Last Son of Dry Pond

Heading out to SDCC in the morning! I'll be signing copies of Comic Book Tattoo at the Image Comics booth (#2729) with newjason, who wrote the story I drew (I think it's the fourth one in the book). I'll also have buttons & prints and I'll be doing little sketches during my times. If you're having trouble catching me and you really want to say hey or buy stuff, just email me and maybe we can meet up. ;)

Signing Schedule - Image Comics Booth #2729

Friday: 2pm to 3pm
Saturday:  2pm  to 3pm
Sunday: 3pm to 4pm

Also, the CBT panel will be in room 6b at 11:30am on Saturday. Anyway, we're crazy psyched about the show. Hope to see you there!

Oh, and I'll likely be Twittering from the show.

From Coast-to-Coast: Butterfly Country:


More overwhelming coolness here. When I mentioned Jason Rodriguez stopping into Nashville to talk comics with me and newjason , I didn't know it'd be such a good time. Thanks for letting me talk your ear off, J-Rod, and for all the kind words in your article. Let's be best friends.

So fancypants Eisner-nominated anthology-helmer, Jason Rodriguez will be stopping here in Nashville on his incredibly cool coast-to-coast road trip to the San Diego Comic Con to chat with me and see the local shops. It's all a pretty cool idea, getting a picture of the state of the industry across the landscape of the country. You can follow along over at DCist here (though if you're like me, you'll be supplementing the blog posts with Twitter updates)!

Speaking of SDCC, Animal Qwacker over on the Drawing Board has been putting together a customized map of Drawing Boarders who'll be at the show! See, I'm a big, gray square. You can probably check for map updates here. Also, SteamCrow's got a pretty solid SDCC Survival Guide up over on their site, which I highly recommend reading.

And now, The All-Night Distraction-Free Mandatory Work Session, Sponsored by Mystery Science Theater 3000, Krispy Kreme Donuts, Amp Energy Drink.

Field's doing really great. He's all alert and makes eye contact and funny sounds now. It's really just incomprehensible how having your own child just takes over your life, but how you barely have time to even notice it, because there's so much going on. Sonrisa and I treated ourselves to ordering in (The Dark Knight Deal from Domino's!) this week, and have started feeling more confident taking Field out into the world (the library and Target, this week).

Also, it looks like newjason and I WILL be hitting SDCC for the Comic Book Tattoo release and signing! Since this is kind of last minute, we're still looking for a place to crash Friday night through Monday morning. If there's any LJ pals who'd be up for letting us sleep on their floors (or sofas), please let us know. The last minute flights were pretty 'spensive.

More new Field pics over on my Flickr.


UPDATE: We're now covered for Friday and Saturday (thanks, Randy!), so we just need a place to sleep on Sunday night!

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A guy at WizardWorld gave me a cd with THIS SONG on it, and now all I want to do is read Super Skrull comics.

(Btw, the Superman: Man of Style Finalists are up!)

Okay, there is a lot of smack being said around the interwebs this week about how you can't introduce Robin into the current Batman film franchise. That's ridiculous. As Dick Grayson is actually one of my favorite superheroes in all of comicdom, I feel like I should help out here, offering my own take on how to bring Robin into the current franchise. It's a grimmer reality Nolan's set up here, so let's stick with that. Imagine all the currently established actors, and this should all work fine. For Robin, remember the kid that played young Bruce? He'll do for now.


(For more on the awesomeness of Robin, please check out Robin: Year One, by Chuck Dixon, Scott Beatty, Javier Pulido, Robert Campanella, and Lee Loughridge. Grab the issues rather than the trade, if you can. The paper's nicer.)

So I spent the last few days in the hospital with my superhero wife and this little guy. AKA Field and I watched Finding Nemo the first night (father son story for Father's Day!) after our families had gone back to their hotels and Sonrisa was asleep. Field was surprisingly chill and awake for being born just a few hours earlier, looking up at me and listening to the the movie until he fell asleep (as seen here).

Anyway, we're home now and everyone's doing great. Thanks so much for the congratulations! Between LJ comment notifications and last minute Superman: Man of Style entries, I got more than 130 emails in the last 48 hours! All caught up now. Thanks everybody. :)

Dean is a dad. Holy wow.

The new movie was cool (my spoiler-free review here), but it totally needed more jumping. :P

I dug it.

A while back, destroyerzooey asked me to draw something for this fan art book deal thing he was putting together, and I asked if, to save time, i could bring on a pal to help it go faster...so this piece, which took a trillion years and only made the deadline thanks to some guy called The Doctor, is by me and oxboxer. Pencils by Jemma, craziness by me. Enjoying the insanity?

1. Sequential Tart Interview - This was pretty fun to do, but I've been so busy this last couple months I didn't even notice when it went live! Go check it out, if just for the pics of my studio. (New pics of said studio space here.)

2. Mainstream Art Updates - Just posted some reviews on Morrison's triple-hit the other week. I've got a handful of reviews for this week's comics coming soon.

3. *Knuckles*

( Larger Version )

If you haven't heard, the P:R crew and I have teamed up the with awesome online comics show Pulp Secret and one of my favorite comic shops in the country, Jim Hanley's Universe to bring you Superman: Man of Style! Details here and there.

Above is a sneak preview of my own ineligible entry, drawn a couple of weeks back. I'll probably throw some clouds in there if I have time before the June 15th deadline. I wanted to go for a Silver Age-y kinda vibe, like All-Star Supes, and then the new issue of All-Star came out this week, with Supes donning a white costume! So I think I'm on the right track.

This week I finished colors on the Scott Pilgrim convention special, and a joint illustration with oxboxer for the back cover of an SP fan book destroyerzooey is putting together. This morning I finished colors on a Perhapanauts back up story by Perhapawriter Todd Dezago and artist Kelly Yates. newjason and I teamed up on the colors for that one, with him handling most of the background shading, and me on characters and final color choices. It turned out pretty good, I think.

Two of these were inked with Faber-Castell PITT artist brush pens, five with my trusty Windsor-Newton Series 7 brush, and two were inked with my brand spanking new MEMORY brush pen from Korea, which is rocking pretty dang hard right out of the gate.

On the desk: Colors for Scott Pilgrim, illustrations for Bloomsbury book, stacks of half-finished commissions, colors for Perhapanauts backup, and a scrawly idea for a story I dreamed most of the other night.

Continued from here. Been enjoying seeing jodycody and darkkof and</a></b></a></div>posting theirs as well. :)

Here are a few of my sketchcards for the Marvel Masterpieces set. More to come.

My wife and I and newjason and Kathryn all had a fine time at FLUKE last weekend. I didn't have a camera with me, but my mom nabbed the above shot of me and Jason. As you can see, I didn't have much of anything new to sell, because of recent deadlines, but I came down to see everybody anyway. :)

I love FLUKE, not just because it takes place in my back yard, near all my teenage hangouts, but because so many amazing cartoonists and friends make it a highlight of my convention travels each year. I also get to spend the weekend with my wonderful family. I just couldn't have had a better time. It was wonderful to see old friends (Antar Ellis, Drew Weing, Eleanor Davis), Athens mainstays (Robert Newsome, Patrick Dean, Devlin Thompson), indie hypertalents (Andy Runton, The Wide Awake crew, Chris Schweizer, Joey Weiser, Mike Maihack, Hunter Clark), and student superstars (Coleman Engle, Jeremy Sorese).

Since getting back from Georgia, Jason and I finished up our eleven page comic for the upcoming Tori Amos inspired anthology, Comic Book Tattoo. I've seen some of my friends' stories from the book, and I can't wait to see the rest. It's gonna be a monster!

I've got most of this week off from bookslog, so I'm finishing up my Marvel Masterpieces sketchcards, working some more on my [SECRET PROJECT] pitch, and starting illustrations for a book for Bloomsbury. Oh and commissions, of course!

Hope to see y'all at FLUKE this weekend! I've been too busy to get any new mini's to sell together, but I'll be there with newjason, who's got a truckload of awesome comics for ya. In other news, my wife got me a new hoodie! It is amazing.

EDIT FOR RANTING: Dude, has anyone else noticed that Marvel's running several major titles with no panel borders? It looks HORRIBLE. Check out Fantastic Four or Amazing Spider-Man's last few issues. (On FF, it's a double whammy, since the colorist (who I know to be capable of far better) is washing out and blurring everything anyway. The action in the new issue should be exciting as all get out, except you can barely tell what's even happening because of pale colors, blurring, and power effects! EXAMPLE. And just for fun, with borders.) Panel borders are important, Marvel! They contain the actions within a panel. This isn't comics theory mumbo jumbo, here. You've got to contain the objects within the panel to give them weight. Especially with artists like Bryan Hitch. And if you're not going to have them, the panel colors have to be hard, no white backgrounds (see Amazing Spider-Man) or even light ones (Fantastic Four). I don't know why Marvel has started doing this, but it's just a small mistake that makes the comics less readable. There's no reason for it.