I'm a huge fan of MacBreakWeekly. (Hey, there's a new episode recording tomorrow. Yay!) It's not just a good show for those of us Of The Mac, but it's also a good show because it's a good show with great commentators.
I've done little things before about them, too. Mark wears a TWiT sweatshirt in Love and Capes #2, and Charlotte drinks out of a MacBreakWeekly coffee mug in issue #4. I've even included Andy Ihnatko as a background character in the just-posted page one of the new issue. But I think I've hit a new level here.
Scott Bourne, photography and backup guy, has been raving about the Drobo. I think he's right to. As a backup nut myself, since my Big Crash of 2006, I really need to get one sometime this year since they make backing up so easy. Because of that, my brain just clicked a certain way and I started imagining a comic strip with Scott and his Drobo. I went ahead and did a couple of strips to get them out of my head and sent them to Scott, who liked them muchly. He's even called me out on Twitter for it, which I appreciate.
So, especially if you're a MBW fan, here's a sample strip, with links to the other two I did.
Over on the Twitter, Ken Plume posted a link to this great mash-up of Wall-E and Watchmen. I don't know who saw the great Watchmen trailer and thought "Hey, I could add Wall-E to that", but I'm glad he did.
I figure at eight panels over twenty-four pages, that's 192 panels. Well, 184 now. Page one of Love and Capes #11 is done. Twenty three pages to go.
The first couple of pages are always the hardest. It's a rough horse to get back on, committing to do another book. Technically, I committed when I sent the information to Diamond to appear in the May Previews, but you know what I mean.
This should be a fun issue, and a heck of a lot lighter than the last issue. Oh, wait, you haven't read that one yet. Well, trust me. This one should be pretty funny, as we follow Abby's Quest for the Dress. Like "The Quest for Peace", except intentionally funny and with better special effects. And much less crapulence.
Oh, and is my tradition, since it's page one, you can actually click and embiggen it.
My friend, and purveyor of at least 22% of the awesomeness on the internet, Mark Evanier, has a video on his blog about today, which is International Talk Like William Shatner Day. The day is being proposed by Maurice LaMarche, who's an absurdly talented voice over actor. You'd know him from Pinky and the Brain, or just about every impression on The Critic.
Check the link out here. Today is also the birthday of Mr. William Shatner, who all kidding aside, I think is just wonderful. The guy is 78 today, and I think he looks great. His Kirk is legendary, and his Denny Crane was just as fantastic. He's got a tremendous ability to try new things and look like he's having fun. You may not like his interview show (I haven't caught it), or his Has Been CD (which I think is just brilliant), but you've got to admire his willingness to, well, explore strange new worlds.
Yup, it's another commission from my current sale. This time I was asked to do a duo, Bettie and the Rocketeer, from the late, great Dave Stevens book. Of course, I'm nowhere near the artist Dave was, but I think there are hints of his work in this. I know he was on my mind.
The movie is worth checking out too. It didn't seem to catch on the way it should have. Among other things, it has one of the best and most perfect casts of all time, with Billy Campell as the Rocketeer, Alan Arkin as Pevey (who gets the best line when Cliff tags him for not having a date since 1932, and he responds "Flora Maxwell. There wasn't any point datin' nobody after her"), Jennifer Connelly as Jenny, a pre-Lost Terry O'Quinn as Howard Hughes, and Timothy Dalton and Paul Sorvino to boot.
And Id be remiss if I didn't mention that the publisher of my Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret trade, IDW, is going to be releasing a collection of his Rocketeer work. I've already bought it, I just don't know it yet.
So, back in December of 2003, SciFi Channel started their new Battlestar Galactica series.
I watched that miniseries more out of my love for science fiction than anything else.I had a fondness for the original Galactica, mostly stemming from reading the Glen A. Larsen novels more than the actual show. But I wasn't looking that forward to a reboot. Starbuck a girl? Really? Bryan Singer, who at that point hadn't done Superman Returns was supposedly going to work on it, and that sounded interesting. But then he left and we got Ron Moore, whose work I loved loved loved on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But still, Galactica? Seriously?
But, like I said, I like science fiction. And I was rooting for the show a little bit, because of my love/hate relationship with Sci-Fi Channel. These were the people who cancelled Farscape, which is still one of my favorite shows of all time. And they cancelled it after announcing a two-year commitment. The famous quote that went around was that they wanted "less spaceship shows". (And then they cancelled The Invisible Man, which was a non-spaceship show.) Well, BSG was a spaceship show, and I wanted to see it succeed, if just to mess with them.
The first miniseries was, well, okay. It didn't sing to me. I left it on tape for a while before I actually watched it, I was so not into it. I had a lot going on, and trying out the new miniseries wasn't just on the top of my list. And when I did see it, it suffered from that NBC Universal miniseries glacial pacing. I knew I'd watch it if it became a series, but I knew I wouldn't love it. The miniseries just wasn't that special.
Except…
There were two moments in that pilot that still stick in my mind. When I saw them, they kept me going. They were the little hints that this new Battlestar Galactica wasn't just going to be any show. I didn't know if they'd be able to capitalize on it, but there were these glimmers that jumped out.
First, in the first few minutes, the Cylon we'd come to know as Six was sauntering down the Caprica street. She came up to a baby in a stroller who was crying. She was fascinated. In retrospect, it doesn't just sell the alien qualities of the cover, but it's the first hint of their obsession with procreation. And Six looks at the baby, who's unattended at this point, and reaches out. We don't see it, but we know she's touching it, almost exploring it. And then she snaps its neck.
You could tell she didn't mean to. She was just examining it, and didn't realize its fragility. But still, she killed the baby and then went on her way.
I'm a writer, and I appreciate craft. You want to interest an audience in those first few minutes. Maybe get them on your side. And you know how not to do that? Infanticide. A character we're supposed to be interested in enough to follow just committed one of the most horrible acts one can think of in the first ten minutes. That was brave storytelling.
Second, there's a scene where some old Vipers are doing a flyby over Galactica. It's an airborne military parade. During it, they play the Colonial Anthem, and it's the old Battlestar Galactica theme song.
I've always loved that score. But on top of that, it spoke to the Galactica purists. It was a quick and maybe too subtle way of saying: "Yeah, Starbuck's a girl and so's Boomer, and Tigh is now a drunken Irishman. We changed a bunch of stuff. But we did it for a reason. We know the old show, and we kinda liked it too. Just give me a little trust."
And I did.
So I checked out the later premiere and I don't know what they did, but it rocked. Seriously, it was just two of the most intense hours of TV I'd seen. I was in love with the show. Over the seasons, it's only gotten better. A couple years ago, I made the joke "If they announced they were going to find Earth and do the last season as their remake of Galactica 1980 I wouldn't gripe. I'd just watch it." Except it wasn't a joke. I've just come to trust this writing team so much.
They've rarely missed a step, and sometimes when they have, it was just me being impatient. Yeah, I would have liked the reveal about the Chief's kid earlier, since I wondered why everyone thought Hera was so special and not his kid. They got to that. They've shocked me, surprised me, made me laugh and even made me cry.
Seriously. I don't care how you feel about the New Caprica arc, but watch Adama jump the Galactica into the atmosphere of New Caprica, falling like a rock and covered in flames, and I dare you not to get a damp eye. And then when the Pegasus appears in one of the most beautifully staged special effects shots I've ever seen, you'll lose it again. And while all the actors on BSG have been amazing, special props to Edward James Olmos for selling that "we're all going to die" moment.
Tonight's the last episode of the series. I'll be watching it with some friends. Conventional wisdom says that there's no way it won't disappoint. Expectations are too high, and the movie you see is never as good as the movie in your mind.
Maybe. But if anyone's going to pull it off, it's going to be these guys.
While I was drawing some commissions, I went ahead and did this Zatanna image, which will also serve as the cover image for Powerful Women #3. There are only a few spots left, and I'd really like to get this filled up so that I can have it done for Heroes Con in Charlotte. So, if you have some requests, get them in soon.
As part of my Saint Patrick's Day Sale (still going on), I received a request to do a Wonder Woman commission. I thought back on a couple of the other times I've drawn Diana, and decided that I really wanted to do something with her lasso. I'd used the bracelets as a design element a couple of times, but didn't really work with the golden lariat at all.
I decided to use it as a light source, and set about a design that showcased that. I like her tough expression here, and I haven't done a lot of back views of these characters, and thought it could really work. It's a little thing, but I really like the rendering on the lasso, with the little chain links visible. And then I Photoshopped the dickens out of it to get all the lighting in the foreground and the background.
The guy who ordered it was pleased as well. So keep those commissions coming. I think I might do a Zatanna next.
I had a little time to play around today, and I've wanted to mess with this Catwoman drawing for a while. It's based on a tracing paper rough from Baltimore Comicon 2008, I think. The last two Catwoman images I did were done in Illustrator, and I wanted to try something completely different. Textures are handled by some new brushes I downloaded for Photoshop, and they worked really well.
One of these days I will do a picture of Selina in her current tight catsuit number. I just dig drawing and coloring this purple and green one too much, I guess.
Just because I feel like it, and because I'm particularly proud to be an Irishman on this day, I've posted a page of special deals from the Love and Capes and Thomz.com store. The specials will last until tomorrow for sure, maybe even longer. But when they're gone, they're gone.
