Car Wars… Nothing But Car Wars…

I hate drawing cars. I really do. They're complicated, and hard to get right from every angle. But, I try not to let my art get in the way of my writing. So, page seven features Mark, Abby and Charlotte on a road trip to Abby's family picnic. There are times I do curse myself for the scenes I write, but I think that's far more preferable to those artists (and they know who they are) who write scenes solely based on what they want to draw.

Fortunately, the car appears in only two more panels past this one. I'm willing to work, but I'm not insane about it.

There are a couple of concepts from this scene that cut for space reasons. Abby and Mark essentially live in Chicago and use mass transit, and Mark obviously flies everywhere. I was thinking that either Mark didn't own a car, or that he's actually a really bad driver, both since he doesn't drive very much. Would you if you could fly?

Also, I'm doing something different with the coloring in this issue. This panel should give you everything you need to figure it out. Hopefully, it's not jarring enough to be immediately noticable, but I think it makes the book look better.

It's Awards Season After All

Tony Isabella is a friend of mine. He also posts his reviews of comics, and I made sure he got an advance copy of Love and Capes #3. He's never let his awe and admiration, or mosre likely tolerance, of me get in the way of honest criticism. You can read the full review here, and I certainly encourage you to do so. But if that button on your mouse is just too much effort, here's an excerpt to give you a feel for his review.

Zahler has a gift for writing clever, humorous stories for Abby and Mark. There are familiar sitcom and super-hero notes to the tune, but his variations on these themes keep the series fresh. When it comes to the art and coloring, I don’t think there’s another comic being published today that has a style more likely to appeal to a truly mainstream audience.

Yup, I got the full five out of five Tonys. I'll let you know as I get more reviews.

Falling Down

Another one down… another one down… another one bites the dust.

I just finished page six of Love and Capes #4. I think the narrative is starting to come together. I'm trying to make sure that characters are introduced and explained since, being part of Free Comic Book Day, it's going to be a lot of people's first issue. I'll have a "For those who came in late" recap on the inside front cover, but I want to make sure it's pretty clear in the story, too.

The other thing I'm doing is making things more physical. More physical comedy, more physical stuff, so that it's not as conversationally heavy as other issues. Free Comic Book Day will give me some younger readers, too, I hope.

Besides, I've got a rule about the super heroics in Love and Capes… we don't see them. At least not much of them. Part of it is from its genesis as a sitcom, so the special effects are intentionally limited. The other is that I want the focus on the characters and relationships, not on the superhero stuff. If you want that, there are a lot of other comics out there. I'll play to my strength.

With all that in mind, we'll see Darkblade doing the typical interrogation scene, but it's not the important part of the scene. Oh, and don't worry, this guy doesn't die.

Also, Love and Capes #3 will be in stores this week! So will Raider: Dead Men's Tales. Support your local comics shop and pick it up. And, if they don't carry it, point out the error of their ways, and order it here. Sure, there's a shipping charge, but you'll get your Love and Capes fix in time for Valentine's Day.

So What Were the First Eleven?

I've been watching the excellent series Slings and Arrows, produced by our neighbors to the north (Canada, for those of you in the public school system), I'm on season two, unfortunately also the last season, and it's pretty good. If anything, it suffers from being not-as-good as the first season. Anyway, I've mentioned it before, and still recommend it. And, possibly because of it, Shakespeare's been on my mind.

I'm passing some of that on to Abby in Love and Capes #4, as evidenced in the panel to the right. Oddly, though, the plotline that will spiral out from this scene came to me as I was watching The Good Shepherd, which I thought was pretty good too, incidentally. Just didn't want you to think that my mind was wandering because of the film.

For those of you keeping score, that's five pages in and nineteen to go.

The New Kids on the Block

I got to design a mousepad for Catapult Online, a frequent client of mine. I created some cartoon characters, The Catapult Kids, for a quick little job some time ago and they really stuck. This one was a bit of a challenge to have so many characters in such a small area, and to give them each something unique to do. I suppose it's kind of Alex Ross in it's composing. Either way, I like it, and so does the client.

The World Must Be Peopled

I realized that something was missing from the last issue of Love and Capes, specifically in the bookstore: customers. We saw a few customers in the first issue, and the store was flooded with kids in the second, but I think no one bought any books for Valentine's Day. So I've tried to make sure there are some people in the store this issue.

I also try to make my "extras" look normal, since my supporting cast is so good looking. So you'll see some average, balding, overweight and every other sort of shape. Although, one of my ideas as a little joke was to do a caricature of Anthony Stewart Head as Giles and have him picking up some arcane tome. Keep an eye out for that.

Most of the names I give my characters have significance, too, even if just to me. Here, Professor Russell is named for Russell Johnson, best known as the Professor on Gilligan's Island.

I've also kept my questionable practice of having the bookstore highlight books I like and am reading. In this panel, we have The Complete Peanuts, The Complete Shakespeare, America: The Book, and the soon-to-be-released Drink and Draw. The latter being done by my friend Dan Panosian, and is a collection of their weekly drawing and drinking sessions. Man, I'm jealous I can't get out there to hang with them.

Incidentally, all the links above are Amazon Associates links. I'll try to post links to the books I've been enjoying and highlighting here, and better yet, if you click through and buy a book, I get a little bonus from the folks at Amazon. Hey, we all win!

 

12.5% Done!

After having done three big 100+ page graphic novels in the Raider series, doing 24 page books sometimes seems like a breeze. Now, it's not, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to draw three pages and feel like I've made significant progress. On the other hand, the deadline's a lot shorter. (Why must February have only 28 days? Damn you Pope Gregory and your calendar!)

This page turned out pretty well, and the dialogue is pretty sharp. Well, not evidenced by this panel, but trust me, the other stuff… pure Sorkinesque gold! And, in case you're wondering, Abby is wearing the latest in Old Navy clothes. Mark is wearing the glassic denim and khaki look from darn near everywhere. Sure, it's boring, but those denim shirts cover your superhero uniform pretty well, and the deep red uniform makes a good looking undershirt.

And, for those of you interested, this panel illustrates why I love the computer. The brick wall and other wall are not on the original artwork, and are added in computer. I can't tell you how many hours of drawing that saved me.

In other news, my monitor adapter came yesterday, so now I'm typing this on the combined monitor desktop of a 22" and 23" monitor. I feel so cool.

Do You Want a Shag, Baby?

One of my regular clients is Catapult Learning in Baltimore. I've designed postcards, banners, logos and more for them. One of the cool things about them is they give me a fair amount of free reign designing things. So, when they said they were having a beach and bowling themed party in California and needed an invitation, I decided to try something different. Inspired by the work of Shag and some of the Vegas designs in Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, I designed a solid color shaped, vaguely 60's retro, postcard.

Some of my designs for the girls needed to be tamed down. (Hey, California and beaches, I think bikinis. Sue me.) But other than that, it was relatively painless. I think the solid shapes and paper textures that make up the design pretty well.

Love and Capes #4 continues, and you should see a panel from page three pretty tonight or tomorrow. I'll be getting #3 from the printer Monday, and it should be in stores shortly thereafter.

In the Spirit of the Season

One of the things I've been trying to do with Love and Capes is to make the title pages kind of like Will Eisner's The Spirit. Grand Art Master Eisner never designed a logo for The Spirit, instead making it a design element on every introductory panel. I hid my name in the newspaper of issue one, and decided to make that a recurring theme.

In #2, it's on a billboard. In #3, it's on the last page. (Where? Buy the book, baby!) Here's the splash page from #4, and you can see that my name is on the credits of the Arachnerd movie. Why, I even threw some other people's names in.

Okay, that's all I've got from here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to fantasize about that iPhone. It's so slick, I might switch to Cingular after my contract ends next year.

Didn't We Just Do This?

Love and Capes #3 is at my printer, Activities Press, right now. And frighteningly enough, it's time to start #4! Like I've done with the last two issues, I'll be posting some selected panels here. To the right is part of the fourth panel of page one. Usually, I won't preview the punchline, but without context, and by cutting off Abby's dialogue, I figure this one is okay.

In other news, the New Year has been full of many things. I made a bunch of resolutions, and so far I'm doing okay on them. It's been a week (since I'm one of those people who start resolutions on the 2nd, since the 1st is no place to start a diet) and I've managed to keep on my diet, take a walk every day, and kickbox five times a week. My organizational skills seem to be improving because of the GTD procedures I've been using.

Let's pause on that one for a minute. I know it seems silly, but one of the things I've done that seems to have spiked my productivity, is I set my e-mail to check for new messages every thirty minutes instead of every thirty seconds. As a result, there are less interruptions, and I get more done. Like I said, a little thing, but one that's really helped.

The only resolutions I've been less-than-stellar on have been flossing and trying to read a little bit before bed. I did read Frank Miller's 300 and have Son of a Witch on the nightstand now, although largely untouched. The big thing I'm trying to do is carve out a little more time for not working. There are so many movies out there I'd like to see, I've got the second season of Slings and Arrows ready to be watched, and I'm sure my girlfriend would like see me from time to time (at least, I hope so). Fighting my workaholism is difficult, but I hope to make some headway.

And today is Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld, and I am so looking forward to that. What will he debut? The iPhone? What's in iTV? And anything else? Oh, this is going to be so cool.