Apologies for today’s Rough Monday title, for those who haven’t seen the 80s cult classic movie.
The “Warriors” in question are Marvel’s New Warriors, one of the best comic series of the 90s! I’ve wanted to draw these guys for a while and this week’s “The Line Is Drawn” provided the perfect opportunity! (you’ll see, 90s fans…these guys really have the Right Stuff…)
“The Dark Queen” – A little drawing I did for David Reddick’s fun “Legend of Bill” comic:
Bronze-Age Legion Roughs. I’d like to do a full-blown drawing of all these guys.
So did you hear the one about the Disney Princess and the iconic female super-hero?
Here’s my latest — this was for week three of CBR’s “The Line Is Drawn” try-outs. The theme was “comic book characters in different genres.” I really went for the Disney-style vibe in this one, so I had to do some research on Prince Charmings and Fairy Godmothers…
The Twitter suggestion was “Wonder Woman as a Disney Princess,” which you can take in a number of directions. I knew I wanted to challenge the “princess waiting for rescue” notion, and I knew Diana wouldn’t be that princess. So the concept came pretty easily…
Here’s the pencil rough…
I usually do my inking and coloring in Adobe Illustrator, using my Wacom Tablet. So here’s what that looked like:
But I really wanted that lush Disney look… so off to Adobe Photoshop for some shading and texturing…
… and viola!
What I didn’t anticipate is the viral-ness of the image! It seems to have really struck a chord from all the shares, notes, reblogs and comments I’ve been receiving! So thanks, one and all!
Please stay and enjoy some more of my work here or on my Deviant Art Page.
And, oh, if you want to see more of my work, vote for me here.
Last week, we met Primstone, the fabulously fastidious executive assistant of Infernal Enterprises.
Sometimes a name just drives a character design. I’m a sucker for a play on words so the whole Brimstone to Primstone thing struck a chord with me. And whereas some of the other villainous organizations were based on some familiar tropes, I wanted our Infernal Enterprises rep to play against type. Here’s the initial roughs:
Slick and polished. No gnarly demons here!
We’ll learn more about Primstone when he pops up again.
Yup, I said “when” not “if”!
This “Namor and Me” piece was done for CBR’s “The Line Is Drawn,” where a list of artists (including myself) had to choose from twitter feed responses and then create cover homages. Someone suggested a cover homage to Betty and Me #16, which featured an unintentional double entendre. This is a REAL cover, folks, no photo-shopping:
The twitter requestor suggested the same cover with amorous Prince Namor whisking the Invisible Girl away from her Fantastic Four teammates. But I wanted something more…. and then I thought of all the Archie “Double Digest” Collections… And I thought, ah, “Double ENTENDRE Digest”! And then just continuing with a stream of unintentional bits that could be seen as Archie-clean or slightly-naughty. Here’s the sketch:
The fun was taking some innocent double entendres to ridiculous new extremes, with dialogue from Reed, Jonny and Ben… plus a few little things in the trade dress and blurbs. That dialogue went through a few passes, as you can see my original thoughts in the sketch vs the final. It took awhile to get the exact phrasing down. And the writers of “Three’s Company” made it look so easy….
Plus, I always knew Northstar was going to figure in; That pretty much wrote itself!
And here’s the final:
This one was a lot of fun! Hope you enjoyed it.
Greetings, post-Holiday Heroites!
For this week’s Rough Monday, I’m sharing some preliminary sketches from a commission piece I did for the ever-excellent Aquaman Shrine. The idea: the modern AquaFamily celebrating the Holidays.
Aquaman and Mera retained their present looks, while Arthur Jr.’s design is in keeping with his appearance in the “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” cartoon. The Aquaman Shrine gave me carte blanche with the other characters…. So I really wanted to tweak the AquaTeens…
Here’s some initial thoughts…
Garth, the original Aqualad, is reimagined as a zen surfer dude; I combined his Kingdom Come costume but kept his original Aqualad gloves. Tula, the original Aquagirl, got modernized; I kept her seashell motif and gave her a stylish wild-wave hair-do to echo her original Nick Cardy design.
For Lorena, the new Aquagirl, I redesigned her wetsuit to include an “A” symbol; I also liked her original “edgy” look with the dark eyeliner and short-shag cut. For Kaldur, the new Aqualad, I adapted his “Young Justice” look, which I prefer to the dreads he sported in “Brightest Day.”
Here’s the final Aqugirls:
I then mapped out who’s going where in the Aquacave celebration…
(Storm and Imp…. aw, reindeer games!)
And then debated what Mera was going to be doing….
Aaaaaaand here’s the final:
Happy Holidays Holiday Hangover everyone!
A few weeks ago, The Hero Business hosted the return of Stiletto. She was my first published comic creation – a hard-edged heroine with a sharp blade and killer heels. Originally a joke shared with a few friends, the character took a life of her own, serving as a satire for comic books but “sexy under-dressed 90s anti-heroines” in particular.
After Stiletto’s Hero Business debut, I shared her secret origin along with the very first ashcan issue. For this week’s Rough Monday, I bring you a holiday tale of the ages: The Stiletto Christmas Special. Hope you enjoy!
Happy holidays, heroites!
It’s week two of the Comics Should Be Good “The Line Is Drawn” try-outs. The theme is “team ups” and “two comic characters that have never teamed up before.” You have to choose from a selection of fan-tweets, so I chose Booster Gold and Wonder Man.
My “genius” idea was to do a riff of those corny Hostess ads that ran in the late-70s and early-80s. You can check ‘em out here. My idea was to portray the Hostess ads as a real paying spokesman-like gig. Yeah, perfect for two fame-seekers like Booster and Simon.
So here’s the pencil sketch:
I originally had Booster and Simon in their retro-80s era costumes; Then, I decided to keep it modern…. with the conceit that the snack food company had fallen on hard times and could no longer afford the likes of Superman and Spider-Man. And here’s the final:
Also, a reminder: If you’d like to see more of this stuff, vote for me in “The Line Is Drawn” poll, right here!
A piece for CBR’s “The Line it is Drawn” tryouts. The theme: “Turn a famous person/character into a superhero or supervillain.” Here’s a famous red-headed mop top as an anti-hero(ine). It’s a Hard Knock Origin, punk!
I wanted to do a riff on The Punisher’s first appearance:
Here’s my original rough:
And the finished piece:
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