Middle-Aged

I crowdsourced part of this page when I put out a call for cheesy pickup lines on Twitter, and Mike Hawthorne, way talented artist guy and person I'm friendly with, gave me a great one that worked just fine. And so, I present Charlotte and Blurstreak meeting at Abby and Mark's wedding.

This is page forty, and now I've only got five pages to go. I can't tell you how thrilled I am by this. I'm going to keep plugging away, and I'm hoping that I'll have it done early next week. When I was walking to vote yesterday, I plotted out the rest of the jokes/beats for the remaining pages.

Now, all I have to do is draw them. And ink them. And color them. And letter them. Easy, right?

Browns Town

I can't tell you what this panel is, but I can tell you what it's not. It has nothing to do with the Mighty Mighty Cleveland Browns.

Who are neither mighty, nor mighty. Heck, they're barely a professional team these days.

With this, I'm in the forties in the book. Just six left!

Dancing with the Super-Stars

As I've mentioned before, you need to follow me on Twitter.

I started drawing this scene from Mark and Abby's wedding, and I needed the name of a DJ. There's a group of brothers out here in Northeast Ohio that DJ events and do a pretty good job, so I got the idea to call it "________" Brothers. (Hey, it's like the Match Game!) I was going through a list of joke names and friends' names I could put in, and then I said "Heck with that!" And I twittered First person to Twitter me their name gets it placed somewhere on page 38.

Then Jason Wright tweeted back, and bam! We have the Wright Brothers Music and Entertainment. Their name will be on the sign. I don't know if it'll get a text mention at all, but I do now that the DJ will be in a scene or two that's coming up. Heck, with the way I'm busting out pages, maybe they'll show up today.

This Hawk's Now a Dove

Page thirty-seven is now done. While I was listening to the 15 Minutes with Mark Waidpodcast, which I recommend y'all listen to, too, I was reminded of another movie that I dig. So much so that I almost watched it last night, but I decided to watch the World Series. Sadly, I made the wrong choice.

So, that said, anyone know what song Quincy is slightly misquoting in this panel?

Page 36

I actually finished page 36 a couple of days ago. I've just been too busy, or maybe lazy, to post a panel from it. As usual, I had to erase the real dialogue and put something else in.

So Abby's speaking the lyrics to All You Need is Love by the Beatles. It's been on my mind because of the recent Blackberry commercial. I'm a die-hard iPhone guy, but these commercials really get me. I always thought of All You Need is Love as a romantic song, but here it's an inspirational one. The commercial has a bunch of people finding what they love and then mastering it. Yeah, it's a soft spot for a guy who loved comics and learned how to write and draw. So, if you haven't seen it, here's the commercial:

All You Need is Love, of course, also had a brilliant appearance in Love Actually. I can't link to one without linking to the other. It was also pretty awesome in the Cirque de Soliei show Love in Las Vegas. I recommend that, too.

The Big Mile Marker

I finished pages 34 and 35, and, while I'd love to show them to you, I just can't. You'll have to buy the book to find out. But, I've been posting an image for each page. Since I can't do it for this one, enjoy this one of Kayla Perkins modeling the new Love and Capes ringer shirt. (Which, of course, you can order here.)

Page 33

I throw a bunch of little things in Love and Capes to keep myself interested. Things like throwing Richard Castle references into the bookstore. One of the other things I do is draw people into the background every now and then. Here, I drew someone into the foreground. I went to Immaculate Conception church in Willoughby, and when I was in grade school, one of our priests was Father Jerry. I was lucky that Immaculate had a pretty good assortment of priests, and Fr. Jerry was one of my favorites. In thinking about it, his use of humor in homilies probably influenced a lot of my own public speaking style.

So, Mark and Abby are getting married, and I needed a priest, so guess who I put into the book?

Starbucks That Don't Involve Coffee

I've been doing commissions as I knock out pages of Love and Capes #12. I've had a few pile up as I've been trying to get to a particular mile marker in the book.

One of them is this Starbuck illustration. The client wanted that hard drinking, gambling, smoking first season version of the character. I had a lot of fun doing it,and think I got the pose and the attitude down pretty well. Frak yeah!

Careless Whispers

I haven't posted one of these in a while: a realpanel from the new issue. Here's a scene from the wedding itself, where Charlotte and Quincy (Maid of Honor and Best Man, respectively) are coming down the aisle. You can see Doc Karma and Blurstreak out of their uniforms, as well as a nondescript extra sitting next to them. Blurstreak's real name is Michael, and he was named after Mike Wieringo. I didn't know Mike as well as I would have liked, but he was a great guy and we were friends. So when I had a super speedster character and he needed to have a first name, it had to be Ringo's.

Also in this scene is something that's driving me nuts: whispering. I don't think the dashed-line thing when I'm doing the transparent balloons. So I fade out the words themselves to a 75% gray so it gives the same effect, hopefully. Especially since, being at the wedding, there's a lot of whispering going on.

I'm at 13 pages to go, but two of those are a double-page spread, so that's like 12, right? And that means I'm at the halfway point… if this were a 24 page story.

This Scene Does NOT Appear in This (or any other) Issue

Yeah, I can guarantee that this scene won't be in issue #12. I mean, it's clear that Charlotte's pregnant with Mark's kid. Oh, wait, that's not going to happen either.

My gush of pages stops with this one. I know what happens on the next two, but I have to figure out how to tell that part of the story. I need to take a breather and figure those out.