Twelve and a Half Percent Doesn't Mean a Lot

I'm already on page three, which means I'm 1/8th of the way through the book! That's 12 1/2%.

Although the fourth panel always has the beat, usually a funny one, I like when I can pop a joke in the middle of a scene, too. This one is particularly good because Darkblade makes the joke, and he's not often the funny one. He's got a gruff exterior when he's not talking to the Crusader, so it's nice to crack that every once in a while.

It's also interesting how the scenes break. I always had Darkblade and Blurstreak having a kind of adversarial relationship, which fit the general Batman vibe. But then I hit on something in the panel that directly follows that which deepens that reasoning. It was something that was always there, and made a lot of sense, but it wasn't obvious to me.

Want to find out what it was? Well, you'll have to grab the book on Free Comic Book Day.

Two for Two

Here's a panel from page two. While I think this scene is funny, I have to say it was a royal pain to draw. Four characters in multiple panels is a bit of a grind, worsened by Blurstreak's superspeed leaving a bunch of ghost images behind.

The guys at Comic Pants did a really interesting podcast on diversity in comics. I've tried to keep my cast in Love and Capes and Raider as diverse as I can without making it forced. I'd already planned on introducing Microdot in this sequence, and always intended for her to be a female, since I figure her secret identity's first name is Dorothy. Hence the dot. But, upon listening to the podcast, I realized that I hadn't had any Asian characters appear in the book. There was no reason for Microdot not to be Asian, so I went ahead and did that.

I don't know if anyone will notice. Actually, I hope no one will, since I'm not trying to make an overt statement. Aside from here, I suppose. But I thought I'd share with you, so you've got a glimpse into why I make some of the decisions that I do.

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.

Podcasting a Wide Net

The Love and Capes signal went off on Monday, letting me know that someone mentioned the series somewhere on the tubes of the internets. It was Comic Podcast Network, which reviewed Love and Capes #6, along with Action Comics #859 and Loners #6. The guys on the show had a lot of kind things to say and loved the book. I particularly appreciated that they noticed how I try to make every issue new reader friendly.

Get your iPod fired up and check out the podcast here.

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.

Races Other Than Bannon

This one one of those posts that I’m writing in lieu of actually doing real work. I have a website to build, and a cool Red Sonja piece that I’m working on that I’ll post later, I’m sure. But I just had a marathon Council meeting, and I want to write about my day.

You see, today, my brother Robert and I tried out for The Amazing Race.

I don’t watch the show. Seriously. I know of it, and it seems very cool. But it’s an reason to travel and have adventures, and that would be all I’d need normally. But it’s also my Grandma’s favorite show. With those two things, Robert and I went down to Dave and Buster’s to try out.

We got there an hour early, just to be safe. There was already a pretty long line. Some people had even camped out.

Some dumb people, I must say. I checked out the line and some of these campers were fstill filling out their applications. Geez, Robert and I brought ours already filled out. How can you plan for a camp put, bring sleeping bags and the like, but not bring a completed application?

We were lucky enough to have some pretty fun people behind us. Hanging out with them made the time go faster.

They let seven teams in at a time to run a couple of challenges. Being Dave and Busters, they were largely video game related. We had to run the linked Daytona Race game. Robert said he was pretty good at it, so I let him race. He came in second out of seven, and we got our second clue, which took us to the Chicago Shooting Gallery. Robert stepped up again and got a perfect score.

From there we got our ticket to do the video interview. Hopefully, here’s where I came in handy. We had some time to walk around, and Robert and I discussed our strategy. Basically they turned a camera on the team and had us talk. So we needed a plan.

Robert suggested our intro, as I said “I’m a Mac” and Robert said “I’m a PC.” Then I came up with the idea of us interviewing each other. I figured that it would make us seem conversational, and give us a natural way to express ourselves rather than try to make a tandem speech.

I asked Robert why he wanted to be on the show, and then I followed it up with the story about my Grandma. “And if you want to be the heartless person who tells her she can’t see her two favorite grandsons on her favorite show... well, you’re a heartless bastard.” We covered Robert’s fall off the grand canyon, and my career as a cartoonist, and then closed by saying how we’d bring in the deomgraphics they’ve been looking for.

I don’t know if we did well enough to get on. I think we’re soild enough that if someone read our applications or saw or video, they’d check out the other half. We may not make it on the show, but we gave it a good swing, and that’s all you can ask for, right?