Talk and Demo in Willingbor

See you this Saturday at the Willingboro Art Alliance 9-11

I'll be talking comics and doing a demo https://www.facebook.com/thewillingboroartalliance/photos/rpp.140328629341430/1906210336086

The Phantom, The Bat, The Kryptonian And The Minivan

This was one of the heaviest lifting weeks in the studio for a long time. On top of the two strips which keep me plenty busy, I also got a rush 10 page penciling job for DC Digital books, written by old buddy Phil Hester and inked by Comics god, Tom Palmer. I think it will show up on Comixology.

Tom and I last worked together over 20 years ago on Spirits of Vengeance.

you can see more of Tom's great work on his website tomplamerillustration.com

Its Supes and Bats vs Darkseid and DeSaad. It was a fun romp, better for an annual than a 10 pager as it was very dense and I had to get used to the DC Digital format which breaks things into two tiers for the cellphones and tablets.

The rough for page 1 on the left and the finished pencils on the right.













Still I was happy old Marvel buddy Steve Buccellato asked me to do it.  I got to draw the new costumes on Supes and Bats which made me miss the old ones--well at least on Superman.

This weeks was also a hard drawing week on The Phantom as week get Kit to his new school hidden away in the far off Himalayas. Great vistas and people, new character and street scenes, so it was a fun lush week written by Tony that called on all my drawing muscles!

 And here is last week's worth of The Phantom strips.

The band's trip back from Morrisville/Morristown continues in the Judge. This is from a plot I pitched to Woody back at the beginning of the year. Woody is scripting and adding his own flair of course. The band is on the way back and there looks to be some back seat hijinks. Oh, Oh, drama!

It was also a cleaning out week, out with more old and unwanted  comics and books into the recycle--I have acquired so much of everything it seems---so my rule is if I haven't looked at it in 5 years--it goes in the "out pile". Some stuff I will keep, but frankly its so easy to keep things you think you will look at again--then never do!! I brought crap home from my studio in school that I thought I'd want or would go through two years ago that I am just going through now--and most of the stuff I am tossing.

I think all mid career artists have to do this, out with as much as you can so what you have is good and easily found. One of the museum conservators at PAFA told me that when they get in an artist studio, all their material, sometimes after they pass, it's so daunting the family goes ,"Here you guys can have this stuff".

Then they have to go through a huge amount of junk that is basically mostly just junk to sort out the envelope with a doodle  that was some link in the artists work or process that is important, from the real junk mail. She told me to toss away as much stuff as I can along the way to avoid the huge pile of art debris she was going through. It was sound advice I should have listened too!

First Day In The Skull Cave

 Today marks my start on The Phantom as the regular artist on the daily strip as the torch is passed officially on the comics page from the late Paul Ryan to me. Its hard to still process that it all happened so fast, Paul passed away only two months ago and within a few days of his passing I was hired by King as his replacement and had to hit the ground running fast. Luckily Tony DePaul the long time Phantom scribe as well as the folks at King and fellow Phantom artist Terry Beatty who does the Sunday strip gave me as much help to get up to speed quickly as I came in on the very end of the current story line. I also did all of this while still keeping up on drawing Judge Parker.

This was exactly the same situation that lead me to get the Judge Parker strip when Eduardo Barreto passed away back in 2011. No artist likes to inherit work this way but the comic strips must go on and this situation is very similar to what happened to John Prentice jumping into the drawing chair on Rip Kirby when artist Alex Raymond was tragically killed driving Stan Drake's new sports car. King was is a panic to replace one the the greatest cartoonists ever on short notice.

I met Paul only once that I remember clearly at a con many years back though we rubbed shoulders at Marvel on books like Quasar with me following him on that book when he left to do other books like The Avengers and The Fantastic Four. Paul left us all a great legacy to enjoy and be inspired by for the ages with his art for Marvel and his long run on the Phantom.

I posted the pencils for today's first strip and the final versions and you can see there were some changes swapping the King and the Colonel. its hard to jump in on something like this and grab the characters and the feel of where the story is at and the actors as it were so I spent as much time as I could reading over the last several weeks of the story and Paul's art.

I also belong to s small club of artists who have also drawn both Batman and The Phantom. They include Jim Aparo, Terry Beatty, Don Newton, Carmine Infantino (As a Ghost for Sy Barry), Joe Giella ( Ghosting for Bob Kane), Graham Nolan, Paul Ryan and myself. That's pretty good company!

 

 Here is a recent commission just off the drawing board I completed for a fan of Bats and Killer Croc based on my cover for Batman 512. For now back to the drawing board!

PAFA CE Cartooning Class 2012

I just finished teaching my one-week intensive workshop on comics at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the Continuing Ed program. I had a great group of talented and enthusiastic young cartoonists who came ready to draw up a storm!  

 Just like last summer  I had a pretty diverse group and a pretty big class at 14 students. I felt lucky as this summer many classes have not run in the program, and thats probably due to the economy. I had two returning students from last summer and it was great to see the growth from last summer.
 There was at a good variety of interests and styles from manga to Indy, horror and humor, one student drew her own Adventure Time comic. I introduced them to the technical end as well as he artistic variety of come books and strips and everyone really churned out great pages. Even in a week long class that runs 6 hours, getting 3-4 pages done in that time is pretty hard work.

 Asher continued on with his theme of doing a war comic, this time based on a book he was reading about Vietnam. I showed him the work of artists like Russ Heath and he ate it up! Not everyone just drew comics, some wanted to draw illustrations of trains or the Beatles--and its all good! I introduced a student to the work of Peter max, Moebius, Virgil Finlay and the Art Nouveau--which she has never heard of but was drawing work very influenced by the 60's psychedelic and The Yellow Submarine cartoon.

I was honestly impressed by how talented some of my students were and how quickly the picked up the things I showed them, trying their hand at the pen nib and brush and not just the marker---and they really seemed to dig the results!

 It was a great group of young cartoonist and teaching them gave me a boost as well---its really great to see that there are a whole bunch of young cartoonist out there hoping to draw their way to fame and fortune, to lob the ball over the net and have it sent back with a little spin on it.

Judge Parker

The Terminators out of service so Constance is on the scene...Sam wants to know who is she and what's her mix all about?

Judge Parker

The Judge and Sam check into their hotel a little in shock after the surprise of the "terminator's" accident.

More Parker Progress

I thought I'd share some more of my working process on Judge parker for some of the dailies that are out this week. Above is my pencils for the Monday and Tuesday strips running this week which features the return of Neddy and the introduction of her French boyfriend, Jules. This was a big weeks as Neddy has been off in Europe and out of the strip for a while. So I get to basically re-establish her in the strip, which is nice.

You can see where I hand write in the script to place the word balloons, which at this point I was still doing by hand, I have now moved to doing them in photoshop, which makes it easier. I would prefer the whole thing done by hand, but I don't have a letterer on staff and it saves a lot of time to do them in photoshop--and time is of the essence as I am still close to King's deadlines on the strip. With my busy schedule now, school, etc., plus the strip--every hour counts--I might even get to use it to sleep. Woody Wilson, the writer wanted Neddy dressed in a sexy little black number, to show she's grown up a bit since she 'went away".




Here are the two dailies inked up and I added some zip as well. Upon seeing the strips printed I am not sure if I'll keep adding zip as the strip is now often printed so small I don't know if it really looks good. every week I feel I get a little looser and the strip is a little more my own take, I "Feel" the characters more, they become actors in my mind, not just drawings or symbols.

I wish the strips were run bigger and I wish I could work bigger as well, but I need to keep things able to fit on my scanner and with the size of the strips being run today drawing more into them would make it much harder to read and reproduce well. Luckily all my years in storyboards helped me work smaller.

Martians Go Home

It's been a while since I posted anything on my current comic project so here are a few pages from the first issue of Martians Go Home. I'll be halfway through the first issue by this weekend and by next weekend I should be done with all of the pencils and then be on the inking wagon.

I'll be uploading a few more pages next week.

Martians, Martians Everywhere

Here are a bunch of sketches from my development art for the adaption of Fredericks Brown's book, Martians Go Home which I'm currently drawing for Sequential Pulp Comics.


I'll be posting art from my progress on the book as I go along.

Manley Goes to the Martians

This is the promo art for a post card to promote the new comic series I'm doing for Sequential Pulp Comics, an adaption of Fredric Brown's Classic Sci-Fi book, Martians Go Home. The first issue will be out in late spring or early summer an will be published through Dark Horse. I'll be penciling, inking and coloring the series myself and my best buddy Bret Blevins will be painting the covers. This will be the first comic series I have done in years and I'm looking forward to doing this series because it combines two things I love, Sci-Fi and Humor.