Proof of Life

I was driving home from my morning kickboxing class and got The Call. No, not "the call that changed my destiny", you Backstreet Boys fan (if there are any of you left… but my, that's a catchy tune) but The Call to pick up my proofs for Love and Capes #6. Here's a pic of the proof, along with one of my favorite Silver Age villains, The Composite Superman. And, since he fell off the shelf when I was reaching for him, Beppo the Super Monkey.

Sliver (and not that bad Sharon Stone film)

It's been pointed out to me that I neglected Wizard World Texas in my quadumverate of holidays. (Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Jesse Jackson, you big pointer-outer-guy.) And yes, I will very much be in Big D with an armful of Love and Capes, including, God and the printer willing, copies of numero six-o. But, while I dig WizDal, it's not quite to the level of MOC or, say, Christmas. So, if it's a holiday, it's one of those government ones that close the banks and the post office, but don't involve cards or presents.

I've gone ahead and finished this year's Christmas Card. I'm providing a lovely slice of the artwork, hot off the Wacom tablet. It's enough so that you can't see what the card or the joke is, but enough to whet your appetite. Plus, it looks kinda cool, don't you think?

Ho Ho Ho, My Goodness, It's Almost That Time, Isn't It?

Yeah, it's getting to be that time again. Halloween is over, so we're coming up to that four-play of holidays: Thanksgiving, Mid-Ohio-Con, Christmas and New Year's.

So, bound and determined not to be cutting it close again, and not having a new issue of Love and Capes to worry about, I've started work on my annual Christmas card. These have become both a marketing piece and something of a collector's item. If you'd like one, just give me a shout with your address and I'll get you on the list. My mailing list is always in flux, as every year it seems I need to rebuild the list or transpose it into another program to generate the mailing list.

Anyway, I've got The Idea for the Christmas cards and may actually finish them up tonight. It's good to be ahead for once.

Trick or Treat!

Torpedoes Away!

Love and Capes #6 went to the printer today. I'll be seeing a proof shortly. Big thanks to Christine, Dee and Jesse who proofed the book for me. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one.

Down in a Hole

The Fort Worth Weekly is one of my frequent and favorite clients. They sent up the Thom Signal for me to do a cover for them. It's Yet Another Crane Cover, as the development of Ft. Worth's end of the Metroplex is a big story out there. Most of the cover was their suggestion, I just changed the angle to make it a more interesting downshot.

For those of you process junkies, the cover was sketched by hand and then taken into Illustrator, where I build the crane and the buildings. I inked the hole and debris by hand, composited it in Photoshop, and three hours and one venti mocha later, lo and behold, there was a cover.

And speaking of the DFW Metroplex, I've been to Dallas a few times, Fort Worth a few fewer, and in my experience, this recent survey saying Dallas-Fort Worth has the nation's second most unattractive citizens. Clearly, those people have never been to a Rangers game or downtown. Hot-itute abounds there. I got your back, DFW.

What's This?

I'm just messing around today. It's good to do that every now and then.

I've started doing my Boo at the Zoo tour this week. As of Thursday, I'm up at the Zoo four days a week, drawing kiddies (and some adults) in costumes, often in the cold. It's a fun time, if a bit draining. The Thursday and Friday drive out to the Zoo through Cleveland rush hour traffic is the worst. It doubles my time to get out there, and cuts my normal workday short.

But the event itself, and especially the people, are great. This is my fifth year doing Boo, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon.

After the movie last night, I met up with Brothers #3 and 4 in the Series, Robert and Michael, and some of Michael's friends to see the re-release of the 3-D version of Nightmare Before Christmas. I love the movie, although I actually haven't seen it as many times as you might think. The art and design draws me to it more than anything else. Which isn't to short change the story or the music, which are also very good. It's just, well, the design is what causes me to get things like my Nightmare baseball jersey. (Sah-weet!)

It was a nice time, and always cool to get time to spend time with the bros.

All of that is to set up today's drawing. You might not think this makes sense, but I don't think I do enough drawing sometimes. I'm doing work stuff, and Love and Capes, but you need time to experiment and hone your craft. I'm usually so booked with paying work that I don't always have time to play. And it's the play that keeps you fresh and trying new things.

So I decided to play in Adobe Photoshop today. For those of you not in the field, Photoshop is the Swiss Army Knife of image creation. You can do the same thing six different ways, and like the myth of the human brain, I think people only use ten percent of what it's capable of. I wanted to do more, so I started playing around with the brushes and wanted to draw something completely digitally. So I drew Sally from Nightmare.

There's lots of little experiments in here, from the rendering to the brush strokes used, to just being able to draw without any scanned pencil sketches. It's also done mostly from memory, which is why everyone's favorite rag doll is probably wildly off model.

I think it's a nice attempt, and I found some new tools that I can put in my Box o'Tools. Now to get better with them...

All Over But the Screaming

I finished Love and Capes #6 today. Well, mostly. There are some copy corrections that I have to make yet, lots of proofing, and one art correction thingee. But the art's all done, the bio page is written, the back cover ad is built, and I've even thrown in some trivia into the back. In the words of Bo (or Luke) Duke: Ya-hoooo!

Words, Words and More Words

Hey, everybody, I'm interviewed this week over on the Sequential Tart site. Stop by and have a look.

This is the Last Page...

…that I'll show you. There are still two more after this but I can't post any images from them. They're from the big surprise ending for the first season of Love and Capes. How big a surprise? Well, did you read the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special with its big surprisey surprise? Okay, now imagine that if it were good. That big.

Or not. You'll have to be the judge.

Incidentally, back in issue #2, I named a restaurant after my friend Barbara Caridad Ferrer, author and all-around great friend. So Chez Ferrer is the big fancy restaurant in Deco City. Mark and Abby are heading back as of this scene. I mention this because I just finished It's Not About the Accent, from MTV Books . It's a really good book, and I highly recommend it. It's not exactly the story I expected, but I love when that happens. And one of the main characters is an artist, so you know I like that.

Check it out.