34. Luke Cage

34. Luke Cage
Wanted to do a redesign of Luke Cage that paid homage to his original costume and made him look more like a superhero.

Movie for 3/5: Star Crystal. I sorta tweeted about it as I watched it. It was terrible. A mid-80s rip-off of Alien, but with none of the resources. It ended with the alien reading from the Bible and a happy ending complete with theme song. I shit you not. Don’t watch it unless it’s in a group and there is booze involved.

Todays movies (so far):

Deadgirl. A unique take on the zombie genre – two guys find an undead woman chained in a basement and proceed to spend the entire movie fucking it. Absolutely full of itself and filled with so many abhorrent characters and so much rape, there’s almost nothing about it that is worth watching. Even the “hero” of the movie is an absolute shitbag.

To Be or Not To Be. Mel Brooks film about an acting troupe pulling one over on the Nazis. Funny, enjoyable. It’s kind of like a PG version of Inglorious Basterds.

33c. Creator Owned Day: Professor EMP

33c. Creator Owned Day: Professor EMP
One of Black Phantom’s villains.

33b. Creator Owned Day: Black Phantom

33b. Creator Owned Day: Black Phantom
Back in November I posted this character’s final form. It’s another idea that has been popping up in my head and won’t leave. The Black Phantom (the name taken from a public domain character) is a little more formed than Range. There’s a developing supporting cast, some villains, an origin and a chapter ready to be expanded on. The only thing keeping it back right now is a cohesive theme – a reason for being (other than being a superhero character I’d like to do stuff with).

33a. Creator Owned Day: Range

33a. Creator Owned Day: Range
I posted this character last year for Creator Owned Day 2012. He and his partner have been popping up in my mind recently. There’s still a lot of work to be done into order to shape a story out of them. Right now, they’re inadvertent rip-offs of “Kick-Ass” and the movie “Super”. I need to find my voice in that idea. But I still like the visual ideas of the characters (who also still need names).

The movie for 3/4/13 was Bronson starring Tom Hardy’s cock and directed by Nicholas Winding Refn. It’s a bio-pic about Britain’s most violent criminal who has lived in solitary confinement for over 30 years. It was very good, but very artsy. Tom Hardy’s performance pulls together what is a very schizophrenic, gorgeous and violent, but comedic movie. That said, there was a lot of similarities to another movie called Chopper, another bio-pic about another dangerous criminal. I liked Chopper a bit more. There’s also some similarities with I Love You Phillip Morris, which I enjoyed, but I’d rank at the bottom of this weird list of biographical prison films.

See you in a bit.

32. Happy

32. Happy
Posting later tonight or tomorrow, Episode 223 of Gutter Trash will be our review of Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson’s HAPPY!.

So I drew the titular Happy, ‘cuz who doesn’t like a cute cartoon flying horse? Nick Sax, that’s who.

I haven’t had time to watch a movie yet today, but yesterday I watched two more in addition to the one mentioned in the previous post.

Safety Not Guaranteed – indie comedy starring the lovely Aubrey Plaza and I still haven’t formed an opinion on the movie.

Bad Ass – indie action movie starring Danny Trejo very loosely based (very loosely) on an internet video of a guy who beat the crap out of another guy on a bus. The movie is not good, but in the best way possible. It’s dumb and fun.

31. Black Canary

31. Black Canary
Dinah’s response to Ollie’s posing from yesterday. Basically, I couldn’t leave the back cover to Green Arrow # 17 blank.

Today’s movie: How to be a Serial Killer. Wanna know the secret? Watch this terrible movie and you’ll want to kill everyone around in frustration.

30. The Ollie Initiative

30. The Ollie Initiative
My friend Joe G. wound up buying a copy of Green Arrow # 17 with the blank cover that our comic shop accidentally ordered 20 copies of. Joe even only bought this comic because they sold it to him cheap to meet the credit card minimum at the shop. Then he asked if I could draw on the cover.

We decided on Silver Age Green Arrow to combat the New 52 Arrow inside, and decided to let him have his own version of a Hawkeye Initiative pose.

The cover stock DC uses for these blank covers is incredible. I could have drawn on it all day.

Todays movie was Steven Soderbergh’s ass-kicking chick flick HAYWIRE, starring MMA fighter Gina Carano, a whole bunch of great actors and Channing Tatum. It was good. It’s a by-the-numbers spy/action flick. The movie offers nothing new, and the action scenes are kind of subdued, but I think that’s the point. It keeps it grounded. But I did find it an enjoyable good time.

29

29
Post-it doodle.

A while back I realized that even though I’d finally gotten a decent enough internet connection to use Netflix streaming, I’d pretty much only watched televisions shows with it, and barely any movies. Which is fine. Nothing says entertaining like watching 11 years worth of CHEERS in two weeks (that is totally a thing that happened). But I did feel the need to start watching some films. Especially since I figured out that some of them go away. As it turns out, since February 15th, I have been watching a movie a day as I’ve been doing the sketch-a-day. Sometimes, more than one. And since this is my blog, I’m gonna tell you about ’em. I’ve also given myself a semi-challenge to continue to watch a movie a day for as long as I can and give short review. I’m absolutely going to fail at that. At some point, I won’t be able to see a movie. The streak almost broke yesterday, but weird bad luck made it possible to watch a flick before going to sleep. So let’s play catch-up:

2/15: Batman Forever – It’s a bad movie, but I kinda loved it. It’s a well-adjusted Batman and much like Batman & Robin (which I had watched the previous week) it was a movie version of the type of superhero comics I would like to read.
2/16: The Watch – saw this one with my Mom as she began her recovery from spinal surgery. It was not good.
ParaNorman – cute, creepy and funny. Dug it a lot.
The Man with the Iron Fists – not great, but a ton of fun and some awesome action. Russel Crowe is fantastic in it.
2/17: The Hole – family oriented horror film from Joe Dante. It was good.
The Caller – started out bad, got incredibly good. It’s a weird timey-wimey wibbly wobbly horror movie.
Fire in the Sky – alien abduction movie from the early 90s, supposedly based on a true story. Not great.
2/18: Brave – the Pixar movie. I liked it a lot, I cried like an idiot even though there didn’t seem to be a lot for me to get weepy about. There was a short on the DVD though that I loved 1000 times more than the actual movie.
2/19: Raging Bull – it was good. Not great. I may not be as much of a Martin Scorsese fan as I think I should be.
2/20: The Gravedancers – horror movie about murdery ghosts. Eh.
2/21: The Burrowers – western/horror movie starring Clancy Brown for five minutes. Also eh.
Swamp Thing – holy fuck was that bad.
2/22: Double Indemnityreviewed for Gutter Trash
2/23: The Descent 2 – terrible, dumb sequel to a great movie
Heckler – documentary by Jamie Kennedy, allegedly about hecklers. Actually about Jamie Kennedy not being able to ignore criticism or be funny or talented.
2/24: The Ten – anthology movie from the guys what brung you The State. Pretty funny, for the most part.
Cult of the Damned – an artsy fartsy piece of shit from the late 60s.
2/25: True Legend – a hot mess of a kung-fu movie. It’s so scatterbrained. The action’s great though.
Last Days Here – rockumentary about Bobby Liebling, the lead singer of a little known metal band called PENTAGRAM. I “discovered” Pentagram about 6 months ago and I love ’em. This documentary is so depressing and uncomfortable, but also very hopeful.
Blood Creek – the third Joel Schumacher movie I’ve watched this month. It’s about a Nazi vampire played by Michael Fassbender who fights Henry Cavill and Dominic Purcell. It’s pretty good, actually.
Marathon Man – Dustin Hoffman/Roy Schieder/Laurence Olivier classic about Nazi dentistry. Also pretty good. Even though I know the whole “Is it safe?” thing, I never had context. Also helps that I knew very little about the plot of this film going in.
A Fish Called Wanda – funny, but so built up by everyone else, I could only be disappointed by it.
2/26: Prince of Darkness – weird John Carpenter movie about Satan as a jar of green goo and Alice Cooper as a zombie hobo. So weird.
Sundown: Vampire in Retreat – vampire comedy starring David Carradine and Bruce Campbell. It was fine.
2/27: Intacto – Spanish film starring a Swedish actor that I watched dubbed in English. It was very good. It’s about people with luck superpowers.
2/28: The Baby – a movie from the early 70s about a fully grown mentally disabled man who is raised his entire life to live a a baby. It’s weird. Watch at your own risk.
3/1: High Anxiety – Mel Brooks tribute to Hitchcock. Of course it’s funny.
Comedians of Comedy – watching it right now. Documentary about a comedy tour with Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford and Zach Galifinakis. Liking it. Except for Galifinakis.

Bored yet? Too bad. It’s my blog.

28

28
The underlying pencils were far more complex than how I inked it. I just wanted to simplify the sketch and ink it entirely with as few curved lines as I could muster. The individual teeth and shadows were last minute adjustments to make it look less empty.

27. Batman

27. Batman
I’ve recently figured out that I prefer a well-adjusted Batman. I have lost all taste I once had for a broody, sulky sad sack Batman, or the uber-dark paranoid dick Batman. There is no better adjusted or happier Batman than the Adam West Batman.