2009 Harvey Nominees Announced and… Great Googly-Moogly!

Wow! I've been nominated for not one, but two Harvey Awards. I've been nominated for Best Letterer for Buzzboy, which is cool enough, but I've also been nominated for Best Cartoonist for Love and Capes. That's fantastic. Amazing. And humbling. I'm up against some great competition, too. But hey, it's an honor just to be nominated. And yes, I am practicing saying that.

The awards are given out (well, I'd say earned) at Marc Nathan's awesomely awesome Baltimore Comicon in October. All of the cool kids will be there. You should be there, too.

Almost There, Stay on Target

Yeah, I like name checking and putting in some in-jokes here and there. Why I didn't think of making a Rick Castle joke sooner, given that Abby owns a bookstore, I'll never know. Well, it could be that Castle came out only while I was working on #11, and page 23 has the first bookstore scene in the entire issue. That could be it, but I still feel like I missed a boat.

Just one page left.

Get Your Jokes Ready

It's a horny toad. You'll see more of him later in the week, but he's been what's taking up my day today. Why? For what? Well, you'll just have to stay tuned, won't you?

Twenties One and Two

My friend Sean suggested I change the pacing of one of my jokes on page 21. I'd be upset if he wasn't right. In fact, the suggestion was something that I was toying about doing myself. I expanded one joke, and finished off with a cut line from an original draft.

All of this makes little sense, I'm sure, since I'm not showing the page. But it gives you an idea of how this process works. And will work over the next two pages until this bad boy is done. Man, am I looking forward to that.

So, now, our heroes are back on Earth. Why's the Crusader flying from an aircraft carrier? What adventure did he just have. Even I don't know. Make your own story.

The Famous Blackjack Page

Page 21 is done. Well, done-ish. The more I think about it, the more I think I need to move a few things around to really make it sing. I do the plots in advance, but sometimes they take on a life of their own. For instance, this whole "In Leandia" segment was originally going to end pages ago. I think it's working well, and now can't imagine doing it in less.

Yes, much thinking will be done. I'll try to fit that in between Secret Project X, a new cover for the Fort Worth Weekly, and, of course, a trip to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. You have to have your priorities.

Blink and You'll Miss Her

Okay, I admit, I have no idea who Blink is. (I know now, though, so I know she's from the X-Men books. Don't worry.) But it's part of the fun of doing convention sketches, when someone comes in with a character you've never heard of. As well as reference, man is reference important. At HeroesCon, if necessary, I could use the insanely useful iPhone to pull some reference off the web. At San Diego, that's not going to be possible, I presume, since I think everyone in the Creative Services and Hollywood has an iPhone, and that's going to slam the 3G network at the San Diego Convention Center.

Back to Blink, though. She was fun to draw. I think this is a definitely different pose, and her skin tone was fun to color since it's not a traditional tone. It made it fun to color.

A Little Early for Independence Day

I don't know why I didn't think of doing a Stargirl piece before, but when someone commissioned me for a sketch at HeroesCon, man did I take to it. My booth neighbor, Rich, was pretty impressed with it, validating my opinion. There's something about the pose and attitude that comes through so nicely. And, this is another one that I ran through my iPhone pic/blueline print process.

Twenty-Twenty

One of these days I'll figure out why these pages always take until 11:30, no matter when I get them started. Hmm, maybe if I were smart, I'd start at 11:00 and then each page would only take half an hour.

Here's a scene from the next page. Dialogue's been stripped out to keep the scene secret like. Still, it's a funny enough visual, I think you all will appreciate it.

Cat Scratch Fever

Here's one of the sketches I did at HeroesCon. I grabbed a snap of it on my now-sadly-outddated iPhone. I messed with the levels in Photoshop and converted it to a blueline so I could reprint it on bristol and ink it again. It's a nice way to save sketches when you can't get a scan per se. And then I have another original to sell, too. How cool is that?

This one is of the Black Cat, created by Marv Wolfman for the Spider-Man books. She hasn't made an appearance in Powerful Women yet (unlike Poison Ivy, who seems to command at least a page a volume), so it's always good to see someone new in those pages.

Hey Nineteen!

I hope this panel doesn't reveal too much, but man, I really like it. Body language, pose and facial expressions all scream drunk. Which is exactly what it's supposed to scream.

Only five pages left. And five days or so left in the month. It's like serrendipity.

This issue has taken far longer than it should have. I meant to be done in early May, not late June. I'm okay now, but this throwing stick will boomerang on me for the next issue. Still, it should be okay as long as I don't have to go to California for two weeks in July. Oh, wait, I do. Yipes!