Pre-San Diego Comic Con 2010

I'm in Los Angeles this week doing a book signing and my first ever book reading for Revolver. I'll let you know how that goes (if it goes well). I had a glut of commissions before San Diego that I'm hand-delivering -- that's what these are this week. I've never drawn or even looked that close at Enemy Ace but his mask is pretty awesome.

I'll be signing at Dark Horse, Top Shelf, and Vertigo this weekend (a record amount of signings for me) and I'll be at the Vertigo panel on Saturday as well so if you're in the neighborhood of any of that come on by!

New Studio. New Books.

I think I've written more comic book pages this year than I have in my entire career combined so far -- 1200 pages of script that will be my next 3 books: Super Natural, End of the World, and Strange Crimes. It feels good to have these books "in-the-can" story-wise so now it's just a matter of production. Drawing, inking, painting. To celebrate (or at least to help me get it all done) -- my new studio is finally done being built! Here's a photo...can't wait to start drawing. [Also pictured -- my mom and daughter.]

Catching Up

I've done a ton of commissions during the gap of me not blogging. So I'll try to catch up a little bit here. Also if you're buying any Vertigo books this month there's a preview of my Revolver graphic novel in the monthly books. I think that there's a short column I wrote as well describing the book and the inspiration for it. So check out some monthly books this month. Keep floppies alive! Next month I'll be doing a daily Vertigo blog with notes, preliminary sketches and more regarding Revolver so stay tuned.

Wild Things Happening

Sorry for the long delay in blog updates. It's been a busy few months and I probably won't be caught up until 2012. But, lots of new things to report. A movie option for 3 Story and four new original graphic novels due to come out between now and 2012. First is REVOLVER from Vertigo which arrives July 14. Then it will be THE TOOTH for Oni in the Fall and Spring of next year. After that THE STRANGE CRIMES OF RED WHEEL BARROW for First Second. And finally the Super Spy sequel SUPER NATURAL which is written and just waiting to be penciled and inked. I promise to keep the updates coming on a more regular basis.

Thanks to everyone that came by the table at Heroes Con this year in Charlotte. It was a great show again. Here's a commission that I did for that show. One of my favorite books as a kid and one of my favorite kid's books as an adult.

Lucca Italy Comic Festival

In September I went to the Lucca Comic Fesitval in Italy and had a great time -- Super Spy was just published over the summer in Italian. One thing I've always done is try to come up with a different sketch every time I sign a book. But truthfully I end up cycling through 15 or 20 different sketches that I've come up with. But for this show I thought it would be fun to come up with a different sketch for every single book I signed. Well, it ended up being about 300 sketches over 3 days. Tons of fun. What I didn't realize until the second day was that my wife was taking pictures of the sketches as I was doing them. Didn't get photos of all of them but here's a sampling....

I'm really curious as to what other artists do at cons. To me, there's a strange kind of fun to work with ink in a book without penciling anything first and having that kind of "danger" of screwing up every time and still coming up with a drawing you haven't drawn before. It's as close to any kind of performance "improv" I'll ever get and I really enjoy it.

If you look closely, there are a few where I started doing 3 panel stories in the front of the book -- each different and written on the fly. I think I only did 3 or 4 of those -- the writing and drawing just took too long for people waiting to get their books so I went back to straight sketches.

SPX Next Weekend!

I'm getting ready for SPX 2009 this weekend. Should be a good show. I sold out of 3 Story last weekend at Windy City Con but should have a Twhole new stack of books for SPX so come by and check it out! I'll be doing commissions all weekend as well. And again, here are a few new commissions I did this week as well as a sketchbook commission from this weekend (The Flash).

3 Story is out, Revolver is in the can and being lettered by the awesome lettering dept. at Vertigo as I type this for a release this spring/summer. In addition, I'm currently plugging away on a fun 70s style Marvel comic with Cullen Bunn called "The Tooth" and laying out pages for the Super Spy sequel "Super Natural".

Thanks again to everyone that came by and talked to me in Chicago this weekend. What a great show!

Commission Time!

My new book 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man is out this week! Check it out please! Also if you want to get a signed copy you can order it directly from me at my newly redesigned website. Take a look! And thanks to everyone that ordered books and art from me -- it is much appreciated!

Got caught up on a TON of commissions this week. I put the finishing touches on my Vertigo book "Revolver"which including actually writing footer "scroll" text for the bottom of every page of the book that was specific to the action of that page and...also contained the page number in the same text. Hard at first but by page 100 I figure it out. There's actually a whole other book if you just read the text at the bottom. Really fun to work on. Here are all the commissions I finished this week! Going to Chicago this weekend for the Windy City Con -- come say 'hi' to me there!