No Rest for the Wicked

So, I signed up to do Love and Capes #7 as part of Free Comic Book Day. That'd be good news. Great news, even. Except that, as opposed to last year, the deadline for having a proof into Diamond is roughly a month earlier than last year. So, my January start has become a, well, a now start. So, I'm up and running with the new issue.

Fortunately, I get to ease into things with a first page splash panel. And I get to introduce the size reducing character Microdot for the first time. I've been trying to get her into the book for an appearance for a while now. Behind them is Blurstreak, who had been seen but not heard in Love and Capes #4. He's going to make quite an addition for this book. Think Barney from How I Met Your Mother.

I love doing LNC, but it's a daunting task. The book is really well received, and #6 was no exception. The problem is, you start feeling like you're walking a tightrope and that you're going to slip at some point. I'll do my darndest to make sure the slip-up doesn't happen this issue, though.

To celebrate, I'm breaking my "one panel per page and that's all you get to see" rule. Click and embiggen and see all of page one.

Red and Hot

Here's the latest in my comic book women series. Since Red Sonja is no longer published by Marvel, technically she's my first independent character in the set. Honestly, though, I know her from her Marvel Comics series. Yeah, she's dressed completely impractically, but you really can't complain too much, can you?

I tried, but I couldn't give her that great Frank Thorne heavy lidded eyes or style, so I hope I did okay capturing a little more of the "devil" in "The She-Devil with a Sword."

And she's way cooler than that Bridgette Neilsen movie.

Thundra and Lightning

The second drawing I did for Ted was Thundra. I remember her from Fantastic Four and Marvel-Two-in-One. What was particularly cool was that the reference that Ted brought for me was an old issue of Spidey Super Stories. Man, I miss that book. A kid-friendly Spider-Man book written to tie in with his appearances on The Electric Company. It was written with a primary reading level in mind.

I particularly remember the story where Spider-Man and Hellcat (just called "The Cat" for obvious reasons) take on Thanos for the Cosmic Cube. And they do the whole thing in rhyme. They just don't write stories like that anymore.

All the Joys of a Con Over the Internets

Okay, let's try this! Recently, I've started doing convention sketches, and having a blast doing it. I think the success of Love and Capes and its style is why people are interested in having me draw their favorite characters. And I'm having so much fun, I want to keep doing it.

I'd like to put together a book of con-style commissions, something like 101 Super Women or something like that. Now, I can pick out 101 characters myself, but why not open it up to all of you?

So here's the deal: For $40.00, you'll get an 8.5x11 black and white original commission featuring one character, and a same sized color print of the commission. (I color on computer, so the b/w original will be untouched.) Pick any character you want, even if I've already drawn them. A lot of these characters open themselves up to multiple interpretations. Let me know what version of the character you want, too. Supergirl in her animated series outfit? Mary Marvel Murderess in black? Backgrounds will be simple, if at all. And no nudity.

I'll entertain two-character commissions for $75, but it'll be my call if I take them. If you're interested in that, e-mail me here and put COMMISSION in the title. I'm definitely going to do a Harley and Ivy, and have already done a Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl image.

Click here to be taken to the main commission page. Or click on the button at the top of the rightmost sidebar.

No Mindwipes Here

Here's one of the commissions I did at Mid-Ohio-Con I did for a guy named Ted. He was nice enough to scan them so that I could color them, and I think they turned out nicely. Here's everyone's favorite fishnet-and-top hat wearing illusionist, Zatanna. Zee's had a few outfits, but she keeps coming back to this one. It was fun to discuss with Ted and the other people at my table her past costume choices. I think I'm the only one who remembered her Dick Dillin outfit. Dick was a fine artist, and a staple on Justice League, but why he did that to her, I'll never understand.

Kickin' It Old School

These are the two other Free Comic Book Day commissions that I had. The customer wanted a couple images of Mark and Abby from Love and Capes. Posing the "Mark changing" piece was particularly difficult, as Mark is so big that he tends to block Abby from the camera. The flying one had some issues too, since these were done on bristol and I usually add the building backgrounds via computer in the comic. I think I figured out a decent way to do it, and to get some of the flight and flow into the image to boot.

I like these a lot. I may color them and figure somewhere to use them.

So Not Jessica Alba

This was my Sunday Mid-Ohio-Con sample. I've always liked Susan Storm Richards, the Invisible Woman. In recent memory she was always handled best the late, great Mike Wieringo. Her could make her look sexy and still a little older and matronly and mix those things all together into a great drawing. Man, I still miss Mike.

When I do these pieces, I do an 8.5x11 black and white image on bristol (suitable for purchase, hint hint) and then color them on the computer later. A lot of times I leave things open and figure out how to color it later. That's part of the fun, and gives me the opportunity to try new techniques.

This is one of the few that I knew how I wanted to color it when I started. I knew it'd be softer and more airbrushed, but that the invisible effect would be a halftone screen. I think it came out pretty sweet.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

As part of my new mission statement to get more commission work at conventions, I've started doing a sample every day of the show. At Mid-Ohio-Con, I started with this Mary Marvel one, which I colored when I got back home. It's the Seventies version of the outfit, as most of my drawings seem to be. I like this image a lot. It's everything that DC isn't doing with the character right now: happy, innocent, optimistic, not a murderess...

I'm still trying to figure out how to package these super women illos together, and how to make it a little more interactive and purchaseable. I'll let you know when I figure something out.

Beyond the Rim of Starlight

Back when I did Free Comic Book Day, I got hired to do a couple of commissions. There were a couple of Love and Capes-related pieces, which I'll post later, but there were also two Captain Kirk pieces. Shatner is legendary for having a hard-to-capture face. Even Tom Richmond, acquaintence and heir apparent to Mort Drucker at Mad Magazine has said so. He's a daunting subject. But I think I did okay here. I like the likeness on the green-shirt Kirk better, but they both capture a chunk of the charm that was and is the captain of the Enterprise.

Borders Guards

I went to Starbucks sometime over the last week or so (several times, actually, but that's neither here nor there) and saw that they were offering custom gift cards. I'm always looking for a cool corporate gift idea, and thought this might be cool to take an image from Love and Capes, especially since tall the characters are heavy coffee drinkers, and plop them on a card. Unfortunately, Starbucks vision of customization is to choose from a finite number of elements.

I mentioned this to close friend Paul D. Storrie. Paul's written an issue of IDW's Star Trek Alien Worlds series featuring my favorite Trek aliens, the Andorians. You should go out and get it, right now. I mean it. Stop reading the blog, go to a comic shop and get it. Then come back. I won't go anywhere.

Welcome back! So I mentioned to the aforementioned PDS that it'd be cool to be able to place your own image or photo on a gift card. Then, lo and behold, he found out that Borders was doing that very thing! I've now designed my first Love and Capes gift card, to be given to some of my corporate clients.

I also figured "Why keep this to myself?" So, I'm making the image available for download here. You can place this image on the Borders card site and send them out to your friends. (It's sized for the gift card, not the greeting card, by the way.)

Abby, everyone's favorite bookstore owner, would be very happy with this.