Over the last 5-6 years, Black Adam has become one of the DC Universe’s most interesting characters. Not to mention the fact that he’s also one of the sharpest looking designs as well. Drew this in Adobe Illustrator a few years ago.
Black Adam
Savage Dragon
When Image Comics first started, Dragon quickly became my favorite of that batch, and when I grew out of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Marc Silvestri (never liked Jim Valentino, still like Whilce Portacio and Todd McFarlane), I stuck by Erik Larsen, who became one of my all-time comic book heroes. Even though I dropped the book around issue 110 or so, it was one of the most painful comic-buying decisions I’ve ever made. I had become so bored and disinterested by the comic, but I still wanted to support Larsen. That aside, I never lost respect for the guy, he was doing what he wanted, and he was doing it his own way. Lately I’ve been picking up random issues of Dragon here and there. It’s still not as good as I remember them being at one time, but I’m not as adverse to it as I was a few years ago. But as long as Erik Larsen and Savage Dragon are around – whether I’m reading it or not – the world of comics is better for it.
The above was a brush pen sketch to see how well the brush pen worked. It worked adequately.
Batman: Fruit Pies
A parody of the old Hostess superhero ads. I miss this element in comics. Occasionally you see ads featuring superheroes, but
A) they’re usually pandering, patronizing PSAs like “Jimmy, you shouldn’t smoke!” “Drugs are whack, yo!” or “Stop fisting your sister!”
2) they’re always poorly drawn and written. Sure the hostess ads ain’t high art, but they’re so fucking insane, that they’re amazing. And usually drawn by what appeared to be staff artists, who, y’know, had talent and skill.
Gutter Trash Episode 33: Apocalypse Now is available when? Now. Next week: Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score.
X-Patrol
When Marvel & DC teamed up to do the Amalgam Comics experiment, they did an X-Patrol comic (X-Men & Doom Patrol). It wasn’t that great. It combined the 90s X-Men with the more classic version of the Doom Patrol.
After reading (and loving) Grant Morrison’s version of the Doom Patrol, I thought that they should have used his version of the team and combined them with similarly suited X-Men characters.
Peter Rasputin (Colossus) and Cliff Steele (Robotman) combined to become Peter Steele (also the name of the Goth-Metal singer from Type O Negative – pretty much my sole purpose of doing this drawing was for that joke that only I find funny).
Crazy Jane (a multiple personality disorder sufferer, whose different personalities have different powers) and Rogue (who gains others powers and minds temporarily when she touches them) became Crazy Rogue (she’s permanently gained every person she’s ever touched powers and personality, which drove her insane).
Negative Man/Rebis combined with Human Torch to become the Pyronic Man. Yeah, Human Torch isn’t an X-Men or even a mutant. Don’t care. The visual is what was important, and no X-character fit.
Anyhoo just a bit of fun done entirely in Adobe Illustrator. There are pieces I like, but a ton I don’t. I’ll blame those on the fact that I didn’t start with a sketch.
The Jack Staff episode is up at Gutter Trash, my weekly review podcast. Next week: Apocalypse Now.
Blue Beetle
If you haven’t figured it out, since there’s more Blue Beetle drawings on this site than any other characters, he’s definitely in my top 3 of mainstream superheroes (Daredevil and Nightwing being the other two).
I drew this in regular ol’ pen and ink, and then colored with color pencils. Unless he’s thrown it away, I gave it to DC Comics artist Mike Norton as a gift at last year’s Windy City Comicon. Been neglecting the blog a bit, but my friend Jason and I challenged each other yesterday that we’d try to update our respective blogs at least once a week indefinitely. Feel free to give both of us shit if we fail (which we probably will). Check out his stuff @ Buyer Beware. Of course you can always listen to our podcast, Gutter Trash, which is definitely updated once a week.
Next week’s episode we review my absolute favorite superhero comic currently being published, Jack Staff by Paul Grist.
Work Doodles
More work doodles. Gel pens are fun.
Wolverine
So despite the fact that I can say (not-so-proudly) I am a Wolverine fan, I have no intention of seeing X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To make up for that, here’s a pencil drawing I did that was probably the only decent Wolverine sketch I’ve ever done.
That said, I did spend my money on the new Star Trek, a franchise I can easily say that I am not a fan of. I have seen most of the films, though, and enjoyed quite a few of them. The new Trek blows ’em all away. It’s just a quickly paced, fun, action romp with enough emotional weight and depth to keep you engaged when shit’s not blowin’ up. Zachary Quinto as Spock shows infinitely more range as an actor than his role as Sylar on Heroes (to be fair, everything about Heroes is incredibly one-note). The rest of the major crew is mostly cast as comic relief (with the exception of Uhura), but each gets a dramatic moment to shine as well. Chris Pine as Kirk comes off as an incredible asshole, and in any other world, this would hurt him. However in the rigid command of Starfleet, Asshole Kirk becomes the Everyman, and the most relatable character, something most of the other Trek movies and shows are missing. Leonard Nimoy’s appearance as Old Spock makes sense within the logic of the movie, but it still felt uncomfortable. However, the worst part of the film is when Young Kirk steals a classic convertible and blasts The Beastie Boys and uses some cellphone technology (Buy Nokia!) that isn’t all that far away from what we’ve got now. The whole scene does help build up Kirk as Asshole Everyman, but still feels… shallow. The direction is pretty standard, but owes quite a bit to both Star Wars and Firefly in it’s action sequences and settings. And hey, the Cloverfield monster shows up!
But still, money well spent, the movie is incredibly fun, and I would definitely recommend it to non-Trek fans. As for diehard Trek fans? I dunno. The majority of the folks in the theater (most of whom I can assume were Trekkies) applauded at the end and at certain key moments in the movie, but as I was leaving I was still hearing some folks bitch about continuity errors and things they “got wrong”. So who knows?
I was going to pick this as the next movie pick for my podcast Gutter Trash, but my local nerd crew decided that we all needed to see it opening night. And for once, my superpowers didn’t kick in, and I didn’t have idiots surrounding me in the theater. However I did get there early, to minimize the damage. One of our group, though, couldn’t get in due to the movie being sold out, however, right next to my friend was an empty seat, and there were a whole bunch of empty seats toward the front of the theater as well. I don’t get it.
Gene
Back in June ’08, I posted a drawing of Gene Simmons. The drawing was used for a very short sequential story I was working on for an art show that never happened. My friend Jason (co-host of my podcast, Gutter Trash) and I put together a mini-comic about KISS for this show. He did a three page Ace Frehley story, and I did a three page Gene Simmons tale.
This past weekend (April 18 ’09) was the Small Press And Comic Expo (SPACE), where Jason took up the copies of our KISS comic to give away, finally.
Updated: Jason has his Ace pages on his own blog (Buyer Beware Comics).
Click on the thumbnail above to read Gene: The Mostly Un-True Tale of God of Thunder.
Guy Gardner
Everyone’s got their favorite Green Lantern. Mine isn’t Hal Boredom. Get it? Boredom – Jordan? Get it? Eh – fuck it.
Cover Recreations
Been busy, and I wanted to wait until I had these things colored before I posted them. But it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Anyhoo, over Christmas, rather than spend money on folks, I drew these cover recreations for some friends of mine. I discovered that doing these are incredibly fun, and I’ve got a mental list of future silver age covers I’d love to recreate. I would also love to take commissions for some as well, if anyone would be willing to pay (I work relatively cheap). If you or anyone you know wants one, send me an email.
This Doom Patrol is the first cover I did, which is why it’s the only one with an unfinished color version.
Next up was Hawkgirl. Obviously, the original wasn’t a Hawkgirl comic, but for the purposes of the gift, it needed to be.
Finally was The Flash. This was hard to do, because almost every Flash cover from this era is awesomely hilarious, and it was difficult to choose.
