Sunday, July 30, 2006 10:36 AM

Okay, we’re back again.

Daughter of Dracula (DOD) is finished. I made printouts of the pages this week to go out to our prospective publisher(s) and representatives. The cover pencils are in Freddie Lopez’s talented hands. So what now?

Well, plenty, actually.

There are still the pulp projects coming from Ron Fortier’s busy pulp grist mill. No less than two Captain Hazzard novels are in various states of production (one is written and awaiting my illustrations, and another is being clacked out on Ron’s keyboard—see the link at left for his notes on the matter) that I’ll be illustrating. There’s a Secret Agent X anthology coming soon from Ron’s editorial mind for which I’ll be doing interior illustrations and the cover. The first of those stories is finished, I just have to find the time to get the illustrations going while doing Captain Hazzard at the same time. Then there are the other two stories yet to come…

illustration from chapter 7 of "Citadel of Fear", the latest Captain Hazzard pulp novel by Ron Fortier and Martin Powell. The first of the villains show...

However, this all should work out fine and dandy now that I don’t have DOD on the table. After two years the muse has been satisfied in that department. Next on the comics agenda is “Robyn of Sherwood” with Paul Storrie. He and I will be talking over our next moves at the Wizard World show coming up next weekend. I’ll let you know how that goes.

"Robyn of Sherwood" #4 cover (from the Mile High Comics website)

This is the busiest the studio has been since the bottom fell out on the Star Trek stuff at DC and Malibu back in the mid 90’s.

So the big thing this week is getting ready for the show in Chicago, Wizard World. I’ll be putting together my portfolio, copies of DOD to show, and seeing what kind of original art prints I think I might be able to sell at my table (that’s table #3220A in Artist’s Alley- see the map of the show at: http://www.wizarduniverse.com/conventions/chcicago/programming.cfm Scroll down the page to "Floor Map" and download the pdf file). More on that after I get back.

Which leads me to mention that since I’ll be in Chicago next weekend there won’t be a regular (well, I TRY to be a regular updater here… ) update of this website. Not until at least the Monday after the show, depending on how worn out I’ll be from the adreneline rush and exhaustion of driving back to mid-Missouri from Chicago. I hope to have some photos and maybe even some video to share (if I can master how to do the video thing and there’s anything worth showing).

And now one last thing before I get back to digging through the piles of stuff in the studio:

Back when I first broke into the comics biz in the late 80’s and early 90’s, close pal and writer Kirk Chritton started up a great newsletter on breaking into the industry called COMICS CAREER NEWSLETTER. I did a number of articles for him covering the titular basis for the magazine. Kirk has dug up those and other articles for the magazine and posted them on a website for all to see at: http://comicscareer.com/articles.html . Surf over and see what we were talking about almost 15 years ago. Nearly everything is as relevant then as now, though we should create some new articles on coloring in Photoshop and lettering with a computer. Webcomics are a phenom since we did those articles too.

If you like what you see, tell Kirk. Maybe we can get him to do this a bit more and more often.

Okay, time to start digging…

More as it develops.

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Sunday, July 23, 2006 8:50 PM

After nearly two years it’s finally finished. Just yesterday I put the finishing touches on page 108 of Daughter of Dracula (DOD), a graphic novel Ron Fortier asked me to draw for him. I agreed on the condition that he understood that I could only give him one penciled, inked, lettered page a week.

detail of page 107 of Daughter of Dracula. Click on the image to see the full page.

Some weeks I actually managed more than one page, and there were weeks where I didn’t get a page done. So I stuck to the initial promise pretty closely. The only real trouble we had was when I realized that I had misread Ron’s original post and there were actually 108 pages instead of 94.

detail of page 108 of Daughter of Dracula. Click on the image to see the full page.

This book has been a labor of love. Ron originally wrote this story as a screenplay, and I can see it being done that way very easily. All along Ron encouraged me, telling me this would be my “Magnum Opus.” Well, I don’t know about that, but there are a good number of pages that I can honestly say are the best work I’ve ever done, and the book as a whole is the best one comic book, novel or single issue, that I’ve ever done.

Today I did my absolute final work on this book (though before publication there may be some tweaking here and there, as we have yet to get a publisher on-board) by penciling the cover and sending it off to Ron. Freddie Lopez (sorry I could not remember your name earlier, Freddie, but your work itself is unforgettable) will be working some magic on the pencils for the cover of DOD. He’ll be adding a gibbous moon to the upper left side and I’ve suggested some sort of cloud formation across the middle background, but it’s up to him.

pencils for the cover of the graphic novel Daughter of Dracula.

After all this time I have mixed feelings about this weekend’s ending of this book. I’ve lived with this script and these characters for two years. That’s longer than I’ve spent on anything else I’ve done in comics work, though my work with RA Jones on Scimidar at Malibu back in the early 90’s was about the same amount of time (and intensity, I must say).

Reflecting back, it’s interesting to note that my career in comics (spotty as it is, thanks to the vagaries of the industry) has been punctuated by stories with female leads. Scimidar was/is a female empath whose downward spiral (and eventual planned redemption) RA Jones and I chronicled for a couple of years. We had a certified independent comics hit with her, and she jump-started my career.

SCIMIDAR by RA Jones and Rob Davis-this cover was from my last issue
(covers shown here are swiped from the online comics shop Mile High Comics-- if you're interested in any of the comics mentioned here, use this link to surf over and shop there)

At the end of the first phase of my career another female character was Paul Storrie’s Robyn of Sherwood. Though a bit hurried, she made a nice end cap to the era of my career that included some interesting work on licensed characters from the science fiction world (Star Trek, Quantum Leap, and Pirates of Dark Water).

ROBYN OF SHERWOOD by Paul Storrie and Rob Davis

Paul and I have been talking lately about reworking some of the pages from the aborted series (it was published by Caliber, which unfortunately succumbed to the implosion of the 90’s as did many other companies at the time), completely re-drawing issue #3 and reworking some of my pages in issue #4, possibly issuing them as a graphic novel and perhaps re-launching it as a series. He and I are talking more in Chicago in a couple of weeks.

GREEN HORNET by Ron Fortier (not sure who drew this first issue, the cover is by Jim Steranko)

And now there’s Marya, the Daughter of Dracula. I have some hope that she will re-energize my career after 10 years on the fringes. In any case she has brought me closer to old pal Ron Fortier who asked me at one time back in the 90’s to draw a version of the Green Hornet and didn’t take it personally when I had to turn him down for professional reasons. That was a shame, since I love the character and what Ron was doing with him, I just couldn’t work for the company publishing it at the time. Ron and I even pitched a Rose & Thorn mini-series (or was it an ongoing series, Ron?) to DC, who didn’t bite. Again a shame, it was as good as the recent mini DC did of the character (and another female character!).

ROSE & THORN by Gail Simone, Adriana Malo and Dan Green , Cover by Adam Hughes (2003)

After all that Ron and I never got to work together, though I continued to send him Christmas cards all these years. Then, suddenly, almost 8 years later, he notices my Route 66 webcomic and pitches an idea to revamp an old pulp series as a webcomic, Dr. Satan. That was a fun weekly ride, but it ground to a halt when Adventurestrips.com didn’t get any traction online. Those strips, however, are slated to make an appearance in print sometime early next year from Wildcat Books. I’ll keep you all informed about that as it nears.

So for now Ron has me pretty well booked doing illustrations for all his various pulp novel projects. As those come off the drawing board I’ll post them here to tease you into peeking at the books themselves (everything so far has been a rip-roaring hoot to read, so feel free to join us!).

In exactly two weeks I should be nearly home from what I hope will be a fun and exciting visit to the Windy City with some old pals. I’ll be sure to let you know how it went then.

More as it develops.

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Sunday, July 16, 2006 12:47 PM

Not much time for chit-chat today. I'm hip deep in all the work that's coming my way, so I won't be able to post much in the way of my thoughts this week (and, frankly, my thoughts have been of rather mundane stuff of late anyway...:)).

First up, another page of Daughter of Dracula has slipped off the drawing board. We're very quickly moving to the end, with only two pages left. With any luck I'll have both pages done by this time next week ready for you to see. Then I'll have to gel all those cover ideas that have been percolating all this time into something interesting and usable for the inker/finisher Ron has lined up to take care of the cover (his name isn't handy or I'd share-- more when we get to that point).

click on the above image to see the full page 106 of Daughter of Dracula

Secondly, another illo' is finished for the up-coming Captain Hazzard novel, Citadel of Fear. I'm doing every third chapter. Last week we had chapter 1, this week, chapter 4.

"'Get the Hornet ready, someone just made this personal.'"

Page 107 of Daughter of Dracula is on the drawing board, and will, with any luck, be done this evening. Then we'll move on to illustrations for the Agent X anthology (the first story just came in and it's a DOOZIE!) and more for Citadel of Fear. Topping off the week with the final page of DOD.

Then it's a frantic week of fitting in work in-between work getting ready for Chicago's Wizard World comics convention.

On that note, I've just learned that a "new" show is starting up in Kansas City this Fall called MoKan Comics Conspiracy. I've been in contact with the organizers and I will be a guest at the show. My usual convention haunt, Planet ComiCon, had location problems this year and didn't get held (next year's show is already booked, so it should go off without a problem), so I jumped at the opportunity to see the KC fans again this October. I'll post more as I know it, but surf over to their website (mo-kancomicsconspiracy.com/ ) to see thier powerful lineup of guests including Howard Chaykin! Hope to see you there.

More as it develops...

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Sunday, July 9, 2006 8:14 PM

Welcome to the month of July.

Just got back from viewing “Superman Returns” at the local theater. I liked it. It had all the flair and excitement that were present in the Christopher Reeves Superman films (at least I and II) and even hued closely to that “canon”, including direct references to scenes from those two movies.

(***NOTE I may give away critical plot points in my “review” of this movie. BEWARE!***)

I saw the “flaws” that I’ve seen others note in blogs and discussion groups, and I personally thought that the movie addressed the bigger problems head on. Most notably the fact that Superman was a “jerk” for not saying goodbye to Lois Lane before he went running off to check out the remains of Krypton. He and Lois talked that one through, and though it was not resolved, Lois definitely let him know she thought he was a jerk for not saying goodbye, and Clark was just as adamant that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Also, it seemed to me that when Martha Kent mentioned that Clark had been gone 5 years and she had thought him dead that there was a flicker of “has it been that long?” in Clark’s eyes- addressing some difficulties other viewers had with the movie plot. If he didn’t think he was going to be gone that long or HAD been gone that long his not saying goodbye to Lois or anyone else made more sense. Just because it wasn’t voiced anywhere, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I saw it, but it was definitely subtle.

The special effects in this film were superior. The first time we see Clark doing super things rescuing the “Genesis Shuttle” was just spectacular! Not only did I believe a man could fly (and the scenes where it obviously was NOT computer generated, but a real person doing the flying were extremely well done) but I believed he could do some pretty amazing things with his strength and heat vision. I clapped after he set down the fuselage of the jet in the baseball stadium!

The story held together fairly well, though, as some have noted it lagged in pacing in places. Personally, I thought this was a good thing. In far too many Hollywood films there’s this idea we have to rush through every scene, rather than drink in what’s happening slowly—absorbing what we’re seeing. Films used to do this regularly, but nowadays seem far too eager to “move things quickly forward” to the detriment of the story being told. Lingering on a moment to reflect on it is good sometimes.

The casting was good as well. As Peter David noted on his blog it was ballsy of Kevin Spacey to actually shave his head to play Lex Luthor. It added much to the mystique of the character, which Spacey played with subdued but palpable menace. There were moments when I believed in the truly menacing character of Lex that was played a bit too “comic booky” (as non-comics readers would understand that term) or “campy” by Gene Hackman.

Lois Lane seemed a bit too distracted in this film. The friend who accompanied me to the showing was quite perturbed by Lois’s bringing her son Jason with her aboard Luthor’s boat. This did seem a bit out of character for any real life mother- especially one who had seemed to be coddling her child, even calling him “fragile” at one point. This is the only nit I have to pick with the story—no way does this jibe with reality or even established character. Other than this I believed Superman could fall in love with this woman—I never got that with Margot Kidder’s Lois.

Some folks had problems with Superman “stalking” Lois by following her home and using his X-ray vision to “spy” on her. I found this in character for a guy who had just come back after five years to find his love had “moved on” with another guy. He was curious, and discretely used his abilities to check up on her and see how she was doing. It wasn’t like he was going to do something drastic or violent to her if she upset his internal view of things (as abusive, stalking boyfriends do in real life). And it seemed quite natural for Clark to keep his eye on her with his vision, lovingly it seemed to me, as she rode the elevator up in the Daily Planet building. After all, he was remembering how much he cared for her and let his view of her linger, then let it drift away as other things casually distracted him away from her.

I give this one 4 1/2 out of 5. It wasn’t a perfect film, as I think few other films are (the last I have seen is “American Beauty”, curiously another film with Kevin Spacey), but was darn near. It hit all the right emotional notes with me, and the special effects and the super-feats of Superman in this film made it a winner and one I’ll definitely purchase for home viewing alongside both Spider-Man films and Fantastic Four in the comic book genre.

Highly recommended!

And now on to this week’s page from Daughter of Dracula. We’re closing in fast on the end of our story and the full reveal of the climax. Three pages left to go.

click on the above image to see the full page 105 of Daughter of Dracula

I’ve also started doing spot illustrations for the new Captain Hazzard novel for Ron Fortier. The first one viewed below.

"Redman Kane was dead befre he could scream. But, his adventure was just beginning."

As well, I’m starting to formulate what I’ll be taking along to Chicago’s Wizard World show, and who and whether I’ll be trying to solicit work at any comics publishers while I’m there.

More as it develops.

And a note on links I’ve posted here before. I have been told that many if not all these links don’t operate correctly, giving viewers error messages rather than taking them to the pages referenced. Given this problem, and my not knowing at this point how to correct that problem I’m not going to post any links to articles until I decide how I want to do that. I hope to make up my mind by the next posting.

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