There's nothing to do that can't be done

There's nothing to do that can't be done.

Things are starting to pick up speed on the marathon that is Love and Capes. Here's page five, and I got it done yesterday. A lot of pages take two days to hammer out, this one took only one. And, if I'm not careful, I'll have page six done today, too.

I particularly dig the art on this panel. It's an expressiveness that I don't often get to do with Mark. He's rarely irritated the way that he is in this panel. It's also neat the way that I got to reverse the shadows, putting Mark's face in the darker area, really getting his feelings across.

As for what else goes on this page, you'll have to buy the book. It is one of the plot-heavier pages, although it doesn't look like it at first glance.

For those of you following my Twitter feed, Twitter was down yesterday. I'm trying to tweet the whole creative process, but it seems like they keep crashing whenever I'm working. I don't think it's my fault, but who knows?

I'm A Rockstar!

Today was a strangely busy day. I'd had it planned to work on the Scene Magazine cover that I landed yesterday, and maybe finish the HGR cover. Then my phone rang for an hour... and the Super Secret Project popped up... and I did a career day for my neighbor at Garrett Morgan school (not Garrett Morris, although he's "berry, berry" funny, if you know what I mean). And tonight I have to go be a Councilman as well as get to sleep early so I can get up at the unThomly hour of 4:30am to go do Good Morning Cleveland. So... yikes!

But, I did get the tight roughs done for my Scene cover. Here's a snippet. Yes, it's heavily photo referenced, and the final style will be kind of familiar to most of you. I'll post it when they print it.

32 wants to do things to you that'll make you blush

One of the things I like about working on a comic book, as opposed to a graphic novel, is the instant sense of accomplishment. This is page four, so I'm already one sixth of the way through the book. Two pages from now, I'll be one-quarter done.

In these exciting panels, Abby is looking for someone to replace Charlotte. What's most interesting about this page, at least to me, is that I didn't have a punchline for panel eight. I knew the body language, but I didn't have any dialogue. In fact, a couple panels were drawn with the "I'll think of something funny later."

There's a scene in Maverick (the Mel Gibson version) where he draws an ace just by trusting that he could. I think the creative arts are kind of like that. Sometimes you have a good hand, and sometimes you have to play and trust you'll draw an ace later on. Now, I'm not so arrogant to say that this page ends with an ace, but hopefully I at least pulled a face card.

Secret Societies

I've made reference a few times to "The Secret Society of Super Reviewers", a gaggle of friends who set each page of Love and Capes as I finish it. They're free to find mistakes, tell me that jokes don't work, that drawing is off and so on. They're friends, fellow artists, fellow writers and so on. They're a huge part of why Love and Capes comes out as good as it is.

Recently, I did a page of Love and Capes (page two, for those of you keeping score at home) where I was told I needed to fix something. It's a complicated scene, with five characters in it. That's a lot of juggling. So, to keep things fresh, I put Abby and Mark in a colored silhouette. They're not important to the panel, so I figured it would work.

It didn't, and boy did I hear about it.

So I went back in and fixed it. You can see the difference in the Before and After to the left. I drew a new Mark and Abby and placed them in, further following the suggestions and desaturating and darkening the characters so they recede into the background. I hate it when I have to do something twice, but the SSSR were right, and the panel is better for it.

It's a Rave!

I mentioned on Twitter that I did a Raven commission. My customer wanted the Teen Titans Go animated cartoon version. It's for his daughter. It was a lot of fun to play around in that style, and nice to do something cool for his daughter, too. I threw in an extra version of the digital print that says "DAUGHTER's ROOM!"

Well, it doesn't say "daughter" but his daughter's name, but you get the idea.

Still care about your hair and the car you drive

Here's page three, in which I make the second of my airlline jokes. I'm relatively confident, unfortunately, that things like the one-bag rule will still be in effect when this sees print. Man, do I hate that rule. Doing conventions, I generally bring a suitcase of clothes and a suitcase of books. I'll have to figure something else out this year.

Enough of that, though. Here's some funny stuff: You can see part of the Deco City Airport through the windows in the corridor here. The basic layout of the airport is based on the Fisher-Price Airport I had when I was a kid. There's a center round cylinder, and the gates spread out from there. No helicopter pad, though.

Three down, twenty-one to go.

Can you handle the curves? Can you run all the lights?

Page two is done, and it's my first TSA based joke. Having flown to Texas and back recently, these airportisms are pretty fresh. I have to say, though, I've never had any problems with TSA. Sure, the water thing's a hassle and all, but they've always been friendly and professional. To me at least, I know your mileage may vary.

Incidentally, this joke was one of the two spurred by my brainstorming session with Mr. Jesse Jackson, and broke the mental logjam that kept me from starting back up. Well, now it's started up, so blame him.

Gentle Reminder

I've mentioned before the Candlelighters Auction organized by Thomas of Say It Backwards. I've got a Supergirl piece up there, and there are still a couple of days left to bid on it. I'm even throwing in some cool Love and Capes swag as well. There are a lot of other auction items over there, too. It's great art for a great cause

One Good Drop of Poison

While I was sitting at CAPE, I did a warm-up drawing of Poison Ivy to help drum up some commission work. Poison Ivy might be the most frequently requested commission I do. She's tremendously popular, both with men and women.

I did a fairly simple pose on this one, but I colored her much more cooly than I did my first one (which has since sold). It wasn't until I started coloring it that I realized I basically drew Charlotte from Love and Capes. That's okay. If Charlotte dressed up for Halloween, I bet she's pick Poison Ivy.

I could hide out under there/I just made you say underwear

I'm back on the horse that is Love and Capes.

Fair warning, though, I'm trying to get 90 days ahead on the book, so you'll see stuff now, but it won't come out until October. Sorry for the extended delay, but I really did need the break. Trust me on that.

As usual, I'll post a panel, or in this case, part of a panel since it's a full-page splash every time I get one done. And you can follow me on Twitter, too. If you'd been on and watching today, your hometown could have appeared on the departure board in the Deco City Airport.

Writer's block is over. Time to get back to work.

Oh, and last time I posted panels with movie quotes. This time, I'll be doing song lyrics. I just get bored typing "Page Six" and so on, so it's something to keep me interested. Hope you are, too.