Stopping a War with Love

This year I'm participating in Wonder Woman Day. It's a day designed to promote and raise awareness of domestic violence. I've created and am donating a piece of artwork for the New Jersey area charity auction that will benefit SAFE in Hunterdon, the local Crisis Center and services. It's done as a tie-in to National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I've drawn a piece with Wonder Woman and Amazonia. I've formatted it so that it's a four-panel design, with the initial rough, the tight pencils, the inks, and the colored version. I thought highlighting the process might make it a more interesting piece. You can see how to bid on my piece, and many others, here.

Click on either image to see the two princesses embiggened!

Cincinnati: The one with the comics and the beer

I was at the inaugural Cincinnati Comic Expo this past weekend. You're never sure what to expect from a first year show, but this one exceeded my expectations. Big kudos to Andrew and Matt for putting on such a great show!

And, as usual, I've returned to Art Studio Zee with a ton of stuff to do and a well-scrambled brain, so I'm going to do this stream-of-consiousness factoid style, with some commissions I did scattered about. The full-color Superman piece was for the auction, and bought by a former classmate of mine at Kubert.

You know how to click and embiggen, right?

The best part of the show is the new people I get to meet. I've known Lora and Mike Innes for a couple of years now, but we were stationed next to each other and got to have some long-form conversations and even brunch. That was all kids of awesome. I met legends Murphy and Helen Anderson, Russ Heath and Al and Roz Bellman. That was a treat. Mark Waid is right, too, Murphy Anderson has the best voice in comics, a honey-dipped baritone. And, you know, killer drawing chops and a fantastic ink line. I also got to meet SteveScott, a crazily-talented artist whom I've been sadly unaware of up to this point. We had some great discussions way too late into the night at the hotel bar. I also got to meet Michael and David Uslan. Great people and David is spearheading Graphic.ly where Love and Capesand The Dreamerwill be showing up really soon. Maybe even some other stuff, but I can't talk about that now.

Sales were pretty good at the show, too. Cincy seemed fairly starved for a good comic show, and now I think they have one. With a show with no track record, you're always worried about who, if anyone, will show up. Attendance was good, and people were buying. Maybe it's that without a second day of the show, everyone has a little more impetus to make decisions. Lora and my panel were really well attended, too.

Bonus fun came because the Cincinnati Oktoberfest was right outside the con hotel. This was great for all my cheesy macaroni and apple strudel needs (the beer lines were a little too long for me) and it was fun to have somewhere to go and wander after show hours. It made driving back to the hotel a little difficult from the closed roads, though. I was particularly disappointed that after going to morning Mass, God didn't see fit to part the orange barrels for me. Perhaps I should have prayed harder.

I even mananged to plot out the next page or two of Love and Capes and really lock things down for the end of the book. Now, all I have to do is actually draw the thing. Hey, that's what the night's for, right? Well, that and the How I Met Your Mother premiere.

And I'll definitely see you next year in Cincinnati!

Look, Up in the Sky!

Here's a Superman commission that I recently did for a fan. There's a lot I like about this. I've made no secret of the fact that the Crusader borrows liberally from the Superman well, so it's nice to find a different way to portray a similar character. I think this would be a great style to do a Superman all-ages kids book in.

In fact, in drawing it, a great idea struck me for how to handle such a book. Obviously, I can't reveal it here, especially since I might eventually need to recycle that idea somewhere else. But, hey, DC call me. We'll talk.

There's Something About a Bad Girl

One of the other things I like about doing commissions is the specificity and originality of the requesters. As an artist, the mission statement "Draw whatever you want" is always daunting. There's too much to choose from. Well, not too much, I can wrangle it down, but it takes effort.

I love when people come up with a sketchbook of all one character or theme. It gives me a starting point, and usually the other commissions in the book make me want to up my game to compete. The estimable Chris Sims had a Jimmy Olsen sketchbook, and I drew Jimmy as Flamebird from the Bottle City of Kandor… life size. Too up all of an inch on the page.

Here, my requester wanted Major Kira, from the excellent and dreadfully-underrated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine looking in the mirror and seeing her Mirror Universe equivalent, the Intendant. I had to research the characters, and get out my Deep Space Nine Companion, which ate up a ton of time because I can never just look at the pictures. I start reading, and then I want to start watching again. Such a good show, and one that really schools you as a writer.

But, I eventually broke away and finished this piece. I'm pleased with how Nana Visitor's likeness was captured, the expression on each face, and the body language of each character.

Kilowog a Doodle All the Day

Right before I left for San Diego, I got a couple of commission requests. I take orders online, too, and I'm actually pretty quick. These took almost a month because I had to fit in my World Tour of All The US States With Disney Parks in. This one is of Kilowog, of the Green Lantern Corps.

He's fun to draw, especially because of his cartoony proportions. I can never remember how his face is constructed, though, so it always takes reference to do it. Fortunately, I have the action figure.

Make Mine Ms. Marvel!

Speaking of conventions, I'll be doing commissions at Baltimore. I charge $20 for a black-and-white image, $40 for color. Color requires me to take the piece home and color it on my computer, since I color digitally. Here's a fine example of that, a Ms. Marvel piece that I did in San Diego and then brought home to add some color.

I actually posted this days ago on my Twitter feed. Twitter is so low-maintenance that it's easy to get stuff up there fast, as opposed to here where I feel compelled to write complete sentences. What? You're not following me on Twitter? Perhaps you should.

Insert Clever Backwards Title Here

Zatanna was really popular at Charlotte this year, including having a set of Zatannas be the artwork models at the charity auction. It's always good to see Zee, but I thought it was particularly cool to see this George Peréz 80s-version.

Here was my run at the character, harkening back to her live magic stage show. This was done at the table at Charlotte, and then taken back home to color.

Black Cat Scratch Fever

This commission came across my website. He wanted a picture of Spider-Man's ex-girlfriend the Black Cat. I haven't done a lot of pictures of her, and didn't know her costume was revised until I started looking for reference. I think this one came out really well.

My Drawing Board

Between cons and my website, I've been taking commissions. It's one of my favorite parts of doing conventions these days. I just completed a bunch of them, so I'll be posting them the next few days.

Here's the first, a Power Girl commission. The request here was to "show her defiant but not ticked-off". The commissioner was pretty happy with this one.

Building My Own Mousetrap

I do a lot of conventions to promote Love and Capes. I love doing the shows, but hauling my gear to shows is always an effort. For shows I can drive to, everything fits (albeit snugly) in my convertible. The worst for transport is, of course, Comic-Con in San Diego, where I have to ship things across the country. The biggest hassle, to my mind, is shipping my wire display rack. It's too large to fit into a suitcase so I have to ship it in a big box. The box isn't so much heavy as it is unweildly, but just its size makes it expensive to ship. I've been trying to find a better mousetrap, as it were. I haven't been able to find one, so I decided to make one. Here's what I wanted my design to do:

1. Fit into a suitcase, flat.
2. Be light.
3. Display a decent number of books.
4. Be sturdy.
5. Be disposable, so I can leave it behind if I want to.

Here's what I came up with. I'll need two of them to display the Love and Capes ouevre, but that's fine. It folds down to about 17" x 27", which does fit in my suitcase. And it's even got an area for signage at the top, where I'll put a price list. I think it came out really well, and I'm a little proud of myself. My Dad is awesome at building things, and it's nice to know that I've got a little bit of that in me when I need it. I'm also going to share it, under the Creative Commons act. I've had people say that I could sell these, but honestly, I'd rather make comics than stands. Besides, not everything's got to be about profit, sometimes you should just release some good into the universe, you know? If this design helps someone else, I'm happy to help. Here's a link to a PDF of my blueprints. I figure each one takes about $10-15 in supplies. You need a 40" x 60" piece of foam core board, an X-acto knife, a long ruler, and a piece of tape or Velcro. It probably takes 30-60 minutes to build. I laid out and marked up the foam core. Here's what the flat piece looks like. (Click any picture to see it larger.) Then I scored it so that the front panel becomes like a set of stairs. I scored the side panels so that it will fold up flat. You have to be careful while making your scores, though. The design has a lot of weak points while you're trying to fold it, although once it's complete it's pretty solid. I stress tested it for a day and there were no problems. It also has a slight lean to it, by design. This puts the shelves at an angle so that gravity can help keep the books in place. The stair shelf doesn't hold itself down at first. You need the books to force it into place, but after a couple of hours, it starts to hold its shape. And I put some Velcro on the back panel to make the final connection. You could use tape, too. You just need to have a knife to cut it when you're done if you want to reuse it. Here it is folded flat. And here it is with books on it. Pretty cool, eh? Oh, what the heck, how about a little shilling? Hey! Love and Capes: Going to the Chapel, the second Love and Capes collection is available in comic stores this Wednesday! Foam Core Display Stand by Thomas Zahler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.thomz.com.