With My Sword and Magic Helmet

I can't talk too much about this one, but I'm kind of jazzed about it. Raider is going to appear on a mass-marketed helmet. (What kind of helmet? Why a helmet? All will be revealed in time.) I got to go through previous issues of Raider and grab panels to create a collage, kind of a wrapping paper, really, that will be used for said helmet. The process, as my addled brain understands it, is similar to shrink wrapping. I design the flat sheet, and then it will be melted onto the helmet itself.

So, click on the thumbnail and see the black and white artwork for the helmet. Once the client approves it, I'll color it and apply a halftone filter to it so it looks like a big comic book page. Which, I guess, it is.

Going through the art kind of makes me want to get back to Raider, but with Love and Capes doing so well, as well as the rest of my freelance work, it'll be a little while. Unless, of course, some publisher backs a truck full of money up to my front door. I'm not made of stone, you know.

In other Raider news, I am officially sold out of Raider #1! It only took five years, but better late than never, right?

Recipe for Comedy

What? Mark's Mom saying something nice about Abby? You know that can't last.

Here's a panel from page fourteen. (Ten left!) Abby has to pick Mark's parents up at the airport, so Jerry and Joanne Spencer get to spend some time with Abby. I've said before, I think, that Mrs. Spencer one of the hardest characters in the book to write. Everything she says has to have a double meaning. It has to be on the surface negative to Abby, and then upon reflection, actually kind of nice.

In the second issue, Abby apologizes for being the reason Mark's away for Christmas. Mrs. Spencer responds, "That's fine, this year." Yeah, it sounds nasty, but on the other hand, Mark's Mom is also expecting Abby to be around the following year. But Abby hears the former and Joanne implies the latter.

Ah, such is the recipe for comedy.

It's Not Fair!

Thanks to the guys on Comic Pants, I've gotten hooked on the Tokyopop manga series Battle Royale The basic premise is the standard bunch of people on an island who have to kill each other until one is left with a twist: the contestants are all relatively innocent high school students. The fact that none of the students wanted to be there really gives it an edge. The series also shares Lost's penchant for flashbacks, which works really well.

I asked for a couple volumes of the remainder of the series for my birthday. My Mom surprised me and bought them all. I've been parceling them out since, really wanting to finish the series but not wanting to rush through it. Last night, the rubber band in my brain broke, largely due to the Adventures in Sanitary Sewers I'm having at Fortress Zahler, and I decided to veg out and read the rest of the series.

I get to the last issue, and about twenty pages from the end, my Spider-Sense starts going off. Something's wrong. My fears are realized as I get to the end: This isn't the last volume. It's the second last, and Mom didn't get the last one.

Now, let's be clear, it's not my Mom's fault. Heck, I'm impressed she bought them at all. Mom's not a big comics person, and while she's absorbed a lot of comics knowledge from me, her buying specific comic series is like sending me to buy car parts. I only know what I have written down. There's no way she knew she was one shy. Heck, I didn't know she was one shy.

It's all good, anyway. It's nice to find a series that draws you in enough that you get upset you haven't reached the end. And I'll be buying the last volume off Amazon pretty soon, so I'll be set. But, as I'm avoiding working on anything large right now, I thought I'd share my pain.

Order It Now!

Love and Capes #5 is in Previews this week! It's order code JUN07 3740, so be sure to ask for it, well, by numbers I guess. Here's the official solicitation:

Spend some time with comicdom's favorite super-couple, and this time Abby's finding out that time is the problem. She's dating the world's mightiest workaholic, and getting some time alone with her boyfriend - the Crusader - is becoming as much of a battle as any menace he has to fight. How do you share your boyfriend with the world? Plus, learn how Darkblade stays sharp, and Amazonia continues to make her presence felt.

And, since I really, really want you to buy it, I'm posting two full pages of the book for you to check out. Here's page five and page eight. Enjoy!

The book will be out in early August.

Lucky Thirteen

Page thirteen is done! I can't show too much of it, as there are a couple of fun reveals in the joke panels, including one that allowed me that allowed me to draw a sixties-Kirby-style monster. He'll be called the Kirbivore in later pages.

Once again, we get to see that Mark has an iPhone, too. One of these days, I'll have to start charging for this product placement.

Hopefully, I'll have room to explain that Mark's parents are very concerned with the appearance of normality, and as such don't let Mark fly them to visit him in Deco City. Wouldn't want people to think that the Crusader makes his parents fly coach because he's lazy or anything.

Colorin' Books

I'm not just cranking out Love and Capes here at the Thom Zahler Art and Coffee Emporium. I just finished a caricature for the Chalmers-Tinlin Team of real estate agents located around Akron, Ohio. I've done a bunch of work for Phil Chalmers, from cartooning to logo design to t-shirts, both for his real estate and speaking work. He's great to work with, and I'm proud of the work we've done over the last few years.

This is a caricature of the entire team for a coloring book. A black and white version of the art will appear as a coloring page in said coloring book.

See Them In Glorious 2-D!

I finally got the product photography for the Love and Capes t-shirts. They, and the models, look trés cool! You can click on the thumbnails and see them larger, too.

Like 'em? Be sure to order them before the end of June when orders close.

Halfway Home, Baby!

The pages are finally starting to come a little faster. I wasn't sure I was going to make the halfway mark before the end of the month, but here it is, the last day of May, and here's page twelve, too.

This page requires a little bit of explanation. For the last year or so, I've been driving to the West Side of Cleveland on the first Wednesday of the Month to play Pub Quiz with a bunch of friends. The quiz I played was a ten round, intensive trivia competition, including a picture round and a video round. Our team, the brilliantly named Team Eleven, was the scourge of the pub we played at. I may have participated in fifteen quizzes over the last year and a half, and I think Team Eleven only lost three times.

The host, MikeD, did a great job running the show. He even helped me change my flat tire in the middle of a spring snowstorm. He left with my wheel lock, but that's another story. After that, though, I wanted to do something to show my appreciation. So I thought about putting him in Love and Capes.

I came up with the idea that Darkblade, in his secret identity, would attend such trivia contests to try to hone his skills. After all, if you fight villains like The Quizzler who leave clever clues for you to figure out, it's probably good to keep sharp on these things. Later in the strip, there's even a reference to Charles Goren, best known to me as being part of my last question when I was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Last month was the last pub quiz. Brendan O'Neill's, our host restaurant, lost its lease and has closed. I know MikeD is on the search for a new location, and I hope he finds one. When he does, you should make sure to come on by and play the Quiz. Team Eleven would love to take your money, too.

Worse Than Ants

And here's the second and last part of what I've been calling "The Picnic Imperative." Of course, it's nowhere near as important as that, although a lot of stuff does seem to be happening around noon.

Keeping my "one panel, no joke" posting rule, I can't show you the first four panels, which I think have some pretty good comic timing in them. Trust me, though, they're comedy gold.

I also managed to finish this page long before 2:00am, and I always consider that a win.

Snow Day

Remember when Marvel did their Casket of Ancient Blizzards storyline? Oh, that was when people knew how to make crossovers. Someone in Thor, I think, opened up this magical casket and for the next month it snowed in the Marvel Universe. No massive crossovers, no special issues, just some snow in everyone's comics. These days, thanks to marketing and deconstructed storytelling, that story would be a four-month event. Yeah, things were better in my day, young fella, now get off my lawn.

Sorry, I'm a little punchy after staying up until 2:00am to finish page ten. Fortunately, I had NBC.com and the last four episodes of The Black Donnellys to keep me company as I worked.

Anyway, in this page Mark and Abby go on a picnic. Or try to.