Category Archives: Comics

Work that’s either done specif­i­cal­ly for comics, or is comic-related.

Missile Mouse

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I men­tioned ear­li­er that from time to time, I intend to do posts of “inspi­ra­tional stuff.” Basi­cal­ly, we’re talk­ing comics I’ve come across that I think are real­ly good, and kind of inspire you to draw. So here’s another.

If you’ve ever checked out the list of artists over in my side­bar, per­haps you’ve looked at the work of Jake Park­er. He’s one of those artists that seem to strad­dle mul­ti­ple media, includ­ing comics and ani­ma­tion. His stuff is very imag­i­na­tive, appeal­ing and a lot of fun to look at.

One of Jake’s cre­ations, Mis­sile Mouse, has now been fea­tured in two books: The Star Crush­er and Res­cue on Tanki­um 3 (Actu­al­ly, Mis­sile Mouse has appeared in three books, if you want to count Flight Explor­er Vol. 1) . You can buy them here. Mis­sile Mouse is a tough lit­tle char­ac­ter who usu­al­ly has to face down char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions that are much big­ger than him, but he nev­er backs down. He always does what he has to do.

In my opin­ion, one of the best aspects of these books is the way every­thing’s so clear­ly been thought out in great detail. Jake is a “world-builder.” He plain­ly puts a lot of thought into design­ing even the tini­est prop. In the back of Res­cue on Tanki­um 3 is a sec­tion where among oth­er things, he goes into great detail about all of Mis­sile Mouse’s gear, how it’s assem­bled, what prin­ci­ples it works on. The lev­el of back detail and thought put into these books makes for a fun and rich read­ing expe­ri­ence. They’re good all-ages reads, and worth check­ing out.

Since it’s my art­blog, of course I’ve got to put up some art. So up top is my Mis­sile Mouse fan art piece. As usu­al, my ani­ma­tion train­ing seems to have com­pelled me to try to get as close to on-mod­el as I can.  I did some exper­i­ment­ing with the col­or meth­ods, because if I can’t do that here, where can I? It struck me that most­ly we’ve seen Mis­sile Mouse inter­act­ing with beings who are a good deal big­ger than he is (play­ing the “David and Goliath” card very well), so I thought it might be fun to see him inter­act with some­thing much small­er than himself.

Mis­sile Mouse is ™ and © Jake Parker.

UPDATE: If you look in the Com­ments below, you’ll see that Jake has seen this post. He appar­ent­ly liked my draw­ing well enough to post it on his own site here. I’m very flat­tered! Thanks, Jake!

Five Color Comics

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So my local com­ic shop, House of Secrets (Hi Paul, Erik and Amy!) also occa­sion­al­ly pub­lish­es spe­cial projects of their own, under the name Art of Fic­tion. One of them is a title they call Five Col­or Comics. The inter­est­ing thing about it is that they have each pan­el of the sto­ries drawn by a dif­fer­ent artist. Bit of an exer­cise in herd­ing cats for them some­times, I’m sure, but the results are interesting.

I con­tributed to vol­ume one, and they recent­ly pub­lished vol­ume two. Which I was also invit­ed to con­tribute to. You can see my pan­el con­tri­bu­tion here, sans cap­tions. No “Pho­to­shop­pery” going on; it was done the old-school way, direct­ly on paper with pen, ink and col­ored pen­cils. In con­text with the oth­er pan­els, it’s inter­est­ing to see how there still man­ages to be a cer­tain over­all cohe­sive­ness to the sto­ry, despite the fact we all have such dif­fer­ent styles.

Just Another Tease

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So I haven’t post­ed in awhile. The last few weeks have been crazy busy with col­or­ing and let­ter­ing a com­ic book project. I can’t give details or post the pages just yet, but will in a few months, once I get the clear­ance to do so. In the mean­time, the image at right is non-spe­cif­ic enough to work as a tease for what the thing looks like.

Pen­cils for this project were by the love­ly and tal­ent­ed Jim Sten­strum. Jim is best known in comics as a writer, but in ani­ma­tion he’s bet­ter known as a char­ac­ter design­er. I’ve worked with Jim on many projects over the years, and it is always a pleasure.

Zita the Spacegirl

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Before talk­ing about the illus­tra­tion at right, I need to set the stage and explain what I’m doing here. Please bear with me.

It will come as no sur­prise (if you know me, or have looked around my site) that I’m a long-time fan of comics. It’s a top­ic I can go on at length about (and have, at times!). Now there are a lot of things I real­ly have no use for in mod­ern comics. But it’s way too easy to talk about those. It strikes me it’d be a waste of time and space for me to go rant­i­ng on my blog about what I don’t like in comics.

Instead, I thought it might be more worth­while to take a pos­i­tive tack and point out comics (or oth­er books and things) I’ve come across that I like, and have found inspir­ing. So from time to time, I’ll do posts about inspi­ra­tional stuff I’ve come across. It may be new, or some­thing old. But these are the kinds of things that remind me why I fell in love with comics (and car­toons and sto­ry­telling) in the first place. Maybe you’ll like them too.

For my first install­ment along those lines, here’s a bit of “fan art” I gen­er­at­ed of Zita the Space­girl. Cre­at­ed by artist/author Ben Hatke, I picked this book up a few weeks back. I’d pre-ordered it on a whim, based pure­ly on the cov­er art and the sto­ry descrip­tion. I was not dis­ap­point­ed. In full col­or and clock­ing in at over 180+ pages, it def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fies as a graph­ic nov­el. Hatke’s art is loaded with charm, and he’s craft­ed a sol­id all-ages book. Zita faces some chal­lenges and some hard choic­es that kids will under­stand, but per­haps adult read­ers will find addi­tion­al res­o­nance with (much like Pixar movies). I thor­ough­ly enjoyed the book. It’s the kind of thing that gives you hope for the future of comics.

Zita the Space­girl is ™ and © Ben Hatke.

UPDATE: You might notice in the Com­ments that Ben some­how dis­cov­ered my post here, and asked if he could re-post my Zita draw­ing over on his own blog. Which he did, along with a cou­ple oth­er cool Zita draw­ings. Thanks, Ben!

Nat Gertler to the Rescue!

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This post will be a lit­tle out­side my ordi­nary, but I think it’s war­rant­ed in order to give cred­it where cred­it’s due.

Since launch­ing this site, I’d been telling peo­ple that it was 90–95% of the way there to what I want­ed it to be. There were a few items where I just could­n’t quite fig­ure out how to tweak them into what I need­ed. But as of late yes­ter­day, that has final­ly changed!

This is cour­tesy of an old friend, writer and expert/dabbler in many things, Nat Gertler. I approached him to see if per­haps he might be able to tweak those inter­web thin­gies that need­ed tweak­ing, and he agreed to give it a shot. And he did it bril­liant­ly! It’s a huge relief to have my site final­ly work­ing just the way I always want­ed it to work. So, a very big “Thanks!” goes out to Nat.

So what’s with the bear? Well, I thought it would be bor­ing to have a post with no images. These pan­els come from a sto­ry I drew fea­tur­ing Nat’s Licens­able Bear™. LB™ and Mis­ter U.S. are prob­a­bly the main things that Nat and I have had the plea­sure of col­lab­o­rat­ing on. You can see sam­ples of my Mis­ter U.S. work on the site here, here and here.

Mis­ter U.S. is ™ and © Nat Gertler and Mark Lewis, Licens­able Bear™ is ™ and © Nat Gertler.

Now It Can Be Told!

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Some may recall there was a mys­te­ri­ous “teas­er” post I put up back before Christ­mas. I’d been asked to hold off on putting the full art­work for it on my site…until now. So here it is, final­ly: a copy of Amaz­ing Faw­cett Fan­ta­sy #15.

Nev­er seen one before? That’s because it does­n’t exist. It was done as the cov­er for FCA #159, which will be appear­ing in the upcom­ing land­mark 100th issue of Alter Ego. You can see it in con­text with the FCA logo and every­thing else over in my Gal­leries.

You’re prob­a­bly say­ing, “Wait, you goofed up! That does­n’t look any­thing like Spi­der-man!” Ah, but it seems that before the Spi­der-man we’re all famil­iar with came to be, there were sev­er­al vil­lain “spi­der men” char­ac­ters who cropped up in var­i­ous Faw­cett strips. Includ­ing the fel­low on this cov­er here, who went up against Cap­tain Marvel.

This assign­ment was sev­er­al lev­els of fun: get­ting to do my best C.C. Beck impres­sion, try­ing to fig­ure out just what a Faw­cett com­ic might have looked like had they still been pub­lish­ing into the ear­ly 60’s, and work­ing out how to use Pho­to­shop to make it look like a real, well-read comic.

Many thanks to both P.C. Hamer­linck and Roy Thomas for invit­ing me to be part of this mile­stone issue!

The Galleries are Up! Happy New Year!

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I was­n’t sure if I would get to it or not, but it appears I was suc­cess­ful in putting up my gal­leries. Though there are still a few minor bugs to iron out around here, things are func­tion­al. You can access them via the “Gal­leries” link up top.

And just so I’m not only giv­ing you bor­ing text to read, by pop­u­lar request (do three requests by one per­son count?), I’m post­ing an old pin-up I drew fea­tur­ing Chesty Sanchez and Mis­ter U.S.

I had a lot of fun with this! It start­ed with a gag idea sug­gest­ed by writer Nat Gertler, whom Chesty Sanchez cre­ator Steve Ross had ini­tial­ly con­tact­ed to request a pin-up. For some rea­son, though I knew the book was only going to be print­ed in black and white, I always want­ed to see this in col­or. Maybe one day I’ll do it, just for fun. This appeared in the 96 page “Chesty Sanchez Super Spe­cial” some years back, pub­lished by Antarc­tic Press.

Look­ing back over the com­ic, a Chesty Sanchez movie could be a lot of fun. The time is right, with all the oth­er com­ic book movies out there. Steve? you should get right on that and make it happen! 😉

Chesty Sanchez is ™ and © Steve Ross, Mis­ter U.S. is ™ and © Nat Gertler and Mark Lewis.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to You All Out There

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I’m not sure whether I’ll man­age to get my gal­leries up before the hol­i­days or not, but I thought I’d at least get one more post in before the end of the year. That project I allud­ed to in my pre­vi­ous post last month? This is a teaser/portion of that illus­tra­tion. Down the road at some point when I’ve been giv­en clear­ance, I’ll post the full image. This was a fun one to do, as I got to try out some things in Pho­to­shop I’d nev­er done before.

And in case I don’t wind up post­ing any­thing else before then: hope you all have a good hol­i­day sea­son, wher­ev­er you go, what­ev­er you do.

Happy Thanksgiving: Now Go Out and Hunt Down Your Own Turkey!

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I still haven’t had time to get back to fig­ur­ing out how to install the gallery plu­g­in (due to anoth­er project which will prob­a­bly make its way on here even­tu­al­ly), but I want­ed to keep the site active. So by request of my friend Lyle, I’ve post­ed the draw­ing on the left. It’s a fake com­ic cov­er fea­tur­ing a jun­gle girl char­ac­ter named Zhantika.

She’s the blonde at left. Zhan­ti­ka was a char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Lyle and myself. Around that time, I’d got­ten my hands on the Ger­ber Pho­to-Jour­nal Guide to Com­ic Books. Look­ing through them, we both real­ized sep­a­rate­ly that the “jun­gle girl” com­ic was a real pop­u­lar genre of its own at one point that sort of van­ished. That sparked an idea. Lyle came up with the basic con­cept, and the visu­al was mine.

We actu­al­ly pub­lished a Zhan­ti­ka sto­ry in Big Bang #17, much thanks to Gary Carl­son. I also have to thank inker David Zim­mer­mann, who brought a real­ly nice pol­ish to my pen­cils with his brush­work. The above image is not from that sto­ry though; it was done as a faux gold­en age cov­er for one of “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues (#27, if any­one cares to look). It was part of a whole fic­ti­tious his­to­ry of comics that did­n’t real­ly exist, but it was lots of fun to pretend.

Maybe even­tu­al­ly one day I’ll col­or this cov­er, just for fun. And just to make this a lit­tle longer: Zhan­ti­ka is ™ and © Lyle Dodd and Mark Lewis.