Meanwhile on planet Earth..

Meanwhile my Multiple Warheads book is still puttering along. I’ve got 2 thirds of an issue left to draw before the new #1 goes to print. Here’s a 2 page spread I colored today.

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

An ever changing world

Hello,

When I’d agreed to take on the job of reworking the 90’s Image book Prophet, the joke was that I couldn’t resist the pun.  — doing it for Prophet and all.

This is the first really collaborative comic I’ve done. This is the first time I’ve had to work out how to collaborate and try to make it carry the weight of my solo comics. So yeah, this is the first time I’ve cared about collaborating.

I got my misses Marian (Churchland) did this first cover.

I did the logo, It’s pretty unchanged from the old series. I like that sci fi E

I’m really hyped about the guys I’m working with on this book.

Simon Roy is drawing it– and we’ve been doing a lot of back and forth on writing. I really hate working off of scripts so we’ve been doing it much more lose where I send Simon issue breakdowns–what happens on each page. We then send back and forth layouts and Simon calls me on my bullshit if and when I start to stink like a writer/artists who isn’t drawing. Mostly the goal is to push eachother to do some cool sci fi.

Here’s Simon’s Deviantart. http://povorot.deviantart.com/

The serious colors on it are by Simon’s pal Richard Ballermann, here’s his site.

http://www.funkdafide.com/index.html

And the Lettering is by Ed Brisson who is the reason I saw Simon’s work. Ed published Simon’s book Jan’s Atomic heart and has written some great crime comics Simon drew. — Ed’s site http://edbrisson.com/

And some info on Jan’s http://www.newreliable.com/?p=56

Here’s how the start of our first issue (issue 21) set in the far far far far future.

You know how Prophet’s creator gets picked on for his 90’s drawings of feet–completely unplanned for we started it with a creature with 5 feet. That is a 15 foot page.

So I’m planning on 6 issues a year and we’re making the issues self contained but part of a big ongoing intergalactic so and so. Fucking future space Conan ish.

I’m really excited about the possibilities in this.

again Appleseed

I just heard about a new Appleseed Manga that Shirow isn’t drawing. with this and the non Adam Warren drawn Dirty pair that came out recently. It’s new comics with the creator that got me  into them removed.

It reminds me of this other old porn page I did– no salad just dressing.

I always say how Shirow stuff more than anything is an argument for work not translating to other mediums past the original creator. Complicated intense work dumbed down to the point that it’s barely recognizable. Anyway, I’m at least interested to see the thing.

Here’s some art from it –it’s by Akira Miyagawa. It looks aight…

The Studio 4c animated Orion short might be kind of cool though.

I’ve said it before on here but it kills me to see Shirow’s best work handed off to be redone by other dudes.

But you know, I’m sure he’s busy doing something importa–

Nevermind.

 

Anyway, here’s some Appleseed figures I thought were cool.

And a comparison between the original version (left) and what was released in the Korean (right) intron depot. I assume they might’ve left the lady on lady cybersex scene out of that one.

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I like these Project A-ko designs.

and some Leji Matsumoto.

And Matsumoto and Astro boy

And I liked this Wally Wood page from Sally Forth. “It’s all up here…”

 

 

Like, look I’m still here.

Hello,

While I still putter away on my Warheads pages here’s some of the other ish I’ve been up to.

I did a drawing for the Emerald city con’s Monsters and dames book. I was aiming for a robot centaur made out of the same mechnology as a Robotech Cyclone.– and I drew a Weewolf reading Murakami’s wind up bird chronicles. 

I did this for a Floating world artshow for Craig Thompson’s fantastic book Habibi.

That book has stuck with me nicely since reading it. I keep thinking about the characters lives past the book.

Some sketchbookery:

I drew some of these to harass my dear sweet lady –Marian drew the 2nd And now.

She’s so all Skyrim on her mind all day these days.

Marian’s been doing a push to sell off some art. I think the stuffed gnomes are gone already but she has lots of pages left.

More on her site.

http://hchom.com/

and as always I have pages of mine for sale at:

http://www.mcconnellart.com/

anyway, Sketchbook.

I had an idea to do a series of rough sketches while watching music videos, I did this page looking at Aerosmith’s Girls of summer. It’s a shitty song and the video has as much artistic merit as an episode of Charmed but whatever whatever.

 

And a sketch I drew on a boat. Coooooze

annd a racoon and a robot racoon– Marian drew the creatures on the top left and the photos are some Dirty pair cosplay I snerked off this internet.

And I dug up some awful scans of an unfinished porn comic I started on Slipshine long ago.

Slipshine site:

http://orgymania.net/ 

The idea with this was to make a porn thing with a bunch of characters from other comics I’d done all interacting in a giant tower.

This title page was colored by my pal Tom Herpich long long long ago– Left to right that’s Sexica from Multiple warheads and Stix from Perverts of the Unknown and a character from a porn short I did called Juice (Tash I think her name was?) and the character I did just for this. I’d read that pretty ladies worked better with as few lines on their faces as possible. So I drew her trying to add as lots of face lines– bags under eyes & freckles. 

Speaking of porn you can order the Thickness #2 that my Dirty Pairody comic is in along with some great shorts by Angie Wang, Michael DeForge, Mickey Zacchilli and more and more. I’m really proud to be in that books lineup.

 it’s here:

http://thickness.me/

And also my pal Robin who does Inkstuds did a video talk with me while I was drawing the Thickness pages.

Representative

Oh helllllo,

I’ve been deep in my comic book pages.

Here’s a couple pages from the story I did for the Thickness #2: (page 3 and page 6)

I’ve been mulling over my thoughts on comic book piracy on this internet– avast!

It always gets my ire up when I see creators and publishers saying shit like ” If you’re illegally downloading our comics, you’re stealing from us” –I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to shame readers into paying for books. Someone yelling at me for being a crook doesn’t make me want to give them money. 

I feel like part of this job is to get people excited about what you’re putting out and making something for them to read that’s worth being excited about.

Granted I do think that ideally the people putting the stuff out should have a say in how it’s presented but The harsh cold reality is that downloading comics is free, easy and without consequences. I feel like the trick is to make a book that is something worth owning in print.

 I think about Head shops carrying underground comix next to weed pipes or EC comics being accused of corrupting the youth or Mad magazine or Heavy metal full of nudity from the future. Selling cool to the kids– don’t let your mom see these comics!

I have faith in my own work,and the comics that I’m excited about I feel like if enough people saw them they would want to own them on paper. When I find some amazing comic online one of my first reactions is always –Where can I find a copy of this.?” for me I can only understand how comics sell by thinking about what I would buy.

I think one of the strengths of comics on this internet is that we can show comics to such a huge audience outside of just who goes into comic shops. You can be their dealer instead of some scolding school principal.

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While I was working on my Thickness story I was rereading all the old Adam Warren Dirty pair issues (soo Good) I ran across this thing I hadn’t noticed before.

So back in ’89 they ran a letter in one of the issues from a 15 year old kid writing to the fictional Kei and Yuri like they were real.  He seems way too into convincing his friends that the Pair are straight he writes– “when I let my friends flip through the issues the first thing they said was “so are they lesbians or what?””

The editor goes on to publicly shame the kid in the pages of his favorite comic. “They are drawings on paper” It’s good stuff.

And then I was reading a 1991 DP where they threw this in:

I like that. 3 years later when they need to show someone is an asshole they quote the kids letter. I like to think that the kid (at 18) was still reading DP. Never escape your crimes! hehehehehehhehehhehehhehe

ANNnnnnnyywayy, Here’s some drawings out of my sketchbook.

Starting with some Queen Emeraldas to go along with my pirate rant.

 

On the right side of the above is an aborted list of comic book crimes I was fucking around with just to be petty and mean. The one that cracked me up was Stokoes idea of it just not being ok to draw Little mermaid fan art. so yeah, be warned.

Here’s an album cover I did for a project that never came out.

And also I got this awesome drawing from James Lloyd,an amazingly talented dude who draws the the Futurama comics as his day job and lives is the same comic book hood as me. –deepest darkest Canada.

 :

 and some more stuff from James-

His site http://puddingsock.livejournal.com/

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Here’s some pages from the manga Space Chef Caisar. I like the space ship and robot in this.

The whole thing is up here:

http://www.fakku.net/viewonline.php?id=5871&page=1#page=1

and here’s some 80’s Jump cover I like:

And some Dirty pair paper dolls with project eden outfits.

Oh and here’s how Yuri looks in my Dirty Parody Thickness thang.

And here’s some racoons dancing to Russian rap:

i bid you adude,

Brandon

Marian Loves chickens

I went to a wedding with my lady Marian, she talked me out of the chicken I ordered in trade for her Salmon. She drew this in my sketchbook to mock me. But look how nice we’re dressed.

That comic book shit.

 I woke up at 3 this afternoon and stumbles over to RX comics to get a Joe Wight (who did Twilight-x ) written zombie comic and I grabbed Snarked too because it was all of a dollar.

http://www.rxcomics.com/

I’d heard about Langrige’s Muppet stuff before but Snarked is the first I’ve read of his.

This first page that’s meant to show the Walrus dude being lazy fit in perfectly with how I felt. This walrus speaks to me. Also I like the oysters welcome sign on his door. Fucking pussy hound (oyster walrus).

I like this pun

I really like all the back up shit he put in this–It’s got games and puzzles that all relate to the story. It’s got a full page wanted poster of a missing character, a diary of how another character from after the story and even a full page of the newspaper the walrus reads.

There’s a draw your own version of the Snark monster page in it too. Here’s mine. (I’ve been reading Elektra again)

 

Return to the planet of the living dead felt like it would make a great Twilight zone comic issue– like my pal Kate’s comic I typed about on here earlier this week. It kind of reads like the actualization of two kids in the 80’s talking about what would happen if space marines met zombies.

I’m not sure how the book was broken up since both Wight and Huchison draw– I’d assume  Huchison drew it but so much of the art looks like Wight to me.

I’m always impressed by how Wight writes military dialog. He doesn’t try to explain or dumb down anything. The characters feel talk like they’re in it “bronco one is feet dry and weapons hot”

I like this panel

I was looking at Garcia Lopez’s Star raiders book again tonight–  this book is so cool.

It never occurred to me before that it was based off of an Atari game. That’s an ad for it on the left and a panel from the comic on the right.

 and this title page

the layouts on these space pages kill me. — even Roy Jones is forced to lean back.

And up on comic art fans there’s a photo of how his originals for it look.

“water colors, colored inks and a little bit of a grease pencil for shading.”

More here:

http://www.comicartfans.com/SearchResult.asp?PM=10&txtSearch=JOSE+LUIS+GARCIA+LOPEZ&Order=&PI=18

 here’s a page from Atari force that was up there as well. I love it when an artist shows the characters really integrated into the backgrounds– it’s one of those things that feels like magic to me when it works. That last panel where he shows the room inside the ship from outside the ship– that’s like magic.

Hello Break fast

Hello Breakfast.

Oh hellllloo,

Stuff has been nice and nicely busy on my side of the earth.

I’ve been tightening and loosening the screws of my comic book machine. Mr Inkstuds gave me these giant pads of paper so I’ve been doing my layouts bigger than the final pages. It’s nice, room to think.

Here’s another page from my Thickness story. With some Robotech and a blatant nod to the Adan Warren DP comics of my youth.

And the mamoth thumbnail for that page:

Here’s a commission I did this week, redrawing an early Kirby FF page.( I might be on kind of a dirty pair kick. with that 6th panel )

 

Here’s the page I based it off of.

Here’s some recent sketchbookery with some trees, and raps.

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soooo my lady is deep in some serious D&D recently. It is the coolest shit ever. Here’s the drawings she did of her character and related horse and things.

More of Marians shiizzz here:

http://hchom.com/

And here’s some sketchbook drawings that I scammed out of my pal(and some people’s Dungeon Master) Emily.

Foxtaurs 4 lyfe bra.

Emily’s site: http://emcarroll.blogspot.com/

Also also Kate did this Ice cool Heart of Ice comic .

It feels like what a twilight zone comic should be. Why isn’t there an ongoing twilight zone anthology? — you can read Kate’s whole comic here:

http://www.katecraig.ca/heartofice.html

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I’ve been so thrilled at all the amazing redraws of the Moebius starwatcher drawing.

Ian has been running them all on his Moebius Tumblr

http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/tagged/starwatcher

And one of my comic book heroes (and all around solid dude) Fil Barlow did this one that had me cracking up all morning.

heheheheheh

Fil’s site: http://zooniversecomic.blogspot.com/

and http://filbarlow.deviantart.com/

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Here’s a photo I took out of the window of my building. I like this hoop thing that was put up on the fire escape of that building. It was for some street (alley?) Me and Marian went to it just long enough to buy a plant. 

That rooftop puddle is a good spot to watch birds splash around.

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I got some good manga recently.

Maps on the left and Shower Moonlight (moonlight shower?) on the right.

Both these books are huge fat things (700 pages for maps) 

Maps is by Yuichi Hasegawa and has these great giant statue of liberty looking Ghost ships.

I like how he shows the scale of the thing on these pages. Showing the ship in relation to buildings and then the forehead dock.

I like this great Giant space tower with chicken aliens and elephant footed ball dudes

 There’s a site that goes into much more depth on the series here:

http://www.archipelago.freeservers.com/html/maps/

Shower Moonlight is by Hisashi Sakaguchi who started out working in animation under Tezuka. In the early 90’s Dark horse put out his book Version.

It was such a rad book. I have a theory that the misleading computer covers were why the book didn’t click with more people over here. Here’s a link with some.

http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Credit.aspx?id=777f6609-9a63-4875-a9cb-1d9d56304716

Sakaguchi died in 95, here’s a photo of him.

Here’s some pages from Shower moonlight

man that landing pad and treesss. His work has that great european manga mix that reminds me of 80’s howard and nester comics.

I like how he did the trees on the right with just the guy in shadow.

and this cool looking JB NO bot– and that great spin move on the right.

Here’s a SAKAGUCHI. page from another book. I like how that 3rd panel is just a sliver of trees.

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And here’s a couple pages from a short Kenichi Sonada comic I was looking at. I like the idea of girls catching robots in a wasteland so they can cook them and eat them, Breakfast!

Here’s some Seiichi Hayashi pages I like the little Nemo look of.

and an image from a calender he did.

There’s more on him on the Drawn and quarterly site.

http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/artStudio.php?artist=a46cdb44d6e400

and here’s megazone 23 design.

And now it’s 6 30 in the am and I have a full day (after sleep) of planning out the 4th Multiple warheads issue and more Thickness porn.

Knightwatcher

Hellllo,

Here’s a sketchbook drawing I based off of the Moebius Starwatcher drawing.

with Priss from Bubblegum crisis and a T2 head.

And here’s my pal Moritat’s version of Starwatcher:

and the origonal by Moebius.

My fondest hope is to see other people jump on this like the applepie redraws:

http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/tagged/the_apple_pie

Gunsmith pants

I was thinking that this scene from Manara’s Click 4 could only be explained by the gun up the sleve trick from Gunsmith cats.

Just when you think you’re dealing with a barefoot girl SHAK! she’s got boots on!