They Keep Pulling Me Back In

So I thought I was done with "Buzzboy" and then Sky Dog Big Mucketeymuck John Gallagher called and said "Can you do four more?" And then he smashed a watermelon with a sledgehammer. Wait, that last part was the other Gallagher. No matter, the upshot is, I'm doing four more pages. Here's the first of them.

In Love and Capes news, I got my orders for the Free Comic Book Day, and I have to say, they're pretty good. They're well over ten times my normal orders, so the book is going to get in the hands of a lot more people. Hopefully, a chunk of them stay on board for #5, coming out in August. The book ships off to the printer on Monday, and I'll be getting them sometime after that.

Clearing the Decks

Today's the last of my cleanup days, I think, where I try to do all the little stuff that's slipped through the cracks. I was messed up by a bad deadline on a lettering project, and a couple of other things. I know it's the nature of the beast, but it doesn't mean I like when it happens consistently.

One of the bright spots, though, has been coloring Buzzboy. I colored a six-page "Buzzboy in Space" story, and I just finished coloring a second story, an autobiographical "How I Became a Cartoonist" story. It's really sweet, and I'd tell you to pick the book up just for that, but that'd slight the rest of the goodness in the book. Besides, it's free! That's right, it's a Free Comic Book Day book.

Below are thumbnail links to the pages. These have no copy on them, so you can see them without ruining the story.

Wrap Party

And here's the last page of Buzzboy, at least for now. I'm the regular colorist, unless you've heard something I haven't, so I'll be back on board for the next issue.

On top of that, I've had a moment of inspiration and have figured out the cover for Love and Capes #5! Expect to be seeing it soon.

I'm going Phi Beta Kubert

It seems to be Rush Week here at Thom Zahler Art Studios world headquarters. We're not pledging for a sorority (why would I want to hang out with a bunch of guys?) or anything, just that there seem to be a lot of clients who require our, shall we say, immediate attention. So, we're keeping the chatter down to a minimum, despite how much we want to rave about 300, and just uploading the eye candy that is our latest page of Buzzboy eye candy.

Knowing My Place in the Universe

Last night was the first Wednesday of the month, which means that I, my girlfriend, and a bunch of our friends, participate it the legendary Pub Quiz here in town. It's a knock-down, drag-out trivia competition, including a video round, a picture round, and a missing link round. There up to eight people on each team, and our team in particular is kind of the New York Yankees of trivia teams. Well, without the being completely evil part. We're the one everyone wants to beat, and we're also the one that usually wins.

Each of the eight have their own areas of expertise. Mine, obviously, are quantum mechanics and comic books. So last night, we got this question: This super heroine made her first appearance in All-Star Comics #8. It couldn't be Wonder Woman, I thought. That was too obvious. Besides, her first appearance was in Sensation Comics, right? I used to have the hardback treasury edition. It's what her First Appearance Action Figure is based on. So it'd have to be someone else. I chose Hawkgirl.

Can you believe that it was Wonder Woman? I thought our host got it wrong, and on the way home, called my Mom and had her check the answer. Okay, I didn't call her at 11:30pm to have her check Wikipedia, she'd left a message earlier in the night and said to call, and she's more of a night owl than me, so I was returning said call. She's usually on the computer doing real estate stuff, so having her check wasn't that much of an effort.

And our host was right. I felt horrible all that night. I mean, it's a comic question, I should know that cold. There are any number of questions on Pub Quiz that we think are between A and B and we pick A when it should be B. That's fine. But me not knowing a comics question, geez, that's like not knowing my own middle name.

Worse yet, when the scores were all tallied, we were tied with another team. That one question could have been the difference. So we went into the tie-breaker round. We had to get two points. I got the first one for our team, and teammate Dave and I were simultaneous in getting our second winning point. So, I feel vindicated at least a little bit.

Oh, yeah, and here's a newly-colored page from Buzzboy!

Skipping Right Along

Here's another fine page of Buzzboy. I've been trying to do two a day, along with keeping everything else going. Today didn't go so well, as I only got one done.

I've also added to the Love and Capes site a listing of stores that are supporting the Free Comic Book Day issue of Love and Capes. You can click here and see what stores are carrying it, and where I'll be doing a drawing and signing that day. It's a wildly incomplete list, so if you know of more places, or are a place carrying it, give me a shout, and I'll add to the list.

And get this... for those of you keeping track, this is post #200!

…and Roboy Red, too!

I just finished coloring the second page of the Free Comic Book Day Buzzboy. The story also features Rich Faber's Roboy Red. These pages are going pretty quickly. Apparently, all that black of space makes things easier to color.

Buzzing again

I'm back coloring Buzzboy again. These pages will appear in the Free Comic Book Day edition, so I'll have work in two, that's right two, different books on that magical May day.

This sequence is a bit of a riff on the Spirit-in-Space bit that Wally Wood did.

Buzzboy's fun to color. I never thought that I'd be doing coloring professionally. It was hard to think of that as a possibility when you went to school with Sean Tiffany, who among his many frightening talents an understanding of color that's just amazing.

But, through lots of work and the tutoring of a couple of people, my coloring is now 60% less clunky. I've been pretty happy with the coloring on Love and Capes, and I think the Buzzboy stuff looks pretty good, too.

You'll never guess my secret identity

So I was chatting with John Gallagher, artist and writer of the terrific Buzzboy series, about Free Comic Book Day. He'd done it before, and I was looking for some guidance.

One of the things he suggested I do was a variant cover. The theory being that a couple months after FCBD, you release a for-sale version. You can't really sell a book that says FREE on the cover. Made sense to me. So I started working on the cover.

The joke I had was pretty straightforward, Mark making a joke about the Arachnerd movie as he missed the 'Nerd being in the alley. The quandry I had was that I wanted to have the Crusader on the cover, but it didn't make much story sense to have Crusader in public with Abby. I reasoned I could get away with it on the cover.

Then I realized that was my answer to the dual cover question. I'd do the FCBD version with Crusader, and do the Secret Identity version as my saleable version. So, for the first time anywhere, you can see both versions. Click, and see them bigger.

And with that, all the art for both versions of Love and Capes is done! Next step is figuring out issue #5…

Afterglow

Still doing the little itty-bitty stuff on the production of Love and Capes, but I realized that I meant to mention that I did an interview with Tim O'Shea on Silver Bullet Comics about Love and Capes. If you'd like to read it, click right here.