Nice Adam Rapp Interview at Graphic Novel Reporter

An entertaining and illuminating interview with Ball-Peen Hammer writer Adam Rapp at the Graphic Novel Reporter. Check it out!

Ball-Peen Preview in PW

Publishers Weekly's PW Comics Week features a nice, big 13 page preview of Ball-Peen Hammer. Go check out the pain.

More old Marvel stuff

People seemed to like seeing my old superhero stuff, so here's some more. The X-men versus Arcade, from the second Marvel tryout book (I missed the first one). Really not much of a script, if I may say so, in terms of being able to do some storytelling, just a lot of rapid scene shifts withthe opportunity to draw a lot of cool stuff. Heck, it was the 90's, what do you expect?

More Athena

Another page from Athena, this time in the Medusa sequence. I love when I can get away with wordlessness.

Postscript to the No Love From Marvel

Readers of the first post in this series will recall that I was compelled to dig up my old mid-90's Marvel samples due to the fact that I was drawing a honking big whale monster in my new book Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess, and I remembered drawing a cool whale monster way back then. So, now, over ten years after I created it, Honking Big Whale Monster makes will make his publishing debut as Cetus, the sea monster whom Perseus rescues Andromeda from. A page from the big guy's debut below:

No love from Marvel Comics, part 2

Part 2 of that Namor versus the whale story I drew way back in the mid 90's. I don't normally like to post spoilers, but I'll tell you this-- Namor beats the honking big whale monster up.






I'm getting some nice feedback from this, so I'll be posting up some more old school superhero stuff from the 90's. Hold on to your hats.

No love from Marvel Comics

Recently, while working on Athena, I had the occasion to draw a honking big whale monster. I half-remembered way, way back in the mid 90's drawing a Sub-Mariner sample for Marvel Comics that featured Namor fighting a honking big whale monster that I seemed to recall I had come up with a pretty nifty design for. I dug the pages out of my studio closet and was pleasantly surprised to see how nice they actually were (didn't get me any Marvel work though). Inspired by my buddy Michel Fiffe's recent brave example I decided to post the whale/Namor story online. Enjoy the first four pages below, the second half will go up tomorry.









Namor is trademarked Marvel Comics. The honking big whale monster is all me, baybee.

Athena pin up

A pinup for the back of Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess (and the upcoming Olympiansrule.com website) that I thought came out rather well.

Gigantomachy

I was pretty happy with the way this page from Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess turned out, showing the opening stages of the Gigantomachy, the war of the Giants. Thought I'd share it with y'all.

Sneak Peek- Page from Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess

Zeus has a splitting headache. Luckily Hephaistos is there to help him out...

This is why it pays to have a good editor...

And I have two good editors on Olympians. Mark Siegel, head honcho of First Second, acts in the capacity of my art director, whereas Neal Porter acts in the capacity of my text editor, helping me to refine my words and story. I'm also ably assisted by Calista Brill, who keeps the whole show running, and David Langva, but I digress. Back to why it's important to have a good editor (or four).

Longtime readers of this blog may remember seeing this pencil sketch before:



Not bad, but it is a small sketch. Everyone liked it, signed off on it, and then came time to do the finish.

Normally this is not a problem that I have, but I just couldn't nail this drawing. It's no exaggeration to say that I probably drew about 7 separate pencil drawings of this, and none of them were clicking. The signs were all there that the composition was falling apart at a larger size, but I couldn't see them. Hades looked too small, when we were looking down on him, Cerberus looked liked three dogs, rather than one horrible 3 headed beast. I even took some embarrassing photo reference of myself, acting all mopey on my throne, which has since ended up in the hands of nefarious forces. Finally, over one weekend, I said screw it, and penciled, inked and colored the below image (with several departures from the sketch).



At the time, I was so burnt on this whole cover that I fooled myself into thinking the above image was good. I look at it now with a real feeling of 'meh', so much so that I almost didn't put it up on the site. But at the time, I was blind to it's faults.

Cut to a few days later. I'm at my studio, drawing away when I get a phone call from my two aforementioned editors, Neal and Mark. To their credit, they approached it very carefully, but they said, gently of course, that the Hades cover wasn't working for them. Demeter's headshot overwhelmed the piece, Cerberus still looked like three digs,Hades looked like he had a migraine. A lot of illustrators will get pissed when there's changes to be made after the sketches were signed off on, but I am grateful they flagged this one. We talked a bit, and while I was on the phone with them , I knocked off a few sketches of the cover design you see below. In my opinion, it's stronger in nearly every conceivable way.



So there you have it. Editors can be your friends.

Not a hoax! Not a dream!

It's been forever and I day since I last updated the ol' blog. The good news is that's because I've been creating scads of new artwork, so lot's of stuff to share!

First up, the complete colors for The Glory of Hera. Enjoy!