Witchy Woman

In today's installment of Messin' Around, we present the Scarlet Witch.

One of my art school teachers posited the idea that men were mostly angles and women were mostly curves. It's something I apply to these Powerful Women pieces. But, for this one, I wanted to see how angular, yet feminine, I could keep the drawing. Scarlet Witch has a lot of angles in her costume, especially in her headpiece, so I could play off of that.

I also like the wacky Ditko-esque background that I was able to achieve. Part of it was a Happy Accident in using the Photoshop Twirl filter and applying it to the wrong area.

Now, if we could just get Wanda here back together with The Vision.

Look! Up on the blog!

Just messing around a little bit today. I wanted to try a different style, different color approach, different color choices. So here's the Superman illo I kicked around today.

It'll Be Here Before You Know It

I received my advance copies of Love and Capes #7 from the printer today. I got both the Free Comic Book Day and the retail version (available in July). I am so looking forward to this FCBD. I didn't know what I was in for last year. This year I do, and I think it's gonna rock!

Now You See Her, Now You Don't

I've had a little time to experiment and keep up the sketches. So, today, it's Phantom Lady.

I used to love DC’s Freedom Fighters comic. There was just something cool about a new universe of heroes (who all seemed to relocate to Earth One like it was moving to another city) that I’d never seen before. Freedom Fighters was cancelled in the DC Implosion, but she eventually came back in All-Star Squadron. For those of you DC people, that means she started out on Earth-Two, moved to Earth-X, and then Earth-One. And didn’t age a day.

Only later did I find out she was part of Quality Comics. That’s something I miss about comics these days, that sense of history that they had. So many characters today are clean reboots and you don't have that desire to find the old comics, see what they were about.

Phantom Lady’s costume has got skimpier and skimpier as the years have gone on... and I’m apparently not going to deviate too far from that tradition here.

Illo a la Retro

I've just done a spate of illustrations for Lone Star Press and my friend Bill Williams. These are for a forthcoming Wowio book that he's putting out, and I'll let him announce those particulars. I'm sure he won't mind me telling you to check out his books over there, though.

These are illustrations for a prose book, and I wanted to do them in a kind of classic pen illustration style. But I don't have any of those crow quills anymore, and was never all that comfortable with one anyway. So I decided to work all in brush. This one, a picture of an old-time coffin shop, turned out particularly well. I like that there are no ruler straight lines. I think I got some interesting textures, too. And working with only one gray helps keep it simple yet interesting while separating the image nicely.

Blub, Blub

My friend Thomas who runs the excellent Say it Backwards blog has started a new one, the Underwater Jiu Jitsu blog, devoted to Aquaman. I love SIB, and while Aquaman isn't on my short list of top characters, I look forward to seeing the Sea King through Thomas' unique prism of humor and insight.

Oddly, as I was battling the Vulcan Death Cold yesterday, watching the Indians trying desperately to lose their opening game, I started thinking about the next sketchbook piece. I'd decided to do Mera, Aquaman's wife. I don't know if she's dead anymore, of if they're married anymore or, well, anything. Man, Arthur has been messed up but good. And Mera's been messed up worse.

Heck, Aquaman killed her when she went insane. Well, he threw her onto a sharp piece of wood by accident, impaling her. It didn't take, as she got out of her casket the next day saying "I'm an alien from another dimension. Did you think my anatomy was the same as yours?" Well, you two did have a kid together, so it was a safe assumption that you kept your vital organs in your stomach cavity, but that's beside the point. Then she screamed at him some more and disappeared into a wormhole. Or something.

Anyway, in honor of the new Underwater Jiu Jitsu blog, and just because, here's my Mera illustration. If you really like it, you can buy it here.

Oh, and I think I'm winning the battle with the cold. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a day or two.

Frak Yeah!

If, four years ago, you would have asked me what my favorite TV show would be, there's no way I would have said Battlestar Galactica. I like sci-fi, and was looking forward to the miniseries, but Galactica, really?

The mini-series had that languid mini-series pacing and that turned me off a little bit. I wasn't sold on Starbuck being female, and there were other things that left me cool to the project. Still, there were two scenes that stand out that were so cool that I knew I'd give it a chance if it became a series. One was that, in a scene where the Colonial anthem needed to be played, that anthem was the original series theme song. That was a nice nod to the fans of the original show. The other was in the first couple of minutes, the Cylon now known as Number Six was examining a little baby and, in doing so, snapped it's neck. It's not that I'm in favor of infantcide, but it's a brave storytelling choice, and one that really established the Cylons as a cold, calculating threat.

Then the first episode aired, and I was blown away. There was something about doing one hour instead of two that tightened everything. And it's never looked back since.

Battlestar Galactica is just a perfectly executed piece of entertainment. Actors, writers, special effects all work so seamlessly that there's no weak link. It's one of the few shows that have inspired blind trust in me. If Ronald Moore and David Eick said "For the next season, we're going to do BSG as a three-camera sitcom, shot on tape with a laugh track, and bring in Norman Fell as Cylon Number One" I'd have to say "Okay, I'll check it out." That's the kind of trust they've engendered.

The last season of Battlestar starts this Friday. It had dropped of my radar (or DRAIS as we BSG peeps would say) thanks to Sci-Fi's odd "whenever we feel like it" scheduling. But it's back now, and I'm going to enjoy every last minute of it. And, with Galactica on my mind, I've done an illo of the sexy Cylon, Number Six.

Bobble Fish

The Lake County Captains are the single-A franchise of the Cleveland Indians, and their ballpark is maybe five minutes away from Fortress Zahler. I finally made contact with them last year when Comic Heaven and I provided them books for Free Comic Book Day. Since then, we've spoken of a couple of further projects. The first one to come to fruition is this, a Fish Race bobblehead series giveaway.

The Captains have a fish race, featuring Buster Bluegill, Pauley Perch and Willy Walleye. It's the same as the sausage races or condiment races at other parks. Now these three characters will get to live in three-dimensional form, designed by me.

The fish in question are costumes that are more giant masks than full costumes that the runners wear. I had to translate this format into a more cartoony fish figure. I like to call them Bobble Fish, as a little nod to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. They share a common form and will each sport unique colors.

Click on the fish to the left to see the complete style guide sheet.

They'll be given away on Saturday June 28, Saturday July 26, Saturday August 23. We're working out details so I can hopefully do a signing of the bobble fish one of those days.

And thanks to Comic Heaven, copies the FCBD version of Love and Capes will be given away this Free Comic Book Day, too!

Youthful Indiscretions

A long time ago, or at least it feels that way, I did the illustrations and designed a book called Women Do and Say the Dumbest Things. I did this for Jimmy and Chip on WMJI, Cleveland's number one (and certainly my favorite) Lanigan and Malone Morning Show. The good-natured book did okay, but despite our best efforts all around, it wasn't the runaway hit we'd all hoped for.

Artistically, though, it was a watershed for me. It's here that I first used what would evolve into my Love and Capes style. I broke out of some of the traditional superhero stuff and did some cartooning that opened up a much larger world.

Now, thanks to Wowio, you can read this book for free. There are about 100 stories, all submitted by listeners to WMJI, as well as one submitted by me. It's a short, fun little book.

Jimmy, Chip and I always promised to do a sequel, Men Do and Say the Dumbest Things. "Buy this one and we'll do another," we said. We didn't get enough to do that, but here's a second chance for all of us. Download the book and if it does well enough, maybe you'll see another. And you can submit your stories at the book's website.

Lantern's Light

While I was in Orlando for MegaCon, I met a Green Lantern fan who wanted a sketch done. We wound up doing it through the mail for reasons which don't need exploring at this juncture. He asked which member of the GL Corps I wanted to draw and I gave him three choices: Arisa (I am looking for new pieces for the second sketchbook), Tomar-Re (the example I use for what cool action figures you can get now as opposed to when I was a kid) and a Guardian (the Guardians may have been modeled after Irwin Hasen, who taught me at Kubert). He chose the Guardian Ganthet, so I put this one together.

The customer wanted everything done on green paper, which is all kinds of appropriate for Green Lantern stuff, hence the emerald hue to the illo.