HATE research. I'm not much of a note-taker so I usually end up devising my plot, then reading up on my subject and then, finally, adjusting my story to match the research if I've done something that doesn't jibe. It means, as I write, I constantly have to refer back to my research material. On issue 3, I had a mild panic attack when I couldn't find the item I needed. I wasted an entire evening re-scanning a single book.

That's all over now and it's just wrapping up the story. And I'm itching to get to it. Hopefully, next week. We'll see.

During occasional moments of downtime at work, I had the chance to knock out the above sketch. I've never drawn the Thing before and I was a little nervous about it because Mike's so associated with the character. It's why I never draw Spider-Man, though I love the costume. But a thread on the John Byrne Forum got me all worked up about those classic fights between Ben Grimm and The Hulk so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm pretty disappointed in the way the Thing came out but I'm very happy with the Hulk, so I guess it averaged out to solid "meh." It sure was fun, though. I think I'll give the Thing another shot sometime soon.

Before I sign off, I thought I'd post the jack-o-lanterns Suzanne and I carved. It's getting to be tradition for us to carve pumpkins with our neice and nephew who come up for a visit around this time of year. I have to admit that I'm a little out of the mood this year because of the crazy summer-like weather (our yard was destroyed last night by a freak storm) and our suddenly busy work schedules. I haven't had much time at all for horror movies. And our diets preclude Halloween candy. But it's really nice to come home to these babies each night, even if they are decomposing faster because of the heat and rain. And there are fruit flies buzzing around them. WTF!??

Here's mine:

And here's Suze's:

Have a great Halloween weekend, folks, and don't forget to tune into AMC Sunday night for the premiere of Robert Kirkman's WALKING DEAD TV show! I can't wait!

Brett Who?

2010-10-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

The Packers beat the Vikings at home 28-24. All hail the Aaron Rogers.

Welcome home, Brett. Now get out.

Invisible in San Diego

2010-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

The script for HMDH #6 is with my "editors" (Todd, Suzanne and Christian) so I'm going to take some time this week to regroup and work on the Scholarship Fund brochure and some other much-neglected projects, if possible, before jumping right into issue 7.

This last script was tough because there was a lot of..."emotional content", I guess you'd call it. I'm a very non-confrontational kind of guy so that was difficult to write. I'm hoping my editors come back with mostly thumbs up. As I've often pointed out, I've rarely progressed in any of my attempts at writing beyond the first issue and those are always the easiest. Lots of set-up and character intros. Being this far into the story is new ground for me and it's exhilarating, exciting and not a little bit scary. With everything I've written leading up to what happens in the next two chapters, I find myself wondering if I've telegraphed things too much or, worse, left gaping plot holes that will leave readers disappointed. But it's fascinating for me to see the story develop. A lot changed from the time when I was just figuring out the story to where I am now. Characters have taken on a life of their own and developed away from my original intent. One character in particular, who I hadn't given much thought to, has been a lot of fun to write, just seeing where he was going, and even spawned a couple of ancillary characters that I've grown to love.

You hear writers sometimes say "the story wrote itself." Stephen King claims to rarely use an outline (THE DEAD ZONE, one of my favorites, being an exception) or even know how his story will end until he gets there. I can't really say that because my story is a little plot-heavy. Character development had to take a back-seat (Eamon, Oscar and Chris, for instance, had some scenes cut or severely shortened) to make room for stuff that had to happen. But often, I would get to scenes where I knew what I had to accomplish and roughly how many pages I had in which to do it and I just ran with it, letting the characters do their thing. It has been a real hoot.

Recently, Christian turned me onto Jason Aaron's column at ComicBookResources.com in which he details his experiences and techniques in writing. While it's all very interesting, one thing in particular stood out. He said that, when he's writing a script, he starts out by just writing out the dialogue with no description or notes for the artist. I assume that was to maintain an organic flow to the dialogue. I was finding that I was doing a lot of rewriting of dialogue because, as I was writing, I'd have to pause between "lines" to write "Panel 2: Johnny picks his nose" or some such. It would break my concentration. With this last script, one heavy in emotional scenes, I wanted to keep the dialogue flowing and as in-character as possible. So I tried Aaron's technique, knocking out each scene's dialogue first, then going back and breaking it into panels and pages. It really worked well! I reduced my rewriting to a minimum (we'll see if that's a good thing or not) and it helped me keep my page count in line. If you're writing something for fun out there, like me, I highly recommend you give that a try.

_________________

Waaaay back at the end of the 20th century (okay, about 13 years ago) I made my one and only trek out to attend the San Diego Comicon. I had just left my job of six years as Production Manager at a presentation graphics house for a horrible corporate job doing Powerpoint presentations at G.E. and felt my future was a little uncertain. Before I took the plunge and settled on a real career path, I thought I should take one last stab at becoming a comic book artist.

Suzanne was supposed to go with me but we decided it was too much of an expense as we were dirt-poor at the time. Despite the higher pay at my new job, twice nothing is still nothing. So she stayed behind. I packed a lot of snacks in my suitcase (buying meals only once per day), loaded up a ton of sample pages and caught a flight. I missed Suzanne immediately. I'm not as adventurous as she is. I would have had a much better time with her there.

The entire trip was rather uneventful. I remember some of the highlights included a panel featuring John Carpenter promoting his new film VAMPIRES (based on one of my at-the-time favorite books, VAMPIRE$). This was roughly the beginning of San Diego turning from a comic convention to a multi-media madhouse. This was also where I got my brief portfolio review from a jet-lagged and irritable Tom Breevort. He basically raked me over the coals for wasting his time. While his heart wasn't exactly in the right place, everything he pointed out, in retrospect, was true. And the truth, as they say, hurts. I guess it was the manner in which that truth was presented that ruffled my feathers. But Mike liked him a lot so I figured it was the fatigue talking. I also got to hang out briefly with a small group of really nice ILM CG artists who were playing hookie to attend the show. They ooo-ed and aah-ed over my portfolio and told me I should come visit them at ILM which made me feel like James Cameron at the Oscars. But I never saw them again.

The one ray of hope at that show was a Vertigo editor (whose name escapes me) that reviewed my portfolio. I knew, even then, that I didn't draw the "Vertigo way" but I thought a little more abuse couldn't hurt. Imagine my shock when she absolutely raved about my work. She didn't tell me, like Breevort did, that my faces were mushy (they were) or that I seemed to be having trouble settling on a realistic style versus a cartoony one (I was) or that my characters weren't on-model (they weren't.) She absolutely loved my stuff. Her only complaint was that she couldn't tell if I could draw everyday items like cars, backgrounds and so-forth. She told me I would be great for a book...had I heard of it?...called THE INVISIBLES. I had not (I wasn't buying much of anything at that point) but I assured her it was one of my favorite books. She told me to work up some sketches so she could see how I handled the characters and she'd be in touch. I don't know if there was going to be a change in artists on THE INVISIBLES or if the regular artist just needed a break. I didn't care. I just knew this was my chance.

When I got home, I was in a frenzy. I spent the next few days doing the drawings you see above, along with a page of backgrounds, buildings, cars and (inexplicably) the Statue of Liberty. I sent off copies of the work with my contact info. And waited. And I've been waiting for 13 years. Never heard back, despite several follow-up letters. Looking at them now, I don't blame her. I wouldn't have called me back either. Look at the right eye on that lady in the S&M gear. Anyway, soon after, I got my job at the ad agency where I'm working now and quickly forgot about the editor. And forgot about trying to get work in comics.

While San Diego ended up being a colossal waste of time and effort, I did get something to post on my blog today, and that's the important thing.

Todd and Sharon's Southern Tour

2010-10-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Meet the gang.

I had so much fun drawing Sam for the Halloween banner that I didn't want to go so long without drawing again. But since I'm on a real roll with the scripts for HAND ME DOWN HORROR (just about 75% done now) I thought it would be prudent to do some character drawings. I started out planning to do another model sheet for Johnny Dyer (our hero!) but got sidetracked. I just felt like drawing Dana suddenly. Before I knew it, I'd drawn the whole gang. So, in order, from left to right, meet Johnny, Dana, Chris, Oscar and Eamon. I was afraid to take it too far because I hadn't really thought much about Chris or Oscar but once I'd pencilled it, I realized these were the folks I see in my head while I'm writing.

I recently had an email discussion with one of Mike's fans about drawing and the question of style came up. I realized that I'd wasted a lot of time trying to force myself to draw like Darwyn Cooke or Javier Pulido. I love the guys who draw with bold strokes. Looking at their work really inspires me and gets me excited about drawing. But, alas, I just don't draw like them at all. So with this one, I tried to keep my style consistent and just draw like me. I've mentioned that I usually fall back on the Darwyn crutch when drawing females because I love how he draws women with those round, open faces. But not this time. I just relaxed and tried to be me. I really like the result. I really feel like I've found my Dana.

Anyway, I hope you like the sketch. I'm actually looking forward to drawing this thing!

————————

Last year, Suzanne and I travelled up to New York to visit Todd and Sharon for a few days and they were very hospitable and showed us around their stomping grounds. We fell in love with their home and wished we could stay longer. Happily, Todd and Sharon turned the tables on us this year and came down to Richmond and stayed at the Ranch with us for a long weekend. Richmond doesn't have a lot to offer that you can't find just about anywhere else but we did our best to show them a good time.

My parents came down on Thursday to spend a day with the whole gang but they had to leave on Friday. That left us plenty of time to show Todd and Sharon around. The Folk Festival was this weekend and we took them to that and walked our rear ends off. (I thought we would gain weight during their visit but we actually ended up losing!) We took them to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, shopped in Carytown, gave them a tour of VCU (especially the areas where Mike and I spent most of our time in college) and showed them some historic buildings. We took them to several of our favorite restaurants and, on Sunday, Christian, Angie and my Crom-daughter Lilah met us at our favorite watering-hole, Legend Brewery. We even got to have the movie night that Todd, Christian and I had been wishing for. We sat in my den and watched horror flicks until we dropped. Fortunately, the weather while they were down was absolutely fantastic, though the 90-degree temperatures put a real damper on my Halloween groove. I'm actually glad to see it turning cold and wet this week.

Toonces was a good host but Charlie was especially glad to see his Uncle Todd and was really sad to see him and Sharon go home on Monday. And so were we. Thanks for a great weekend, guys! Here's some photos of the visit:

Okay, that's all for now. Later!

Trick 'R Treat!

2010-10-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that Halloween is my favorite time of year. Being a horror movie nut all year long, I really go crazy in October. Poor Suzanne. She can't stand horror movies so I'm always running up to my office with a handful of DVDs and it's hard for her to not take it personally. But I can't help myself. I think Halloween should be a national holiday but I guess that would be asking a bit much.

One of the best horror movies to come out in the last decade has got to be TRICK 'R TREAT, Director Michael Dougherty's love letter to the season of ghosts and goblins. I'd been holding off on buying it because the price just wouldn't come down. It was stuck at 14 bucks and I just couldn't do it. It's not that I can't afford it, it's just that after years of buying movies the day they came out, I knew the minute I took the plunge, they'd throw it in the delete bin for 9 dollars. But last week, Best Buy put, of all things, the Blu-ray version on sale for SEVEN DOLLARS (!) and I jumped. Boy, am I glad I did. As much as I enjoyed it the first time I saw it, I downright fell in love with it on Blu-ray. It's got everything. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, gorgeous damsels in distress (sort of), serial killers, kids in peril and, best of all, a brand new horror "mascot." Sam (short, I imagine, for "Samhain") is the commond thread running through four interwoven tales of terror featuring Dylan Baker, Tahmoh Penikett (the dude from DOLLHOUSE), Brian Cox and Anna Paquin, looking surprisingly scrumptious as...well, I don't want to ruin it.

Check out the trailer here:

Sam is such a delightfully designed character that perfectly embodies the spirit of Halloween in a way that Michael Myers could never hope to. He's mischievous, deadly and, well, kind of cute. I just fell in love with the little guy and that's why he's the star of my Halloween banner this year. I hope you like it.

TRICK 'R TREAT is such a fun, wonderful surprise. I didn't think they made these kinds of horror movies anymore. If I'm ever lucky enough to meet Michael Dougherty in person, I'm going to shake his hand and buy him a drink. He made my Halloween. If you haven't seen this terrific little film, do so with haste.

——————————————

Todd and Sharon are coming down to Richmond to visit the Ringo Ranch (not to be confused with the 'Ringo! Ranch) for a few days. We're planning on running them ragged. If I don't post for a while, that's what I'm doing.

Later.

The Good Captain

2010-10-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

I was talking to Todd the other day (well, emailing him) and somehow the subject of Mike's comic book collection came up. I was complaining about all the boxes of comics in my office and how they're taking over like kudzu and I mentioned how that was the reason I didn't keep Mike's 30-plus-box collection. There were certainly some good books in there and a lot that I didn't have. But I just wasn't prepared, at the time, to deal with sorting through them. And I definitely didn't have anywhere to put them. We ended up giving them to a dealer friend of Mike's (You can probably guess who.) who, instead of just taking advantage, has been selling them and keeping track of the money, which he donates to the scholarship fund. (Have I told you how much we love Mike's friends?)

Anyway, I did flip through them looking for the Kirby DEMON issues because Mike had recently sent me an excited email detailing how he'd won an eBay auction of a complete set. This was before the awesome DC reprint hardcover edition came out. Dad had had a few issues when we were kids that looked interesting but since there were so many issues missing, I never read them. I wanted to see what had Mike so excited. I never found them, though. I did find something else, though. Mike's Jim Starlin CAPTAIN MARVELs.

When Mike and I were kids, Mike was absolutely nuts for Jim Starlin. He would sit on the floor and practically trace the panels from those issues of CAPTAIN MARVEL and the issues of WARLOCK that Starlin drew. Mike and his friend Carlton created their own versions of the characters and Mike drew them in his Starlin-knock-off style. You'd never know it to look at his style later on but Mike spent much of his formative years imitating Starlin, John Byrne and Gil Kane.

Starlin's stuff was so off the wall. My young palette was more suited to the accessible style of guys like Sal Buscema and Jack Kirby. (I also had a love-hate relationship with Frank Robbins. That's nuthin' but love these days.) But Mike was attracted to Starlin's crazy musculature and hyper-dramatic poses. The crazy wind-blown hair and LSD-trippy writing. I have very vivid memories of a 12-year-old Mike drawing his Starlin-lite illustrations.

And that's why, of all those comics (other than anything Mike did himself) I only kept those Jim Starlin CAPTAIN MARVELs. I already had my own copies but these were the ones that helped set Mike on the road to being a pro. I had to have 'em.

That email conversation with Todd inspired this drawing. I knocked it out in an hour on my lunch break the other day. It started off promising but I think I blew it by the end. I was going for a loose look. But loose ended up being sloppy with this. The brush pen I was using had lost it's point and I wasn't skilled enough to work it to my advantage. But I've got nothing else to show (mostly because I couldnt' resist starting to write HMDH issue #6) and also because this drawing cracks me up. Does the face remind anyone else of actor Doug McClure?

Treasure

2010-09-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but you haven’t missed anything. I really haven’t had much time to draw at all. Work has been what I always hope for: busy during the day and no late nights. Since that’s usually when I get my drawing done...

Suze and I went on vacation a week ago, back down to Harker’s Island, and had a great time (as did Toonces and Charlie) with her parents. I’d written out an entire post about it but deleted it after realizing it would be a boring read to anyone but us and we were there so we didn’t need to read it.

However, during vacation, I did a lot of walking and, during those walks, I worked the kinks out of the fifth chapter of HAND ME DOWN HORROR. When we got back, I wrote the script out in five days. That’s the quickest one yet. It’s got a few wrinkles that need smoothing but it’s the most action-packed chapter yet and I’m really looking forward to starting chapter six. I’ve got two more chapters, I think, before I’m done. Then I’ll do a quick rewrite to fix some trouble spots. Christian and Todd have been making some nice suggestions—thanks, guys!—and I’m going to be incorporating those. I really hope to be drawing by January.

Speaking of Todd...Todd and Sharon are coming down for a visit next month and Suze and I are really excited about it. Not only are we looking forward to seeing them outside a convention setting (fun but draining), it’s given me an excuse to do some much-needed work around the house. I got the back yard straight (much to my neighbors’ relief) a few weeks ago. This past week, I turned my attention to the inside and I got the second guest room in order. It had become a storage room in the last few years, sort of a catch-all for anything we didn’t know what to do with. Thankfully, it’s now a guest room again and I couldn’t be happier.

In the course of moving the stuff in there to a more appropriate place, I came across some great items. This room was where we were storing Mike’s non-artwork belongings and since I haven’t really looked through much of it since we packed it up, I found some nice surprises.

One of them is this drawing of the Swordsman that was tucked away in a folder full of copies of other people’s drawings. (Mike got lots of stuff from aspiring artists and kept some of it.) Sadly, it was a little damaged (not by me!) but still beautiful. This looks like one of his later drawings and I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere but can’t say where. Still, in case somebody out there hasn’t seen it, I thought I’d post it. I really love this drawing. Not only did Mike nail the character, I love how everything in the drawing, even with a minimum of detail, has real weight to it. Just look at that sword. And I love the lines. He was really varying the line weights to great effect. Damn.

I also found some photos I’d never seen. Lots of them, actually. There were some great shots of Mike, including a bunch of them with the family. I grabbed a few shots off the top to post here but I’ll be posting more in the future. There’s some great shots of Mike with his friends in the biz that I’m sure will be of interest.

This one took me a while to place. As far as I knew, Mike had never met Kevin Smith. Then I realized...that’s not Kevin Smith...THAT’S ME! I’ve struggled with my weight all my life but I think this photo represents me at my heaviest. I was around 300 in this photo and for a minute I didn’t even recognize myself. Especially with the beard. Other than a failed attempt in college, I’ve only had a full beard once in my life. I tried again a few years ago but it came in gray and I shaved it with a quickness. Once I realized who the fatty was, I was able to place the locale. Other photos in the stack confirmed it. This was one of Mike’s signings at his friend Paul Rogers’ old shop in Lynchburg, DOMINION COMICS. I honestly don’t remember when this was but I’m sure I made the trip just to see Mike. I usually only got to see him in person two, maybe three times a year so this was probably an opportunity not to be missed.

I’ll end with this one. It made me laugh out loud. And not just because of my shirt (now long gone, fortunately) my ridiculous shorts or even my pudgy, bearded face. What made me laugh was seeing Mike hoisting our good friend Don into the air...and Don enjoying it. Back then, getting Don to smile at anything was no easy task. I’m having this one framed.

Him again?

2010-09-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

I’m going to have to keep this one brief because I’m pretty busy. But I wanted to go into the weekend with another sketch. Adam’s friend Mike Gagnon was Baltimore with him and asked for a Nova sketch in his sketchbook. After Adam’s and Craig’s (still not done yet) sketchbooks, I didn’t think my heart could take it and there were only a few hours left in the convention at that point. I worried I might rush it and that wouldn’t be good. So Mike agreed to let me do a standalone sketch at home and mail it to him. It’s probably only half-way there as I type this but Mike was nice enough to allow me to post the scan early.

I enjoyed this one though the pose wasn't particularly original. As I told Adam, I like drawing Nova's leg stripes and when he flies all you see are speedlines. That left arm is a little horsey, too. (You can imagine the jokes Christian is making right now.) I chalk that up to the angle of my desk. And my laziness. Add proportions to the list of things I need to work on.

That said, doing this sketch gave me a reason to draw and with all the moving around I've been doing at work, it's difficult to get in the mood or even find the time. So I was grateful for the opportunity. It was a lot of fun playing with the grey-tone markers too.

I hope you like it and I hope you have a great weekend.

(Craig, don't worry. You’re not getting a Nova. :) )

Adam's sketch

2010-09-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is having a great Labor Day Holiday. As frustrating as my job is these days, I'm still really glad to have it. As one of the talking heads on TV said this morning, this year, Labor Day is just another day without a job for thousands of Americans. Here's hoping that situation is resolved very soon.

I've been spending most of this weekend cleaning up our back yard in preparation for Todd and Sharon's upcoming visit as I've let it get a little messy over the last year with all the projects I've been doing. The patio is done now as is Suzanne's box garden. Unfortunately, the detritus of all that work made the back yard look like a construction site. Or worse, Robert Kirkman's trailer park. (Sorry. Couldn't resist since he just won a Harvey!) Our neighbors have been very understanding but I felt it was time to hitch up my pants and haul off the leftover sand, tarps, rotting lumber, etc. We also ripped out the rest of the fence that was destroyed by that awful storm back in 2007 while we were in Durham. I'm exhausted. But I'm looking forward to a relaxing Labor Day, grilling out, hanging out with Christian at Legend and doing some drawing. Speaking of which...

Adam Hutchinson was thoughtful enough to send me a scan of the Question sketch I did for him in that priceless sketchbook of his. I think you can tell I was nervous as hell because I didn't get too fancy with it. Thanks, Adam! I hope you like it.

Okay, have a great weekend folks. I hope to scan Adam's friend's Nova sketch before I send it off so that will probably be my next post.

Later.

Balti-MORE!

2010-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the goods about our trip to Baltimore, I should mention that I'm a little embarrassed about my reaction to BOOM!'s new Dracula book. (Which was a decent read, once I got past the similarities that had me so worked up.) I came across a bit whiney, I'm afraid. I'm still a little distressed about how closely some of the details mirror each other but after talking to Todd, I feel a lot better. Good thing we all talked him into coming. He made me feel so ridiculous about the whole thing. And it didn't hurt that, as I was walking around the convention hall, I saw at least three booths pimping new books that were alarmingly similar to THE PERHAPANAUTS. (Just not as cool.) It put everything into perspective and illustrated Todd's point. By Sunday morning, I was already itching to start writing Chapter Five.

But enough of that.

Looks like I could stick Todd's whole head in my mouth, doesn't it? Either I've gained more weight than I thought or Todd's been in the dryer.

Baltimore Comicon 2010 was a hell of a lot of fun. Probably the largest crowd I've seen since I went to San Diego Comicon back in the late '90s. I'm exhausted and Suzanne and I were tired, it seemed, all the time but the weekend went by way too fast and we were a little sad to have to go back to the "real" world. Seeing everyone was a real blast and it was nice to have Todd by our side again. I think the convention-goers agreed because every time he got up to go look around or take care of something, we'd have to tell five people he'd be back "in a minute." Craig Rousseau had us in stitches the entire time and the days just flew by.

We did get off to a rocky start, though. We checked in at about 9:30 Friday night only to find out the Hyatt had overbooked and they asked us if we'd be willing to spend the night across the street at the Sheraton. We didn't like the idea but the Hyatt agreed to pick up the tab for the room so we figured that was a pretty good trade off. When we got to the room, though, it was less a room and more a broom closet with a window. The room was barely large enough for us to turn around in and the bed was more or less a futon. The top of the bed was about a foot from the floor. It was free, though, and we were pretty tired. We were literally across the street from the Hyatt (a ten-second walk) and hit the bar to say, "hi" to everyone. The first person we saw was Jamal Igle who greeted us with a big smile a hug. People always describe Mike as the "nicest man in comics." Well, I think Jamal is keeping that tradition alive now because he really is a sweetheart.

After hanging out with Todd, Craig, Rich Woodall and Shelton Drum, (and unexpectedly getting to meet Marc and Shelly Nathan's new baby Reese!) we went back to the room and discovered, to our surprise, that the futon slept great. Best night's sleep I've had in quite a while. And the bathroom was pretty nice. It really did turn out well. Our only complaint is that it was a bit of a hassle to have to check out of the Sheraton and drop our luggage off across the street before heading to the convention. Overall, a small price to pay for a free hotel room.

The days were a bit of a blur. I had forgotten the donation jar so Suze went out to a nearby CVS and bought a huge jug of pretzels and dumped them into a bag (They made a nice snack for everyone.) and we taped one of the Tellos prints to the front. Suzanne really saved the day on that one.

We saw a few regulars that we see at all the conventions. That's always somehow comforting. I finally got to meet the very nice Adam Hutchinson who flattered me by asking for a Question sketch. (I've done three of four sketches for folks and two of them have been the Question. Go figure.) He handed me a sketchbook in which to do it and I asked him if anyone important had drawn in it because I was nervous about messing up a page in something so precious. He shrugged and said, "Enh. Not really." Later, I was flipping through the book and saw, among others, a Walt Simonson, a Tim Sale and—GOOD LORD!—a Darwyn Cooke! I'm not exaggerating when I say I got faint when I saw that. Anyway, I drew him holding Yorick's skull and saying, "To be or not to be..." I thought I was being clever but nobody got it so... (Adam, I've started your friend's Nova sketch. E-mail me his address and I'll send it on when I'm done. Please apologize to him for me. I didn't want to rush it and I didn't dare take the sketchbook with me.)

I finally got to have an extended conversation with Dean Trippe whose drawing style I find very appealing. Somewhere between Brian Lee O'Malley and Darwyn Cooke. (Or, all Dean Trippe, if you prefer.) He gave me a print of a wonderful Superman drawing he did which I'm going to hang up at work while I still have a wall on which to do so. (Don't ask.) Dean was nice enough to buy an F.F. page and contribute to the fund. Thanks, Dean. It was great hanging out.

We also got to see Rod and Leanne Hannah who we missed at Heroes this year.

Rod absolutely cracked me up when he had the balls to do something we all wanted to do at dinner Saturday night but didn't. I won't go into detail because it was a little embarrassing but it was necessary and I thank Rod. I think asking the waitress for a recommendation may have been pushing your luck, but #$%*ing hysterical, nonetheless. Just to piss him off, here's a picture of him guarding his ice cream from the rest of us barbarians.

Dinner was a blast, though I was sorry that we had to split the group into two tables and Todd wasn't sitting with us. We made up for it the next day, though, as we had the traditional BOMB. (Brotherhood of Mike Breakfast.) Suze and I have been fortunate to be included in a lot of these and this time we went about 15 minutes from the hotel to a place called the Broadway Diner which I believe Jamar Nicholas (or DJ Squatty Large as he wants to be called now) had seen on the Food Network.

The food was good but the service was spectacular. Jamar talked Todd and Craig into trying the dreaded "scrapple" against our adamant protests. It's a cross between potted meat and gristle. Being from rural Virginia, I've seen a lot of people eat it but I never could bring myself to.There were no casualties, fortunately. Jamar, Todd and Craig had us laughing to the point of crying the whole time and I could almost hear Mike's famous laugh a few times as well. We toasted the big lug before digging in. FOR MIKE!

The new buttons seemed to be a hit. Sales were slow but thanks to some generous donations from some very nice folks, we did just fine. So the award will go up a little more. (We're at $1,600 per year now. That's $350 more than when we started it!) Thanks to everyone who bought something or dropped money into the pretzel jug. Or just stopped by to offer encouragement. It means a lot.

There were a ton of retailers there with a lot of stuff but I didn't find much. I picked up several Ed Brubaker CAPTAIN AMERICA trades so I can start catching up on that. A CHAMPIONS Vol. 2 trade. And some DC collected miniseries like ECLIPSO. Not really enough to do my "loot" collage. Probably a good thing. I spent a lot less and I really am running out of places to put all these books.

The con was over before we knew it and it was time to say goodbye. We had a lot of laughs, increased the fund and got to see our friends. We couldn't ask for more. Another day would have been nice, though. :) To top it off, I even managed to lose a tiny bit of weight, despite all the beer and restaurant hopping.

Next up, the Salem Comic Convention in October. See you there.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Huey

2010-08-27T10:42:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm reeeally busy getting ready for Baltimore but I wanted to leave the blog on a cheery note. The other day, when I was at my LCS, my friend Marsha showed me this video of her and Marvin's cat Huey, named after the cartoon character Baby Huey. (He's a big kitty.) She kept referring to his "suck 'n' purr." I was afraid to ask but curiosity got the best of me. Marsha pulled this up on YouTube and I laughed my ass off. I thought it had to be a rare phenomenon but judging by the amount of similar videos, I guess not.

Okay, back to packing. Enjoy!

And heeeeere we go.

2010-08-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

I've been sort of dreading today for a while. Wednesday is usually my favorite day of the week because it's when the new comics come out. I never really realized what a big part of my life it had become until recently. Suze and I would go to Nostalgia Plus to pick up the books and hang out with our friends Marvin and Marsha. Sometimes if we timed it right, we would go out to dinner with them afterward. Since our diet started, though, the dinner part has gotten cut out and it's made us realize how much we loved the whole experience.

This week was different, though. Because it marked the release of DRACULA: COMPANY OF MONSTERS, the new series from BOOM! Studios. When the series was first announced, I felt that sinking feeling I've felt nearly every time I thought I had a good idea and someone else beats me to it. It was similar to what I expect Todd felt when he saw the write-ups on PROOF. Except Todd and Craig got there first. The report I read on D:COM sounded so "in the neighborhood" of THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR that I literally couldn't sleep that night. This story, whether it gets published or not, has a deep personal significance to me. I'm very close to finishing the writing and this is certainly the farthest along I've ever gotten in any of my writing endeavors. I've cast aside so many of my potential stories because others had beaten me to it. I couldn't believe it was happening again.

When I started working out the story, vampires (especially Dracula) were passé. Nobody would be caught dead doing a vampire story. I got really excited. Then TWILIGHT happened and the shit hit the fan. Vampires were everywhere. People were looking for any excuse to put a vampire in their story. And Dracula comics started coming out of the woodwork. But I still didn't get too worried because I had two "hooks" in my story that were different. I won't go into one because I'm still hoping I'm in the clear on that one. But the other, the direct linking of the historical Vlad Tepes with Stoker's fictional character, had only been touched upon with any real detail in the Coppola film of the '90s.

COMPANY OF MONSTERS not only does this but it focuses on a couple of historical details that are central to my story. It's close enough to be nerve-wracking. I fear that if my story ever sees print, it will all be old-hat.

As for the other "hook", everything I've read about Busiek's story to this point and what I saw in the first issue leads me to believe that his story will be close enough to mine as to be a deal breaker. I sure hope not. Because I really love THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR. I sure would like to finish it.

The only comfort I have at this point is that Todd, Suzanne and Christian have been reading each chapter as I've finished it. It's only an audience of three but at least that's three people will know I wasn't cribbing from Busiek. Sigh.

___________________________

Okay, on to cheerier stuff. In case I'm too busy at work between now and Friday to post again, we'll be at the Baltimore Comicon this coming weekend. It's only a quick drive up the road from Richmond and we're really looking forward to it. Marc, Shelly and Brad have kindly set us up at a table with Todd and Craig. (We'll try not to crowd you, guys.) And we'll be directly across the aisle from BLUE MILK SPECIAL writer/artist/spousal team Rod and Leeane Hannah, which has me excited because nobody else will talk about the incredible awesomeness of Hammer Films with me. (And with Halloween approaching, I'm eager to do just that!)

We've got some new buttons to debut. We ran out of the white "'Ringo" signature buttons Suzanne had made as a tribute to Mike at our first convention so we decided to take the opportunity to redesign them. These will be slightly bigger and feature the scholarship fund logo designed by my friend Matt Wojtysiak in white reversed out of black. If you're there, make sure you come by and get one to help spread the word. We plan on getting some more of the white tribute buttons by next Heroes and maybe, if we can afford it, some full-color Flyboy buttons. We pay for these out of our own pocket (again, every dime we take in goes to the fund and not for any sort of overhead) so we'll have to see how things go.

We're looking forward to seeing everybody again, especially Todd, since he wasn't at Heroes. But I'm also sad because apparently Brian Mulchahy, Warren Newsome and our buddy Heywood won't be there this year. We'll miss you guys. Maybe next time.

Okay, gotta get some sleep. Later.

Piranha 3D

2010-08-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of out of it the last week or so. Right around the time of my last post, I started feeling the beginnings of a cold that ended up really knocking me off my feet for a few days. I've been pretty susceptible to them the last few years for some reason, after years of virtual immunity. Not sure what happened but this one was a real doozy. Fortunately, the worst of it was over the weekend so I didn't miss any work. And speaking of work, this past week they moved my entire department downstairs to an area Suze calls "witness protection." It's pretty secluded. The good news is I have a window seat again. The bad news is it's only temporary. In a few months, they're moving us back up to our new permanent space that I have to say I'm not too thrilled (or optimistic) about. But whatever. It's just a job. As long as the paycheck finds me, I don't care where they put me.

As a result of this, I haven't been online much. I've been pretty wasted when I get home at night, usually falling asleep in front of the T.V. I've rented a few of the recent Roger Corman re-issues including GALAXY OF TERROR and FORBIDDEN WORLD. My god, what crap. I was scratching my head wondering why these movies have such devoted followings. Then, in the special features, one of the directors hit it on the head. It was a combination of the brilliantly lurid publicity art and the basic unavailability of the films. I admit, based on the movie posters, I'd worked myself into a near-frenzy of wanting to see them. And boy, did they suck. The best of the lot (and the one I purchased on Blu-ray because NetFlix didn't carry it) was HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. And by "best of the lot", I don't mean that it's any good. But there are some nice special features and a decent James Horner score to keep it from being a total waste of money.

All this brings me to PIRANHA 3D, Alexandre Aja's remake of the Joe Dante original made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. I have vaguely pleasant memories of the original so I was looking forward to the remake, now in theaters. I absolutely love any movie about creatures in the water. If you want to plant my butt in the seat, call your movie DEEP BLUE SEA, FROM THE DEPTHS or, hell, even SHARKTOPUS. I don't care what it's about. If there's even a hint of sea creatures, I'm down.

The trailer makes it seem like a goofy, campy summer creature feature. (And it is.) But I'm familiar with Aja's work (He directed HAUTE TENSION, one of the most brutally stomach-turning movies I've ever seen.), so I was pretty sure I could expect some real nastiness. And he didn't disappoint. I saw the flick today and I'm frankly shocked that a lot of the stuff in this picture made it past the MPAA. One shot in particular was so disgustingly gratuitous and shocking I couldn't help but laugh. But at the same time, I really wish it wasn't in there. It's not that I'm for censorship. It just seemed pointless.

I really enjoyed the movie. It had all the fun, gratuitous booby shots (but oddly, no sex) of a Roger Corman film but with the budget, script, performances and special effects that were always missing from those cheap-o quickies. This film has pretty much everything you'd want from a guilty pleasure schlock film...in spades. I just wish it had been longer. There was a lot of set up at the beginning. And while it was fun set-up, I don't know that I'd want to sit through all that again. Boobies or no boobies. I can see me just skipping ahead to the big set-piece at the end of the film which is truly epic...just too short. Aja is at his stomach-turning best in this film but there's a real sense of 80's horror fun here that's lacking in the rest of his films that I've seen.

I also enjoyed seeing Christopher Lloyd and Elizabeth Shue again. But Shue is playing the mother of a 17-year-old boy. The math might be right but she looked really good in this movie and I had a hard time buying her as that age. (I still have trouble accepting that I'm old enough to have a kid in college.) I had the same problem with Kari Wuhrer in EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS.

Now for the griping. My problem isn't with the film. It's with the idiots cutting together trailers these days. It's bad enough that trailers lately are pretty much short-form versions of the films themselves. But now there seems to be a trend where they include the final shot of the film in the trailer. There is a huge spoiler in the trailer for PIRANHA 3D. I started to realize it about two-thirds of the way in. I won't mention it if you've avoided the trailer but still want to see the film. But it was pretty irritating. The same thing happened with one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade, QUARANTINE. The last shot wasn't just in the trailer, it was on the movie poster. Do producers have so little confidence in their films these days that they feel they have to reveal everything upfront to get people to watch them? Even more irritatingly, there were a couple of shots I remembered from the trailer that weren't even in the movie. Including one iconic shot shown in the photo up above.

And one last gripe. STOP WITH THE 3D ALREADY!!! I've almost reached the point where I don't care what the movie is, if it's in 3D, I'm not going. I don't care if it is the "future of film." I've seen three films this year that were in 3D and only AVATAR was even remotely improved by it. It's a gimmick. And not a gimmick worth an extra 4 dollars on the price of the ticket. That's right. I paid 14 dollars to see PIRANHA today. If I had waited 3 months, I could buy the DVD for the same price when it's released. And if I'd waited six months, I could get it in the bargain bin for even less. Without having to watch it wearing stupid glasses that kept making my actual glasses slide down my nose, forcing me to spend 90 minutes with my index finger pressed between my eyes. I'm done being robbed by movie studios.

Okay, that's about it. I'm all settled in to my new space at work so, hopefully, I can get some sketching done at some point. I've also finished the script for part four of HAND ME DOWN HORROR. I just need to work out a title. That seems to be the hardest part of this whole enterprise. The first three chapters just popped into my head but this issue didn't have a clear "hook" that suggested a title. I've been scratching my head on that for a week now and still nothing. Wish me luck.

Later.

Three Years

2010-08-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the third anniversary of Mike’s death and I still can hardly believe it. I remember getting the phone call that Sunday night with near perfect clarity. I never really went through the “anger” stage (I felt too beaten up for that) but now, if I think about that night too much I do feel the need to break something. It passes quickly, thankfully. What has also passed is that weird phenomenon where I would start an email to him only to remember that it was pointless and feel an overwhelming sense of loss every time. Now there’s just the occasional, unbearable need to ask his advice on something and knowing I can’t. Suzanne and I still miss him terribly and, every once in a while, we’ll just look at each other and realize we were both thinking about him at the same time and we’ll sigh. If we’re home, we usually snatch up Charlie and mercilessly subject him to that “Rockabye Baby on steroids” thing Mike would do to him while going, “EENH-EENH-EENH-EENH!” We had forgotten about that until Todd showed up in Durham the week Mike died and demonstrated it for us. We laughed our heads off and I think that was the point that we realized that, as bad as things were, we might be all right.

As August 12th has approached, I’ve found myself listening again to the Fanboy Radio interviews Mike participated in, sometimes by himself and sometimes with Robert Kirkman or Skottie Young. It’s just so nice to hear his voice and I’m really grateful that he did them. And I found a way to download the videos of him on YouTube, shot when he was on a convention Spider-Man panel with John Romita, Sr. He doesn’t talk much but he’s there. I don’t know if all this is healthy but it has helped, though I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to re-read his MODERN MASTERS book.

But I don’t want this to be too sad so I’ve posted above a drawing Mike did for me after I graduated college and he still had a year to go. We started at the same time but, while all of my community college credits transferred, some of Mike’s didn’t. So his stay at VCU was extended. I don’t think he minded. Mike had to work to save up for college, which was why we were able to attend at the same time. (Like most things in life, I had college handed to me on a silver platter when my parents came into some money just when I was ready to go.) In his mid-to-late twenties and prematurely gray, he always felt like the “old man on campus” but it was a beneficial time for him. He was exposed to other art forms and other creative people. He was taught by Don Early, one of the best figure drawing teachers in the country. And working to pay his own way, I believe, taught him the work ethic that carried over into his comics career. Mike may have been slow but nobody could say he was lazy. He didn’t sit around playing video games or watching movies when he should have been working. He started early and finished late. He was just a perfectionist.

Mike was always working on his comics portfolio, even during school. He’d finish a set of pages and then start on the next, usually discarding the earliest set as unacceptable. If you’ve ever seen his pre-career sample pages, you’ll see a lot of the style evident in the New Warriors piece. Mike was in his Brian Stelfreeze phase and was trying to emulate him. And he was also trying to work in (against his own preference) some of that cross-hatchy, fussy stuff that was all the rage, hoping to appeal to editors. But (if I remember correctly) he had seen some people at conventions show portfolios with lots of panel-to-panel continuity but with the occasional pin-up or two to punch up their presentation. He decided to do that and started cranking out glorious pinups of Dr. Strange, She-Hulk and some others.

My senior year in college, my girlfriend at the time was digging on the drawings and, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to like her, he told her she could have one as sort of a peace offering. She picked an awesome color drawing of Starfire from the Teen Titans. Much to my eventual regret. We didn’t end well and I can only imagine what happened to that piece. I have a photograph in which you can see it hanging on the wall in her dorm room but you can only just make out what it is.

I really wish I had that drawing.

In 1991, I was working a horrible job at a catering company, really putting that filmmaking degree to good use, and had an apartment right across the street from Mike’s. I was over there all the time, as soon as I was off work. I’d pop in and play videogames with Mike’s roommate Ron and our friend Quentin and just hang out. I’d graduated college without a plan, without any real goals and still months away from meeting Suzanne. I was coasting through life. But not Mike. As always, he had a goal and a plan to achieve it. Whenever I dropped in, Mike would be diligently sitting at his table, working on his drawings. Either for class or for his portfolio. I wish I’d ever had one-tenth of his drive. At some point during this, and my memory fails me at this point, Mike did the above drawing for me. It was probably for my birthday because we were both pretty broke all the time and I would always pester him for drawings. And, of course, there’s the whole Nova thing. Although Mike had the audacity to put him in that damned brown costume they had him in.

The note at the bottom promises the second half of the piece. As far as I know, it never materialized. I say “as far as I know” because, for some reason, I never got this one. I found it in a portfolio of Mike’s college-era work in his house. You can imagine how it made me feel. As soon as I found it, I knew I had to share. So here it is, folks. I know you’ll love it as much as I do.

I miss you Mikey. And thanks for the drawing.

Distraction. I has it.

2010-08-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

The drawing above is my entry into the Project Rooftop: Captain America costume redesign contest. I scoured the rules two or three times and there was no mention of not posting your entries elsewhere and, as I don't have any sketches to post (mostly because I was working on this) I'm hoping they won't mind. Other than Dean, I don't think any of the judges come here so it's not like I'm influencing anyone with it.

Christian pointed out to me that there was a new contest in the works and suggested I enter. I was nervous because costume design is one of my many weak points and, besides, Captain America's uniform is one I've always considered to be "perfect". Really no room for improvement, much like Green Lantern, Spider-Man and (dare I say it), the original Nova suit. But I thought maybe Cap could use a formal military outfit for special occasions like funerals, award ceremonies, inaugurations, etc. But you never know when trouble will come calling so I made sure he had a helmet and a place to keep his keys and cell phone. I've already seen a few things I wish I'd done differently but the contest is closed now and I'm just waiting to see if I made the cut. I'm just hoping to make it as far as getting posted on the site. And I can't wait to see the other entries. Looking through the other contest results just make me feel like the amateur I am. Some great stuff there. Anyway, I hope you like it. Wish me luck.

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Suzanne and I have noticed that whenever we're trying to lose weight, as we are now (I'm down 12 pounds and counting since Todd posted that picture of me from Heroes, thank you very much.) people hear the word "diet" and translate that as "please give me fattening food." It seems like everywhere we go there's someone wanting to give us free grub. Restaurants I can understand but with friends and family it's like they find our desire to drop some pounds personally offensive.

It's like that with distractions too. Now that I've made a concerted effort to work on HAND ME DOWN HORROR, my world is filled with people and things vying for my attention. Either it's a poker game with my co-workers, the release of STARCRAFT 2 (which, thankfully, doesn't work on my home computer) or the slew of cool horror movies coming to Blu-ray (GALAXY OF TERROR, HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, PIRANHA and FORBIDDEN WORLD, baby!) and to theaters (PIRANHA 3D and LAST EXORCISM leading the charge.) I've still managed to avoid as much of this as possible and get some writing time in whenever possible but with football season starting soon, I'm a little concerned. Fortunately, the upcoming fall TV season doesn't appear to offer any new shows that interest me in the slightest. And with FLASH/FORWARD and LOST off the plate, I'm looking good in that department.

Speaking of distraction. Today, Suze and I finally made it to "Movies and Mimosas" at the Bowtie Cinema here in Richmond. (The mimosas are served outside in the lobby.) On weekend mornings, they show classic movies from yesteryear and this weekend it was DIAL "M" FOR MURDER, one of Hitchcock's films I had not yet seen. It was a blast. An entire film that takes place in one room. I have a great love for Hitchcock and Suze and I laughed at several shots that would be taken for granted now or considered cheesy but were quite innovative and clever in their time.

After that, we swung by the Virginia Comicon and spent most of our time there talking to Shelton Drum of Heroes Con who was set up there. It's really nice that he comes to these smaller cons because we don't really get much chance to thank him personally at Heroes as he's so busy. We also confirmed with Brett Carreras that we'll be setting up at the November Virginia Comicon which is a two-day affair. And we're tentatively scheduled to appear at Chris Garvey's convention at the Salem Civic Center in October. Whew. We were disappointed that Marc Nathan couldn't make it but, as he's expecting to become a first-time Dad any minute now, it was understandable. Good luck, Marc and Shelley!

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The title of this post is a reference to my new favorite television commercial. I usually can't stand advertisements. That's a direct result of working in the business for so long. The sheer egotism and douchebaggery in the industry has turned me off to the stuff. Whenever I see a TV spot, even one I like, all I can think about is all the crap that most likely went on behind the scenes. (Do other professions have people that show up for work on a 105-degree day wearing a wool cap as a fashion statement?) But this one is so much damned fun I can't help myself. Every time I see it, I break up laughing. It really is brilliant. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMsSIjQXxo

Okay, this is long enough. Later.

Not Just Me

2010-08-03T13:35:00.001-07:00

So it happens to people who do this for a living too? Awesome!

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/08/02/inception-inspires-x-men-first-class-rewrites/#more-17706

On a related note, Suze and I saw INCEPTION. While I enjoyed it very much and would see it again, it's not my favorite Nolan film. That's a jump ball between DARK KNIGHT and MEMENTO. And MEMENTO has longer fingers. Again, I loved the movie and it's an impressive feat in storytelling (Nolan loves a challenge!) but if you need the first hour of your movie to explain the rules of your story, maybe you need to simplify things just a tad.

______________

By the way, as of today, it's official. We'll be representing the MIKE WIERINGO SCHOLARSHIP FUND at the Baltimore Con later this month. Just in case anyone was wondering. Hope to see you there.

Later.

More Mike

2010-07-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

I had originally set this evening aside to play the new STARCRAFT II game that came out today. Unfortunately (or not, I suppose) I discovered, once I took it upstairs to my office, that my computer doesn't meet the minimum system requirements. Looks like I'll be paying a little visit to the Apple Store this weekend for a much-needed software update. I'm not really disappointed, though. I have other things that I should be doing and, remembering how many hours I've wasted playing the original STARCRAFT over the last 10 years or so, I'm probably better off.

I've got my design for the PROJECT ROOFTOP Captain America contest almost nailed down. I don't really think it's a winner but I like it. So I'll be drawing that up in the next couple of days. I'm also moving right along on the fourth chapter of HAND ME DOWN HORROR. And with Todd's announcement that PERHAPANAUTS is going to be back on the schedule, I've got to finish my last three pages of Christian's and my backup story. I'm a little ashamed that I let it sit this long, hiatus or not. An obligation is an obligation.

Anyway, that's all for now. Once I realized I wasn't going to be locking horns with the Protoss and Zerg tonight, I remembered I needed to post the remainder of Mike's "secret stash" of TELLOS sketches that Suzanne and I found in the garage. Looking these over, it still amazes me what a gifted cartoonist he was. As much as I loved that he was in comics, I think he may have missed his calling as an animator or even director of animated films. I know he would have loved it and I think he would have been one of the greats. And I wish to hell he was here to post them himself.

Here they are, folks. Enjoy.

Later.

Deadman

2010-07-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

Not much to talk about this go ‘round. Which I’m sure will please those of you sick of hearing, “I’m so busy! Wah!”

Suze and I did, in fact, make time to go see PREDATORS in the theater the other night which was a nice treat. The movie itself was a pretty darned good entry in the franchise. The best one since the first, actually. I was curious to see how they’d handle the “game preserve” angle. The trailer reminded me so much of HUNTERS OF THE RED MOON I wanted to see how similar the movie turned out to be. After seeing it, I have to think the filmmakers were at least aware of the book because of the samurai's katana found by one of the characters and his observations about it. Right out of the book. Adrian Brody turns in a convincing performance as the main badass and it was nice to see Laurence Fishburne back on the big screen in an unexpected role. An all-around good time. I did have two complaints, though. First, there were a few too many homages to the original. It got to be a little distracting. And, second, Alan Silvestri’s score from the original film was practically used note for note but he wasn’t credited at all. At least not that I saw and I was looking. Still, I recommend it but see it soon. It’s not doing well and will probably get yanked in the glut of big summer blockbusters. Suze and I are hoping to see INCEPTION soon, before somebody ruins it for us.

Above is the sketch I’ve been promising. Deadman has long been one of my favorite characters. I’ve always loved the second and third-tier characters at both Marvel and DC and ol’ Boston Brand is no exception. He’s always been unique in that his special ability pretty much means very little “screentime” for him in his own stories. Since he takes over the bodies of the living, it means we don’t get to see him all that much. I guess that’s why he’s never been able to sustain a series for very long. But he’s had some great stories done with him. I’ve always loved Neal Adam’s work on the character but, up until recently, my favorite artist on him was Jose Luis Garcia Lopez. He really gave the character the slick look he deserves. But I did say “recently”. Dave Bullock’s take on the character in the WEDNESDAY COMICS experiment was a beauty to behold. Obviously, the style he used is very reminiscent of Darwyn Cooke, but he does bring a lot to the table. And he has a wonderful sense of design. I drooled over every one of those twelve pages.

With this drawing, I tried to get fancy with the shadows but I’m just not that good at it. It’s an area I hope to improve in before I start drawing THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR as lighting and mood will play a big part in the story. But I did like how using only the brush pen gave it a bolder look. This one was fun. I just wish I’d had the time to lay it out a little more dramatically.

Anyway, I hope you like it. Look for more of Mike’s action figure designs coming up.

Later.

"New" Mike Stuff

2010-07-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

I should be writing. I finished issue three of THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR last week and am two pages into issue four. But that's kind of cheating because those two pages are actually a scene I wrote for issue three but had to cut for space reasons. But I'm officially past the half-way point and that's pretty gratifying. It's also significant because I've written some of the toughest stuff in the book. The stuff I had the most difficulty figuring out. Nearly all the major players are introduced and all the dominoes are set up. Now I get to start knocking them over. While the dialogue most definitely needs what Hollywood calls a "polish", I'm pretty happy with the way things are going. And Johnny is finally starting to become proactive. Get some, Johnny!

You know, whenever I talk/post about writing this thing, I hear Stewie Griffin's voice in my head: "Got a, got a, got a nice little, nice little story you're working on there...your big novel you’ve been working on for three years. Huh? Got a, got a compelling protagonist, huh? Got an obstacle for him to overcome, huh? Little story brewing there... ?"

I have to laugh. Because that running gag on FAMILY GUY hits pretty close to home. But I'm not taking this whole thing too seriously, despite my reaction to BOOM!'s new Dracula series coming out. (I was pretty freaked out, to be honest.) While I plan on finishing it and would love for it to see print, I'm approaching it as more of a fun diversion than something my future depends on.

I've actually gotten the chance to do a little sketching as well but nothing I'm too happy with. I've gotten a little rusty and I'm on my third attempt at the same character. I'll probably finish it up tomorrow and post it for the weekend. I'm using the brush pen exclusively to see if I can get a bolder look. Wish me luck. I'm also thinking about throwing my hat in the ring on Dean Trippe's PROJECT ROOFTOP Captain America costume contest. Christian told me about it and I've been mulling it over. Not sure I've got the design chops for that though.

But this post is called "New Mike Stuff" and since most folks who are nice enough to stop by here from time to time were Mike's fans, I'd better not keep them waiting any longer. The other day, Suzanne and I were braving the heat to do some overdue yard work and I stumbled across a box that's been hiding in plain sight in the garage for the last three years. It had a bunch of random items in it but, under some Xerox's of some Frank Cho drawings Mike had, were several pages of sketches Mike had done that I don't think he ever posted. It seemed evident (and I have since confirmed it with Todd) that these drawings were done in preparation for the TELLOS line of action figures that were in development but sadly never released. There were about 8 in all and I'll post them all eventually but posting photos on this thing is a pain in the rear. So I'm going to ration them out over several posts.

These are two of the TELLOS figure pics. Looks like Mike had Chuck Wojtkiewicz helping him out on that model sheet for Jarek. He did some really nice inkwash on that.

And this one I had no idea about. When I sent it to Todd, he told me that he had a pretty good idea what that was for but since it involves some ideas of his and Mike's that never saw print, I'll leave it up to Todd whether or not he wants to come out with it.

I have to say that finding these drawings (and the ones I've yet to post) was a real treat for me. I had thought that I'd seen all of Mike's drawings at this point. Todd had already seen these before but they were new to me. It really put a smile on my face. I hope you like them (Of course you do!) and will make sure to post the rest of them for you to enjoy when I get the chance.

I do want to point out that Suzanne and I really haven't been careless with Mike's artwork. We keep all his work safely in a dry, climate-controlled environment. I promise we haven't just been storing it out in the garage!

Okay, back to work!

Later.

Back from the Beach

2010-07-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

Still no sketches.

I'm noticing I tend to produce more sketches when I'm busy than when I'm not. I think that's because drawing (for me, anyway) is a fairly thought-free process. Beyond figuring out what I'm going to draw, light sources, and so forth. If I'm working in bursts with little breaks between the action, I can spend 10 minutes drawing, then drop it, then come back later. I have to be in the mood, of course, but I always seem to want to draw when I'm not supposed to be doing it. It's a weird tick I've always had.

Writing, on the other hand, I have to really be in the mood for. Fortunately for me (and not so fortunately for my so-called sketchblog) is that I'm really in the mood lately. I've been making real progress on the story and may, hopefully, be moving on to part four by the weekend.

Suze and I just got back from a great Fourth of July weekend spent with her parents on Harker's Island. Suzanne's sister and her family had the cottage so we just stayed in her parent's spare bedroom. That suited me fine. It's a six hour drive down and then six hours back so scrubbing down the cottage on Monday would have just eaten into our time with them. It was tough because we're only two weeks into our diets but we hung in there and stuck with the grilled stuff and boiled shrimp. I did indulge in my father-in-law's martinis (a drink I usually find disgusting but his are somehow just amazing) but still ended up losing weight so that was good.

On the drive down, I was going over the next few scenes in my story in my head and I realized I'd painted myself into a corner. I know the ending of my story. It's already planned out and everything I'm writing is leading up to it. But I'd added little details here and there in the first three chapters that accidentally made an important aspect of the ending, well, impossible. Or, at least, implausible. Not the end of the world but troublesome. I had worked myself into a fair lather by the time we arrived but I scheduled a walk for the next morning, by myself, for some thinking time. I left my iPhone behind so I wouldn't distract myself with music and, sure enough, before I'd gone 200 yards, I had my solution. I actually laughed and raised my arms over my head in the "touchdown!" sign. This is the part of writing I enjoy the most. The problem solving. Watching things click into place. Like a puzzle, the more pieces you solve, the easier the rest of them are. Being so close to the story though, you can only hope that the fact that things are clicking so well doesn't mean that your story is predictable. I'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Christian sent me down with the six trades of SCALPED by Jason Aaron to read. I'd read the first one a year or two ago and really liked it, including the amazing, moody art by R. M. Guerra. It's a terrific series and I blazed through the first four trades while we were there. Couldn't put it down. It was very inspiring. I loved the multi-layered story and epic feel of Aaron's storytelling. But it was very intimidating. Aaron has a very deft hand when it comes to dialogue, characterization and plot, knowing just what to reveal and when. I feel like I'm poking around in the dark, knocking things over and hoping they don't break. His story shifts back and forth through time but you never get lost. My story is set mostly in the present with occasional forays into the 1980's and way back to the 15th and 16th centuries. I'm juggling as best I can and just hoping I don't drop a ball on my head.

Anyway, I want to get back to the writing and time is running out before I have to hit the sack. So if anyone's reading this, goodnight and I hope you had a great Fourth of July. And, if you're anywhere near Richmond, stay cool! It was so hot today Suzanne forbade me from taking my lunchtime walk. I had to go to the gym where the dreaded Sweathog (Have I mentioned him?) had left his foul oozings on every machine in the damned place. Heatstroke would almost be preferable.

Later.

Sketchless in Richmond and Back to the Book

2010-06-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

It seems that the rush of activity on my accounts at work has subsided a bit for now so this week has been strangely...normal. After several weeks of working weekends and all-nighters, I suddenly find myself working 9-to-5 (ish) days and it's been a bit of a shock to my system. During the day, it's been balls to the wall, so I haven't had any time to draw anything. Which, I suppose, is how a job is supposed to be. But I'm so tired when I get home, the last thing I want to do is sit down at the drawing board. Plus, Suzanne and I have just started a diet and exercise plan (That pic of us Todd posted was alarming...) and our energy levels are looowwwww. Overall, I am feeling better, though. A consequence of the diet has been a marked decrease in my coffee consumption since I can't afford all that extra sugar intake. That's lessened the effect of the 6:00 caffeine-crash I usually suffer. But I have to wonder at the wisdom of starting a diet at the beginning of summer. I'm a beer and barbecue guy and there will have to be none of that for a while.

Since I haven't been drawing (I did a few doodles yesterday and was horrified at how bad they were.), I've decided to take advantage of the situation and make a concerted effort to get back to writing my story. Due to my profession, I'm more comfortable at the computer than at the drawing board anyway. But anyone that tells you that writing is easier than drawing either hasn't done both or is yanking your weenie. Writing is hard work.

I heard some great writing advice once. The writer said that he never stops working at the end of a scene because it's so hard to start working the next day when there's no momentum already going. Great advice that. I made the mistake of finishing a pivotal scene back when work really blew up a couple of months ago and trying to figure out what comes next has been downright maddening. As I've mentioned, knowing a story and telling it are two different things.

I go for walks on my lunch hour whenever possible. Richmond is blessed with some nice, scenic walking routes along the James River and I can get there in minutes from the agency. I used to listen to music on my iPhone while I walked but it became too distracting. I've found that if leave the headphones behind, it frees my mind to work out storytelling problems. I was having trouble even getting a character into a room convincingly. But I think, thanks to my 3 or 4 mile jaunts this week, that I'm over that hump and I can move forward again.

The problem I've having now has to do with mechanics. Writing comics is not writing a novel or a short story. Or a movie. As I walk, I come up with great (IMO) character bits and lines of dialogue and strands of backstory that, once I start typing, I realize just don't fit. There are only so many panels and words that will fit on a page and only so many pages in an issue. My four-issue story has already ballooned to six and now maybe eight issues. Christian has read the first two scripts and said, "Great! I love it! When is something going to happen?" Which is the worst thing an aspiring writer can hear.

Unfortunately, THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR has always been about the characters and their relationships. I really love this group of kids I'm writing about and I think the plot has suffered a bit because of it. I have thought of several things that will punch up the action a couple of notches in the rewrite and, luckily, it won't necessitate a massive overhaul. I'm actually looking forward to that.

Another problem is that Johnny, the "hero" of the story, was beginning to feel like a bit of a cypher. Writing a character that could be you is really not a good idea because you tend to idealize yourself. You can be afraid to show that character's weaknesses because people will see them as your weaknesses. But I've worked out some things that I think will alleviate that issue and make Johnny more interesting as a character. I always loved how J. K. Rowling, who based the character of Hermione on herself, went out of her way to show that Hermione's enthusiasm and brilliance were not always a good thing. She managed to take a character who was almost perfect in every way and make her one of the most endearing and interesting characters in the series. I'm no J. K. Rowling but there are lessons to be learned here.

_______

Another couple of quick things and then I'm going to sign off and take advantage of my weekend off and get some writing done. Suzanne has to go in to work today and it's too damn hot to mow the grass, which is brown and crackly anyway. (We don't have a sprinkler system, alas.)

I recently ordered and received a copy of Screen Archives reissue of James Horner's score from STAR TREK II, THE WRATH OF KHAN. After years of searching, I had finally gotten a copy of the out-of-print release that only had 8 or so tracks from the film. But its brevity was disappointing. This rerelease has everything. Every cue. And it's delightful. The liner notes alone are worth the $19. For instance, I never realized that WRATH was produced as a low-budget movie! Stung by the disappointment of the first film that went horribly over-budget, the studio cut corners all over the place. They recycled effects shots and sets from the first film. They hired TV producer Harve Bennett to produce, virtually untested director Nicholas Meyer to direct and then tapped the nearly unheard-of composer James Horner to do the score because they couldn't afford to have Jerry Goldsmith come back. Against all odds, they managed to put together a team that not only cared about the material but had the talent and passion to put together one of the best genre films ever made. And James Horner's score was a large part of that. This was one of my soundtrack "holy grails" for years (I can't believe the film is nearly 30 years old!) and it still holds up as one of the all-time great film scores. I highly recommend it if you're into this sort of thing. Thank you Screen Archives!

Suze and I saw THE A-TEAM last Saturday night. It ain't high art, but damn it was FUN! If you liked the trailer, you'll love the movie. These guys looked like they had a great time, particularly Bradley Cooper, who never stops grinning.

FUTURAMA is back, baby! Suck it, FOX!

Catch this week's MAN VS. FOOD, if you can. Adam Richmond is in...well...Richmond! I somehow managed to miss seeing him when he was in town filming but I'm really looking forward to seeing where he went when he was here.

Okay, sorry to go on so long with no pix to cut the taste of boolsheet. Have a great weekend.

Later.

47

2010-06-23T17:58:00.001-07:00

I've posted this picture before but I don't think I ever told the story behind it. Not here anyway.

I think it was back in 2006. The Heroes Convention, after many years of dancing around it, had finally fallen on the same date as Mike's birthday, June 24th. As we were preparing for our trip down to Charlotte, Suzanne began to wonder when was the last time Mike had gotten a cake for his birthday. She got it into her head that she was going to take him one. I told her there was no outside food allowed into the convention center but she said she'd just smile nice and bright and they'd have to let her take it in to him.

The night before the trip, she whipped up a great looking Spider-Man cake in honor of Mike's on-again, off-again relationship with the wall-crawler and the next morning, we loaded it into our Suburban for the 5-hour drive to Charlotte. We left the cake uncovered, figuring it would be a quick air-conditioned drive and that would be that.

Fate had other plans.

This was before Christian and Angie started going with us so it was just the two of us. We were either listening to a book on tape or maybe one of Suzanne's mix CDs. We were making great time and had gone about halfway when we decided to stop for gas and lunch in the town of Creedmoor, just north of Mike's home in Durham. Lucky we did. After gassing up, I went to start the car and >click!<...nothing happened. Just a click. The truck was dead.

After some investigation, we determined that there was an open garage about a quarter-mile down the road. They said they'd be glad to help us out but they didn't tow. So we called AAA and after about 45 minutes, a truck showed up and towed us all of 200 yards to the garage. The driver got a few yucks out of that. It was so close I could have pushed it myself except it was up-slope.

Anyway, it turned out to be the alternator and the garage just happened to have one in stock. They promised to have us back on the road in a couple of hours. What they didn't have, though, was air conditioning. And it was pretty nasty hot. Suzanne had rescued the cake from the truck, just in case, but there was nowhere to store it. The icing had started to sweat in the heat a little and the tiny waiting room was...um...dusty. We could see it drifting heavily in the sunlight coming through the open door. There was an old TV with a UHF dial sitting on pasteboard cart in the corner. The slot for a VCR was empty and Suzanne and I looked at each other, shrugged, and she slid the cake into the slot under the TV. Problem solved.

True to their word, about two and half hours later, we were gratefully paying up and back on 85, Mike's cake safely back in the storage compartment of the Suburban. (When we got back home, Suzanne promptly sent the garage a thank-you gift of a box of gourmet cookies.) We felt, all things considered, extremely fortunate. But we'd missed almost the entire first day of the convention and were pretty sure we weren't going to get there before it closed for the day.

But Suzanne was at the wheel and we got there with about a half-hour to spare. We raced into the convention center as soon as we'd parked and picked up our badges and headed to the escalator. Where we were stopped by the security guard. Fortunately, Suzanne's smile was extra bright and, with the help of one of Shelton's volunteers, explained the situation to the guard who was actually very nice. She looked around to make sure nobody was watching and let us through with the cake.

Mike was so excited to see us and couldn't believe that Suze had made him a cake. And he really couldn't believe she'd talked her way past the guards. Suzanne cut him a slice and he scarfed it down. We both wondered if he was just being nice since Mike was known to eat things he didn't really want just to humor us. But then he ate another piece. And another. And started handing out pieces to people sitting around him. In no time, half the cake was gone.

Seeing Mike enjoying the cake Suzanne made for him is one of my favorite memories of him. Since we lived so far apart, for all I know, that was the last birthday cake Mike got. It nearly breaks my heart to think about it. But then I think how lucky it was that Suzanne chose that year to do it. And that we stopped in Creedmoor, right next to that garage. And that we got a sympathetic guard. We could have missed out on that great memory for so many reasons. But we didn't.

Happy Birthday, Mikey. We miss you more than ever.

R.I.P. Al Williamson

2010-06-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

Another giant gone. He really was one of the greats. Especially his work for the old black and white horror mags published by Warren.

Damn Dirty Apes

2010-06-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

During all the craziness leading up to last weekend’s Heroes Convention, I foolishly started a sketch that was intended as a gift for Jeff Parker. I had listened to an interview between him, Gabriel Hardman and John Siuntres that was ostensibly about AGENTS OF ATLAS but which degenerated into a great discussion of the 1960’s-1970’s PLANET OF THE APES film series. I’ve always loved those movies and, when Hardman mentioned how much he loved the opening scene of ESCAPE (as do I) I knew I had to draw something. My intention was to knock it out quickly and then give it to Jeff at the convention. Alas, an inevitable all-nighter at work the night before prevented me from finishing it and then the half-drawn sketch got misplaced while we were packing so I couldn’t work on it during the show. I felt a little foolish walking up to Jeff, giving him the big build up and then...nothin’. Jeff gave me a look not unlike the expression one has when one realizes that an elderly relative has lost their mind. He patted my forearm and offered to go get my shawl. I never saw him again. Which is too bad. That hall got a little chilly in the mornings. Could’ve used that shawl.

This week has been just as nuts but I had a few minutes today and finished inking Cornelius, which was all that remained to be done. I thought I’d go ahead and post it while I had the time. The likenesses are a bit off but I kind of dig it. I hope you do too. Is it poor form to post a drawing before presenting it to the giftee?

___________________________

I mentioned in the last post that I’d gotten a Nova sketch from Franco (thanks to a timely heads-up from our friend David Tilly) and here it is:

I love it. Especially the bullet-shaped head. He struggled with the costume a little and did some corrections before inking. But that actually made me happy. I love that almost nobody from whom I get sketches knows who Nova is. I almost wish that Marvel hadn’t done anything with him since the ‘70s. He’s never been as good as he was then though I really enjoyed that Erik Larsen/Joe Bennett series a while back. The new series is decent but I really can’t stand the new costume (although at least there are no red straps and buckles) and with his new popularity (Secret Avengers? WTF?) it’s only a matter of time before he’s inevitably over-complicated and screwed up.

As the show was winding down, my buddy Warren Newsome hooked me up with a quick Nova headshot that he knocked out in about 30 seconds which I find pretty darned impressive.

I guess he didn’t because he promised to email me another attempt when he got home. True to his word, this was waiting for me when I got home Monday, along with another version colored by his son Eric. Eric, you may remember, was the first person to ever ask me for a convention sketch, fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine. Thanks guys! These are great!

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One of the things I love about comic conventions is seeing what tools everyone is using. This year, Suzanne excitedly pointed out that Steve Lieber was using a Pentel brush pen that I’d noticed at an art supply store a couple of weeks ago. It was fairly expensive ($16 retail compared to about $3 for the Pitt pen) so I didn’t want to just buy it on blind faith. I never got up the nerve to ask him about it (again, I suffer from a mild case of SAD) and he had a constant flow of admirers in front of him anyway. But then he posted something about the pen on the John Byrne forum and that’s all it took. I picked one up at an art supply store on the VCU campus today. I’ve only messed around with it a little but it’s really cool. I can’t wait to try it out for real.

Okay, that’s all for now. We’ve got my parents coming for a visit this weekend but I may try to squeeze in some of the World Cup. I’m not a futbol kind of guy but I like watching the big sporting events even for sports I don’t really follow. Anyway, have a great weekend everybody.

Once More, with Feeling

2010-06-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Shelton Drum, for another great Heroes Convention! Despite the absence of so many of our friends this year, Suzanne and I had a wonderful time. That was due, in large part, to the fact that we lucked into a spot on the main drag between gentleman drawing machine superstar Rick Leonardi (who looks nothing like I pictured him) and Mike's friend, the hilariously funny and handsome Ron Garney. Ron kept us laughing so hard the entire show that the muscles in the back of my head were hurting by Sunday. (A college friend used to call that "permagrin.")

We had a slow start but, by the end of the show, we ended up having a very productive weekend. For that, we can thank several people, including one British gentleman who ended up buying, I believe, six pages over the weekend. We also got several generous donations from professionals who were sitting around us or stopped by on their way home after the show. I got a big laugh when my favorite blogger, Chris Sims stopped by to wish us luck and ended up buying a page from Mike's ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN run. If you know anything about Chris' tastes and you're familiar with Mike's Superman run, you could probably guess which page got him excited.

Most impressively, we've noticed a trend the last few shows and this one was no different. We've been getting more in donations than we have from people buying stuff. From pocket change up to some hefty contributions. That's really warmed our hearts and we can't thank everyone enough who contributed to the fund. Every penny, and I mean every penny goes into the fund and that means it goes to a student. So thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

Thank you also to Brett Carerras, who officially invited us to set up at the Virginia Comicon, coming up this November. Thank you to friend of the blog Warren Newsome who kept me company. Sometimes sitting behind that table can get dull and Warren was a lot of fun to talk to. Thank you also to Brian Pillow, Paul Rogers and Brian Mulchahy for "minding the store" for us so we could have lunch together or just walk around holding hands from time to time. (Brian Pillow is either lucky as hell or the best sales person ever because he always brings in more than we do and in one tenth of the time.)

I'll wrap up the scholarship fund part of this post with one last item. In the chaos leading up to the art auction, one thing led to another and we never made our announcement. Since I'm a terrible public speaker and suffer from just a touch of social anxiety disorder, I can't say I was altogether disappointed. But what Suze and I were going to say was that a) Rae Rochelle is keeping the scholarship this year and that in all likelihood, we will be announcing a new winner at next Heroes and b) thanks to everyone's generousity and a (temporarily?) rebounding stock market, the award went up from $1100 last year to $1500 this year. That's great news. Now, let's keep at it and get Mike's fund up there where we can put a kid through school on a full ride.

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Now on to the fanboy stuff. Suze was nice enough to sit at the table and allow me some geek time. I'm a little shy around people so I was too nervous to go talk to some of the pros I wanted to meet like Mike Mignola, Herb Trimpe and Jim Starlin. But I did run over and snag a Nova sketch from Franco, who draws the TINY TITANS book for DC and writes BILLY BATSON AND THE POWER OF SHAZAM, one of new favorites. Also, after listening to our friend Chris Kemple describe the plot of the latest issue of THE RISE OF ARSENAL, I got queasy and had to run over and buy a few issues of G-MAN from Chris Giarrusso. And since we were in the same "corral", I screwed up the nerve to tell Steve Lieber how much I loved UNDERGROUND, which was my favorite book of the year so far. (Suzanne, never bashful, bought the trade from them and got them to sign it to her and Steve did a great sketch for her.) But I'm still kicking myself for forgetting to pick up some of Chris Sim's comics, including AWESOME HOSPITAL. Aargh!

Most of my free time was spent running around the hall checking out the bargain trades. As has become tradition, behold my wall o' loot!

I tried to be good this year. I tend to go way overboard and blow the budget all to hell. But this year I went in not really looking for much (just the THORs, really) and trying to stick to the real bargain stuff. I found some great surprises (like the CAPTAIN CANUCK hardcover and EERIE collection) but I was proud that I didn't find myself returning over and over to the ATM. I even passed up a half-price TOMB OF DRACULA VOL. 2 OMNIBUS. That took real willpower, as I had just about 50 bucks in my pocket at the time.

But then my BEST WIFE EVER, Suzanne, spotted the guy selling out-of-print soundtracks. I'd walked past him a couple of times, holding my hand up to shield my vision from alluring merch. But not Suzanne. She walked up to me and quizzed me about what soundtracks I wished I had.

"Ummm...THE THING is kind of my holy grail...maybe DAY OF THE DEAD by John Harrison...OH! and ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES by Jerry Goldsmith!" Why?"

Next thing I know, she's standing in front of the soundtrack guy, holding up all three. "THESE OKAY!???"

It was almost too tempting. But I figured the CDs wouldn't sound very good in the poor house so DAY OF THE DEAD went back and Suze got me these:

Thanks, baby!

Sunday night, Shelton kindly invited us to his afterparty. It's our third one and it's always fun. I love shopping in his store because he's always got great stuff in stock. It's also a great way to indulge fanboy fantasies by standing next to guys like Tony Harris while checking out the latest issue of SPIDER-MAN. Mark Waid is usually there and it's usually the only time we get to say, "Hi" because he's always all over the place but we didn't get to see him this year. (Except for 30 seconds in the hotel elevator when I gave him shit for destroying Richmond in IRREDEEMABLE. I told him between him and John Carpenter, I was getting a complex.) Valerie D'Orozio was there and I really wanted to introduce myself because I was a fan of her blog but I didn't have the nerve. She was shopping and I didn't want to get all fanboy on her in her personal time. Maybe next year.

Though Shelton always puts out a great spread, it's sort of become tradition for Suze and I to eat at the Cajun Queen restaurant down the street from the shop. Mark Waid kindly invited us to join him three years ago (along with Christian who dubbed Mark "Uncle Boom", cracking us all up) and we fell in love with the place. The food is magnificent and there's great atmosphere. This year we ended up going by ourselves but, Suzanne being Suzanne, we still wound up talking with the folks at the next table and having a great time.

We ended the weekend with breakfast with our friend Rich Faber, his son Jason and a friend at, of all places, the convention center food court. It was close and cheap (I think we were all officially broke by then) and I'm glad we did. Not only did we enjoy the company, we got to see something I've never seen before. The Charlotte Convention Center, post-con. Observe:

I god, Woodrow.

We had a great time seeing everybody (and missed seeing those who couldn't make it.) I also had a great time creeping out Jeff Parker with my obscene Planet of the Apes fixation but I don't think I skeeved him quite as much as did Paul Roger with this rather unmanly display of fan affection. Hand check!

Okay. Enough rambling. Back to real world. Ugh.

Later.

Age of Heroes

2010-06-02T16:57:00.001-07:00

Suzanne and I will once again be representing the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund at Heroes this coming weekend. Shelton has nicely provided us a space in Artists Alley. I think the guest list is longer than ever before this year, despite several no-shows by some folks I was hoping to see (ahem—Todd, Nick, Rod, Leeane, Scott—ahem). There wasn't any space to spare so we'll be squeezed in between the folks from Jeff Parker's studio and our good buddy Craig Rousseau who have graciously agreed to give up some of their space so we can set up. I can't thank them all enough. We're going to keep it mean and lean this year and try to take up as little space as possible.

Unfortunately, that will be easier than we'd planned. Suzanne and I had ordered some fancy new buttons to hand out this year. Suzanne couldn't remember where she ordered the last batch so I took a chance on these useless so-and-so's who not only took two weeks to complete the order, but they then sent us some other poor sucker's buttons. This has left us high and dry since we're completely out of the white 'Ringo buttons. Needless to say, I won't be using them again and I highly recommend you don't either. The steam is still coming out of my ears.

Still, I'm trying to stay positive because we are there for a good cause and I'm looking forward to seeing some of the folks we only get to see at Heroes including some of you who are nice enough to post in the comments here. We're also so grateful for everyone who has been so generous and patient with us. Despite tough economic times and a declining comics market, the fund has continued to grow and it's all because of you folks out there who loved Mike and his work and because of great folks like Shelton Drum at Heroes, Marc and Shelley at Baltimore and Brett Carreras at Virginia Comicon who continue to go out of their way to support us.

We'll be making a very short announcement regarding the fund before the Art Auction. In case you can't make it, though, it's nothing major. Just announcing how much this year's award is (It's gone up!) and the fact that it's staying with our favorite Sequential Art major, Rae Rochelle. I believe she's scheduled to graduate next year so, hopefully, we'll be announcing a new winner at next year's Heroes.

Okay, unless your name fell between the "ahems" up above or unless you happen to be my good buddy, Christian Leaf, who also is not coming, I'll look for you to stop by the table this weekend. See you then.

And sorry about the buttons.

Deja View

2010-05-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

With Todd taking a hiatus from blogging, Occasional Superheroine shut down and a lot of my other usual sites updating more and more infrequently, I was starting to feel a little unplugged. So I wasn't about to take that crap from Christian. Brother hadn't posted diddly in TWO MONTHS! I knew I needed to post another sketch soon, preferably of a female C-lister, so I decided to kill two birds with one tennis racquet. I challenged Christian to a "sketch-off." I gave him, as the one challenged, the choice of character. He deferred back to me so I hit him with Hellcat. (After Jack of Hearts, I wanted something simple.) I managed to knock mine out pretty quickly and held onto it because Christian is apparently going all out and doing something pretty cool. But my schedule is turning to s*** with a quickness. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to feel a lot like this guy every Friday:

Anyway, I decided to post mine while I have the chance. I hope you like it. I did. I liked it so much I started to feel like I'd seen it before. And I was right. Remember this?

Mike's been gone for nearly three years now and I'm still copying my big brother. I guess if you're going to steal, steal from the best. That drawing, for some reason, was always one of my favorite of his sketches.

Remember to keep checking back at Christian's blog. He should have his Hellcat rebuttal up soon. Hopefully, he's having fun with the challenge. I sure did. Maybe we can make it a regular thing.

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The last several sketches, I've noticed that I've been having trouble focusing my eyes. When I do my thumbnails and layouts, everything is fine. But when I start inking, I can't quite tell where to lay the pen nib. It was getting fairly alarming because the same thing was happening when I tried to read at night. My eyes couldn't focus on the words on the page. One night, when I was inking, I took off my glasses to try rubbing my eyes, thinking that would help. And, boom. Everything clicked into focus. Now when I ink, I have to take my glasses off and stick my face about eight inches from the page.

I need friggin' bifocals!

It seems old age keeps tapping me on the shoulder to remind me he's catching up.

Funny thing, though. I was admiring a Spider-Man commission by John Byrne on his website and in the thread he mentioned that he had just started having the same issue! He'd also figured out the same solution (taking off his glasses to ink.) As he's about ten or fifteen years older than me, I feel a little cheated. Lucky bastard!

Got Any Jacks?

2010-05-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I’m supposed to be drawing women. Not to mention the piece for Christian and Angie’s daughter, Lilah. But on Friday, I had a quiet evening waiting for Suzanne to get off work and I was clicking through my 40 YEARS OF IRON MAN DVD set (in preparation for seeing the new IM movie) and saw the great cover to IRON MAN #105 by the inestimable Dave Cockrum. There, staring back at me, was Jack of Hearts, the most visually frustrating character in comics. As sometimes happens to me when confronted with very beautiful women or very ugly men, the words “I...must...draw...you!” instantly popped into my head.

I don’t know who first designed the character (Was it George Tuska?) but, whoever it was, they were either a sadist or a masochist. Maybe both. He’s a great character but hasn’t been used much. There’s a reason for that. Nobody wants to draw the noodly-costumed sonofab****!!! Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great costume with an inspired design. But no other character in comics, not even Galactus, has so much...stuff to figure out. My hat goes off to George Freeman, the guy who drew that terrific JOH miniseries back in the ‘80s. I can’t imagine having to draw four issues starring this dude. While I was looking for reference online — the shots of him in the IRON MAN books weren’t static enough to get a full view of his suit — I stumbled across a couple of less inspiring versions of Jack’s togs here and here. I had to laugh. There would only be one reason to redesign the suit. Because you were too lazy to draw Tuska’s version.

I wanted to do something a little more dynamic this go-round. My sketches lately have been looking like the drawings in the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. Very static. And dull. So I decided to do something with lots of foreshortening and bending and crackling energy. The drawing itself went very quickly. It wasn’t until I started filling in all the costume details that things slowed to a crawl. But, dang, I had fun doing this one. Even if I did give Jack the hands of an NBA player. I hope you like it.

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Speaking of Iron Man, Suzanne and I managed to catch a matinee of the second film this weekend. I wasn’t expecting much because the trailer made it look like a BATMAN FOREVER-style train wreck with too many characters and too much going on. And people were complaining that it wasn’t as good as the first one. Now that I’ve seen it, I have to wonder...what the hell do people want? This movie was as good or better than the first, sharply written and directed, with plenty of action and humor and even features Scarlett Johannsen in a skin-tight catsuit. All the performances were top-notch and the change from Terrence Howard to Don Cheadle was a good call. I thought it would be troublesome but this movie featured War Machine and they really needed an actor who could go toe-to-toe with Robert Downy Jr. Let me tell you, Don Cheadle can go toe-to-toe with anybody. Micky Roarke was his usual great self. Remember that “OH NO!” moment when you saw Whiplash’s “costume” for the first time? Forget about it. The scene in Monte Carlo is brilliantly done, including the nod to the fans when Tony dons his armor from a briefcase. I had to restrain myself from standing up and cheering. There were several scenes that had us laughing out loud and I looked over during one of the action scenes to see Suzanne grinning broadly from ear to ear. I loved DARK KNIGHT but the Iron Man movies have that one element that’s been missing from the DC-based films for years now (and, in point of fact, the comics from both companies)...FUN. As the comic companies bend over backwards to emulate the movies based on their own properties, they would do well to remember what made them so appealing to Hollywood in the first place and get over all the brooding self pity that makes their books so unreadable these days.

My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is the scene in which Tony Stark does a drunken two-step in the armor. I thought to myself, “Who wrote this scene? Chuck Austen?” But even that scene was pivotal to the plot and, taken in context, was forgivable.

Go see IRON MAN 2. And prepare to have fun.

Because You Demanded It!

2010-05-13T12:25:00.001-07:00

I’ve always wanted to be able to say that.

Unfortunately the “you” in that title refers to just two people and the “it” refers to my drawing the Daughters of the Dragon, two characters I had no idea how to approach. While researching the definitive look of these characters, I dug out my ESSENTIAL IRON FIST trade and took a trip down memory lane. I pretty much knew what I was going to do with Misty Knight because I remembered her vividly from her appearance in MARVEL TEAM-UP. That skin-tight black outfit, shoulder harness and badass afro were hard to forget. But Colleen Wing just never had an iconic look. Thumbing through the collection, it became apparent that Ms. Wing changed her outfits (and hairstyle) more often than Janet Van Dyne. John Byrne came up with some interesting looks for her but nothing I could nail down. So I just cobbled this outfit together out of a couple pieces Byrne had her wearing. The bell bottoms were a last minute decision and I’m glad it happened. I dig ‘em.

I really wasn’t happy with where the drawing was going when I sketched it out. There’s still something about it that bothers me. I think it’s Colleen’s face and hair. The drawing style doesn’t match or something. I struggled mightily with the drawing because of my aforementioned lack of experience drawing women and was falling back on my crutch of imitating Timm and Cooke. As a result, her face came out a little more cartoony than I’d intended and doesn’t match my natural drawing style. It’s a shame because I think I saved the drawing, more or less, in the inks. Not that I think it’s really any good. I wasn’t going to post it at all but I’m on a quest to become better at drawing women so I figured I’d put it out there, warts and all, to force me to keep trying and redeem myself.

Misty’s guns (another shortcoming of mine) gave me fits too. I couldn’t find any reference from the proper angles and so I just faked the funk. I apologize to any gun enthusiasts out there who are cringing at everything I got wrong. I just sort of made the guns up. And lets hope Misty refrains from discharging the one in her right hand because Colleen’s hearing will never be the same.

I hope you like it, even if I don’t. Have a great weekend.

Later.

Chris Samnee, Sherlock Holmes and Atomic Comics

2010-05-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Schedule, unrelenting back pain and a wicked cold have conspired to prevent much drawing this past week but I’m not letting that get me down. The weather has been simply glorious and I had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend with my parents and finally got to hang out with Christian at Legend after a month of trying. A false alarm at work early this morning did give me the chance to nail down a layout for the drawing I’m doing for my Cromdaughter, Lilah so, work permitting, I may be able to post something later this week.

While looking for reference for the character, I came across the blog of one of my new favorite artists, Chris Samnee. I first noticed his work when he took over drawing THE MIGHTY from Peter Snejbjerg who has a similar style. I love guys who draw with bold lines and have a gestural, almost cartoony quality to their work. My love for Darwyn Cooke and Bruce Timm is well documented. There’s also Cameron Stewart, Javier Pulido, Cliff Chiang and Marcos Martin. These guys all seem to come from the Alex Toth school of comic art and I’m torn between absolutely loving them and being driven insane with envy at their talent. Chris Samnee in particular drives me nuts. I stumbled across a Rom sketch of his a few months back that made me just cry. Like Darwyn Cooke, his drawing style makes it look like he just throws the ink on the page in a frenzy. But it always ends up so perfect. And he combines that with an awesome design sense and a Frank Miller-esque grasp of positive/negative space, not feeling the need to draw a solid line around his figures. Check out his blog HERE. I’m sure you’ll dig it.
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Every once in a while, the cover of a comic will catch my eye and I’ll just have to buy it. Unfortunately, that rarely happens with first issues. This usually results in a frantic search for back issues. Sometimes, that search is fruitless (as was the case with NORTH 40 recently) and I end up waiting for the trade. Last week, after about two weeks of searching, my friends at Nostalgia Plus hooked me up with the complete run of VICTORIAN UNDEAD, the Wildstorm series billed as “Sherlock Holmes versus zombies.” I confess to not being a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and only recall reading the story about the Redheaded League or some such in high school and I enjoyed the Peter Cushing version of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. That’s about the extent of my experience with the character. But the series was about zombies, after all, and the art was really nice, including some enticing cover work. So I gave it a shot. Sometimes, it seems, you can judge a book by its cover. VICTORIAN UNDEAD was a real hoot. It’s well-written and the writers seem to have done their Holmes-work (heh), as there are quite a few references to Holmes canon. I didn’t realize it was a miniseries until I got to the end and was very saddened to see the story end. It’s left me with a taste for Sherlock Holmes stories and I think I’ll seek out one of the ubiquitous hardcover collections at Barnes and Noble. If you haven’t read the series, I highly recommend you try it. (Rod Hannah, this seems to be particularly up your alley.)

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During my parents’ visit this weekend, we got on the subject of cities with really bad traffic. New York and Los Angeles came up, of course, but when Virginia Beach was mentioned, it sparked some comic-related memories. I lived in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area briefly after college when an old school friend of mine invited me down to help him start a video production company under the umbrella of his father’s market research firm.

The whole thing ended up being a disaster but I do have some pleasant recollections. I was completely unfamiliar with the area but managed to find a tiny (and I mean tiny) apartment just off the ODU campus. It was my first time living by myself so, through the friend of my aunt, I adopted Toonces, my now-19-year-old little buddy. Sometimes Suzanne would come down from Richmond and visit us and spend the weekend. (Those weekends were the only times I could really be said to eat well.) The job paid less than peanuts so my disposable income was almost non-existent. I did manage to get back into buying a few comics, though, after having to give them up almost completely during college. During our school years, I would go with Mike (who was much wiser with his money) to Nostalgia Plus but only occasionally would I be able to actually buy anything.

Now that I was working for a living, my priority in my new home — after locating the nearest grocery store and laundromat — was finding a comic shop. I got out the Yellow Pages and found one called Atomic Comics that seemed to be somewhere nearby. I didn’t have a map so I ventured out in my car on one of the rare Saturdays I didn’t have to work and drove all around the neighborhood, trying to find the place. No luck. Disappointed, I went home, figuring the place had closed down. I’ve found, whenever I move to a new location, it’s easier to get a feel for a place on foot, rather than behind the wheel of a car when you have to worry about running stoplights or hitting a parked car. So, one evening, when I got home before sundown, I set off on foot to walk the area, not particularly worrying about Atomic Comics. Astonishingly, without really intending to, I stumbled onto the place...about two blocks from my apartment!

It’s hard for me to express the elation I felt. For me, at that point, getting to a comic shop had always been dependent on Mike. There were no decent shops in Lynchburg so, once the comics industry went direct sales only, I relied on Mike to drive us to Roanoke, fifty miles away, once a week, for our fix. In college, though I wasn’t buying much, I’d ride with Mike on his trips just to keep up with what was coming out. Now, here was a shop I could walk to, maybe a hundred yards from where I slept. I was giddy. Thinking back, it wasn’t much of a shop. About the size of a small barber shop. But it had all the new releases and a few boxes of back issues. And the proprietor, a young guy about my age, was pretty friendly. I don’t remember exactly what I bought. This was 1991, so I was probably buying THE FLASH by William Messner-Loebs and Greg Laroque and I was pretty into the SUPERMAN books. But I do remember buying THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN which was being drawn by Sal Buscema. Until college, I’d had a complete run of the title and it was particularly painful when I had to stop reading it. Now I had the chance to catch up. I think the shop had a few months worth of issues and I picked them up cheap.

I took my haul back to my apartment. The luster had started to wear off my new job and I was starting to feel a little depressed, away from home and far away from Suzanne and my family. But something so simple as having an armload of new comics really boosted my spirits. It sounds ridiculous but it was true. It was something to cling to. I curled up on the couch in my tiny living room and savored those books, reading well into the evening. I’ve rarely enjoyed reading comics as much as I did that weekend.

The next week, I got paid and decided to head on out Saturday morning to see if I could scrounge a few more back issues of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN. Arriving at the store, I was shocked to see the place locked up tight, a “GONE OUT OF BUSINESS” sign taped to the inside of the glass on the door. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe my new comic shop was gone...after one week! The empty-handed walk back to my apartment seemed much, much longer this time than it had a week prior. However, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in JURASSIC PARK, comic readers will find a way. I eventually located a new shop a few blocks down from where I worked but the walk from the office was along-side a freeway and a little treacherous. Driving was an unpleasant option because crossing the traffic was difficult unless you wanted to pay tolls (which I didn’t.) It was a much nicer shop than Atomic Comics, large, well-stocked and, I don’t know...shiny...but the same thrill just wasn’t there.

It was all moot, anyway. After only three months or so, it had become apparent that my friend’s dad had no intention of following through with starting the video production company and I’d ended up doing low-end focus group videos and designing brochures for the marketing research firm. Not bad work but the hours-to-salary ratio was unacceptable and, frankly, I didn’t care much for my friend’s father. So Tooncie and I packed our bags and back home we went.

My little affair with Atomic Comics only lasted one visit but it made one hell of an impression and it remains one of my more vivid comic book memories.

No way am I calling this post "Fisting it."

2010-04-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

My last post got me thinking about all the cool B- and C-tier characters at the Big Two that I loved as a kid. Even more came to mind. KOBRA, DEADMAN, GHOST RIDER, THE DEMON...a few others.

It occurred to me that Mike was the same way. We used to trade titles back and forth all the time but it was usually the large collections like SPIDER-MAN or AVENGERS. Once a creative team moved on and Mike lost interest, he'd start eyeing what I was buying to see if one of "his guys" was working on it. His guys were John Byrne, Jim Starlin, Mike Ploog. Even then Mike was becoming a student of comic art, studying people he thought he could learn from. (My "guy" was Sal Buscema and though Mike appreciated his work, he wasn't necessarily sparked by it creatively. So he never traded for THE INCREDIBLE HULK, ROM or NOVA.)

But Mike rarely gave up the small books. The only one I can remember was SPIDER-WOMAN. He read it, wasn't impressed and turned it over. Somehow, I ended up trading it for something else later on. When he got his hands on one of those little gems like Joe Kubert's RAGMAN or OMEGA THE UNKNOWN or MS. MARVEL, however, he held onto it for dear life. He read CAPTAIN MARVEL, WARLOCK, THE CHAMPIONS and IRON FIST to tatters. He'd let me borrow them, which I often did because I wanted to see why he was so fascinated with them. I knew the books were quality but I was five years younger and much more appreciative of the the more simplistic rendering of my beloved pal Sal. It wasn't until much later that I realized what I was missing out on but by then Mike had those books bagged, boarded and under armed guard.

Thank Crom for reprints. Marvel and DC have gone reprint crazy lately and, unlike horror movie remakes and the 3D crap going on, I'm actually enjoying this trend. It's enabled me to read all those great old books and soak in the artwork that I didn't get a chance to when I was a stupid kid and jumping up and down at the latest issue of HUMAN FLY, US1 and TEAM AMERICA. One of those books is IRON FIST. It was one of those books that seemed to scratch so many of Mike's itches at once. Great John Byrne art, fantasy elements, mature (not to be confused with adult) stories, martial arts (Mike loved Kung Fu movies and took Karate lessons) and had those great Dave Cockrum covers. Best of all, since it was written by Chris Claremont, it had close ties to the X-MEN, Mike's favorite book at the time. I didn't get to spend much time with the books but I remember the incredible art and coloring (Byrne brought out the best in his colorists back then) but I never actually sat down and read them cover to cover. My only exposure to 'Fist was his appearance in MARVEL TEAM-UP, also drawn by Byrne but somehow allowed to remain in my possession. It was enough. His iconic appearance (including his Spider-Man-style eyes) and the great story in that TEAM-UP two-parter were enough to cement him on my list of all-time favorite B-characters.

As I was drawing the above sketch, it occurred to me how great it would be if Marvel had a book set in the Marvel Universe of the '70s, not tied to any modern continuity but with fun, self-contained stories and a rotating cast of B-listers in their classic costumes. Mike would have been perfect for a book like that. It seemed to be his curse that every time he was assigned to a book, it would get sucked into some stupid crossover that would change the character's look (Iron Spider, anyone? JEEZ!) and he wouldn't get to draw the "classic" design. He probably wouldn't want to draw the book because it wouldn't be tied into current continuity and he was very career-conscious but I would have loved to have seen it.

_______

I often bitch about the hours I work and the past two weeks have been no exception. (70 hours last week.) But it does have one beneficial side-effect. When I have down time while I'm waiting on someone else to do their bit so I can do mine, I get to draw guilt free. Who's going to give me grief for sketching at 9:00 at night (or even 2:00 in the afternoon) when I'm not going home until 3:00 in the morning? This sketch was finished in record time. I was very surprised at how fast I managed to draw it, even though I don't think I spent more than five consecutive minutes on it at a time. I wasn't even going to ink it. I was going to just go over it in traditional pencil, but I'm trying to get comfortable with inking my work in preparation for THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR, assuming I ever get to go back to work on it.

I really like how it came out. I'm getting more confident with drawing legs and feet, something I've struggled with in the past. And I think I'm finally starting to like the hands I draw. I was recently telling someone who e-mailed me through the blog that I read a post on Mike Manley's site that really helped with that. He mentioned that, if you're struggling with a particular body part, spend an entire day drawing only that, over and over, from every angle. Before you know it, you'll know how to draw it. I'm no expert by any means, but that bit of advice really came in, um...handy.

Since I really hate the way I draw women, I may start doing more of the female B-listers to get over that hump. But first, I have to do a drawing for my buddy Christian's little girl Lilah. I won't say which character it is that he's asked for but I can say I've never drawn him before and I'm really looking forward to the challenge. That will probably be my next post. Okay, gotta go crawl into bed. On top of all the hours, I'm working, Todd has somehow given me his cold from 300 miles away. Have a great weekend and I hope you like the sketch.

Later!

Kickin' and Creepin'

2010-04-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Suzanne and I went to see KICK-ASS this weekend. I was really expecting to not like this movie. I greatly dislike movies that make fun of geek culture. Granted, there’s a lot to make fun of but it’s such an easy target, it almost feels like bullying. (It’s the same reason dwarf jokes always set my teeth on edge.) But in the case of KICK-ASS, it felt like the filmmakers were laughing with us. Not at us. The geeks (including Kick-Ass himself) are all portrayed as earnest, well-adjusted and pretty darned likeable.

We had a great time and laughed almost constantly, despite the brutal violence, most of which was being committed by the 11-year-old Hit-Girl. I wasn’t sure what to make of a homicidal, pre-pubescent, cherub-faced kid but the whole movie is tongue-in-cheek, so I just went with it. And, let me tell you, Hit-Girl steals the show. I don’t usually like precocious kid actors. (Dakota Fanning, for instance, has always given me the creeps. She was like a forty-year-old woman trapped in a little girl’s body.) But the kid playing Hit-Girl is different somehow. Despite the fact that she kills almost everyone she meets and spouts four-letter words without batting an eyelash, she still maintains an air of adorable sweetness throughout. And I like the fact that her mask is always slightly askew, making her look slightly cross-eyed.

Her dad, the strangely permissive “Big Daddy”, was played by Nicholas Cage, who also tends to grate my nerves, but he was very good in this, doing a riff on Adam West that had me in stitches.

There was also some nice John Romita Jr. artwork on display (given a neat 3D treatment in spots) and the soundtrack (despite being a compilation album and not a score) was, well, kick-ass. All in all, it was a great way to spend an evening. I highly recommend it.

This post’s sketch, I suppose, should have been of Kick-Ass (love that name!) but I was already well into the Creeper drawing before seeing the movie and decided to take advantage of having some art ready to post.

I was inspired by the recent hardcover compilation published by DC of all the Steve Ditko Creeper stories. I was always a big sucker for all the third-tier characters put out by the big two. At Marvel, I loved Nova, Rom, Omega, Deathlok, Nighthawk, Shroud, Black Panther, Vision...If there was a character without his own book or one that lasted less than 25 issues, I was a fan. At DC, it was Firestorm, Black Lightning, Eclipso, Metamorpho, Steel, Blue Devil...and The Creeper.

His origin was standard Ditko fare. Reporter Jack Ryder gets injured and happens to be near a doctor who has created a special healing serum that bestows superpowers. The doctor, upon supplying the serum to Ryder, is shot and killed by mob gunmen. This was very similar to the character The Destructor that Ditko created for Atlas Comics a bit later. Even I admit that The Creeper looks ridiculous in his slapped-together Halloween costume (assembled from odds and ends at the last minute to sneak into a mob costume party), including a red sheepskin rug (!) but somehow it works. Steve Ditko had a real knack for designing compelling characters. (Spider-Man, anyone?) Maybe they wouldn’t have looked like much in real life but, on paper, they were wonderous.

When I still had comic-book artist aspirations, I put together a couple of sample pages featuring The Creeper but never finished the samples. But I’ve always enjoyed drawing him. The new hardcover gave me the perfect excuse. I really liked where the drawing was going but ran out of time last week and ended up rushing it at the end to finish up this weekend. So the background didn’t quite come out like I’d hoped.

Anyway, I hope you like it.

Later.

California Dreamin'

2010-04-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

Been a while, hasn’t it?

My delay in posting hasn’t been because I was busy. Quite the opposite. Suzanne and I went on a much, much-needed, week-long vacation to California. Suzanne’s Dad has a brother in L.A. and one in Las Vegas and we all went out there for a bit of a family reunion and also to celebrate Suze’s and her sister’s birthdays. I didn’t mention it here because, as I’ve pointed out, it’s not wise to announce on the internet that you’re leaving your house unattended for a week. Actually, that wasn’t really the case this time as Mom and Dad watched the house and the cats for us so we could enjoy ourselves without worry.

We had an incredible time.

The plane ride over was surprisingly smooth. A brief layover in Dallas split the trip nicely in half. I hate, hate, hate flying in planes but I have to commend Continental for a very pleasant ride. Both legs. On the second half, they played a movie on those little drop-down screens. I didn't want to pay the 3 dollars for headphones so Suzanne suggested we try our iPhone earbuds and, what do you know! We each only got one channel but it was a nice distraction. Problem was, they showed a movie called HACHI, A DOG'S STORY and I really don't know what they were thinking. It's the biggest heart-wrenching tear-jerker since THE YEARLING. Suzanne and I were crying like babies and, as I checked around, so were a lot of other passengers. I was still sniffling when we got off the plane.

We enjoyed hanging out with Suze’s cousin Michelle (a member of the LAPD) and her partner Renee (who is currently one of my favorite people in the world) and their amazingly smart toddler for a couple of days. Then we moved in with Michelle’s poor sister Lisa, her husband John and their two adorable kids who had to put up with us for five days and nights.

We crammed in a lot during our week there including a pool party at Lisa and John’s (featuring Uncle Mo’s famous Mogaritas) and a trip to the beautiful Huntington Beach. We got to finally eat at In and Out Burger (a personal goal—hey, I’m easy.) We also spent two straight days at Disneyland (I’ve never been so tired in my life.) where I was cajoled by Michelle to ride my very first (and, coincidentally, last) rollercoaster ever, California Screamin’.

I’m petrified of heights and this was a nice refresher course on why that is so. There were a lot of great non-coaster rides at Disneyland (some we rode multiple times) and I had a much better time than I expected. I’d taken a paperback book in my coat pocket and never even looked at it.

It was really great seeing the three brothers get together. I'm very fond of my Father-In-Law. He doesn't get to see his brothers very often. They almost couldn't live farther apart and still be in the same country. So it was pretty touching. I admit to feeling a little envious and I missed Mike quite a lot on the trip. We gave Michelle a copy of TELLOS for Jake when he gets older and that made me feel good. Especially when she saw Mike's name on the cover and made the connection and we talked about him for a while.

But, for me, the best part of the trip was the last night there. Suzanne and I had given her West Coast posse a break and decided to spend the night at a hotel across from the airport as our flight left extremely early Saturday morning. On the way to return the rental car, Suzanne suggested, as an afterthought, that we check out the Santa Monica pier. I eagerly agreed, despite the traffic, because it was still early and I secretly had hopes of catching a glimpse of the parking lot where Jim Rockford’s trailer was on THE ROCKFORD FILES TV show. That didn’t happen but we did have fun checking out the pier. We spent about twenty minutes or so sitting at the very end of the pier just staring out at the ocean and feeling the wind in our hair. I was more relaxed and content than I have been in such a very long time. I didn’t want to leave. But it was getting dark and we had a lot to do to get ready for our trip home.

The flight back, unfortunately, wasn't nearly as pleasant as the trip over. This time, it was U.S. Airways and there were no free perks like meals or movies. The planes seemed more cramped and our layover was in Charlotte, N.C., so it meant a longer first leg. To make things worse, the air conditioning was much weaker so that, when the baby in the next row crapped his diaper, it was painfully apparent. I was really suffering but Suze didn't smell anything. I started to doubt myself until we both saw the mother pull back the kids pants and jerk her head back. She walked her two kids (the other being barely a toddler) up to the forward bathroom. A flight attendant was laughing with a passenger in first class and, as the woman passed with the baby, her head jerked up and she started fanning the air in front of her face. She looked like someone had just painted a mustache on her lip with Mr. Hanky. I called out "Aaiiieee! Un skunk de pew!" while miming fumes passing our noses and Suzanne and I broke up laughing for at least ten minutes. We were grateful when we landed in Richmond.

Well, I’ve got a rough week ahead so I don’t know if I’ll be able to post for a while. I hope everybody had a nice Easter holiday and enjoyed this great weather we’ve had. It’s long overdue, in my book.

Later.

Logos and Stuff

2010-03-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Just a few odds and ends this time. I'd hoped to have more art to post but it feels like my life has been turned upside down (again) the last couple of weeks. Suzanne and I are fine but work has been downright nasty and there have been some other things I don't want to go into online. The work thing is frustrating because I remember many times in college when our roommates or friends would claim to be envious of us art students because they were under the impression we didn't have to work as hard as the rest of the student population. I have very vivid memories of all-nighters, sick to my stomach on No-Doze and Vivarin, trying to finish my projects on time while my roommates were snoozing away, having finished their two hours or so of math homework. Those guys are now making great livings as Pharmacists and Physical Therapists, working bankers hours and spending nights and weekends with their families while Suze and I are still plugging away doing 14-hour days and having to meet unreasonable deadlines. It feels stupid to complain about our jobs while good people are out of work but I guess the grass is always greener. I should be grateful to be getting a paycheck, I suppose.

And not be a complete downer, but I heard this weekend that Dick Giordano passed away after struggling with an illness. I can't say I was a raving fan but I did like his work and could always spot it a mile away. He was a giant in the industry and I was too intimidated to say hello at conventions. That's something I regret because he seemed to be a very nice, approachable man. My sincere sympathies to his family, friends and fans.

Last post, PJ mentioned wanting to use Mike's LOST character drawings for a post about the show but not wanting to presume. PJ, it was very nice of you to wonder that. All I can say is that I don't think Mike would have minded. He probably would have been flattered. So please feel free. My only concerns with people using Mike's work is that a) folks don't try to pass it off as their own, b) if any money is to be made as a result, I would hope it would be passed on to the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund at S.C.A.D. and c) I'm made aware of it so I can make sure Mike's work isn't being used for something unsavory or in a way I feel Mike wouldn't appreciate. None of those apply to you, PJ, so post away.

________________

Okay, on to some smiles. For me, anyway. One of the bright spots in my life that keeps me going through the long hours at my job is my work on THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR. I'm fully aware of the odds against me ever finishing the project, much less getting it published, but it's a fun little diversion and I really enjoy myself when I'm working on it. Sometimes I picture the ten or twelve people who read this blog seeing the stuff I post and thinking to themselves, "He's not serious, is he?" The answer is yes...and no. I have no illusions. At this point, I'm aware that I'm doing fan fiction. I'm also aware that if, by some slim chance, the book actually makes it to the finish line, it will be inevitably compared to the work of my brother and found lacking. And I'm fine with that. I expect it will be either panned, ignored or overlooked completely. But I'm doing it for me and that's all I need. It gives me the hope that my life can be more than sixty hours a week at my desk and dinners in front of the TV. If people end up liking it, that's just gravy.

As I've been drawing the characters and seeing them come to life in front of me (I only had the vaguest of ideas what some of them looked like.) the project has become more and more real to me. I thought maybe having a logo for the book would solidify things for me. I was right. One day, during my lunch break, it was raining outside and I couldn't take my usual walk. So I spent it working on the logo and came up with several possibles. Christian helped me whittle down the candidates. This was his favorite:

His view was that it had a nice old-school typography look to it. I agreed with him. The problem is that, with this logo, I fear that my Stephen King influences are showing. This font is very similar to the one used in the DEAD ZONE logo. It's why I chose it, in fact. I even did a stacked version that was much too close for comfort. I got so distracted by the similarities that I don't think I can bear to use it. Sorry Christian.

So this is the one I'm going with. I think it looks cleaner and a little more modern. I will most certainly tweak it before I'm done but I think it's close. I hope you dig it.

I was so happy with the direction the logos were taking that I whipped up a cover sketch with my Wacom tablet at work and put the logo on it. I'm extremely happy with the cover design but I'm afraid I can't post it because I feel it reveals a little more than I'm ready to share yet. Maybe once the writing is done.

Have a great week and I hope I didn't come off sounding like this chick:

Oscar

2010-03-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

No, not the award. Oscar Freiberger, the character.

A couple of weeks ago, I got involved in an email dispute with a couple of coworkers about the TV show LOST. I've always been a big fan of the character Kate (played by the lovely Evangeline Lilly) but these two guys can't stand her. They contend that she's worthless as a character because she contributes nothing to the story. "She's just around to screw things up. Name one thing she's done," one of them said. Now, at the time, all I could think of was a lame response: "She keeps me watching."

But the question stuck with me. I've since thought of several things Kate's contributed to the story, not the least of which was taking Aaron off the island. But the idea that a character has to actually do something proactive to have value to a story kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, Kate, as a reluctant member of the love triangle between herself, Sawyer and Jack, has had great influence over the decisions those two have made and, thus, has affected the story, albeit indirectly. And, in her defense, her character is not uninteresting. Her backstory is one of the more action-packed and riveting of the entire group.

So, as I'm now working on the script for the third part* of THE HAND ME DOWN HORROR, I started thinking about the relevance of my own characters. I wanted my lead character Johnny to have a fairly large group of friends because, unless you're talking about Peter Parker, most high-schoolers do. I wasn't what you'd call popular by any stretch of the imagination but, at that age, I had a "crew" that I hung around with at lunch and between classes and went to the movies with. Some of us were closer than others. But it was a nice, comfortable group that I knew I could count on if I needed something. And vice versa.

As I've been progressing into the more vaguely plotted-out portion of my story (I didn't do an outline so I know the beginning and end but only some of what comes between.) I'm noticing that some of my characters have, to this point, just been around for atmosphere and as foils for Johnny. (But, hey, nobody ever complains about Dr. Watson.) They all have their arcs and backstories and I'd intended to include all that in the story but I'm noticing just how little of that sort of thing you can include without slowing things down. Eamon's arc is my favorite and one that I think would resonate the most with readers. But I keep wondering if it has any real relevance to the main story. I would hate to shoehorn in something just because I like it. That's just self-indulgent.

Fortunately, I don't have that problem with Oscar, seen in the drawing above. When I was first thinking about these characters, I had an old high-school chum in mind if only in appearance and demeanor. I really liked this guy because, back then, in the age before the internet, he was a goldmine of knowledge about all kinds of obscure things I'd never heard of. He lived with his parents in what looked like a delightful old farm house with wonderfully creaky floorboards and, one day, when I gave him a ride home after school, he took me to his room and showed me his collection of old beer bottles and cans that are probably worth a fortune today. He had great taste in music and, while the rest of us were listening to 80's Pop (not knocking it, mind you) on the one good station in the area, he was walking around in DOORS T-shirts and listening to the classics that I wouldn't be exposed to until college. His dad ran a hardware store and, when we visited him, he'd talk to you like just another guy, and not like some kid that was bugging him.

As I got into the story, though, all that, neat as it was, wasn't enough and I realized I needed someone who knew the things that Johnny needs to find out. Johnny's not dumb but he's my Everyman (well, Everykid) and ultra-smart kids can sometimes come off as annoying or precocious. That's not Johnny. And I didn't want him spending the whole story on the computer Googling things. I want this to feel like a timeless coming-of-age story and kids sitting around with laptops is anything but timeless. (Can you imagine Wil Wheaton in STAND BY ME calling for help on his iPhone and pinpointing the body's location with GPS? Ugh.) So enter Oscar. Oscar knows everything. It's actually a sort of running gag throughout the story. Oscar probably couldn't use a shovel but he can give you a thirty minute dissertation on the Battle of Hastings whether you want to hear it or not. But he's also annoyingly sarcastic. He needed a personality so I started thinking, "What would Gregory House have been like as a kid?" And, boom. Oscar was born. I hope you'll like him as much as I do.

I was going to include some logo designs but, since work is a real bear lately (how am I ever going to draw this damned book when I barely have time to write it?) and this post has gone way long, I'll save them for next time.

Later.

_______________________________

* This, by the way, is the most I've ever scripted out on any of my little amateur projects. I've written (and re-written) untold "first issues" and typed up complete plots of at least half a dozen ideas and written several short stories and one novella. But I think I may actually finish this one. Imagine that.

Two Morrows Today

2010-03-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

I love all the books that Two Morrows puts out and until they cancelled ROUGH STUFF and WRITE NOW!, I was spending more on their magazines each month than on the comics they were writing about. They just put out a long-overdue (in my opinion) tribute book focusing on the great Sal Buscema who is my all-time favorite comic book artist (Sorry, Darwyn.) and one of my personal heroes. (I forgive him for barely remembering and not really liking Nova. Nobody's perfect.)

Imagine my delight when they emailed me a while back to ask if I would be okay with them using one of Mike’s drawings of Spider-Ham for the cover of this month’s BACK ISSUE! (Which was really nice of them considering they didn’t have to, as far as I know. Marvel? Yes. Me? No.) Though the drawing’s been seen before, I’m so excited to see Mike’s artwork on the front of a new publication.

I can’t express how thrilling it always was for me to pick up Mike’s books each month. I’m in my 40’s now but I was still a little brother and still a comic fan. Seeing that ‘Ringo signature on a cover always filled me with pride and I couldn’t wait until the next time I could talk to Mike about his latest work. I can’t exactly call him up anymore but at least I’ll get to have a little bit of the old thrill again this Wednesday. So thanks, Two Morrows. I owe ya one.

Looks like a fun issue. Make sure to check it out.

Incontheivable

2010-03-09T09:29:00.000-08:00

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of comics from Boom! Studios. Particularly the ones written by Mike’s buddy Mark Waid. I’ve been enjoying them immensely but I’ve started noticing a pattern with the titles. “Unknown”, “Irredeemable”, “Unthinkable”, “Incorruptible”...

And with Boom!’s streak of winning the rights to licensed properties recently, it got me thinking...

Hey, I’d buy it!

Toonces, the Sleep Thief

2010-02-26T07:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve been gone a while but not because I’m just lazin’ around. Well, not unless you count feverishly reading Stephen King’s UNDER THE DOME as lazin’. It’s King’s best book in years. (Actually, I have to qualify that because I actually haven’t read the last few.) With King, I’d gotten to the point where I’d reach about the 100 page mark and hit a “wall” that would take me several attempts to get past. I’d lose interest and have to struggle to regain it. When this happened with BAG OF BONES, I set the book aside for almost a year before picking it back up again. I was glad I did because it was a great story. But his books are so long it became a chore to finish them. As a lifelong Kind devotee, this was heartbreaking. But none of that with DOME. From page one, I was hooked and for the last two weeks, every free moment has been dedicated to finishing the book. I’ve got less than a hundred pages to go and should be finished before I turn in tonight. (So don’t spoil the ending!)

One unfortunate side effect has been a lack of sleep. I’ve been suffering from that enough lately as it is. Ever since college, I’ve had job after job that required all-nighters or, at least late-nighters. And often. The result has been that I’ve been subsisting on 5-to-6 hours of sleep per night for going on 20 years. (An addiction to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network hasn’t helped.) And for the last several months, our aging kitty Toonces has started howling for his breakfast earlier and earlier. He used to start in at 7:00 a.m. if we were sleeping in. These days, he’s chiming in at 4:30 on the worst days. It’s taking a toll. Last night, I was at my LCS and having a conversation with my friend Marvin. My mind kept wandering and I couldn’t concentrate, often asking him to repeat what he’d just said. My body was aching all over and I couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. Today, I couldn’t tell you what we talked about or even which books I bought without checking. Last night I managed 8 hours of sleep and the difference is amazing. I’m going to make an effort to do that more often. I’ve heard that getting less sleep takes years off your life. And I believe it.

On a happier note...as a horror fan and overgrown kid, I have an enduring love for the monster cereals manufactured by General Foods. Mom tried to keep us healthy but she also liked to let us be kids. Though we usually got Cheerios or Kix (or mostly plain ol’ oatmeal) for breakfast as kids, Mom would sometimes favor us with such treats as Cocoa Puffs, Sugar Smacks, Cap’n Crunch (the peanut butter variety is my all-time favorite) and Fruity or Cocoa Pebbles. (I loved how the milk would taste after a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles.) All the Kellogg’s mascots, at one time or another, were close breakfast companions. And, on happy occasions, Mom would come home with a selection of the monster cereals. BooBerry, FrankenBerry and Count Chocula were the favorites, of course, but we were even around for the brief but welcome appearances of Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy. Though those two are no longer manufactured, they hold a warm place in my heart.

For the last few years, I’ve been living through a second childhood of sorts, collecting all my old favorite movies, re-reading favorite books and comics, listening to ‘80s-era music and watching old, old TV shows. And I’d been hitting the Walmart cereal aisle to buy the occasional box of Count Chocula and FrankenBerry. But, sadly, Walmart has stopped carrying the cereals and they aren’t available anywhere else in Richmond. Trust me, I’ve looked. I was hugely disappointed. So, imagine my delight two days ago, when I came in to work and found a large cardboard shipping box on my desk. I opened it to find two boxes each of Boo, Frankie and the Count! Suzanne, the reigning Best Wife Ever, had struck again, ordering a case for me from an online candy retailer she’d located. I was so happy, I thought it warranted a sketch. I hope you like it.

Have a great weekend. I’ll be getting plenty of sleep. Well, unless the sugar high keeps me up. Mmmm...

Aaa-whoooooo!

2010-02-14T07:38:00.000-08:00

Now, that was a Wolfman movie. Went to an early matinee with Christian instead going by myself Friday night, as planned. And that was a good thing. Despite the long lines of cabin-fever suffering Richmonders hitting the road after being snowed-in all month, people who see horror movies during the matinees are people who are there for the movie, not so they can be seen.

The movie itself was a lot of fun. It's a direct remake of the original '40s Lon Chaney Jr. version but adds some (telegraphed) plot twists I won't spoil. Hugo Weaving as Inspector Abberline (yes, that Abberline) and Anthony Hopkins as Lawrence Talbot's father were great, as expected. Emily Blunt played her part well but was really not given much to do. And Benicio Del Toro certainly looked the part and was a great Wolfman but ultimately never came across as very sympathetic. In the original, Lon Chaney Jr. was extremely likable but Del Toro has such an edge to him he may have been miscast. And that's not even taking into account the fact that his accent was constantly slipping. Talbot was supposed to have spent most of his life in the U.S., so it was forgivable that he sounded American most of the time. But every now and then, he sounded Puerto Rican. And that was just weird. Which is a shame because I love Del Toro in just about everything, he bears a passing resemblance to Lon Chaney Jr. and he looked absolutely fantastic in the makeup.

Tthe film does succeed in the most important parts. It looks gorgeous. Like a Frank Frazetta painting come to life. Rick Baker's makeup is the usual feast for the eyes. And the scenes where the Wolfman wreaks havoc are a brutally good time. Even the CG transformations which caused such an internet furor were not that bad. Probably the best I've seen on film. They wisely didn't spend all that much time on them, just using them to accent the change. Talbot's transformations take place fairly quickly (unlike the ten-minute change David Kessler underwent in AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) so you don't have time to wonder if they looked convincing enough before the blood starts spraying and heads start flying.

The gore is out of control. In torture porn movies like HOSTEL, that's a bad thing because it becomes the whole point. In WOLFMAN, it's a means to an end and it turns Del Toro's Wolfman into a ferocious, fearsome beast to be avoided at all costs. In the original, Chaney Jr. would pounce on his victims and choke them to death with a high-pitched snarl. I remember watching it the first time and thinking, "Aww. Cute! Throw him a ball!" Del Toro's Wolfman is anything but cute. Unfortunately, they do show him running on all fours quite a lot and it looks weird because when humans run on all fours, their butts stick up in the air. Legs are longer than arms and all that. He is called "The Wolfman", and they should have just stuck with the ol' bipedal locomotion. But the way it was shot, in quick cuts and in foggy low-light situations, it was a lot more convincing than Sabertooth in the WOLVERINE movie. That was just ridiculous.

Sadly, there was something not quite right about the movie. I can't put my finger on it (maybe a lack of emotional involvement) but it keeps it from being a great monster film. But it is a very good one. All in all, a fun entry into the Werewolf genre and worth your ten bucks.

The Wolfman

2010-02-06T12:35:00.000-08:00

Though I haven't been much enjoying the weather this year (we've just had our third massive snowfall in a month) I have to say this is one of my favorite times of year. Because of the horror movies. A lot of them get dumped in the theater around this time because, though they usually make a profit, they aren't really family-friendly enough to be considered summer tent poles. So early this year, we're getting LEGION, THE CRAZIES and a film I'm looking forward to more than any other movie this year, THE WOLFMAN. It seems like this thing's been in production forever. I think Ain't It Cool News began reporting on it at least 5 years ago. But it's finally done and will be in theaters next weekend.

Werewolves are my favorite monster but they've always had a spotty record in theaters. People just don't seem to know what to do with them. I guess it's the whole full moon thing. Kind of makes it hard to come up with a convincing threat if you know exactly when and how the monster will strike. (The movie BAD MOON tried something interesting with that. Michael Pare handcuffed himself to a tree each night. But how did he manage to get loose each morning? Never figured that one out.) But everything I've seen from THE WOLFMAN looks promising. This looks like great old school werewolf stuff, right out of the Lon Chaney playbook. And I can't wait. I just hope I can make it to the damned theater. I'll be spending tomorrow digging out of the snow (just like last weekend) and we're supposed to get even more snow this coming week.

Anyway, to get myself in the mood, I did the sketch above. I still stink at drawing werewolves but I kind of like it.

***********

One more quick note. Christian had been after me all week to go with him to the book signing of AFRODISIAC creator Jim Rugg at Velocity Comics Friday night. Suze and I were doubtful we'd make it because of the impending storm. Fortunately, the snow fall didn't start in earnest until late last night and all we were getting was a nasty, soupy slush. So we went ahead and checked it out. Only to have Christian bail on us. (Get it? Christian bail?) Still, it was nice to be able to check out Rugg's beautiful original artwork and pick up a signed copy of the AFRODISIAC hardcover. Nice stuff. If you haven't read it, please do. Mr. Rugg will be signing more books today, Saturday, February 6th at the awesome Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC. If you remember, that's where Mike bought all his books. Check it out if you're in the area.

Later

Not snow quick...

2010-01-31T17:24:00.000-08:00

I was hoping that I would be making this post to tell you how much fun I had at Darwyn Cooke's appearance at the Smithsonian this weekend. It's no secret how much I idolize Mr. Cooke and love his work. He appeared to do a reading of his adaptation of THE HUNTER by Richard Stark. Newsarama did an article on it here:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/Darwyn-Cooke-Smithsonian-100118.html

Suzanne and I were going to make a weekend of it, getting a room in D.C. and attending the reading with our friends Rod and Leanne Hannah who were also planning to attend. Then it was going to be dinner at our favorite D.C. eatery, The Hard Times Cafe and a Sunday shopping trip to Potomac Mills.

Alas, it was not to be. Richmond almost never gets snow. Even when it falls everywhere else in the state. There's something about the terrain that keeps our temperature slightly higher than surrounding areas. But this year, we've been getting hammered with the white stuff like I haven't seen since my childhood. By the time we would have been leaving for D.C., we'd gotten about 4-5 inches on the ground and traffic accidents were clogging the roads all over the place. So we decided to bag the trip.

On the upside, we got to spend the weekend shoveling snow and digging out our neighbor who'd banged up his truck trying to get out of his driveway. Crap. Remember when 12 inches of snow meant a week off from school spent sculpting snowmen and throwing snowballs at your siblings from elaborate snow forts? Sigh.