Review Too

Yet another review, this time of Love and Capes #2, by Steve Saville on Silverbulletcomics.com.

In this second outing from this appealing title Zahler continues to hone his impressive writing skills, and the witty dialogue just leaps off the pages…This edition successfully develops both of the main characters. Mark’s feeling of guilt at not being able to solve every problem develops another side of his character while Abbeys’ jealous nature is also given extra space to fester…It all ends with a big sloppy kiss- fuelled parting scene and the Christmas presents that Mark and abbey do finally decide to give each other are delightful. So as we close the covers we feel a nice warm feel- good feeling ooze over us.

In My Hot Little Hands

I've been in Las Vegas on vacation the last couple of days, and when I got home, what was waiting for me but advance copies of Love and Capes #4, both the Free Comic Book Day version and the special Secret Identity version. They look pretty good, and hopefully all of you will think so, too. Just a little over two weeks before they pop into stores.

In celebration of this event, I'm posting a whole page from the FCBD edition, so check it out.

I'll be posting a bunch of random tidbits about my Vegas trip on my blog in the next day or two. Nothing artwork related, but a couple of interesting stories (at least, I think so).

Baby, Baby, One More Time

It's Good Friday, let's do something a little special.

I've started working on Love and Capes #5. So I'll post a panel from each page as I get it finished. But like I said, Good Friday, so let's go Broadway. I'm going to post the whole page.

I don't usually post pages of a comic-in-progress. After all, I want you to buy it. Preferably multiple copies of it. But, it's the first one, so it won't spoil too much. Besides, I like to try to have cool introductions to my characters. Issue #4, which you haven't seen yet, is probably the weakest, but it serves the story so well. Here, we meet two of the super heroes, introduce the city, and set up the theme for the entire book. And all in eight panels.

Put Me In Coach, I'm Ready to Play

I'm working on websites and lettering today, so I've got nothing new to show you. But it's Opening Day for the Cleveland Indians today, so I thought I'd post some of my Slider stuff.

From 2002-2006 I was the artist for the "It's Slider Time", a monthly feature in Game Face magazine. The piece was half-comic, half-puzzle page, and I wrote and drew the entire feature, including creating the puzzles. When it first started out, I wrote it as an adventure strip, having a loose "Someone stole all the bases" storyline. At the end of every strip, the thief would leave a clue that would be the puzzle on the facing page. Kids could solve the puzzle and find out where the next base would be at.

With a month between strips, I didn't think the adventure format worked well, so I switched to a humor format, and I thought that worked much better. Writing the joke was always the hardest part. Occasionally I worked with the actor who played Slider to come up with the jokes. Two things were funny about that: First, he'd call and say "Thom. this is Slider." No, you're not Slider, you're Dan, the guy who plays Slider. You're not Batman. Batman can call up and say "This is Batman." Second, some of the help was very often a starting point. "We should do something about the hurricane that flooded the Winter Haven spring training facility." (Yeah, because hurricanes and mass destruction are hilarious.) Oddly, those starting points helped a lot. When you've got an infinite field, it's hard to narrow it down to find the funny. When you're given the starting point of "It's All-Star Balloting time", it gives you something to focus on.

I also did the infamous "Where's Slider" cartoon, too, for the 2004 Spring Training edition. This was a tremendously successful piece, and won a number of awards. It also took two solid days to complete because of all the detail. When it was done, my contact at the Indians was raving about it. I told her "It's a great piece. I'm very proud of it. And I will never, ever do it again, unless you increase my pay drastically. It almost killed me."

The strip also featured tons of my trademark in-jokes. When I needed a newspaper photographer, I drew him to look like Jimmy Olsen. And, while the jokes were aimed at kids, I'd throw in a few funnies that would probably go over their head. When Slider was actively campaigning for the All-Star ballot, that strip ended with Slider folding in a press conference. It was during the 2004 presidential campaign, so he was asked "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the National League?" (Joe McCarthy), "Were you a member of the Ohio National Guard" (playing off the George W. Bush Air National Guard controversy) and "Do you drive an SUV?" (playing off John Kerry's at-the-time famous "No, I don't own an SUV… tmy wife does.")

In 2005, after three years of the comic strip format, new management took over and the strip became a straight-up puzzle page with spot cartoons of Slider. It still looked good, and continued to improve from an artistic standpoint (man, I can't even think of that first strip without cringing) but it was nowhere near as much fun to do. In 2006, there was another change in direction, and Game Face magazine switched from being a monthly program book to more of a Playbill format, where it was printed once, and flyer inserts were added to change the information. That year I did my last comic for the Spring Training edition. There was talk of bringing me back to do the 2007 Spring Training issue, but we couldn't come to payment terms.

I guess that Trot Nixon deal really tapped out the club.

Still, Slider was one of the coolest jobs I had. And, as my friend Sean told me just last week, "Nothing leaves the resumé." So mine will always says that I worked for the Cleveland Indians, and that's pretty nice.

Below are some of the strips from the 2004 run. Click, and they shall embiggen.

Now… play ball!

And Many More…

Most of the work here at the studio the last few days has been production stuff. I'm lettering a "Deadbeats" trade paperback, working on the new Claypool website, and getting ready to color a new project. Lots of stuff, but not a lot to show. So, this is a birthday card I designed for Catapult Online a couple weeks ago. It's designed to be customizable, so CO will be able to have it say "Happy Birthday, Student's Name Here." It features the same Catapult Kids I've been drawing for a while.

My hand is starting to twitch from not drawing "Love and Capes", and I think I've broken down the first three pages, so it might be time to start. Expect to see some art from that start to pop up around these parts soonish.

Jossishness

I got to attend the first and only Flanvention a couple of years ago. The second one was cancelled abruptly, and all sorts of bad surrounded it. I don't know what happened there, so I can't speak to it. (Many of the cast, including Nathan Fillion, showed up to the bar at the hotel where the Flan was supposed to be, and I think that's just six kinds of cool.) The first one, though, was fun. I met a lot of great people there, professional and fan alike.

One of them was Brenda, the photographer. She remembered me, and got in touch with me to have me do a caricature of Joss Whedon as part of a "get Joss Whedon a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame" project. I'd done caricatures both live at the event and of the cast for the program book and she liked my work.

I had to guess at his eye color, but other than that I think it turned out swell. You can find out more about Brenda and her campaign for Joss here.

The Shirt Off My Back

Okay, I don't usually bother you faithful readers o'my blog with things like this, but this one's a little different.

I'd like to do a Love and Capes t-shirt for San Diego. My plan is to do it as a giveaway, or something close to that as San Diego has rules about giveaways at the show. Here's the concept: You come up to my booth at San Diego, and somehow, you walk away with a shirt with the requirement that you wear it right there. I've seen this a lot of times and it does have the ability to "flood the zone." The convention has a bunch of people walking around the show with t-shirts, walking billboards for your book.

Yeah, people could walk twenty feet and take it off, but in my experience, that doesn't usually happen. And even if only half of them keep the shirt on, it still serves the larger purpose.

Here's the thing: it's expensive. Not crazy expensive, but it'd be a bit of a bite. I'd be willing to put a sponsorship logo on the back, if anyone's interested, but I've got another idea… premium t-shirts.

I've posted my design and versions on black and dark red. I could sell the black through preorders on my websites, and charge $15 or so for them. Selling those would defray the cost of my free shirts. And, it'd give me a little more flexibility with sizes. I play the odds when I print a bunch of shirts, so heavy on the extra-larges, light on the smalls. With pre-orders, if you need an XXL or a medium, I can probably swing it.

If I wind up doing this, it'll be in June or so. The question I have for you now (admittedly, a couple of months early) is would you buy one of the shirts? If you would, e-mail me or make a comment below and let me know.

Making More Work for Myself

I'm being a little over-achievery today. I don't need to have this done for almost a month, but I have this theory. Actually, I have a theory about darn near everything. This particular theory is that it's better to do the work you want to do when you want to do it. You'll be more inspired and more productive. So, I've had the rough for the cover of Love and Capes #5 on my shower wall for about a week now. It was time to draw it.

This joke has the benefit of being the theme of the fifth issue. At least as planned right now. There is one Easter Egg on the cover, the wine bottle is J. Dub's winery. That's a nod to my friend, and big supporter, Jesse Jackson. Unfortunately, with a name like that, it's hard to work it in without it being misconstrued. Jesse's wife calls him "J-Dub" from time to time, so I added that in.

The other thing I was going to do is make the plane say "Oceanic", the name of the airline from "Lost". Try as I might, though, I couldn't work it in without messing up all the perspective, so I let that one go. That's okay, I'm sure there will be other little jokes inside the book.

Once I start it, of course.

It's Gonna Be Messy, I Bet

I just finished working on a logo for Catapult Online for their Baltimore vs. DC Celebrity Paintball Tournament. It's going to feature players from the evil Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins. Working for Catapult Online lets me do some pretty fun stuff, and I think this will look pretty sharp on t-shirts and wherever else they put it.

Plus, I'll get another t-shirt for my collection!

The Finish Line

A year or so ago, I made the decision that it was time to stop working on weekends and evenings. I'd allowed my work life to grow to the point where it was, well, my life, and I wanted to get it under control. So, I slowly let my clients know and I went from there. It's a hard thing for a freelancer to do. So many of us start out with this as a second job that weekend and evenings are the only times you can work, and sometimes your clients come to expect it. Anyway, I staked out my position and have tried to stick with it.

Now, I'm not saying I'm never in the studio after office hours. I am. A lot. But it's usually only on stuff I want to work on. Things that are fun, or that I have a burning desire to do. Or, when a friend calls and needs some help, which is what happened this weekend when John Gallagher asked me to help him finish off his Free Comic Book Day issue of Buzzboy. John's a great guy, and we've all fallen under the Dreaded Deadline Doom. So, I said "sure" and started coloring.

Fortunately, it wasn't a horrible job. As coloring goes, the pages were pretty simple. And I still got out to see "Zodiac" (very good, by the way) and out to dinner on Saturday, too. So I wasn't locked in for the weekend or anything. Best of all, they came out pretty good. I posted the first a couple of days ago, the balance are below. Click on any of them to, as Jebediah Springfield once said, embiggen them.