Adding some gray marker tones here.
Listening to: Cat Power, Bat for Lashes

comic review: Holy Terror

When I first flipped through it last year on the shelf, I was pretty impressed, thinking "Frank still got it", due to pages like this:

I didn't know a lot going into it, only that Frank Miller is a legendary comic book creator, known for having re-defined Batman and Daredevil for a generation, and creating Sin City. Apparently this book was originally supposed to be a Batman story about fighting al-queda. Turned into generic Batman & Catwoman archetypes fighting generic Muslim extremist archetypes.

I might have sounded like a fool to the comic shop owner when I remarked how awesome the book looked. In hindsight, I was only right about the first half of the book. For the first part, the art was gritty, but dynamic, with a great white ink effect of a rainstorm throughout. About halfway through...I don't know what to say. I would never normally have the arrogance to say I could do better than an artist of Frank's reputation, but...

I don't like to say negative things about a creator's work. It was just too much difference in quality, I've never seen anything like this before. I feel confused. The story even started off strong with a fun (and maybe a little disturbing) Cat and Bat...I mean Fixer chase across the city rooftops. They quickly discover suicide bombings all over the city, and it gets pretty cliche' from there. I can only compare the story to a loved one who loses their mind in old age. Choose to remember the good times when they were young, forget the bad.

Going to go read the Dark Knight Returns and pretend this didn't happen.

New pages!

Been a long time! Got a lettering gig for upcoming Revelators comics, so I'll be busy with that for a while. I managed to finish this page a few weeks ago (12), and following are 2 guest pages by Mike Auban!

I'm only showing the pages here in order, but unlettered. I'd like to do all the lettering all at once to keep it consistent.

Enjoy!

side job

I had the privilege of lettering another issue of Mark Melton's Angeldreams comic. We just finished issue 5, and it looks awesome!

Pick up a few issues if you can, and support indie comics!

New CoL page, 11, I think.

Not lettered yet, I'm thinking of foregoing lettering until print. That way, I can do it all at once and keep everything straight. Also, to make you buy the book, hehe!

Here's a great piece of art from my friend Mark Melton! He does a great comic called Angeldreams you should check out.

I've been finishing up a project for Social Sump the past few weeks. The plan is to get back into some Children of Light stuff pretty quick. I'll show you another preview soon, promise!

Back at Blogger! yay.

Checking back in here for the time being, here's a present for me being away for so long:



This is an upcoming page for Children of Light. Not the next page, which I thought was this page. I'll have to do the next page after this one, I don't like to leave things half-finished.

moving

I decided to make the move to a big-boy website where I can do a little more, and keep the comics organized. Go there now!

Page 9

Nothing much to say here. Took me longer than it should have to do this one. Sam & Melina posed for the bottom panel. I didn't really dump rubble on them. I unintentionally made the scared little girl look like her.

#3, page 4

Page 4 here of Children of Light 3. This one took maybe the least time, but was kinda hard emotionally. When I write, I try to dig inside myself to find parts of myself to put into the characters, and poor Scott here has a lot of my pain and hurts. I also made a censored version where I cleaned up a few words. I didn’t use language to be shocking or gratuitous; it seemed most appropriate for the character and what he’s going through. At the darkest times of our lives, we hardly care to censor ourselves. I may have gotten too into the character during this page, I started to share some of his feelings! But I remembered the voice of the Lord, who promises renewed life, just as he offers Scott. No matter the past, long ago, or recent, God can make all things new!

This took about 8-10 hours total. Used sharpie, brush pen, gray tone marker, and sponge with ink. I enjoyed a Great Lakes Elliot Ness beverage during the inking.

Ready...set...

Hey blogsters! Long time! My bad. Been letting a lot of stuff get in the way of my getting work done. Sorry, it was a bad year. One thing I have been doing is lettering for issue #4 of Mark Melton's Angledreams. Good stuff. I never read it until I started work on it. Sorry Mark!

So about a year after I finished Children of Light #2, I finally get #3 rolling. Really. Check this out:


Monster attack. Rarrr!

This page is almost in the can. It will be page 1 & 2, and 3 is in inks too. What I thought I'd do is post finished pages here, so you can read them as I finish. Hopefully 1 every week or 2. I can't promise speed, sorry. It's the way things is. Not yet sure if I'll be opening up to other artists to help out. Possibly. There is 1 page already done by someone else, so I might as well. I liked the way they turned out. You'd probably like it too, so we can move along quicker!

Invincible Iron Man

Been a while since I did a comics review. One of my favorite reads lately has been Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction (writer), Salvador Larocca (penciller), and Frank D'Armata (colorist). I'm usually an occasional Iron Man reader, sometimes finding it hard to relate to the character of Tony Stark. He's a billionaire, I'm broke. He's a genius inventor, I just figured how to text on my phone. He drives to work in one of the most powerful weapons on earth, I drive a '91 Olds.

The current storyline is what grabbed me the most. Tony Stark was not only the aforementioned billionaire playboy, but was given charge of the US's top peacekeeping force, SHIELD. An alien invasion led to Tony losing everything, and being hunted for precious information stored in his brain. Stark begins deleting information from his technology-enhanced mind to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. This causes him to slowly lose his greatest weapon, his intelligence. As a result, Tony experiences an examination of his life as he needs to use less advanced versions of his armor developed through the years.

I've had a year of trouble and loss to put it simply, so I find I can understand what Tony Stark goes through in this past year's worth of stories. It reminds me of a storyline from the 80's where Tony's alcoholism caused him to lose everything he had, even giving up his Iron Man identity to a trusted friend, while we slowly watched Stark rebuild his life. When we hit rock bottom, we usually find out who we really are as we rebuild ourselves, hopefully stronger than before.

Ugh!

I was looking over Children of Light #1 today, wondering if I should reprint. Wow. This is pretty bad. Granted, it was my 1st effort at comics, but it does seem to get a little better as I go along. If I just reprint, there's information that's horribly out of date. One day, i'd love to do a totally re-mastered version. Maybe after #3, which wraps up the "origin" storyline. For now, I think I'll just do a 2nd print with some updated credits and "extras" pages. Get the original print while you still can over at Comixpress!

Progress

Sorry for the sucky quality, takes too long to set up a scan, so I just take a pic with the Macbook! Worked for about an hour on this today. It will be pages 1 & 2 of Children of Light #3. I'm drawing it at pretty much print size because I didn't want to mess with 2 art pages.

Goodwill to all

Went diving last night, thought I made out great, but ended up being disappointing. Looked like a foreign grocery cleaned out their freezer, and I filled a box with still frozen meat & fish. Turned out the stuff was years old. Years, like 2-5. Someone call the health dept! Sometimes there's a reason things are thrown out. There was a package of Chicken wings from somewhere else only a few days expired, so we kept that. Sell-by dates don't mean the food has become instant death, just cook thoroughly. Not much good produce. Got a leaky bottle of cooking oil, a few things Melissa made me throw out: a few dented cans, a broken bag of sugar & flour. I guess every day won't be great finds. There was a good "mystery" can (no label). I guess it would be safer (and fun!) to stick with those.

Behind a Goodwill store is a trash dumpster filled with discarded things. Definitely not a donation dumpster. I made sure! There are lost of good & semi-good things in there I guess the store thinks they won't sell. Yard sale stock for us! I almost feel guilty because there's so little effort.
Rescued was:
A nice baby stroller
a computer that can probably go on ebay for parts.
baby mobile floor play thing
electric hedge trimmer
oil lamp (Melissa might want to keep)
Princess Barbie for Melina (looked like Sarah Furgeson doll-she got a bath)
electronics experiment toy for Sam.
a small gift basket of soap (keep!)

Getting ready for comic show on Sunday, my 1st one in a few years. I've learned you need to do more than sit there and hope people make eye contact with you. I started doing some sketches to sell cheaply that can work as promotional material and act as conversation starters. Artists that have familiar characters on display attract more customers to their table, and people standing in front of you instead of looking as they walk by from a safe distance on the other side of the aisle so they don't have to talk to you is a good thing.

Thanks to my friends from Crashland who are sending me great stuff to have on the table!

Yeah, DMZ is good!

It's here! It's here!

Yay! Children of Light #2 finally here after 5 long years! Take that, Battle Chasers! Art by 11 great artists! Free preview here!

Getting closer

Drawn by Papa Nate, ink by me. I still need to fix the guy's pants, I know!

This is the last page of Children of Light #2, but not the last page I have to work on. I think I'm working at a better pace lately, at least a few times a week.

Oh, yeah, we were robbed on New Years Day, and among the stolen items was my laptop with some finished pages on it. Not too much was lost, I only have to re-work parts of a few pages. So left to do is inks/tones on 3 pages, then lotsa letters.

Been listening to Around Comics podcasts. They do a great weekly comics show!

Press release from my buddy Josh Alves:


I just posted on my site this morning, but I'm getting ready to place the order for my self-published project "Araknid Kid" and am currently taking pre-orders!

The print edition of Araknid Kid: Episode 1 is getting the final preparation (getting the files ready) and the plan is to have the book sent on the 19th with delivery sometime in early '09 (depending on how busy the printer is).
28 Full color pages with cover by DAPPER DAN!!!
Looking for a great stocking stuffer/gift? When you pick up a copy for yourself, how about another for that special someone (even a "not-so-special someone" :D) The books are priced at $5.50 ($3.50 for the book $2.00 for standard delivery in the continental US) When you order, once the comics arrive I can send it directly to the address of your choosing!!! Since it won't be available for Christmas, if you are interested in gifting it, I'll send you a hi-res "gift card" for you to print out and wrap, or put in a card or whatever
I've got some discount prices set for multiple orders as well (includes individual shipping of each one)

ORDER HERE

Everyone that pre-orders will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win an Araknid Kid Sculpt! (1 entry for each copy purchased)

Winner will be announced on December 22nd on my site.
Any questions, please feel free to email me! THANKS!
-Josh