happy xmas...

from tom, monique, and graham.

mysterius 3...

buy it, kids. you'll like it...

too close for comfort?...

soooooo.... everyone remember this image? it was one of the images that was submitted and accepted into spectrum 14 a couple of years ago. very proud of it. still sell a ton of posters of it.


i just popped over to the spectrum site to see when the deadline was for this year and was met with this lovely painting by one of my personal artistic heroes, peter de seve:


gosh.

to be absolutely clear here: i'm not accusing peter de seve, the fenners, or anyone associated with spectrum of anything. i will say only that i guess great minds really do think alike.

and, peter, i got there first. (winking sideways smiley face)

UPDATE: i guess charles addams got there first. (see comments)

UPDATE, THE SECOND: de Sève speaks! ... and says some very nice things. thanks for being a good sport, peter.

mysterius #2!!!

the mcguinness wore tennis shoes...


solicit blurb here

more mysterius activity...

jeff and i did an interview(?) over at cbr about the creative process (or at least our creative process, which is mostly paper-mâché and thumb wrestling). so if you're a fan of me babbling like an idiot (and i know you are) then swing on over.

here's some of the mysterius prep stuff we talk about...

mysterius (pt. 3)...

jeff parker speaks!


but not if you use firefox...

(seriously. what he hell is up with the new newsarama?)

also go here.




all latin and/or greek in this post has been reviewed by a retired anglican priest.

mysterius... (or whoring it up pt. 2)...

this month's previews catalogue features three pages of mysterius in fabulous mccaigorama! go bug your comic store guy if he doesn't order it by the crate full that the waves of your bodies will crash upon his store front!

say it just like that.

he'll have to order it... because eventually that would get hard to step over.

anyway, here are the pages in glorious and silent black and white...



the same coloured pages are also available here on this fancy french website (thanks marv).

mysterius...

what he said...


the mysteri(o)us after school job is revealed... finally.

mad monkeys...

a few months back MAD did a theme issue: MAD by monkeys, for monkeys. as a result i was informed that monroe wouldn't run that month. luckily for me fearless art director ryan "sexy" flanders had my back. the result was "great monkeys in american history"...





the layout also featured headshots to go along with the illos and blurb. never let it be said that i don't know how to make extra work for myself for the sake of an in-house joke...




as much as i enjoyed the job i still think with a decent heads up i could have come up with an awesome "monroe vs. the planet of the apes"...

how to make a monroe...

... an adventure in navel gazing!



there seem to be a whole lot of process tutorials and "how to"s floating around the blogoverse right now and as i wouldn't want to deny anyone the chance to "share my soul" (black and prickly thing that it is) here's mine:

step 1: get a script at the worst possible time in your otherwise cluttered schedule. the best time to get one is when you're two weeks late with your secret afterschool job, and your child, your wife and yourself are sick. this script is by the lovely and talented mr. tony barbieri (as are they all). once the script has been vetted by MAD's editorial department, it goes to the art department where the equally lovely and talented mr. sam viviano breaks it down into blank panel layouts, rough letters, and panel descriptions. basically a comic strip with no pictures. on any other project i'd bristle at this, but as the deadlines tend to be pretty tight, sam knows what he's doing, and this is the way EC has ALWAYS done it, i let that go. i actually have a tremendous amount of leeway in terms of layout and action if i feel that it flows better a different way. i do my first doodles at this stage (usually as i'm reading it)...

you'll note i took out all the dialogue. that's 'cuz i don't own it and warners likes to sue.

step 2: trace off step one with one of those fancy blue pencils that no longer has any earthly purpose in today's world onto the second set of pages the beguiling and whimsical mr. sam sends you (the ones with nothing but the boxes). start drinking...


step 3: slightly buzzed, crawl to a house of ill repute better known as a copy store, blow everything up to 165%, piggy back home on the back of a helpful hobo, and trace that off tightening stuff as you go...



step 4: drunk yet? well, you're gonna wanna be. grit your teeth and curse the stars, it's inking time! dip that brush in and slap it on. this is actually the most fun part of the job for me. typically i'll go through and ink all the figures and important/fun bits in one big initial pass. the brush is a raphael 8404 #2 and the ink is the basic pelican drawing ink A.



step 5: after that it's time to fill in the rest with a brush, and mix of pitt and staedtler felt-tip pens. it's at this stage that the real hardcore cursing starts. though, much of it slurred due to the roughly equal amounts of scotch and allergy medication in my system...



step 6: this is the stage where i used to do colour, applying watercolour directly to the finished boards. that is now, mercifully, someone else's job: the svelte and cherubic mr. carl peterson, who does it with his computer. (meaning he uses his computer to do the colours, i'm not suggesting it's got any extra tubes or anything.) to keep the painterly look of the strip that i was striving for when i did do the colours, i apply a couple of layers of ink wash tones. then one last pass with some white gouache the bring out details or correct any mistakes that i notice.


so there you have it. now you have all the tools and know how so that you can make your own monroe.

...but don't. 'cuz warners will sue you.

unpublished post...

i was doing some housekeeping and found this in an unpublished post. don't know why i didn't post it, i quite like it. it's from a period where i was voraciously eating up my sketchbooks*. these periods are short lived but usually yield at least a couple of good drawings (the hitchhikers stuff below came from a similar creative burst). i think i called them "kosmoknights".



* i have piles of them. i also go through these pathological sketchbook buying sprees, put two or three drawings in them and move on. i'm a sketchbook lothario*.



*by which i mean slut.

wasn't in san diego...

...and they rioted in the streets at the loss. i've since received multiple letters and phonecalls from the mayor's office and the city's board of trustees begging that i never miss another show, for the good of the city. just so long as i don't kiss any dudes.

here's some monsters (from the project i still can't talk about)...

busy...

just home from new york comicon. absolutely slammed with work. working my way through belated xmas/birthday present "the complete black books" from my lovely wife. here's a recent commission...

dream jobs part 2: ROCKET RACCOON!!!

yeah, you heard...
since i was twelve, i have loved this book. and what's not to love?!! rockets... raccoons... mignola... BIM! BAM! BOOM! about a year ago, when i was thinking about ways to build work for myself, "rocky" popped back into my head. i reread it and to my delight it still held up... or maybe more accurately it's still got great bones (i could have done without the clowns). but maybe the best part was how easily it can fall outside of regular marvel continuity...

the pitch: give me a good writer, someone who can write well, but, more importantly, someone who can write fun (mike carey, jeff parker, etc...). once you've done that, charge them with writing the best damn "adam strange" story they can think of, staple a tail to it, and let me paint. ...that's it...

now here's the tricky part: publish in a different format (slightly bigger, slightly smaller-- doesn't matter) at about 44+ pages per book, and throw it onto a bookstore shelf next to "bone". the beauty of this is that at a different format you can trick parents into buying their kids comics ("this isn't comic book," they'll say. "comic books are bigger/smaller and have less pages and are crap. with this i can help my son/daughter to be interested in reading REAL books..."-- don't think it works? ask my folks about "asterix"), and the kids are happy 'cause they're reading a book about a raccoon with a jet pack*. win/win, and nary a cape (and all their accompanying baggage) in sight.


why no one will let me do it: honestly? i'm not totally sure they wouldn't. i'll give you a moment to let the gasps at tom being positive about something die down...

i actually brought this up to someone at marvel when he was trying to offer me a job on something else (the something else didn't happen, but foot in the door, etc...) and wasn't completely shut down right away.

the crinkle in my master plan, though, is that in the time that it took me cook up this genius rocket raccoon comeback THEY BROUGHT THE CHARACTER BACK THEMSELVES! and worst of all for me, by all reports, they did a good job of it. rocky's now a member of the "guardians of the galaxy" and therefore well ensconced (albeit at an arm's length) in the same marvel universe i'd have further distanced him from. again because, purely from a bookstore marketing/trickery standpoint, it becomes significantly more difficult to trick parents into buying it if it's got spiderman plastered all over it. weirdest of all for me is that when they brought him back it was in an almost identical costume as the one i'd designed for him (though, admittedly i cribbed mine from garcia lopez's "tommy tomorrow" in "twilight").

so here's the new pitch: eventually guardians is going to end, right? well then maybe rocky goes home. and maybe things aren't as stable as he left them. maybe it's time to don the jet pack once again... and no parent would be the wiser.


*yeah i know he had jet skates. i like jet packs better.

EDIT: monique pointed out last night that the above picture of rocket might look a bit too lupine. i agree. here's the new one.

some monkey pages for you...

...'cause you asked for 'em, kids.

that's all.




also: BEHOLD THE SAVAGE POWER!

dream jobs part 1

i'm starting a new semi-regular feature here at blarg (though, i suppose "semi-regular" could be used to describe just about everything to do with how i keep this site...).

"Dream Jobs". which is really just as it sounds. each installment will consist of three elements: the project, the pitch, and, most gloomily, the reason no one will ever let me do it ...

and with that ringingly positive description let's start with:

the project: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!
the pitch:

pretty much a direct adaptation of the radio series... all twenty-six episodes! if you figure about 23-30 minutes per episode -- taking into account the differences in the two media, dropping out a few of the wordier bits of exposition, drawing out some extra colour from the novels, as well as all of the wonderfully alien characters and environs that only comics can fully realize-- that should translate fairly well to a 22-24 page comic for each. or a 44 page european style album for each two, or a 144 page ogn for each "phase", etc, etc, etc... all adapted (though probably with help) and drawn by me, with the excerpts from "the book" -- and since we're dealing with tom's perfect dream-world let's just keep dreamin'-- drawn by chip zdarsky (or as he likes to be called now, mrs. edith nausbaum) in the style he uses for his national post "extremely bad advice" column. funny funny funny stuff...

i've found myself drawing this stuff like a madman in my spare time... and i've been finding marvin to be the toughest nut to crack. these are the three best iterations so far...

first one's good but a bit too scrawny. he'd work well, though, as the generic model for all the other robots to be built off from...
this guy's getting closer, he's got that could fall apart at any moment and is slightly testy about it look that i always picture marvin with...
this is the one i'm happiest with. still not sure about the head, the body's exactly as i picture it when i'm listening...

the reason no one will ever let me do it: two reasons, really.

first: it's already been done... poorly (or, at least that's how everyone who remembers it remembers it.)

and second: there's been a movie. once hollywood shoots it's mostly corrupted and ill conceived wad, that's usually just about it for any comic version. unless your average modern comic publisher can sniff out the pungent aroma of option money rising off your project, they won't go anywhere near it; let alone something they'd have to license. add to that the movie, tragically, not being all that good.

(let me just back that up before i get jumped on... everything on screen that was pure unadulterated douglas adams, shot through the henson lens, and even with the disney "let's put 'mericans in it so 'mericans will watch it" filter (mos def, sam rockwell, even zooey deschannel): good, all good. hell, mos def was outstanding. everything else (i'm looking at you karey kirkparick): malkovitch, the truth gun, the alien dmv, the tacked on love story/happy ending... bad. very bad. tragically, horribly, egregiously bad. i mean come on! he hadn't even read the fudding book!!! that said we do own the movie, for all of the above "good" reasons.)

all of this means the chances of a comic book publisher committing to this kind of major undertaking, without anything other than comic/trade sales on the back end are about as good as me riding a hippo drawn battle wagon through the tim hortons drive thru...

but then who knows?... maybe ballantine would be interested...

edit: on a totally unrelated topic, i just had to do a google image search of "monkey" for a job (yeah... "had to"), and it came up with this. awesome.