Of Mice and 'Boys

Here are some colors I put down on a sketch I did for buddy David Petersen, with his Mouse Guard characters meeting Hellboy and Abe Sapien. You can see the black and white original over on David's blog here. Drawing the mice was a lot of fun, especially as small as I drew them here. I'll have to try drawing a closer shot of them at some point.

Post-mas

Happy Boxing Day Canadian friends. Hope everybody had a nice Christmas yesterday, if that's your kind of thing. Niceties, that is. There was a lot of merriment going around here at the Shaner's, like an airborne sickness.

The tree pictured above is not our actual Christmas tree, but the replica of Charlie Brown's tree that my mom sent me a couple days ago. It is hilariously large and looks great in the corner of my office.

Now that Christmas is over I've got work to get back to, but I'll still try and keep posting when I can. If you've been watching the 1990 Gettysburg blog, you'll see I've posted the newest strip over there, so please give it a look if you're so inclined.

Early Christmas Present

As an early Christmas present for you guys, here's a small piece of the next 1990 Gettysburg strip. I talk more about the delay with this one and the strip itself over at it's respective hole in the internet, as well as another piece of the strip. Neither of these clips are a spoiler in any way and make up very little of the strip itself so I don't feel that bad about it.

So there you go. Now I'm off to drink some egg nog and play "Snowman Tipping".

A Fantastic Christmas

Here's this year's Christmas piece! I wanted to try and do something bigger than last year so I looked through a bunch of old Avengers and Fantastic Four covers for one of those famous "floating head" covers. I picked Fantastic Four #46 because it already had the color scheme I was looking for. I was hoping to include the FF anyway, but the Inhumans were a bonus. I haven't tried drawing any of the Inhumans before, with the exception of Lockjaw. My favorite ended up being Karnak, who's really excited for Santa. The only one I didn't change the expression for was Thing, because his face already cracked me up in the original.

I wanted to do something that encompassed all the holidays, but I don't know enough about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, so I couldn't do anything like Michael Cho's great card. Regardless, I hope everyone enjoys this holiday season. Take some time to spend with friends and family and remember what's important. Like a fight between Santa and Lockjaw. Happy Holidays!

Cheeky Lockjaw

Just in case I don't get around to finishing the Christmas piece tonight, I figured I'd go ahead an post this tiny bit of it for you folks during this blogging drought. I make no secret of that fact that I love drawing Lockjaw, and this was a nice change from the way I usually end up portraying him. I can't wait to show you guys the rest of this one, because this isn't even my favorite face of the bunch.

Black Terror sketch

This was just a quick Black Terror sketch I slapped some colors on. I really try to make an effort to loosen the inks once in a while because it helps insert a little more energy into the drawing. I like Black Terror's design, but I'll admit I know practically nothing about the character. So that's about all I can say about him.

Cap 1940!

Yesterday I mentioned that David Petersen (of the fantastic Mouse Guard books) had mentioned something about a 1940's Captain America idea. He's been saying for weeks now that I should be doing something with Jonny Quest or a WWII Cap, and it's really been on my mind. While I think Chris Samnee's got Jonny Quest pretty much sewn up, the idea of doing a Cap story certainly has been growing on me. I've never been a huge Cap fan, but for whatever reason I've been drawing him more and more in the last year, and really come to an appreciation for the character. What you see above started as a quick sketch of the old Captain America costume, just for kicks. I apologize for the awful gimmick of dropping in a photo background, but there's only so much time in the day for these things.

And for what it's worth, I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near this thing as long as Mitch Breitweiser is still working.

Shazam!

This is the result of another one of those weekly twitter questions for comic book folks. This week's was "If you could work with any writer, who would it be and which character (or book) would you want to work on with them?" It was, of course, also open to writers and which artist they'd want on a certain book. I like doing these questions because I get a lot of great responses from everybody, all of which would make GREAT books.

My top pick would be to do a Captain Marvel book with writer Jeff Parker. All because one time he said to me on twitter that he liked Captain Marvel. I'm a big fan of Jeff's work on Agents of Atlas, and all I could think was how cool it would be if you took some of the ideas from AoA and applied them to Cap's world. I was going to put names on the drawing above, but felt like that would be really presumptuous. I know I haven't drawn Billy Batson since I was in college, I was trying to get near the age he looked in the C.C. Beck stuff, without the curls of hair.

Francesco reminded me that I'd really love to do an issue of Jonah Hex with Gray and Palmiotti, not that I could even begin to do as well as Bernet or Cooke. In the event that he wouldn't to both write AND draw it, I'd love to do a Luke Cage/Iron Fist thing with Jay Potts. And someday David Petersen will tell me the whole of his Captain America: 1942 idea.

So if you didn't leave a response on Twitter, feel free to leave your answers here in the comments.

Pulp Tuesday -- The Black Beetle!

Here's another "strip I really hope you're already reading", Francesco Francavilla's The Black Beetle. I've talked about Francesco's great work a couple times here, so I won't get into that, but he just started a new serial adventure featuring the Beetle himself entitled "Kara Bocek" which you can check out at the link just by clicking through. Francesco's got a unique talent for atmosphere that shows in every new episode of this story, and I love how each one feels like it could it fit easily into the Sunday newspaper. Well, not newspapers right now, but you get the idea. Francesco also posts little previews and extras from the strips on his Pulp Sunday blog. Pay attention, you folks who want to create serial adventure strips, this is how it's done.

So here's my attempt at the Beetle and some of the ancillary characters who have shown up so far. I've been wanting to try my hand at the character for a while now, especially after seeing Dave Flora's take on Francesco's impeccable designs. I'm not especially crazy about my overall design here, the text was a bit of an afterthought, having already inked all the characters. It was certainly a lot of fun though.

So go check out The Black Beetle in "Kara Bocek"!

Moonstone cards!

Here are the 24 Moonstone cards I just finished for Steve Frank. I was allowed to do Zorro, so they asked that a majority of these featured him. I was more than happy to oblige. I didn't realize how many I'd done with the Cisco Kid until I put them together like this. What can I say, I like westerns. Robin Hood and Airboy were fun too.

Oh! I've also put the original black and white sketch to this Batman Beyond piece up on eBay. Bidding ends on Thursday, so go and check it out and put in a bid if you like.

Encyclopedia Brown Finds the Clues!

Here's a mock cover for the third book in the Encyclopedia Brown series, and for now the last one I'll bug you guys with. They get tougher with each one because I can't remember many of the plots, so these end up kind of generic. I found an old copy of the first book online so I'm waiting for that to arrive in the mail. Hopefully then I'll be able to work up some quick samples once I've read it again.

My buddy Kyle Latino mentioned that I should include Encyclopedia's friend Sally Kimball so here's my first take on her. It's tough because I don't remember much about her, including her hair color, so I kind of guessed at it here. A lot of my take on her was informed by this Shortall illustration that I was able to find online, which gave me the impression that she's a brunette. Most of her other portrayals seems to indicate that she's blond though. This wasn't a great angle for her either, so I'd like to take another shot at her soon. The neighborhood bully and Brown's "nemesis" Bugs Meany was a bit of an afterthought. I needed something to fill that space in the middle and my uncle said he wanted to see Meany show up. I'm reasonably happy with the design though, I love using that yellow ocher color.

So I'll give you guys a break from ol' EB for now. I'm going to start working up a pitch as soon as I have the time, but I can't promise anything soon. Like I said earlier in the week, your response has been overwhelming and only makes me want to do this more. So thank you very much for that.

I'm hoping to update the woefully neglected shop sometime this week. I may even start off with a couple eBay auctions to help me decide on prices. More to follow.

Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again!

I'm back with another mock cover for the second Encyclopedia Brown book, Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again or The Case of the Secret Pitch. I know the last "cover" wasn't exactly exciting, not that this one is either, but I wanted to do more than a head. I liked the trade dress though, so I'm sticking with the banner stripe for the title. And I don't draw enough baseballs.

Thanks for the overwhelming response to the last post, I haven't seen that many comments here in...well, ever. Many of you folks were extremely helpful in the last day too, filling in the gaps of my knowledge of the publishing business. The publishing rights to EB are a little confusing, apparently it's somewhere between Penguin Books and Random House. I figure I'll keep mentioning them on twitter until they notice me or ask me to stop.

Your feedback just reaffirmed my commitment to making this happen. As soon as work clears up a little more I'm going to start working on some samples and a pitch for this. Whether it ever happens, who knows? Can't hurt to try.

And if any of you happen to know anything more about Encyclopedia Brown's Book of Comic Strips, brought to my attention by the awesome Les McClaine, fill me in! I can't even find out who drew the strip!

Again, thanks for all the support, folks!

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of My Dream Gig

A little over a month ago I talked about asking other artists what book, given the chance to do any, they would love to adapt for comics. I mentioned my interest in the possibility of The Invisible Man, The Jungle Book, etc. Then a week or so later when asking for sketch suggestions, my friend Ty Buttars reminded me of Encyclopedia Brown. As a kid, I was crazy about Sobol's Sherlock in sneakers. I had a small collection of the first 8 or 9 books, the older ones with all the great illustrations by Leonard Shortall. I'm not sure where they came from, my Dad may have held onto them. I'd mostly forgotten about them as the years went on until the Children's Literature class I took in college. When asked which books I most enjoyed as a kid, I remembered Encyclopedia Brown. I went and checked out a couple of the old books from the Children's Education Center and immediately the joy of those books came back to me. I had thought about how cool it would be to adapt those books to comics, similar to what the great Raina Telgemeier was doing with the Babysitter's Club books at the time. Again, through the end of college and life after, I had forgotten about this.

That was until Ty reminded me about this dream gig. To my knowledge, this hasn't been done yet, but just think of how awesome it could be. This is right on the crosshairs of the kind of projects I've always wanted to work on. I'll go so far as to say this is one of those things I have to accomplish in my lifetime. From what I could tell, Bantam has the publishing rights to ol' EB. Granted, I'm not exactly knowledgeable as to how things work in the publishing business, but here's an open plea:

Whoever happens to be reading this, if you're from Bantam or know somebody at Bantam, I just want to throw this idea out there. To the point where as often as I can over the next couple of months I'll be working on a few samples for this. Again, I realize this isn't how things are done, but I don't know any better. The above image is a mock cover I made tonight, just fooling around with the idea. I've got a couple ideas for other covers, which hopefully I can get around to soon.

I've been trying to track down the original prints for the first couple of books, and already managed to find the first one (Boy Detective). I thought about doing one of those contests like Sean Galloway does from time to time where if you guys can find me some of the books you'll win a drawing or something. We'll see.

Anyway, thanks for putting up with me while I go on forever about this. And if this sounds cool to you let me know, and spread the word.

DOOM!

Didn't have much time today for warming up, so I just did a quick Doctor Doom sketch. More throughout the week.

It's Clobberin' Time!

Here's a banner I did for buddy Steve Gettis, who runs the great online collection I mentioned a while back Hey Oscar Wilde, It's Clobberin' Time! He's got a set of 7 banners that will run randomly when you get to the site. Steve was kind enough to let me throw this into the mix, amongst much better artists than myself like Stuart Immonen, Jeff Parker, and Ming Doyle.

The idea was to do something with the title, and in black and white for unity's sake. Steve knows all too well that I can't refuse an opportunity to draw the big ol' clobberin' machine Ben Grimm. I cheated and used gray tones because I'm not a great designer and trying to read this in just black and white was really difficult.

Thanks again Steve!

The Loneliest Astronauts!

So lately I seem to be making a habit of doing guest strips. Hopefully I'll figure out how to monetize this and just roll it into a career. Right? The one shown above is for the great Kevin Church and the amazing Ming Doyle over at The Loneliest Astronauts. This is a newer strip, and another one which I hope you're already reading. I like the premise so much that I wish I'd come up with it first and run away with it to the syndicates. Where I would make a million dollars and buy a solid gold boat and oh man I am in so much denial. But seriously, Kevin and Ming do an amazing job with this and I can't endorse it enough. I already have a very high level of respect for Ming, but after working on this it's even higher. Drawing those astronauts and their suits over and over is tougher than you think.

So there you go. Tune in next time when I do a guest strip for Garfield, wherein I blow up Odie.

Red Clay and the Dinosaurs

Another day, another fake Red Clay poster. I wouldn't keep doing these if they weren't so easy to put together. The "cases" line is another take off of one of the "Dirty Harry" tag lines. Incidentally, if you look hard enough, this is the most info I've ever given on this thing.

I need to learn more about webcomics, because this is something I'd like to do.