HOW-TO-BE-ME

I thought this was both flattering and humbling, Kathryn Alcorn and Jonathon Conner over at UTRECHT Art Supplies invited me into their catalog and website as a "spotlight artist"!

In the marker paper section of the catalog, Kathryn asked to put up one of my marker comps from CHARLATAN BALL. On the websites Learning Center area, I broke down my marker illustration process, step-by-step, even paper selection. It was so much fun and such a challenge to try and articulate things both learned and stumbled upon. Check it out HERE

LEAPIN' LAGOMORPH!

...or is it Leporidae?



Either way, buy a shirt.

BRAND NEW CHARLATAN BALL VINTAGE TEES!!!

Any day now, CHARLATAN BALL #6 will hit the stands, then the trade paperback collection a few months later--both with an advertisement for these shirts. But for those of you that read this blog, I'm making the tee shirts available immediately. These are high quality, limited quantity shirts you won't get anywhere else. Order them now and you'll be wearing them before the rest of the *world* knows they're even out!

Here's the new design, I think it really turned out great:"Big Evil/Little Demon"--is an image of the antagonist of our stories; the Chaos Mage pulling Chuck's strings, the one, the only, DEMON EMPTY. This came out really nice, vintage-style silk screen process on a high quality, soft, dark blue t-shirt. 50/50 blend. Available in every size.
We'd actually wanted to do this print back in our first run, but thought it more prudent (*cough* affordable!) to start with the Chuck & Caesar one.

Speaking of, after selling out of the first printing, we went ahead and did up another batch of the *classic* "CHUCK'S AMOK" vintage red tee:

These are really, really nice shirts. American Apparel brand, 100% cotton. Super soft, super high quality , vintage gym class, ringer style.

Here's THE AD, done by BEN KALINA (who also designed the shirts), that's about to run:

Use the safe, secure, easy PAYPAL LINKS on the side. I fixed the tabs so now you can even select the size instead of emailing me. But still feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Go ahead and order a few.



In the market to get your creations stretched across somebody's chest? Kurt and his crew at Brunetto t-shirts really did a first rate job. Check them out.

BACK TO ME...

Along with illustrating the further animated adventures of BATMAN: BRAVE & THE BOLD, I've been compiling a TON of early conceptual sketches and roughs from CHARLATAN BALL, to put into the newly solicited CHARLATAN BALL TRADE PAPERBACK!

In addition to collecting issues #1-6 of the first series, the tpb will include endless pages of extras, drawings, color process and outline to final page comparisons--a virtual smörgåsbord of insight into our collective creative process. Not being satisfied with merely regurgitating and repurposing old artwork, I decided to include never-before-seen marker comps like the ones below. These will be special chapter breaks, 12 total, depicting an important character or element from the series. I'm not going to post them all (gotta have something to look forward to!), so enjoy these while you can.

--And please, PLEASE ask your local comics shop for a Diamond/PREVIEWS ORDERING CATALOG and ORDER the CHARLATAN BALL TPB YOURSELF(!), do NOT count on your shop to do it for you. Serious. Seriously. For reals. I don't want to hear about how your shop didn't carry it. They will if you order it. (All you do is fill out the form and hand it directly back to them!) Do it NOW; the deadline is any day now.

FROM JERSEY THEY CAME...

...No, I'm not talking about The Smithereens (this time), but DAN McCDAID'S and GLEN BRUNSWICK'S "JERSEY GODS" from Image Comics, issue #1 hits stores this Wednesday--with variant covers (Paul Pope, Darwin Cook, Mike Allred to name a few), so go buy them all.

An amazing talent aside--Dan is singularly responsible for getting me into DOCTOR WHO (thanks for the books, Dan--btw!). I love this guys art! You can see more, including, development, sketches, finished pages and fan art (mine!) on his blog HERE.

Go! Go now! (and then come back for a special announcement from me!)

"GLAD YOU ENJOYED YOUR HOSTESS FRUIT PIES, LUNKHEADS!"

I'm not entirely sure why I've been keeping it under wraps, maybe I'm afraid they're liable to take me off at any second--but I'm the artist on the new BATMAN: BRAVE & the BOLD series hitting comic shop shelves tomorrow. It's based on the new animated show, which I helped with for a minute (more on the fun yet bittersweet sting of working on someone else's take on Plastic Man later)--design-wise, the show was/is attempting something somewhere between Bruce Timm and Genndy Tartakovsky's CLONE WARS stuff--which, as you know I worked on. James Tucker is a genius, as well as Ben Jones--who are really giving the show a its own "voice", separating it from all the other attempts at the Caped Crusader. The mood of the show is light, "jazzy" and intentionally (I think) cheesy. I read an article about it that said: "It's The Dark Knight without the darkness", which I thought was pretty dead-on. In the end, it's just fun--and I've had a blast working on the book with MATT WAYNE, who's an incredible writer and super collaborative, creative and cool; he's able to totally harness that tongue and cheek "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" feeling of the show (in which he writes, as well), and carry it over to the comic's medium. Plus, he doesn't use too much dialog balloons to muck up the pages! hahaha. Seriously, couldn't imagine anyone else writing these. I'm also still working with DAN DAVIS, an amazing artist in his own right, who's inked my stuff on the GYM PARTNER books and RACHEL GLUCKSTERN, our editor at DC.

Look at these amazing finishes by Dan: That being said, I doubt anyone would have hired me had they knew I was using these old HOSTESS FRUIT PIES ads as inspiration (hey, the show hadn't aired yet!). Here are some of my pencils from a sequence from issue #1 and you'll see what I mean. Can't you picture Lex Luthor (the old, WAYNE BORING version--Matt's idea) licking his chops, eating some of that "flaky goodness"?This page below is the perfect spot for the Hostess Fruit Pie ad:

P.S. Sorry for making POWER GIRL look like a tranny.

"VOTE FOR AN ARCHIE BRONSON SPINOFF!!!"

Digging through some of my old files from mine and Tom Kenny's PLASTIC MAN PILOT @ WB a few years back, I came across designs for Plas' parole officer, ARCHIE BRONSON. Little known fact: Dynamite Jones was originally created to be Plas' mentor and boss, but after initial notes from DC Comics, we decidedly went another direction and came up with this diminutive supporting character, unabashedly inspired by ROBERT FORSTER's "Max Cherry, Bail Bondsman" from Jackie Brown. GEORGE LIQUOR comparisons aside, Archie also has as much to owe to Yogi's BOO BOO Bear, than John K. Although he does owe a lot. Especially his rage.

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See?
And...We even modeled Archie's office after his...
(I'll try and dig up other views. Beautiful work by SEONNA HONG and layouts from BILL FLORES)

Apparently Tom ran into Robert Forster at a Christmas party--and talked about of all things, Plastic Man, his favorite superhero! He was flattered to be the point of reference and supposedly loved the dvd of our short Tom gave him.

Looking back at these drawings now, they are in no way "great" design theories. At least not as much as I thought they were. But they made sense to me at the time.

I'd actually love to do a show or comic team-up w/Dynamite and grizzled ex-cop with a sensitive side Archie.

SUPERHEROINES

A big THANK YOU goes out to the women in my life...no, my lovely wife--if you're reading this, it isn't how it sounds...but the other day, an incredibly talented artist from Missouri sent me something that not only made my day, but made me humbled--by her skill...using traditional medium (markers, prismacolors, etc)--you've might have seen it on her blog, but take a gander at her SCARLET WENCH drawing!!!

Thanks a million, KRISTEN McCABE! She is possibly one of the most talented cartoonists I've seen out there in Blog Country. Each drawing is textured and tactile. Her lines and form retain their energy--can't say enough about this talented chick...except she does live in Missouri. hahaha

Awhile ago, I had the good fortune to trade super hero drawings with another amazingly talented--and obscenely popular (!) (she averages 50+ comments on each post, I'm not insinuating anything, but...hehee) artist from Toronto, Canada (she's not a girl I made up, I swear!). I think I did a GREEN LANTERN for her--the Hal Jordan version, she was very specific (sorry, Guy Gardner...perhaps someday). She, in turn did this amazing LUKE CAGE and MISTY KNIGHT!

Thanks MEL MADURO!

He might not look like one, but CIRCUS PEANUT is a super hero to me. This first piece is a collaboration between myself and TINY PICNIC'S MICHELLE BICKFORD. I've talked about her work before--but she's so multi-talented it warrants further discussions. Visit one of her many sites and buy something!

She's also good at assemblages...
Not to mention all of the cool things she's sent me over the years. Who could ever forget the ANDY UPDATES BOARD GAME!!

Thanks, ladies!

NUMBER SIX WILL ALWAYS BE #1 TO ME.

It's a sad day. "The Village" finally cracked my favorite secret agent. PATRICK McGOOHAN passed away today.

I'd like to think THIS is how he went...