MOST AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL OF PANELS

In an effort to secure a book deal, I present my most autobiographical of panels:

NEVER

Never let it be said that I only give you stereotypical comic book women.

Also, let it never be said that I won't use noodly detail to get myself out of a half-assed composition.
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So, it appears we have a real winner with Communic's Waves of Visual Decay. Prog metal reminiscent at times of ...and Justice For All Metallica, Sap Alice in Chains, Tool, King Diamond, Queensryche — often in the same song. It's never as awesome or as ambitious as anything it references, but it's solid all the way through.

Deicide's Legion is a bit one note in the growly, repetitions. Definitely a random mix filler than a full listens every time.

QUICK AND THE 8

It's always fun to do a quick little incidental panel with no backgrounds. Lou's 6B pencil, fat #8 brush for everything but the borders and lettering. Speedy delivery.

FIRST/LAST: LAST

The last panel in the first/last series:



I guess it all turns out okay. Next!

BREAKIN' ALL THE RULES

Occupying 4 slots of the six-panel grid on page 4:



The strange thing about this one is that I actually had to draw it smaller than the panels that take up one slot. I'm drawing them at a scale as large as my scanner can take, and the different proportions of this panel wound up meaning that it had to be done smaller, even though it will be printed bigger. Should make for some interesting "Wha???s" once I start printing.
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Panel 10 (should it be Panel -10?) of How Did This Happen is up. It's a tribute to the Barron Storey school of comic illustration (the commercial art guys like Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave McKean, David Mack, that Christian dude who just won a Xeric). I even included the little triangles! And the hand-drawn seriffy typography! I almost want to make a t-shirt out of it.

EMAW 9, PAGE 1

AND HERE'S A PROPER POST

Panel 6 of page 2:

FIRST/LAST

Last week, over deepest dish, Marcos, Kenny and I talked about doing a web jam comic. I got very excited by the idea and immediately drew up an initial panel to start us off with. Then, the next day, we discussed our plans a bit more and the methods of the jam became different than I expected them to be. Considering my initial sketch, I decided that it wouldn't properly fit the parameters of what would become How Did This Happen?.

But, I still had this image, and the image kept calling out to me. So, I've decided to start up yet another side project, one I'll keep on this blog. Just a little something to do when I get distracted from the main book.

I'm calling it FIRST/LAST, for shorts. What I'm going to do is post the first panel of a comic tonight. Then, the next panel that I post is going to be the very last panel. The one after that will be the second panel. And then the next to last panel. Sew on, Soforth. Squeezing until I get to the golden spike at the center of it all. I have no clue what's in store or how point A is going to get to point B, but I'll be finding out — one panel at a time.

The idea is to work differently than I normally do. Give me an offbeat enough approach to make it feel like I'm fooling around while I might actually be getting something done.

Anyway, here's the first panel:

OH, LET'S MAKE IT A THREESOME

ANOTHER QUICKY

QUICKS

THIS IS JUST A TEST

Now, I can go to bed, laughing my ass off.

CATHING UP WITH SCANNING

I didn't really know how far behind I was in scanning until I sat in front of my computer and went at it today. OY!

Have some fight comics:

JUST FOR QUICK, SILLY FUN

Color for your eyes:

TO BE CRAZIER

This is actually going to be just a part of a panel. Once thr two images are combined, it should be EVEN CRAZIER:



Actually started out as me doing a Kirby riff, turned into me doing Kirby through Art Adams and then turned into me doing Kirby through Art Adams through Charles Burns.

FASTER THAN INTERNETS

I'm actually wi=orking faster than posting, which is kind of good. But it means I may not post every panel I finish. Here's page 12, panel 4:



Despite an hour of Lost, an hour on the phone with the mom, setting up a new blog and producing a bit of content for it, I actually got more done yesterday than I did in the two days prior — combined.

I think being busy with hands in different pots actually helps me be productive. Without a doubt, the biggest drain on my work is the desire to be doing something else. So, if I make that/those something else(s) more 'comics', I can do just enough of that on the side to keep my wandering mind wandering along the right path.

That's the theory, anyway. So, in addition to How Did This Happen?, I'm toying with the idea of giving myself even MORE to do, in the hope that I'll get the main work done faster. Oh yeah? I'd like to see YOU out-think my crazy brain!

More on the other side bit later. Hopefully, it won't go down the same drain so many other ideas I've had in the past have gone down.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Marcos, Kenny and I are going to try an online jam comic for shits in the iggles.

It's going to be presented in reverse narrative order, which will hopefully provide for an interesting challenge and maybe even lots of fun. Or we will all wind up hating each other even more.

It is CLIFF FACE: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

The rules, and the first panel are up now. Take a gander or, at least, a goose.

THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!

When I said I was going to start working backwards, I didn't mean it talent-wise. Spent most of the day ruining a few drawings. The thing is, it seems to take a lot more time to ruin a drawing than it does to do it upgoods.

One panel needs to be completely re-done. This one, page 8 panel 5, I scanned just to see it from a different perspective. I couldn't even see what was going wrong or right:



Actually, It doesn't look too terrible. Maybe I'll run the eraser over it and get a proper scan.

BACKWWARDS AND THEN SOME

I still had page 10, panel five on the table, so I decided to ink that next. I think there were three points when I got a little too careless with the pen and wound up splooging all over the page. There's the fucked word balloon and then there's the dialog where I tried to write 'sugges twe'.



As a single image, I wish I had a little more going on in the midground, some more guns or something. I left it empty because the same basic image is used a few times with stuff that does happen in the midground. Do I sacrifice the individual composition for comics? Or will the comic only be better with full solids? I kinda want to stick a big WWII machine gun in there...

PAGE 12, PANEL 5

I think I can live with this. Although, I'm not sure what hill the agents are on...



I found a use for those speedballs that were too fat for lettering: the bricks on the left were done with them. The lettering and balloons are done with a #2 brush, the figures with a #4 and the rest of the backgrounds with a #659 japanese nib.

ONE SHEET

Oops. I only have one sheet of paper left to draw on. Looks like I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend inking. I'll be working backwards, starting with the panel that's on the table right now. This way, I can see what works now (that the drawing is getting better) and I can maybe transplant that onto the earlier pages.

The panel I'm starting with is 12-5. I posted 12-4 on Thursday, but I didn't get much done yesterday, and I wound up going back into 12-4 and backgrounding the fuck out of it. I think it's going to look much better now.

To the inks!

THREE FORE!

The pencils for the third and fourth panels of page 12 (must fix crizzy nostril):

EVERYBODY LOVE CRACK

Pencils for page 11, panel 4:

NO ONE'S MORE SURPRISED

Took a day off to play a little catchup. Pencils for page 10, panel 5:



Things are really coming together now. I'm having even more fun drawing than I've had in a while. I can't believe where those rifles came from. I can't draw guns for my life, normally, and I have no interest in heavily researching them. But, as the figures are starting to feel fuller and more solid, I'm better able to visualize where a gun would fit in the hand. And if you can approximate where a 3D gun would sit in a 3D hand, the gun itself comes together nicely because guns are some of the most ergonomically designed objects on earth.

Now, I don't expect these guns to survive any serious scrutiny, these aren't Utopiate guns or anything gun-porny like that. But they do look gunny instead of like handblobs.