This little gem of a character is the creation of Francesco Francavilla, fellow Comic Twarter and all around spectacular artist! if there is one particular vein of comics i would love to illustrate it is the pulp heroes and villains of yesteryear. Whether it be crime comics or superheroes. From the likes of Flash Gordon to Rip Kirby, The Black Beetle embodies everything i love of this era. read his current adventure in the tale of Kara Böcek!

twitter + art = twarts. get all those dirty thoughts outta your heads.

the comic twarts are Ron Salas, Declan Shalvey, Tom Fowler, Dan Panosian, Francesco Francavilla, Chris Samnee, Mike Hawthorne, Patrick Stiles, Nathan Fairbairn, Evan “Doc” Shaner, Dan McDaid, Steve Bryant, Mitch Gerads, Andy Kuhn, Mitch Breitweiser & myself. each week a different character is chosen by an individual Twart and then said character is tackled by all. for the first round we tackled zorro, followed by the rocketeer (which i sadly missed cause i was travelling, but i’m gonna try and sneak it in anyways…), and now… torpedo.

check out the site, there is some bad-ass talent being showcased there.

this is bernard and he will destroy your planet…

if you haven’t checked out skottie young’s mini opus feature bernard you should. bernard’s story begins HERE as daily warm-up sketches. brilliant and funny.

(this is my little contribution to the future collected works of bernard’s story.)

since this is my first post of the new year time lay down some information…

big news of the year, i’m no longer the artist on dark horse’s green river killer ogn. it was heartbreaking news when i received it, but at the end of the day it came down to dark horse and i weren’t able to make our schedules work together. i hope a bridge wasn’t burned here… but life goes on.

at first this was bad news, but now i see it as opportunity to put love into my current online projects; kukuburi and butternutsquash, as well as a couple noir projects i have in the works (one with b. clay moore and one my own) and a few other ideas i’ve had percolating in my brain for years.

beyond that, i am slowly starting to fill my show schedule for the coming year, so far i’ve committed to C2E2, tcaf, and tentative possibilities of attending comics salon erlangen in berlin germany. all current information will be listed in the left hand 2010 event schedule sidebar.

beyond that i have high hopes of publishing the first volume of kukuburi this fall, and maybe a retrospective art book earlier than that. we’ll see.

that and we’ll see if i can update this site a little more often too

cheers.

just a mid-afternoon sketch to warm up my ink hand.

one of my favourite genres is crime. i love the pulp novels from the 30s to the 60s, along with the classics by hammet, chandler, mcbain, westlake, block, and spillaine to name a few. amongst my favourite films are such classics as double indemnity, laura, out of the past and where the sidewalk ends.

despite working on a true-crime book for dark horse, i’ll have to admit it’s not the same. i want to draw the fedoras, the femme fatales, the gumshoes, and so on. i have a graphic novel of my own in the works, but it’s a long term project that probably won’t see the light of day for a couple years. so to satiate this yearning to draw something in a classic noir vein did up what you see above. traveling europe for two months and not drawing a thing except for some convention sketches, i thought this would be an ideal way of warming up and getting back in the groove.

hope you like.

ps/ here’s a larger version if you’re so inclined.

the past two months saw me traveling throughout europe, visiting a dozen countries and over 16 different cities. it was an inspiring experience. one which i hope to repeat. the travels weren’t purely holiday, but rather a mix of conventions, festivals, store signings with a healthy dollop of holiday thrown in.

i had purchased a new sketchbook before embarking on my travels thinking i’d sit at cafes and doodle from time to time. in fact i drew nothing except when at the different shows i attended. the rest of the time i was absorbing and recharging. i’d been working in burn out mode for so long the well was dry and needed to be refilled. i’m back and now bristling with newfound energy… eager to draw and tell my tales.

above is a sketch i did for andreas at the international book fair in frankfurt germany. a show i’m eager to return to. if you’d like to see other sketches i did take a peek at this post from my blog which showcases a bunch from my time in paris france… there are more scattered throughout other blog posts as well, and more to come as i continue posting to the blog.

till next time…

this little piece was done for the lille comics festival, in lille france, which i will be attending this coming weekend along with cameron stewart and karl kerschl as part of our european tour. for a full convention schedule please check my blog.

if you happen to be in the north of france swing by and say hello!

Earlier this month i had the pleasure of attending the Komics Festiwal in Łódź, Poland. The people were great and very welcoming, in fact when I did my scheduled one hour signing in turned into a 3hr extravaganza!

above is one of the quick doodles i did.

to know more of my travels or if you’d like to see if i’ll be somewhere near you during my tour meander on over to my blog to lear more

this past weekend saw the return of the annual toronto fan expo and the show was explosive! so much so that the fire marshal shut things down for a while on saturday as the doors and lines overflowed. from what i hear the shows attendance was up by nearly 25%!

pretty crazy.

regardless of the chaos outside i had a great time inside. i met a lot of great fans, signed a lot of books, drew a fair amount of doodles and just bantered with the fine folks who lingered at my table.

a big thanks to all who came out to play, you made this fan expo truly memorable and inspirational!

ps/ above is the first of many sketches commissioned said weekend.

continuing my look back at machinations of doom, a story i wrote and drew back in 1999/2000 for palladium books, i present to you o.j. and shakes. the two characters were named by the original writer i collaborated with, coleen britton. o.j. a “juicer” was named for the obvious pun, and shakes as a name for a “crazy” seemed quite tackily appropriate also. to be honest o.j. was my least favourite character and least favourite character class of the rifts rpg off which he was based. however the class was a fan favourite so i thought it best to have a character based on the class included in the story.  i stuck to the basic design of the classic juicer armour and added a few details of my own. funnily enough, though never becoming my favourite, o.j. grew on me. his backstory became one of the richest in my mind and he developed into a character i cared about. in fact he was one of the characters i really wanted to do a solo story on after mod wrapped up.

shakes on the other hand was a vehicle utilized as a vehicle for comedic relief and pure strangeness. he was the character that i could do anything with and it’d be okay… cause his mind wasn’t firing on all synapses. yeah… to much fun. i really miss these characters and would love to revisit and tell more of their tales.