Batman/Blue Beetle Commish

I don't do superheroes as a general rule, but for a small sum, I'll do whatever you want. This one was for my friend Rachel.

Dead Winter Costume Contest

So guys, I won third place in Dave's costume contest! Here's my entry:

If you don't read Dead Winter, read it gosh darnit!


http://www.deadwinter.cc

Mayan Showcase

I kinda got the art bug this weekend and drew myself and some of my forum friends in Meso-American-inspired style.

I lost.

Danger Radio posted a little contest on their Twitter to draw some kind of funny picture. The requirements were a little vague, so I did this.



It didn't win. The one that did was pretty lame.

Anyway.

Grackle - Now for Sale!

OK guys, this is exciting for me. After a couple tense months of waiting, my first full length graphic novel Grackle is for sale at the comixpress online store. If you'd like to preview it, you can go to my website here.

The book is available for a mere $5.00. That's not bad for 128 pages of leetle birdy goodness!

Go here to purchase.

Lubbock Comic Book Expo Recap

So, my first con. Not necessarily a success, not necessarily a failure. I broke even, which most people tell me is a success in the Artist Alley. So, I'll take it for what it is.

It was a retardedly long drive: 7 hours from Austin to Lubbock. We accidentally overshot our exit by 30 miles and ended up in a small town by the name of Throckmorton. Because of the ensuing adventure, I am once again certain that GPS is a fun-killer.



When we got into town, the Motel 6 was already out of rooms (argh!), so we drove around looking for anything less than $80. By then, it'd been raining for hours. We resignedly had Whataburger for dinner and went to bed.

The next day, I realized that I forgot my tablecloth. Jenny was mad. But I HAD TO HAVE IT. My whole display depended upon that specially selected piece of fabric to tie it together. Thankfully, Hobby Lobby opened at 9:00, and I was able to get a new one just in time.



I was in-between two artists - Ariel Walden and the super-talented Will Terrell. Ariel does a comic called Sparkling Trio, which looks something like a mix between the Ninja Turtles and Sailor Moon. She was cool, but her art needs a bit of work. Will's comic Black Dawn is lovely and has an absorbing storyline. Both people were a real pleasure to hang out with for the afternoon.

As the day went on, I got a little bored and started drawing alongside Ariel's friend, shown here on the left (Ariel is in the middle).



He was drawing a Fire-Emblem-inspired picture, and I couldn't help but join in. His is on the left, mine is on the right.



All in all, it was a pretty good time. I met some cool people, ate way too much fast food, had to listen to little kids bang on wood with hammers for seven hours, and sold a mess of comics. I might go back in November for the West Texas Comic Con. Here's hopin'!

2 Specks: The Sequel

I've begun the planning stages to my comic 2 Specks of Light. It's a project I've been rolling around in my head for a while now, but it took a long time to come up with the basic plot structure. I like the idea of setting it many, many years after the first one. There's a mystery in trying to build closure over such a long gap. Here's the sneak peek:

Harvey James Kitty Jam

Today I posted a little contribution to Harvey James' little kitty collab, where you choose one of his adorable little creatures and make your own. A lot of talented artists are taking a whack at it. Here's mine (his original is the tiny one on the left):

Lubbock Comic Book Expo

Well, looks like convention-going won't be a total bust for me. I may have missed that table at Staple last month, but while attending, I ran into a gentleman passing out table applications for the Lubbock Comic Book Expo on May 2. So I filled out an application, and a week later, BAM! I'll be at table 22 - the map is here.

In addition to my recently finished graphic novel Grackle, I'll have copies of 2 Specks of Light and some B&W copies of Rabite Season, along with these lil' guys:



Other news:

I recently finished a six-pages filler comic at The Wotch, which you can find here.

And most importantly, a huge chunk of my time has been devoted to a charity project that I am organizing with some of my artist friends over at the Wotch Forum. It's a calendar about hawt girls living in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world. Here's my current progress on my first piece.



There's a lot of exciting art going on from a lot of talented artists, and I can't wait for it to be ready. You can see our progress over here.

Tragic

Well, I hate to follow a complaint post with another, but this deserves mention.

Surely, if you are a comic fan, you at least know the name Will Eisner. He's one of the genre's champion pioneers, so much so that the highest award in the industry is named after him. Perhaps one of his best qualities is his understanding of the human spirit and of the situation of the general downtrodden everyman.

Recently I checked out from my local library The Name of the Game, one of Eisner's later works. I was disgusted to find that some Christian censorship nut had gone through and scribbled out the word "God" from in front of all the "Goddamn"s and replaced it with "Goodness" in all the "For God's sake"s. I was livid with anger. How could some jerk think he or she was improving this comic by imposing visual censorship on it? As if we wouldn't know what was underneath the scribbles! I noticed none of the exposed breasts were covered; none of the other swear words scratched out; no act of violence hidden. Nope — just instances where Commandment 3 was broken.













At least in this last one (which chronologically is the first one) someone had the nerve to right the situation.

Anyway, I'm still pretty riled up about all this. But c'est la vie, no?

AAAAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!!!

God damnit!!! I've been waiting a full freaking year to sign up for a table at Austin's alternative press convention, Staple!, and the tables sold out YESTERDAY! There were tables available till February last year, and with recent financial troubles, I've been saving up to reserve one, thinking they'd be available next week. I have been crafting and drawing my ass off, and now this.

You wanna know what the worst of it is? I've spent the last two months in sort of a "who gives a crap" daze, and now, when I finally get the nerve to update, I get a kick in the butt. Fan-freakin'-tastic.

So all the cool stuff I was gonna show you for Staple! is just gonna have to go unposted.

Argh!