Early Japanese Influence

First, on a side note, my JSA vs. Kobra #4 cover is still only at $77, including shipping and insurance. Bargain! If you'd just like to look at goodly sized scans, click here for a previous blog post.

Now to today's subject....

Back in 1986, I was a huge fan of Frank Miller and his groundbreaking work on books like Wolverine, Daredevil, Ronin and The Dark Knight Returns. I drew plenty of bad riffs off of the Miller/Janson styles.

In interviews, Miller mentioned what a huge influence Japanese comics were. I was determined to track down a recent issue. I high school junior in South Bend, Indiana, so this wasn't easy. There was no Internet as such, with websites for looking up and ordering obscure foreign books. Foreign comics pretty much meant Heavy Metal and Captain Canuck. The first American edition of Lone Wolf and Cub wouldn't be released until next year.

My mom would occasionally drive to Chicago, the big city, for Korean groceries. A block away from the grubby Korean market on Clark Street was a tidy little Japanese bookstore. I made a jaunt over there, went through the comics, and paid about $10 for something I can't read.

I thought most of it was crap. I still do. But a few of the stories and images had a huge lasting influence on my work.

The first story, "Up To Date", is about a girl who likes to take off her panties and sticks them on the heads of confused pup-tented boys. Japan was and is a bizarre place. I never got into drawing teen sex comedies, but the backgrounds in that story blew me away.

This was years before Akira hit our shores. I really didn't know a comic book could have images like this. At first, I assumed that this was an architectural image that had been licensed for re-use by a comic studio. But the style is consistent with the rest of the story, and the little helicopter shows up on the next page carrying the protagonists. I began freehand copying this image in my spare time.

Which led me to eventually doing pages like this:

Here's the other page. I just love the dynamism and the use of lettering to pop the composition. I still sit back trying to figure out the Japanese science of baseball manga, and it's well-tested formulas for distorting the baseball and the bats and the limbs. I love how it switches from distortion to freeze frame in the panel before the batter swings. I find this far more interesting than 99% of the manga I see translated today:

That 1%, specifically, is Death Note and Yotsuba&!.

Appearances

I just updated my Appearance Schedule on my website home page. Here's the update:

July 11-17. Semana Negra de Gijón in Spain from July 10-19, though I'll only be there from July 11-17. It's a massive cultural festival. This being Europe, culture includes comics!

You have no idea how much I love Spain. The whole country is rock and roll.

July 22-26. San Diego Comic-Con International. Because it's so close to Semana Negra, I wasn't planning on coming. But because they'll be announcing the Big Secret Project there, I may attend for a day or two. I don't expect to set up a table.

August 6-9. Wizard World Chicago. The premiere local convention, conveniently near Ohare airport. I don't know how many days I'll attend, but at least one or two to raise money for charities.

Saturday, September 12. Amazing Fantasy Books & Comics, Frankfort, IL. From noon till 3pm, the whole art team from DC's JSA vs. Kobra will be signing comics. Gene Ha (me, the cover artist!), Penciler Don Kramer, Inker Michael Babinski, and my old pal Art Lyon the Coloring Virtuoso. It'll be like Survivor, but with Sharpies.

I suppose this has been done before, but it's the only time I know of where all the artists on a book, including the colorist, show up for one signing. I'm really psyched about this!

Saturday, September 19. Windy City Comicon on the north side of Chicago. It's a Chicago comic convention actually inside the city of Chicago! It's a great medium sized show, but still intimate. Heavily focused on comics, for the serious or casual comic geek!

October 3-4. Tentatively scheduled to do the FallCon in Minnesota again. Big broad shouldered Minnesota comic geeks, rock and roll, vendors, and drawings. An ideal volunteer run convention.

May 1, 2010. I'm tentatively scheduled to do Free Comic Book Day 2010 at the St Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, IN again. They're a great bunch of librarians and patrons, so it's always a pleasure.

JSA v Kobra #4 Cover Auction

I'm putting up the cover to JSA VS. Kobra: Engines of Faith #4 on eBay Tuesday after 10pm ET/7pm PT. If you're interested, click here. Along with the sale, I like putting up 1600 pixel tall images of the original art. When I do the colors myself, as in this case, I like including a color JPEG too. Click on any of the images below for the full size JPEG.

In doing the idol of Hatred from Shazam's Seven Deadly Enemies of Mankind, I wanted to give it a more primitive and coarse feel. Generally, the Enemies are drawn somewhere between a tiki and Grumpy. I used African tribal sculpture and Hellboy covers as inspiration.

My interpretation of Lightning is based on Alex Ross's JSA covers. The logic is a bit different. He paints her as a photo negative of a woman lit from above, with broad glowing areas where shadows should be. I light her (well, me) from below. In effect, Alex makes her an internally glowing coal, and I make her wreathed in light.

This is the only one of the covers where I didn't use any outside model reference. They're all based on me.

eBay bonus

I often add a little marker doodle to the packing slip when I mail off original art. Because the latest winner got two in a row, I added a bigger, nicer sketch this time.

Otherwise, currently hard at work on a Star Sapphire story for DC's Green Lantern books.

Geek Economists, not Geek Ecologists

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for the link. I love this: comics commentary from economists. It's Eco-comics!:

Finally, aside from investment from within our planet, economic growth can be sped along by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows from other civilizations. But what’s surprising is that with an entire galaxy of highly advanced civilizations, no interplanetary investment seems to be reaching earth. Capital should flow to where its return is highest. Being mere humans in a giant multiverse of galactic powers, it’s a fair assumption that earth is an LDP (less developed planet) with a comparatively small capital stock. According to the Solow model, alien entrepreneurs should be jumping at the opportunity to invest in Earth. Add a growing stock of technology from metahumans and falling debris and you can get productivity and standards of living rising indefinitely. The only thing I can think of that deters aliens from investing is the unstable sociopolitical climate. I mean, who really wants to deal with the risks of a Luthor presidency or an Emperor Joker? It seems that now, more than ever, the earth needs superheroes to stamp out crime so that other planets might feel safer about their investments.

Beating up Lex Luthor is all part of Obama's stimulus plan. And I love the idea of alien empires buying up American companies to prop up the stock market. Thanagarians buying Boeing. The Brood taking over Perdue Chicken. Turin buying Chrysler....

Captain Hammer color preview

I don't want to steal the thunder from the Captain Hammer pinup premiering in the Hero Comics fundraiser for the HERO Initiative. First, so you'll buy the book and help support a hardworking bunch of volunteers. Second, because stealing the Cap's thunder means he might beat me up.

But I did promise a preview!

Click for a larger image.

Hero Comics available at your local comic shop July 29. More details, and the pencils of the full composition, in the previous post on this blog.

Hero Comics

First news, I'm able to upload images to Blogger again! This means I'll be posting more previews here. So expect more news updates.

Second, the real news. Details have been announced for Hero Comics, the HERO Initiative fundraiser comic for which I'm doing two pieces. Available in stores July 29, or get it early at the San Diego con July 23.

More details here. For $3.99, I think it's worth it just for the cover by J. Scott Campbell:

Hero Initiative is very proud to announce the release of Hero Comics. The 32-page, no-ads comic, edited and produced by Scott Dunbier, special projects editor at IDW Publishing, will be released in late July with two covers, Eve by J. Scott Campbell, and Grendel by Matt Wagner. The fundraising book will contain great, all-new content including an original American Flagg! story by Howard Chaykin, and original stories by Gene Ha, Bill Willingham, David Lloyd, and Kaare Andrews.( See attachment for cover art)

In addition, Arthur Adams will recreate three classic Marvel Comics covers, and Hero Initiative beneficiaries such as Gene Colan, Bill Messner-Loebs and Josh Medors will tell their own personal stories, detailing their severe struggles, and Hero's involvement.

An excerpt from Josh Medors' story reads:

"When I am feeling almost ready to give in to my cancer, ready to throw my hands in the air and say ‘I quit!,' I get a call from the Initiative. ‘Just wanted to see how you are doing.' It may not seem like much, but let me assure you—When the monster bites and the pain pills aren't working, a call like that is more effective than a Super-Soaker filled with holy water against the ol' Count."

The first piece I did for the book is a Samson Bible story, with writer Lowell Francis. and lettering by Zander Cannon. Preview images were available on Facebook a while back, but I couldn't get Blogger to upload images that day. Now it works, so here are some larger nicer images than the ones on FB. Click to see the full size images:






I'm also doing a pinup of Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) from Dr. Horrible. Thanks to Scott Allie of Dark Horse and Joss Whedon for expediting the okays to do this! Here are the full pencils. Expect a closeup preview of the colors some time next week: