Noir

Think I've hit a personal best for speed with my latest contribution to Huzzahnoir. Missed deadline by 15 minutes, but managed 2 pages. It's a little cramped in places to fit in the dialogue and I had to trim some of it, but apart from that I think it's an improvement on the first page I did. Scribbling very rough pencils then using a chunky marker to pick out the key bits is very satisfying, the really trick is learning how to refine those initial pieces without losing what makes them work in the first place.

Yay!!

I seem to have stopped getting gushy about books that are coming out, but holy f*cking shit, IDW are collection Jack Kent's King Aroo!!! I've tried to hunt down 2nd hand copies of a collection put out 30 years ago in the US, and oddly have had no luck. This is brilliant news, so far I've only seen what was reprinted in an article in The Comics Journal (which was my introduction to Kent), and adored it. Much seems to have been made about the debt to Walt Kelly, which is fair enough, but I think the work stands on it's own. Well done IDW, who are also collecting Torpedo and Rocketeer, making them very lovely indeed. Now, if they'd only discover, and collect Flook.

Huzzahnoir

There's a new Huzzah in town, this one's Huzzahnoir, and I think the title's a fair clue to the subject matter.
Crime is one of my favourite genres (the other is horror), and I lean towards the hard boiled crime of Hammett and Chandler (although my favourite crime writer is Jim Thompson), although there's plenty of later authors I like very much, Ross Macdonald springs to mind, and Richard (Donald E. Westlake) Stark. And I've mentioned a fair bit of the Hard Case Crime line in this blog before.
Anyway, Huzzahnoir is right up the lonely street that this man must walk.
I wanted something that combined loose brush solid black inky areas with lines picking out and implying detail.
Here's the rough sketches of three of the plates, as usual I prefer them to the finished art, sadly they were too rough to use.

Huzzahing

Been a while since I did anything for Huzzah, partly because of busy, a little drawer's block, and a fair bit of being at work and missing a chance at putting my name down for the next bit.
Huzzah's had a new start of sorts and it's such a strong one that when I saw I had the chance of going next I jumped at it, despite not having a clue what I was going to do. As soon as I commented 'huzzah' to take my turn an idea came to me with the images popped into my head straight after and requiring very little redrawing and refining. It didn't end up being the action packed scene I promised myself, but I have learned that if you get an idea you like then it's best to go for it.
Here's the rough inks I drew the final version from, there's very little changes from this to the finished pencils, but I like to know where everything's at before the final stage. Most people leave a lot out for the final stage to keep things from looking too stiff and overworked. Frankly, I'm not that good and I need to know it works before commiting to finished pencils, or inks. I'm sure it'd drive some people insane and it does mean extra work, but it helps me refine certain details, I find that bits get simplified, and I start 'pushing' the proportions of things and discovering shapes and interesting lines and patterns. Those happy accidents keep it interesting, and without them I think my work can look a bit bland... at least that's how I justify it all to myself.Here's a scrapped version of the first plate, it's a bit too obvious and cliched. All it suggests is menace, mystery and an attempt at looking cool. Big deal. Then I scribbled a bit of dialogue based on the relationship suggest by Colin's wonderful previous plate and I knew there should be real affection shown between the two characters. This turned out well for two reasons - when sinster folks show love it can seem all the more unsettling, and it gave me the idea of having the globe be a bit more glowing with the light coming through the fingers to suggest a feeling of emotion coming from it. The other change from initial idea was that the bottom plate was not divided into two panels, the second eye socket simply had the second bit of dialogue and a bit of background. It just didn't balance right, so I decided the second socket could be another panel, which was lucky because I think the Munoz-esque shadow looks quite nifty and gives the dialogue more weight.

Toxic comic

Today is the day that Toxic went on the shelves in newsagents and supermarkets throughout the land. I've got two strips in it, Bad Robots and The Hoaxers. Toxic are taking votes on the various strips and the one with the most votes is in with a chance of a regular gig..... you can see where I'm going with this can't you:) Anyone who wants to check Toxic out and vote here should absolutely vote for their favourite strip, hopefully you'll think that's one of mine:)
Here's the cover and a peak at my two strips. You get to vote here.

Astrodog at the cantina

Anyone who has been reading The DFC, or not, and thinks it's being cancelled too soon might want to go here. Nice to see a bit of fan support similar to that received by shows like Firefly.
Seems like a good time to show another Astrodog pic. This one was to pad out the three comic pages, and show Astro with aliens, which would have taken several more pages to happen.
Mr Postman delivered a couple of comp copies of the Toxic Comic extra with two strips drawn by me, and they've come out really well. The whole comic looks excellent and I hope there'll be more like it. The issue will be out soon and I'll post some artwork from it then.

Again with the Huzzah

Seems to be a pattern forming to my Huzzah contributions - I've been doing 'inbetween' bits, sort of character stuff, no plot. Nothing wrong with that, I hope, but I should challenge myself a little..
I love how contributors each develop a character based on how we each see them, because we see them from slightly different angles. We all respond to the different facets we each see in the characters, as Rob did with his powerful portrayal of the witchy character recently. I think it's making for some well rounded characters,
This page has been in my head since Ian introduced Khadari, inspired by one of my favourite comics (gets better with each reading), Nexus. One issue featured a back up with the character 'Dave' in prison that has always stuck with me. There's another influence, but I can't say as I'm trying to keep things vague and implied because there's no fun us giving each other a map for the story.

Warm glow, and more Astrodog

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, it's much appreciated, and cheering, with some helpful ideas about what to do with Astrodog. Once I know where things stand with The DFC I'll start putting something into action. A few people have mentioned Top Shelf, and I'd love to give them a go, but there's other places too, and in a turn of events that really made my day I received a lovely email from a small, but very good, publisher wishing me luck and showing interest in Astrodog. Whatever happens Astrodog won't just roll over, he'll find somewhere.
In the meantime, here's page 2 of the early version.

Bugger

Just seen that Random House has decided to pull the plug, so unless someone decides to buy it The DFC will be no more. The DFC was a wonderful comic, getting in from work on a Friday and seeing it on my table gave me a nice comfortable feeling that I'm really going to miss.
On a personal level this sucks as I had a strip, Astrodog, ready to go with them, it's pretty much fully penciled and I'm incredibly proud of it.
I don't suppose it'd hurt now to post some of the older version of Astrodog. Here's page one from when I'd been asked do do it as a half page comic. I don't usually pimp myself on here, but if anyone likes it and has any ideas who'd be interested in publishing it let me know.

I huzzah therefore I am

After what seems like a while I contributed some more work to Huzzah.
I was really pleased with how the Blue Devil pic I did came out, and what I felt worked was the lose and rough quality, so I thought I'd pursue that. Getting the balance between solid drawing and something more personal is tricky, and I'm not sure I'm there yet, this page looks a little too rough to be 'proper' drawing, and a little too restrained to be as expressive as I'd like. This is where the 'Covered' and 'Huzzah' really compliment each other for me, one encourages me to just have fun and mess about because a much better artist has done the hard work, the other forces me to work to bring my drawing up to the standard of everyone else involved. Reminds me of reading how Moebius liked how his work under that nom de plume informed his work as Jean Giraud and vicey versey.

I do love classic look Iron Man

Not been able to post much of what I've been working on lately. But here's a blast from the past, I was asked by John Freeman to draw a strip with a tight deadline for Comics International. Unfortunately the strip, as asked for, was based on some comic news of the time, since the magazine's late, the strip isn't relevant. Oh well.

It's Covered

Covered is a blog where people redraw comic covers, I like that idea, so I decided to bang this one out for the hell of it, it's so nice to draw and not worry about composition, perspective all that proper stuff, because someone else has done the work for you, and just push a pencil round like you did when you were a kid copying favourite pictures. I'd like to (re)draw some UK comic covers and maybe a few other things. For those that don't know Blue Devil came out in the mid-80s as part of DC's 'we're making comics fun again' idea, that I guess must've included 'Mazin' Man, it was created by Dan Mishkin and Gary Chon with art by Paris Cullens - who drew the better version on the left. Blue Devil started out as a quirky adventure romp with funny dialogue and moved further into humour and came up with the idea that the main character was a 'weirdness magnet', which meant general high jinx that included DC mystery stuff. Anyway, I was about 15 going on 11 and having a day out with the family in Marsden Grotto picked up Blue Devil 29 in a paper shop, and loved it, no idea if it still holds up, but I still have it and don't want to spoil the happy nostalgia.

Toxic

Seeing as it's already been reported on Down the Tubes I guess it's ok to post about.
Emont's kid comic/mag Toxic is to feature a 16 page comic free with the April 1st (no foolin') issue, and 2 of the strips will be drawn by me, I know this, cos I finished them a couple of days ago! I'm chuffed to bits to feature in a kid's humour comic, I'll be going out buying a copy along with a bag of pic 'n' mix and fizzy pop.
Readers get to vote on their favorite strips which could lead to the more stories in the regular comic. There's a cracking line up of creators, for more detail on who's doing what, here's the down the tubes link.

Hurray for snow

Yes, it's cold, cause traffic problems and turns to slush, but c'mon, it's SNOWING!

Stuff to look at and read

It seems like it's been ages since I mentioned other people's work. So here's a brief list -
I'm two thirds through Gus and His Gang by Chris Blain and thoroughly enjoying it, perhaps more than Isaac the Pirate.
I reread Ian Edginton and D'Israeli's Stickleback recently in collected form and got more out of it. Reading it in 2000ad was fine, and I liked it, but felt it didn't match the creative teams previous work (Leviathan and the War of the Worlds trilogy, or even Kingdom of the Wicked), turns out I was wrong, it's a fine addition, and I'm looking forward to the plot thickening and the mystery deepening.
Also from 2000ad I picked up the collection of Judge Dredd: The Pit. Rock solid Dredd story, and when he's done well, usually by Wagner, he's great.
On a Wagner kick I'm also reread The Bogie Man, surely this title is due another collection.
By the time I came to Scalped it was already up to two collections, this was fine as it meant I got to read a big chunk and not wait too long for the third collection. I do like a good crime comic, and that's what Scalped is, the grimness is a little too constant it's pretty compelling stuff.
Northlanders was a title I figured I'd wait too see collected (Vertigo have a policy of cheaply priced first collections, which seems like a smart move) and pick it up when I was in mood. I'm glad I did.

Online I recently discovered Rip Haywire, which is still in it's early days, and a great throwback to classic US adventure strips like Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy and Steve Canyon for the Dilbert generation.

The wonderful Phantom Skull's been going for a few months now and is up to episode 13, it's a lot of fun.

Tom Spurgeon, I think, mentioned Covered a few weeks ago, and it's utter genius. Simple premise, artists redraw old comic covers. Rene french draws Wolverine!?! Stepehen Wiessman draw Hulk!?! See? Genius.

One of the best covereds sadly isn't on there, Chris "Elio" Elopoulos , inspired by the blog, did his version of X-Men, and it's awesome. I'm gonna redraw some covers for fun for sure.

More Huzzah

Feeling bold I decided to do two 'plates' for my turn at Huzzah. An interesting one this time round, I made a lot of mistakes drawing these, but found it to be such a positive experience that I'm not sure 'mistakes' is fair. So, here they are - don't forget to look at the strip so far.

Groovy

My book project revealed, it's the UK edition of Bruce Campbell's autobiography 'If Chins Could Kill'! There's a new intro by Mr Campbell for this edition, and here's the full wraparound cover I drew for it.

Dumb luck that I got the chance to do this, and nothing like my original idea, but the chance to do it even if it was a very definite brief was too hard to pass up.
Art style was done as requested, the look is supposed to somehow be a cross between the classic EC sensibility and a more modern take a la Bryan Hitch.
The book is being published by Aurum and will be available fairly soon at Amazon, Waterstones and Bookdepository and loads of places, even ones on streets.
And for anyone interested, here's my first idea, it's rough, and based on a fairly recognisable Evil Dead still, but my take was to make the cover look like an issue of Famous Monsters.

Huzzah!

Just finished and posted my first contribution to Huzzah, if you want to see the story so far, and you really should, go here.
In the meantime here's the finished pencils and final colour version. I've been wanting to skip the inking stage for a while, as much as I like chunky fluid brush lines I've always felt my stuff loses something in the process.

Big Jobs!

and those jobs are......
1. Book cover. Pencils are finished. It's a very 'kewl' thing, I hope to share something soon..
2. Comic strip that I've sort of kept secret, well, ok, I blabbed whenever I could, but I didn't mention it on this blog. Ok, maybe once or twice. Pencils are waiting on approval and hopefully it'll be finished in the next few months.
3. I've also got a chance to do 2 short strips, I'll post the when and where as soon as I can.
4. Daversham Rex, written by David Hailwood. I've had the script for a while and the plan is to draw a few pages, do a few pin ups and see if we can drum up some interest. I posted some art for it here, I plan to get the pitch ready over the next few months.
5. Jellybean. Not the full title, another script from David. This one hasn't been stewing for as long as Daversham, but I'm really excited by the possibilities for it and have done some scribbling, I'll be posting some designs soon.
6. A few personal strips. I've got three ideas I'd like to get down on paper this year, no idea how long they'll be.
7. Late, and very welcome edition, is my inclusion in Huzzah!, the follow up to the frankly fantastic Who Killed Round Robin? I'm really chuffed to be part of this, and as soon as I get no 1 in the list done will be chipping in. Until then gaze upon it's wonderfulness here.... before I eff it up:)
8. Who knows what else, but definitely more.

Bye '08

Another weird old year. 2008 taught me a pretty harsh lesson, after a terrible 07 I thought I'd just walk into a wonderful year where I got everything I wanted. Turns out it's not that easy.
Not that it's been a gloomy year, my beautiful wife and incredible daughter made sure that was never going to be the case, and I've also had a few opportunities to draw come my way that I'm incredibly grateful for. But if I'm being honest, I should have made more time for my family and worked harder. It's crazy that I thought I could lounge around and take it easy, yet hold down a full time job, be a dad and a husband and still turn myself into a cartoonist.
So, '09 will be better not just cos I think I deserve it, but because I'm going to work at it.
All the best for the New Year to all of you!