Spider-Woman-- To Know Her is to Fear Her

Tuesday's Drawbridge topic was "Spider-Woman". Owing to a truly manic Tuesday, I'm a day late in getting up this drawing of one of my all-time favorite characters, Jessica Drew, the original Spider-Woman.

I know that she's been restored to her former prominence in Marvel Comics through the work of Brian Michael Bendis, but, man, I was digging on her way back before it was all cool to do so, as evidenced by these circa 1995 Spider-Woman samples I did. What was I thinking drawing Spider-Woman in 1995? I should have been drawing Youngblood or Bloodspot or Bloodblood or some sort of crap.

Anyway, here's to Spider-Woman, an odd duck of a character with an amazing design,  whose odd duck of a series has many, many cool and weird happenings in it, as well as some great artwork by Carmine Infantino and Steve Leialoha, among others. Check it out!

You win some, you lose some...

Well, the preliminary list is up, and it looks like Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess didn't make the ALA's Notable Children's Book List for 2011. A disappointment to be sure, but one slightly mitigated by Zeus: King of the Gods making Yalsa's Great Graphic Novels for Teens list this morning.

Congrats to my pals!

A big fat freaking CONGRATULATIONS to my good friends Erin and Phil Stead, whose book A Sick Day For Amos McGee just won the FREAKING CALDECOTT AWARD this morning! I knew them back when!

And also big congrats to former studiomate Leland Purvis, who's graphic novel Resistance won a Sydney Taylor Honor Award! You're all champeens!

warm up: Bowie's BDay

David Bowie's birthday was apparently this weekend, so today's Drawbridge topic was the Thin White Duke himself. Man, this dude is hard to draw.

Seems odd that someone like Bowie should even have a birthday. Seems more like he'd have a hatch day...

picking, choosing...

Because I'm childish and immature, when I heard today's Drawbridge topic of "pick and choose", this is the image that came to mind. I suppose the "choose" part comes in what he does next...

My own personal debt to Calvin and Hobbes

The warm-up topic today on Drawbridge was "Calvin and Hobbes"

Back before I broke into the biz, even more than I wanted to draw picture books or graphic novels, I had wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist. I was cured of that ambition when all of my favorite newspaper cartoonists quit at about the same time-- in a way a lucky break for me, I suppose, considering the state of the funny pages today (assuming I had made it, of course).

Far and away my biggest influence was Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, to my mind, the most perfect example of a comic strip ever created. Years after his retirement, when I published my first picture book, Kapow! I remember being concerned that my book would be perceived as too derivative of Wattersons' work. To the best of my knowledge, at least, nobody has felt that way but myself, though many have noted the debt my work owed to Watterson. Here is my character American Eagle (cannibalized from my own attempt at a syndicated Daily strip) surveying his spiritual forefather, Calvin as Spaceman Spiff.

Athena has been nominated for the 2011 ALA Notable Book List!

The last such of these posts I'll put up today, I promise, but this is some very exciting news for me! The American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the world, puts out a yearly list of Notable Books and Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess is in the running! That's some exciting, exciting news for yours truly. Check out the full list here; Athena is nominated in the non-fiction Folklore category.

The ALA is holding their Midwinter Meeting in sunny San Diego this weekend, and everybody who's everybody in kids books will be there (well, except me, I'll be in frigid NYC). All of the shortlisted books will be read and evaluated by the committee members, and the final list will be released on Monday, January 10th. I hope Athena makes it on!

Athena is a Cybil award finalist!

The Cybils (The Childrens' and Young Adult Blogger Literary Awards) recently announced the finalists for their 2010 awards and Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess is on the middle-grade graphic novels list! This is an amazing honor, made more so by the fact that I'm in some pretty serious competition with a host of my favorite graphic novelists, like Raina Telgemeier,  Aaron Renier, and Colleen AF Venable ( In her other life as First Second's Book Designer par excellence, Colleen also designed Athena! Small world!).

As the above are also some of my favorite people, I consider it to be an honor just to nominated amongst such terrific company, and will be happy no matter who wins, BUT... I will say this. The actual winner of the Cybils gets an amazing engraved pen, and, man, I would LOOOVE that pen :).

If I am lucky enough to win the Cybil, man, I do hereby vow to draw some pretty pictures with that pen.

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books awards a blue medal to Zeus!

A lot of cool news piled up while I was recovering recently, and this was amongst the coolest.

The venerable Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (or BCCB for short) recently released their list of 2010 "Blue Ribbon" books and Zeus: King of the Gods was on it! This is a great honor, and I'm pleased as heck to be on the list with so many great and talented authors. Give a  click over and see what else got a blue ribbon.

The tortoise and the rug

Today's perhaps-over-specific warm-up topic was "the turtle and the (fake) hair". I drew the only thing I could, given the topic.

Man, someone tell that Tortoise that his piece just isn't passing, man...

The Sailor Twain/ Journey into Mohawk Country Connection, Part deux; kinda like the Rainbow Connection, but with less singing frogs

Devotees of this blog will recall a post I made about a month ago detailing an unexpected and hitherto unrevealed link between First Second Editorial Grand Poobah Mark Siegel's awesome ongoing webcomic Sailor Twain and my own historical graphic novel Journey into Mohawk Country (follow the link if you missed it).

Well, I'm a little late in reporting this (mainly due to the mother of all flu bugs laying me out cold since late last year) but in the December, 27th installment of Sailor Twain some very familiar faces made an appearance.

That's Harmen van den Bogaert, the author of Journey into Mohawk Country, flanked by his companions Jeronimus de la Croix and Willem Thomassen, as based on the below drawing by yours truly. Now we know what happened to our Dutch heroes after Journey concluded. Who knew Mermaids played a part?

Pretty cool stuff, if I may say so myself. It's really great that Mark has woven these two tales together like this, and I'll bet Harmen van den Bogaert is pretty high atop the list of characters least likely to be featured in two separate graphic novels. If you're not already reading Sailor Twain, I hope this convinces you to start.

warm-up: Red and Black

The first thing I thought of when I heard today's Drawbridge topic of "Red and Black" was checkers; the second thing I thought of was ancient Greek vase painting. Put the two together and...