Here’s the cover of Prophet #26 that I drew this week. This is going to be the first Prophet issue that I write and draw by my lonesome:

And the thumbnail for it:

I like the idea of these Prophet covers to not just be rehashing what’s inside the issue but showing some image that hopefully make the reader think about the expansive sci fi universe we’re trying to set up.

I like these Japanese sci fi covers:

Here’s a sketchbook page I did today– with some drawings by my pal Emily carrollon the left.  Tank girl, Harry dean Lantern on the right.

And a cat drawing I drew over breakfast for my pal Frank’s misses–

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Recently I’ve been wrapped up in thinking about the bullshit side of comics, the awful pre watchmen, Marvel’s legal shitting on Gary Friedrich.  bullshit on bullshit.

Today I just read some good comics to remember why I love this shit.

I got an issue of The Elsewhere prince #1 and skipped right to this 2 page Moebius comic in the back of it. No time to fuck around, today we need the hard shit.

This comic is my favorite kind of Moebius nonsense. Serious nonsense.

“and finally I hate your bathrobe!” nice!

I followed it up with these books:

mannn, I like Ken Macklin’s work.  When I was a kid I got really into his covers on Critters, his Dr. Watchstop and my favorite of his– this one shot Summer special from 87: about 2 Contractors hired to rescue a bird from space pirates.

Here’s a couple pages, I like how the pirate hordes in this act like Jim Henson Muppets.

Such pretty pages.and here’s a sheet on the main characters in the book:

nice nice–

and then from Johny Chambers in 1973 –Little green Dinosaur. It’s about the last dragon in a forest in the middle of a future war between mice and pirate rats.

I like this scene:

and in the middle of the book it’s got an out of nowhere sex scene between the dragon and Sugar mouse. I love that level of whatever you want in old underground comix. ORK! ORK!

In the back of the book there’s a great short, BLOODLUST that was done by Chambers and local Vancouver comix hero George Metzger. It starts out as a Conan style barbarian comic whose main character breaks the 4th wall and asks the artist drawing for a break:

yeah, this is comic strip heaven.

I also read this Tony Takezaki AD police that Marian’s mom was nice enough to get me for Xmas (she got me contractors too)

I like this jerk of a Blade runner billboard turtle:

It almost reads like a fan comic with all the references to other cool sci fi and manga of the era– Here’s a robot that shows up looking like the post apocalyptic Akira Caretaker robots(even with #28 on it):

Later in the book there’s a chapter of the main AD cop lady having to fight her way out of a building that’s been taken over by terroristas with a Die hard nod:

That scene is like no bra cyborg lady cop fan fiction. and I like this Booomer taking over the building–

RAAAA!!

and here’s some Enki Bilal pages that I ran into on this internet– showing an unfinished page that eventually got reworked into 2 pages. I definatly prefer the newer version of her Alien manfriend being allergic to light and all bundled up.

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My pal Frank Santoro was just in town to promote his Santoro Correspondence Course. he crashed at my place for a week and wrote about it on the comics journal:

here:

http://www.tcj.com/west-coast-tour-diary-finale/

and Frank’s site:

http://coldheatcomics.blogspot.com/

and we did a live Inkstuds episode that you can listen to here:

http://www.inkstuds.org/?p=3910

Also I should mention that my giant KING CITY collection will be out on the 22nd (in 4 days) along with Prophet #22– thanks.

if anyone needs me, I’ll be in comic strip heaven.

Marian did the drawing on the right, wanting to leave while I took my sweet time.

in other news Marvel and DC seem to be having some bizarre contest on who can be shittier to the people who’ve done the best work for them.

Gary Friedrich is being forced to pay $17,000 in blood money to Marvel. Comics writer, Steve Niles has been graciously organizing a donation drive . Me and my pal Stokoe are selling off pages with the 100 % sales from the next 10 King City pages and next 10 Orc Stain pages going to the cause that Mr Niles is spearheading.

More on that here:

http://www.mcconnellart.com/?p=844

Fucking comics dawg.

Brandon: Speaking of Ross Campbell(artist on Glory) and his stuff, he’s going through this period where he’s reassessing his work, really looking at how he’s approaching women.  He’s actively trying not to be sexist in his own work, and talking about that a lot.  His being given this character is almost a chance to make right how DC fucked themselves up on their relaunch and how they were really shitty to their female readers. Ross is coming in and being able to actually be thinking about them, because he comes off as one of the creators most aware of the female reader and how female characters are being depicted in comics.

 

Joe Keatinge (writer on Glory): That’s definitely a big part of it too.  I mean, character comes first before any big political statement, but I want a female lead who can break Supreme in half, because why not?  That’s definitely what we’re going for here.  

My goal is to make her and one of the characters in the book who I won’t name, but who appears in the first issue, into two of the biggest bad asses in comics.  Their gender doesn’t really come into it for me.  I don’t see why it should.  It’s just about who they are.

 

Brandon: It doesn’t hurt to point out they’re characters a teenaged girl could read about and not feel embarrassed.

 

Joe: Exactly!  I wanted this to be a book that I could show to a girlfriend or my parents, and not be ashamed.  I want a 13, 18, 20 year-old-girl to read this and not be embarrassed because Catwoman’s fucking Batman or whatever.  I want this to be something where it can be enjoyed by them just as much by a 13, 18, 20-year-old boy, whatever.

 

Nrama: Well, the Extreme books of the 1990s were known to deal in certain stereotypes regarding women’s – and let’s face it, men’s – chests.  And rear ends, and guns, and shoulder pads, and feet that were always off-panel….what are the challenges in moving beyond that stereotype.

 

Joe: I think you just have to make the kind of comic you want to read and go from there.

 

Brandon:  I think it’s important to try to address that shit too, though.  It’s like when they brought back The Spirit and brought in Ebony, and they had that smug thing in the back of the issue where they go, “Here’s how we dealt with Ebony!  We made her a hot chick!”  They just screwed the pooch so badly on that.

You have to bring this stuff up, I feel.  It has to be addressed and not ignored.  And Ross’ way of drawing Glory, I feel, kind of does address it.

 

 Joe: There’s a difference, though, between addressing it and having a political message in it that overpowers your book, and not being able to tell a story, you know what I mean?  We were methodical in making Glory look the way she looks now, as opposed to how she looked before, but at the end of the day, I just want to make some really great comics with Ross.  And that’s more important, I think, than trying to change someone else’s political viewpoint.

 

 

Brandon: It’s important, I think, how you show the story.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be a soapbox comic, but how you depict female characters shows how you’re approaching it as opposed to how they were depicted in the past.

 

Joe: True.  That’s certainly fair.  Tim, what’s your opinion on all this?

 

Tim: I have a character who’s a dominatrix who wears a leather mask and a thong, so whatever.

 

Brandon: But I kind of think that sort of stuff’s okay.  It’s all about owning your shit.  I don’t have any problem with DC’s Catwoman because of the content; it’s because the dork from fuckin’ MTV’s Real World is a shitty writer.  That’s what bothers me.

 

Joe: Whoa!

 

Brandon: It’s okay.  DC’s not calling me anyway.

 

That’s the great thing about Image, though.  I was just reading an interview with Eric Stephenson, and that dude actually talks about comic books like a reader, and he’s not just trying to sell you shit.  He was talking about the Grant Morrison X-Men stuff as a reader, and why he loved it, and what he didn’t like about it.  And I think that as a comic book community, we have address things as adults, and not just as marketing people.

 

Joe: My thing on Eric Stephenson is that he’s kind of the not-so-secret hero of comics in the 21st century.  Not to kiss the guy’s ass too much, but the fact that he is responsible for bringing me onto this Extreme stuff, that he brought Brandon on as well, that he’s giving all these chances to new talent with a really no-bullshit attitude….I think if you look at Marvel’s big lineup right now, with the exception of Brian Michael Bendis, who was brought into Image by Jim Valentino, everyone else was brought in to Image by Eric.  I know that I owe my career in a huge way to him.  Anyway, Eric Stephenson, am I right?

 

Brandon: That’s a huge reason why I’m invested in the Prophet stuff right now.  Seeing how much work he put in to get my King City stuff into print after it got into all this bullshit with the previous publisher…Image doesn’t get a big paycheck from that.  It doesn’t get anything for them.  It’s just that he liked the work and wanted to get it out there.  That makes me want to back them, and to work with them as a publisher.

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So000 yeah.

Anyway here’s Simon’s cover for Prophet 25 (with colors by Jason Wordie)– so cool.

Simon’s site http://www.robot-blood.blogspot.com/

and Jason’s  flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/43870122@N07/

and a spread from the guts of the next issue, Richard Ballermannnn’s colors on this came out so cool:

 

Aside from Prophet I just sent the King city collection off to get printed up.

Here’s a title page Image from that:

and some recent pages from my sketchboook. A couple drawings from Alien and I redrew  Yuri from an Adam Warren Dirty pair.

I drew this one watching Devil in a blue dress, I like that movie.

and some drawings of my pal Liz one of my lady Marrriiannnnn and Groucho marx who I also love.

and here’s some naked ladies just to point out that I’m still a classy dude.

I just wanted to point out that I made a button on the right ————>

You can click it look at original pages me, my lady Marian and our pals James and Muggles are selling through our reputable homie Mr. Mcconnell. He just put up mah Dirty pairody Thickness pages and some of the DHP short I did that comes out on the 21st (next week)

And here’s a quick photoshop shit I did to harass Marian.

I bid you a dude.

Stuff’s been good. I’ve been working on getting the King city collection ready (woo!), Multiple warheads (so close) and Prophet (but of course). 

So I’d written on here before that Prophet would come out 6 times a year but some cool shit has happened and now it’s going to be 12 issues a year monthly.

So here’s the schedule:

Starting Jan-

#21(number 1 in our hearts) -#23  art by Simon Roy (Jan’s Atomic heart), then #24 &25 are drawn by farel dalrymple (pop gun war) I’m drawing #26 and Giannis Milonogiannis (Old city blues)is doing # 27- 32. I think we’ve come up with a cool way to make this work storywize.

Here’s Giannis’s cover for # 24:

And Giannis’s site http://www.oldcityblues.com/

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Last week I thought it’d be fun to enter a poster contest for Yelawolf whose raps I like a lot.

I drew this really big so in retrospect it didn’t come out as detailed as I hoped but I had fun doing it.  I put the names of all the songs on the CD all over this seedy drawing.

And here’s some recent ish out of my sketchbook.

I drew this after my pal Stokoe was bragging about all the ponchos he drew in Orc stain. The drawing on the right is a real poncho and the left is the tropical asshole vest he was trying to pass off. ABUSE!

I realize that by posting this I might be starting the great poncho war of 2011 but I’m just dangerous enough to risk a poncho in the face.

I was thinking about in comics how when you draw a convenience store or grocery store at all accurate it turns something so boring into something  detailed and interesting. Where something like a tree you can choose to draw it as a simple stick thing or really detailed and beautiful and it’s more like how you might notice trees in real real life.

Maybe there’s some mini mart shelf style that I’m not thinking of that dashes my theories against the rocks.

and some moreeee

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And I got a couple rad drawings of my characters from artists whose work kills me.

Craig Thompson drew me this King city, I think I’ve mentioned it on here before but his Habibi is so impressive.

Craig’s site: http://www.dootdootgarden.com/

And last time I was in Seattle I got to hang out with Meeester John Kantz who drew me some Sexica:

More of John’s stuff: http://www.jackmo.com/

and here’s a drawing my pal Moritat did for the Emerald city con’s artbook.

Seeing him draw ish like this makes me want to drop everything and just do bootleg Heavy metal issues.  I have such heavy metal isssues.

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I was reading this 1987 Dennis Fujitake & Jan Strnad Retief comic based off the Keith Laumer books. Such good comics. I like all the open space he gets by leaving out some of the panel boarders.

When I was a kid my Mom was a big Retief fan I remember her being diisapointed when Fujitake stopped drawing it.  

He has such a cool Moebius via american indy steloo. It reminds me of the same (franchmanga) feeling of the old Howard and Nester comics that Nintendo power ran.

more of that here: http://hn.supernintendope.com/main.htm

Something about the Moebius influence in these comes off as nothing but charming to me even when it’s pretty obvious what he was looking at– like this space station on the left and the Moebius all Up-on a star page on the right.

I like that Fujitake borowed so much from the Moebius drawing but still came up with his own style of drawing the rock of the asteroid.

and here’s a drawing from Fujitake’s other series that I was into as a kid– Dalgoda. Man, I love this stuff.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off this to go fuck around on twitter while I draw more naked ladies in my sketchbook.

Oh and here’s a recent interview I did with Martyn Pedler for Bookslut:

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2011_12_018427.php

So the cat is out of the bag, the King city collection comes out from Image comics on February 22nd in black and white 424 pages same golden age size as the Image issues. for $19.99.   Here’s the cover.

 There’s a couple new drawings but for the most part I kept it pretty close to what was in the issues. It’s still got all the back ups, covers, games and puzzles that were in those.
I’m a big advocate of the fun of getting a book in issues as it comes out and I didn’t want the people who had picked it up month to month to feel like they should have waited.

Aight? aight.

My pal Robin has relaunched the site selling pages from me, Marian, Stokoe and Marley. We’re doing a contest to give away this drawing:

It’s a contest to come up with the best brunch this universe has ever seen. no pressure. More on it here:

http://www.mcconnellart.com/?p=451 

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Last night was the deadline to get something off for the Previews cover of Prophet #23 (3rd one of my run) and I’d forgotten that my pal Farel (dalrymple)who I was going to get to draw it was kicked back on a beach far far away. Luckily when Farel came up here a couple weeks back he left an impressive Prophet drawing.

So I colored it. I think he’s doing something else for the actual cover. maybe this’ll run on the back.

–

I wanted to type about the reference I used for a page of my Speaker short that’ll be in DHP#7– yeah that one.

I found this picture on the internet that I liked.

And cutting it up along with another picture I made this mess in Photoshop.

and then the final page. I kept that silhouetted lighting set up and the basic shape and color.

If anything reference is good for getting you to try out stuff in a way you might not if you were just pulling ideas out of your own head.

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also also also, today I got this Adam Warren Dirty pair thumbnail in the mail. It’s the first comic book art I’ve ever bought for my lonesome.

And here’s how the page looked in print. This book was such a huge deal to me when it came out (still is)

 This week I’ve been digging around on the g.e-hentai.org site. The wealth of amazing comics on there is nuts.

I’m really into these Book of the beast anthologies on there. It’s like the finest in furry porn, I think it’s put together by Trump, who I remember did a couple things with Radio comix back in the days that I was also doing stuff with them. These books also have some American dudes from that scene like Miu (Michael Vega) and Fred Perry.

I’m really into the layout of this page with the stairs around the pillar. Also I like a cat in glasses.

He’s an artist like Manara where I’m really impressed with his work but I can’t always defend it. 

Earlier this week I dragged a kicking and screaming Mr Stokoe over to draw on chalkboards for RX comics, the store I loiter at.

http://www.rxcomics.com/

Here’s mine:

And Stokoe (you can see Marian’s GandRALPH puke wearing a wizard hat drawing on the left):

And how they look in the window:

Also also also, I did an image wrapped in secrecy for something of mine that Image is putting out.

So what is it?

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While digging around on my computer I found this rough sketch I did last year.

The idea was to do a wacky races, 10 little Gall force,Cannonball run style comic called RACE WAR (possibly not the best title ever in hindsight) with characters from my Multiple warheads, Marian’s Beast and Stokoe’s Orc stain, selfish dolphin on a segway– along with some Savage dragon guys all racing on a track that ran through 90′s Image. (see Badrock mountain)

Anyway, the idea never made it past this. C’est la vie.

In honor of that here’s a scene from Cannonball run that I always get stuck in my head:

“those priests weren’t fathers they were muthers”

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dodado da doo

And here’s some early Prophet sketches that are going inside the back cover of issue #21 (or issue one of what I’m doing)

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And some photos I took of shiz around my neighborhood.

This one is on a coffee shop I always walk by. That picture reminds me of 90′s paulpope comics. inky black coffee.

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Here’s some characters sitting on bleachers I thought were cool–an old Moebius drawling followed by an Akira Toriyama Dr Slump.

And an Animage cover:

And here’s some other stuff I liked the look of:

I like how adding “police” or the McDonallds cup in this one gives you a tiny bit of context.

And here’s an old Dragon ball jump cover that I’ve put up before, but I need this type of shit today. so fucking good.

I’ve been rereading Appleseed this week and I noticed that early on Shirow would label a characters stuff– gloves or jacket with their name– like Bulma has on her bike. I like that and it seems like a good trick to get your readers to remember a characters name.

“What’s that’s guys name again-oh yeah, it’s written on his forehead”

And here’s some Heavy D.

“Sittin’ in my room with my smoking jacket on”

I screwed up my schedule and woke up at tonight midnight tonight. So I made hot chocolate and drew myself while listening to rap:

I’ve got a short story coming out next month in Dark horse Presents #7 out on December 21.

It’s called the Speaker about the parts of a man who hang around after his death.

Here’s page 2. I had fun coloring this one.

and page 7.

and a sketch of the voice character from it.

And here’s some sketchbook ish from a recent island adventure me and my misses went on.

Here’s a picture from the Avengers tv series. I think I should watch some of that today. I like that show.

 Here’s a milk cow my lady drew over brukfast.

And some of my recent sketchbook ish.– the top left is a panel from the Multiple warheads issue I’m working on.– I do the clouds in ink and then take out the lines when i’m coloring.

Marian’s been working all week doing these rad sketches for people. Here’s 6 of them I ran away with after distracting her with coffee.

I especially like sholder cats all set to be cooked with POtatoes like so much LOTR 2nd breakfast.

And Marian just put up a new thing on her Hchom site. It’s all photos of her larder.

http://hchom.com/2011/10/19/1699/#more-1699

The whole 4th issue takes place above the clouds on these pipes and air whales .Here’s the not so pretty rough of this–I drew it out first on butcher paper with a sharpie and then traced it onto better paper to clean up.

This week has been good for working. A lot of the time when I draw I work off of a kind of enjoying the drudgery of it all. I’ll put on an audio book and get into the slow making of lines on paper– but this week I’ve been so fucking into comics.  It’s been all rap music and no time for anything but comics.

I’d be an asshole not to enjoy being able to make my own comics all day but it is a job to stay excited about it.– There’s that Meatloaf line:

“Somedays it don’t come easy, Somedays it don’t come hard, Some days it don’t come at all And there are the days that never end, Some nights you’re breathing fire, some nights your carved in ice, Somenight you’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before or will again.”

– yeah, he was talking about comics.

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Here’s some recent drawings by my reclusive pal and cold cut sandwich murderer James Stokoe. A couple of Poison thrower drawings. James has been deep in his lair working on some really cool pages.

annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd