QUASAR 10 Part 3

Two more pages today from issue 10. And I can see something on page 5 that showed how cinematically I was thinking back then. The 3rd pannel on this page is a shot of the water racing past, next we pull out to a medium establishing shot of Quasar surfing the tube. The 3rd panel is like a film transition and shows how well we can borrow these techniques from film and apply them to comics at times. This is another way of dealing with "time" which both comics and film are chiefly about; the arrangement of events or actions in a sequence to tell a story. I always see the story play out in my mind like I am watching a movie, even when I am drawing comics. 10 years later after drawing the Q-man I would have moved over from comics into working in animation as a storyboard artist. I think the way I worked in comics naturally made my transition into film a logical fit.

Quasar Issue 10 part 2

Two more page from Quasar 10.

Arizona Sunset

I'm getting back into some painting again this week. This is a quick landscape I did based on a few pics I snapped on my last vacation to Arizona. It's in oil on MDF 16 x 12. I tried to keep this one looser and so I used the palette knife a lot.

Quasar Issue 10

I have decided that wuld do somehing here on the blog that I haven't done before and post the pencils for an entire issue of a comic I've drawn. In this case i came across the copies of the pencils for Quasar #10, which I drew I think in late 1989 or early 1990. Quasar was my first regular series as a penciler for Marvel, written by the late Mark Gruewald and edited by Howard Mackie.
I have to say I wasn't a big fan of the book, or the character, but I was a big fan of working regularly and so I dived at the chance to pencil the book. I was totally unaware of the character's history and all of that, but could see he was sort of like Green Lantern in that he could use his powerbands to create props or tools, force shields etc. hw also had the duel identity thing, sort of like Clark Kent, he even wore glasses. In fact the whole concept seemed more DC than Marvel.
I had recently moved bac to Philly after sharing Al Williamson's studio up in Honesdale, PA along with my best buddy Bret Blevins. I was hoping that this series would lead to more exciting assignments at Marvel as well.
It's funny when I think back about how different the business was then, pre-speculator-boom. It was less pressure and more fun, but already the tide was turning with guys like Liefeld coming in and what that started to do with the line that once seperated what was clearly fan level work and what was professional level work. In the coming months and the next 2-3 years it really was a earthquake in the entire business and it effected everyone who worked in it. I knew almost from the start that Quasar was a book that nobody would really think was hot, or care about, and in fact as I went along that became very apparent for some of the reasons I stated above.

Looking back at this work I like some of it and can see plenty of shortfalls to, but I was averaging 2 pages a day, sometimes 3 in order to stay on that monthly schedule as I was also inking Alpha Flight at the same time for Carl Potts office. Having spent some time basking in the glow of Al's studio, his work and amazing collection of classic comic and comic strip art my work really had a more traditional or classic feel and that was what I was really loving at that time and I see that so clearly on these pages now.

More tomorrow!

Indiana Jones 4 is Good

I saw it this morning and enjoyed it. I won't ruin any plot points but will saw it was enjoyable witha few hichups, but nothing aweful.

3 1/2 stars.

I found this drawing by accident that I did did for my buddy Bret Blevins when he landed the gig drawing the 3rd movie adaption all those years ago when we were sharing Al Williamson's studio.

Today I Enter the Crystal Skull

Thanks to my buddy Scott Neely, today I am getting to sit in on the press screening of Indy 4.

I have to say I figure it will probably suck. I know, I'm prejudging it, and Ford still looks in great shape, and Spielberg does tend to do the craft well, and in fact can be great, but based on the track record of the sequels both Lucas and Spielberg make, I give it a 25% chance of not sucking.

Hope I'm wrong.

Unused Darkhawk Cover Idea

I came across this last night while going through some old files, it's one of the many sketches I know I made for the cover of Darkhawk #1 way back in 1990. I'm not sure on the logo, if I was submitting a design for it or not. I liked mine better than the one marvel eventually went with as it looked more 'hawkish". I think the reason Howard Mackie, the original editor and I abandoned this idea is we wanted something with more action on the first cover.

A Few Commissions

Boy, things have been a bit of a swirl around here, no pun intended. I am finally getting caught up on some commissions that have been in the shop for too long on top of a lot of other "life" stuff like laundry, yard work etc. that's why the blog has been slow this last week.

Last week Old Man Winter, or Old Lady Spring gave us a slap here in the north east with a bit of a storm. A storm more typical to December than mid May. The result was a bunch of huge branches down in the front yard that had me outside with a chainsaw ( which I had to buy). But I also got to see some of the student films from Uarts and that was fun as much as starting my taxes wasn't. I filed for a extension, so now I have to get this thing done...ugh.

This is sort of a recreation of the piece I inked over Kirby for the book Greg Theakston published back in the early 90's. I think I am a bit happier with this version as it's a bit more bold and way more brush that the first version I inked which was a lot of Hunt 108 pen. Now back to the many little tasks at hand....

Digging Through The Years

The working on the attic continues at Casa Manley and as I rummage through the piles of stuff up there from old comics, to toys, magazines and all kinds of crap I have amassed from being a comic collector, to a pro, to being on a lot of comp lists, to stuff I stupidly bought on impulse. I have stopped collecting comics in a nay big way for a while now, partially because I have stuff I need to get rid of, but also because most comics today blow!
I don't want to go of on a rant about that because basically--who cares, and that's not the thrust of this post anyway. In the cleaning up and sorting I came across a huge box of old art, some goes well back into my high school years, some art is from 30 years ago like that Doc Samson drawing I posted. the late 70's, specifically 1977 was a really big year for me. First, Star Wars came out, second I bought my first issue of Heavy Metal. Both of course blew me away and really charged my imagination and artistic engine. one of my students, Samantha, commented a few weeks back that I mentioned Star Wars often when talking about storytelling points in the storyboard class, etc. I guess I didn't notice it, but I kinda' do for a variety of reasons.

It's hard for a 20 something today to really imagine what an impact that SW had on the world and guys in my generation. It changed the world in a lot of ways, and today we have so much entertainment,licensing, just gobs and gobs of stuff from games, comics, movies, toys, web stuff, man, you can't absorb even 10%. In fact we are jadded, spoiled by one big sci-fi, effects driven movies, game, etc., but 30 years ago most shit sucked, sucked bad,and that was all we had.


So at the same time Star wars was blowing up peoples imaginations then Heavy Metal came out. I still remember buying that first issue and just being god-smacked by it. The onslaught of the French and Euro cartoonist was like a thunderbolt. I had seen Corben's work before, but not DEN, and not Moebius. I hungrily scooped up each issue and as I was being changed. I had been a huge Neal Adams fan, Kirby, Buscema, Wood, Frazetta, that was my big school of influences as a budding comic artist and suddenly I see this stuff in Heavy metal and I was just floored, it was so different and so cool!

Theses comic strips I found are certainly done as a result of me being influenced by the Heavy metal crowd and Star Wars, but especially Moebius and that "clear-line' drawing style. I was trying to process that way of working through my matrix of American influences. I have no idea now about what the story was about and it seems I abandoned it after about 4 pages. I also drew it con pretty flimsy sketchbook paper, and as a result the pages are kinda bent up. There are plenty of problems with this stuff but they are better than a lot of the samples I did later to try and get in. Like many wanna-bes I'd tighten up or freeze up or draw what I thought "they'd want to see." I guess I somewhere around 18-19 years old when I did this stuff.

Old Old Old Art

I came across this nearly 25 year old drawing of a cartoony Doc Sampson in a big box of old artwork in my attic. I am in the agonizing process of "thinning the heard' of 30+ years of comic, books and crap I have accumulated from years of being in the business and my old comic collection. I plan on turning the attic into a painting studio, so I can have a completely separate, and bigger studio to do my painting, sculpture and non-commercial work in.

It's a funny and sometimes insightful thing to look at really old artwork. You see things you did a long time ago you still do now, themes, or things that interest you, and hopefully improvement, lots of improvement.

At that time I was doing a lot over very cartoony or what we now call the "animated look' with comics and superheroes. This was long before the success of the Batman show buy the Dini/Burnett/Timm crew made it cool to do cartoony versions of superjocks. I always thought, and still do, that the medium of animation is the best way to do superheroes as film. I came across a lot of old sample pages, some illustrations and drawings going back almost 30 years, well into my high school days. maybe I'll post a few more samples from my origin days.