GQ Super Spy

This is probably the only way I'll ever get into GQ Magazine -- but if you pick up this month's issue they have a list of the 20 Graphic Novels to read after Watchmen and they stuck Super Spy on the list. Here's a link to the article.

Also -- I've set my calendar with convention appearances and here is where I'll be:

Emerald City Con - March 3-5
FX Con (Florida) - April 17-19
TCAF (Toronto) - May 9-10
MoCCA (New York) - June 5-7
Heroes Con - June - 19-21
San Diego Comic Con - July 23-26
Wizard World Chicago - August 7-9
Windy City Comic Con (Chicago) - September 19
SPX - September 25-27 (3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man Debut)

For the FX show I did a piece that will appear on playing cards -- all for charity with an auction of the original art, etc. Here's what the art for my card looks like -- final size is super small -- 2.75" x 1.5".

SCAD

I'm off to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) to talk about comics and walk through my creative process -- so if you're in the area and can hurry up and enroll in the school (if you haven't already), stop on by and say 'hi'!

Part of the process I'll be talking about his design -- so for this week the images here are the steps of creating the Super Spy cover. The two concepts I came up with, and then the original water color cover and then finally the solid colors-cover that I brightened up on the suggestion of Brett Warnock (the publisher) which I totally agreed with after I saw it finished. And then the hardcover 'variant' cover for the limited edition version.

Giant Video

Well, I started penciling my next book this week -- 176 pages graphic novel that I can't officially announce yet but should be able to talk about soon. In the meantime, here is a video of one of the last pages I painted for the Giant Man book. It took me a month to paint 190 pages which is quicker than I thought but now I'm sick of water colors. That usually happens though -- I get sick of inking too but by the time I'm done with all the design and production I've forgotten how much work the rest of it is and I go into the next book just as excited. Short memory is a good thing sometimes.

Giant Advertisement

Well, I'm about 2 full work days from finishing "3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man". I'm doing the production on the book now along with color correction and a few last minute designs for the interior pages. I'd designed 4 or 5 pages to act as ads that the main character appears in to endorse products. Here's one of the ads. I'm almost there! Click on the thumbnail to read the text...

Next week the book will go to my editor and then I'll be able to cut my hair -- I vowed not to cut my hair until this book was done and I am looking pretty shaggy.

Giant Man Preview Pages

Haven't had time to post anything lately because I've been spending the last month painting my Giant Man book. I'm nearly done. I've been painting an average of 4 to 5 pages a day so I can finish by the end of the month. It's been fun -- I've been watching/listening to a lot of television this month while I work which keeps it interesting. I should be able to post the cover next week so stay tuned! The colors turned out kind of dark compared to what the final print version will be -- part of what happens when I change them to jpegs.

Also there will be some exclusive preview pages in the new issue of Comic Foundry magazine which hits the stands sometime in February/March and I should have the cover posted here next week. Stay tuned!

Wolverine Commission

Just finished a Wolverine commission I'd been sitting on for months. I just couldn't think of any image of Wolverine that hadn't been done before a million times. Then I thought it would be cool to have a cross section of Wolverine with little diagram bubbles to explain what was what under his skin -- and then by the time I inked it I dropped the diagram bubbles because they seemed redundant and I thought it would be more interesting if in the 'reality' of the piece Wolverine was posing with his skin cut open for the picture -- and then healed up a few minutes later. That sounds really strange as I type that out...oh well -- that's my thought process for better or worse!

Incidentally, this piece was for Brett of good ol' Top Shelf -- and he has a great blog here -- this week he posted some photos of sketchbook drawings I did at some conventions over the summer as well as a bunch of killer sketches from Jeff Lemire.

The three images are the thumbnail (drawn in bed the morning I thought of the idea), the pencils and the finished color/inks.

I've finished catching up on all my commissions and the last of my freelance jobs for quite a while (a children's book -- 30 pages of full color art) which has slowed me down on Giant Man and my other books. So now it's full steam ahead on graphic novels for the next 3 months.

I'm designing the cover for my Dark Horse book this month so I'll post the thumbnails and art as I go.

Lost Dossiers

Well, I'm nearing completion on 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man -- and also 20 pages into pencils on another soon-to-be-announced book for a major publisher. I'm waiting on the official word to announce it though and I'm dying to! But until then -- it turns out as busy as I am on these books, the first book to arrive in 2009 will probably be Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers -- it's a few of the short stories that I didn't include in the Super Spy book for various reason -- mostly because they didn't fit the flow of the book and had characters that only appeared one time -- and Super Spy had enough characters floating around in it that I thought taking these out would tighten everything up.

Anyway, those stories are in here but then about 70% of the rest of the book is the Super Spy Treasure Box story -- which I sold as a box set at conventions last year. It took too much time to assemble those but now they're in a book -- for the reader to (hopefully) assemble.

Also there's the pop-gun with directions and a story include as well as a small section of my personal sketchbook that I kept while making Super Spy...and finally -- a section of page by page and panel by panel annotations for Super Spy. I've had this book done for a while but I nearly forgot about it and it had to wait its turn in Top Shelfs publishing queue.

Hopefully another big announcement soon and some art that I can post on what I'm working on now. In the meantime, here's the cover to The Lost Dossiers...