Hawken #6 out now!

A while ago, I showed off the cover to Hawken #6 from IDW.  The book is lovingly rendered by Ben and Tim Truman, FUBAR veterans both, and the incentive cover to #6 is by Jeff McComsey, Dom Vivona and Steve Becker, no strangers to FUBAR themselves.  At the last minute, Hawken #6 had another addition - a half page comic by myself and yet another FUBAR luminary by the name of Pietro.

This is, of course, very exciting.  IDW has grown quite a bit in the last several years to the point where they're counted among the major comic book publishers.  While they're best known for their licensed properties like Transformers and the Ninja Turtles, every so often they'll release a creator owned series such as Hawken, a western horror tale that's among the best of them.

Even though my contribution is only a half page, I still feel like this is a big deal.  If nothing else, IDW is one of the most recognizable publishers to print my work; certainly the most high profile since Dark Horse's Strip Search which was printed FOREVER ago.

So let's say that you have no desire to read my comic book writing, but as you're reading this, you feel a slight twinge of guilt over this apathy.  If you pick up Hawken #6, you can spend about 15 seconds, read the entire strip, and say that you have, indeed, supported my comic book career!  What a compromise!  That'd be great.

Many thanks to Ben and Tim for the opportunity.  The trade collection, which is already solicited on Amazon, will also include the strip, which is, in its own way, another bit of exciting news.  As IDW is a major company, you should be able to find this book at pretty much any comic store in North America and beyond.  So go get it!  And don't be a jerk.

Ultimate Hero pinup by Ruben Cordero and Todd Swain

Here's more nearly forgotten artwork that I happened upon recently:

It's the Ultimate Hero (and Gary) by Ruben Cordero!  A little while after our "Eye of the Beholder" comic came out in Strip Search, Ruben and I teamed up with co-creator Mike Adams to put a treatment for this character together.  Unfortunately, not too much has happened with these characters in the meantime, though I still have hope that one day the full story might get told.  A short story appeared in the back of Teddy and the Yeti #3, and I've got two more short stories hanging out on my hard drive (one a glorious five-page story by Duane Redhead).  I don't have any immediate plans for them, but they might just show up in a future issue of T&Y.

Below you see the inked version by Todd Swain.  Mike colored it, but we ended up going with a different color scheme in the end, so if this were to be used in some capacity in the future, it'd have to be redone.  Perhaps that's wishful thinking, but perhaps not.

Thing sketchbook, part 8

I look at these additions to the vaunted Thing sketchbook and I think to myself that these might just be the best group of five in the entire book.  Then I think that I tend to think that about just about any group when I see them.  It's still worth mentioning, though.

Let's take a look at the goods, shall we?

Dominic Vivona - New York Comic Con 2010

I met up with fellow FUBAR creator at the New York Comic Con and foisted upon him the first challenge I'd ever posed for the book.  Whenever someone does a sketch, I make sure to tell them that they can do whatever version of the Thing they'd like - but they usually end up drawing their version of the classic, cigar-smoking Thing.  That's not bad, mind you, but I decided to add some variety to the book and ask Dominic to draw the much-maligned She Thing, formerly the second Ms. Marvel.

Dominic had a heck of a time with it, drawing a couple versions before settling on what you see above.  He did a great job with the costume (check out the sash!), and the flowers are a nice touch.

I'm not going to go near the "Female Thing" line.

Jacob Chabot - New York Comic Con 2010

Jacob and I each had a story printed in Dark Horse's Strip Search anthology a few years back.  Since then, he's really made a name for himself with "The Mighty Skullboy Army" and several Marvel projects like "X-Babies".

Jacob did a short story in a recent Strange Tales miniseries where the Thing and the Human Torch grow mustaches, and I mentioned how much I liked it to him before handing him the book.

I bugged Jacob way too often during the day as I had plans to give the book to one more person - probably to the point where he hates me now - but wow! Look at that artwork.  It's got a speech balloon and everything!

Danny Cruz - New York Comic Con 2010

Danny spent the weekend at the Wagon Wheel Comics booth for last year's New York Comic Con.  I planned on asking him to draw in the sketchbook earlier, but he didn't end up getting a chance until there was about an hour left in the show.

I asked him to draw another variation of the Thing - the spiky "Pineapple" version from when he was powered up for a bit - and he really delivered.  Rarely does the Thing look so mean!

C. Martin Croker - Xcon World 2010

You might recognize the name C. Martin Croker from his work as both an animator and a voice actor - he's played Zorak and Moltar on Space Ghost Coast to Coast - but he's also a big fan of Ben Grimm (and Kirby creations in general, though who isn't?).

I spent a good deal of time chatting with him and distracting him from doing other work over the three-day mini convention, and on Sunday I got him to draw this beauty for me. I love the brow on this one.

Thomas Scioli - Pittsburgh Comic & Collectibles Show 2010

Tom Scioli is best known for his work on the Image Comics Godland series, where he channels Jack Kirby every issue.  Tom also drew a cover for Teddy and the Yeti #3, so it was great to meet him in person.

Knowing how Kirby-esque Tom's artwork is, I asked him to draw an "early" Thing (when he looked more like a monster and less like an awesome rocky guy) and he drew this piece reminiscent of 1961's Fantastic Four #1 - the torn spacesuit is a great touch!

That's 40 total sketches I've shown so far, and we are just about caught up with the entire book - I've got one more sketch after these, so I just might wait to show it until I get more (hopefully soon).  This sketchbook is something that I started on not much more than a whim, but has quickly become one of my more prized possessions - not just because of the artwork itself (though there is that, too), but because of all the great stories and memories behind them.  I've decided that if my house ever catches on fire, this is one of maybe two things not living that I'd try to get before jumping out of a window or whatever.

Pictures from the Motor City Comic Con, part 1

Well, the 2011 Motor City Comic Con is a thing of the past, and now all that's left are the memories, the cool swag, and pictures.  Let's take a look at some of the latter, shall we?

I think I'm starting to run out of original poses for these desperate booth shots.  I've probably made this face before...got to come up with some new ones.  In any case, this is perhaps the biggest table I've ever had.  It was nice to be able to spread out, but I think some of the graphic novels got overlooked because they were all the way at one end.  In any case, I was able to lay out copies of the Magic Bullet, Mr. Massive, Teddy and the Yeti, FUBAR, Strip Search, and other stuff with no problem.

Ernie Hudson was at this show.  I'm pretty sure he didn't drive this to get there...but that would have been cool.

Ugh, look at these books.  Fantastic Four #1.  Amazing Fantasy #15.  Avengers #4.  Superman #...whatever that one is.  This is like a list of "books I'll never be able to afford."

A lot of this costume was made out of couch cushions (seriously).

There was an empty table across the row from ours, so Larry decided to set up his own Franks and Beans booth.  I paid him a few visits.

This was a pretty good costume, and it was funny, too.  Weird kid, though.  No offense, weird kid.

Hey, where's the Cesar Romero Joker?  That would have made it pretty much complete.  The Jack Nicholson Joker actually came off creepier than the Heath Ledger Joker, which was an accomplishment.

I'll post more later.  I will!  I promise.

Primordial Soup, uh..."webcomic"? with Mike Harvey, plus "Weird Al" Yankovic's new song!

Several years ago, soon after "Eye of the Beholder" was published in Strip Search, I took stock of my comic book aspirations and realized that beyond writing half-developed scripts I had NO clue as to the process that went on to put a comic together.  Beyond this, I had no idea how I would ever again convince an artist to work with me on one of those half-developed ideas (some things never change, I suppose).  In a (perhaps rare) moment of proactivity, I decided to figure it out by putting a short comic together, and I was helped by my friend Mike Harvey, who just so happened to be one of the only people I knew with a digital camera.

The result is as you see below: despite our low level of sophistication, and despite the fact that we decided to go with extremely clever pseudonyms rather than give our actual names, I think that the two of us put a fun short story together.  It's not earth-shattering or anything like that, but hey, it was fun.

The one constant background was just a close up of a section of my back yard juxtaposed with a shot of the sky (the volcano looking image is just a plant...it's a happy coincidence that it turned out as well as it did).  Mike himself drew the caveman that serves as possibly the best joke of the story.  The dividing cells and the Mr. Bill-esque character were...I don't know, Play-Doh?  My sister helped with creating that little guy, hence the "special thanks" credit.  And the relatively giant godlike hand...is mine.

Mike and I took a short drive to my college's computer lab, which had a number of Macs with editing software loaded on 'em.  We downloaded some generic Blambot fonts and even some template speech balloons, which look better than some of the balloons I make now that I know how to do them myself.

All in all, not bad for something that was cobbled together with little or no experience.  Check it out!

Mike recently painted a Mini-Marvel style rendition of the Yeti that you can see here.

Also, "Weird Al" Yankovic has a new song, "I Perform This Way"!  This has nothing to do with the above post.  I just love Weird Al and this new song means that a new album will be on the way soon.  Al has a blog that he updates every once in a while, and if you want to read about this new song and why it almost didn't get released, you can find that here.  Listen to the song on below.

AND ENJOY IT.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic by Jeff McClelland and Ruben D. Cordero, Jr.

Presented in its entirety, here's "Eye of the Beholder" with art by Ruben Cordero.  It's a pain to click on eight different links to read the entire story, so I wanted to post it all at once (plus it's easier to find on the Google).  I previously posted each individual page with commentary, and I used another post to show extra material such as sketches and other art in progress.  If anyone feels inclined to check those out, just click on the links below:

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

page 5

page 6

page 7

page 8

extra material

"Eye of the Beholder" was first published in Strip Search from Dark Horse Entertainment in 2004.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 8

Here we are at the end of this particular story.  Yes, it's a sad occasion, but weep not - I write other stuff, too.  Like Teddy and the Yeti.  You should totally buy it.

And speaking of shelling out good money for things with my name attached them, "Eye of the Beholder" is published in the collection Strip Search from Dark Horse Comics.  This book is available at lots of places, like Amazon (click on the links!), Things from Another World, Mile High Comics, Midtown Comics, heck...if you give 'em the ISBN (1593070993), big stores like Barnes and Noble will order it for you!

I'm really lucky to have been a part of this project, and I can't thank talented individuals like editor Adam Gallardo and, of course, artist Ruben Cordero, who is a heck of an artist and a heck of a guy, enough for everything they did to bring this dream to life.  This is the story that convinced me to try to make comics on a semi-regular basis, and I'm thankful for the opportunities it's granted.  May everyone who wants one have their own "Eye of the Beholder".

I'll post some "extra" stuff in a few days - character designs, sketches, pages in progress, etc. - things that haven't been published before.  It should be a fun way to wrap this short story up.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 7

Here we are with page seven of "Eye of the Beholder" - one more page to go and the suspense is at its height.  I certainly went with "religious fury" with this story, didn't I?  There's even a "Kraka-DOOM!" sound effect!

Strip Search isn't only my first comic book publication, but also perhaps my best reviewed work to date. A hundred years ago, I wrote about how reviews are tough to come by for me and what I write (for whatever reason), but Strip Search was reviewed by none other than the American Library Association, which, even if you've never heard of it before, sounds pretty official.  I didn't read the review until several years after the book was released (way to keep up on it, Jeff), but I was still taken back when I did.  Here's what the ALA had to say in their publication, "Booklist":

After the plug was pulled on the anthology series Dark Horse Presents, editor Gallardo found himself griping about where emerging artists were going to get their first exposure. So he started up a Web-based version of DHP, and here he presents the cream, according to site visitors, of what he put up on the site monthly, July 2002-June 2003. Pretty obviously, the genre won't run out of artistic talent any time soon. The Brownlee brothers' faux photographic style and Steve Morris' gorgeously manipulated and photographed models may be the most technically adroit stuff on view, but the other contributors' highly varied drawing styles are just as impressive, whether in color or black and white. The story element is frequently rather thin, however, and many may give best story honors to Jeff McClelland and Ruben D. Cordero Jr.'s straightforward inversion of Hansel and Gretel. All the others beg for more development, which makes the collection's point that each of these newcomers could reward a much longer look at his or her work. -- Ray Olson 

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

 Let me highlight the interesting part of that review, just to make sure no one missed it: "...many may give best story honors to Jeff McClelland and Ruben D. Cordero Jr.'s straightforward inversion of Hansel and Gretel."  Wow.  I have no idea who you are, Ray Olson, but what a nice thing to say.  I'm still not sure what I did to deserve it, but I'll take a compliment where I can get one, without a doubt.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 6

Here's page six of "Eye of the Beholder", where truth begins to come to light.  The end is in sight!

Earlier I talked a little bit about some of the other entires in Strip Search, the collection for the stories featured in Dark Horse's online contest - now let's talk about the overall winner:

Stop Light by Jeff Kilpatrick

I think it's easy to see that this artwork is top-notch.  The layout of the entire story was also quite dynamic and interesting.  In addition, the winner of this contest was chosen quite democratically, so Jeff certainly won things fair and square (that's quite the cliche, isn't it?).

When I found out that "Stop Light" had won it all, though, I was surprised for a few reasons.  First of all, I was almost sure that a color strip would win over one that was black and white, regardless of the overall quality.  Secondly, while a number of other stories in the book were pretty condensed, this six-page story is one short sequence with few words to accompany the pictures.  Not to imply that more words equals a better story (there are many, many examples to the contrary), but I thought that one of the more in-depth stories would take the prize.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to disparage "Stop Light" in the least, and I'm certainly not trying to say that "Eye of the Beholder" should have won the contest.  I do like my entry, of course, but in all honesty I wouldn't call it the best in the book.  This will come as no surprise, but my choice for "best in show" would have been "The Mighty Skullboy Army" by Jacob Chabot, probably followed by the "Haunted Cipher" shorts by Eric Haven (both black and white stories, by the way).  While "Stop Light" was a solid entry and certainly deserved to be in the book, I don't know that it held my interest for long enough for me to rank it up with some of the other, more thought-provoking tales.

In any case, though, Jeff Kilpatrick won the prize and for that I salute him!  It was a year-long contest and he pulled it out.  I wonder what he bought with all that prize money?

That's it for today.  I'll post the penultimate page of "Eye of the Beholder" soon!

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 5

Merry Christmas, blog-o-sphere!  I hope that everyone has a wonderful day and that, though it's cliche and completely unrealistic, we can one day live in a more peaceful world.  Here's hoping.

I'm posting page five of the "Eye of the Beholder" story today for all to see.  I should have put this page up earlier, and there's really no excuse for the lag, as the story has been complete for, oh, seven years now, but them's the breaks.  I hope we all can enjoy it nonetheless.  Page five is when the crazy stuff starts to happen, like sudden visions of floating old men.  I always thought the bed was a little out-of-place in this scene, but it doesn't take anything away from the story.

As I've mentioned (over and over), this story was printed in Dark Horse's Strip Search collection.  There were 17 other stories included in the book (one split up into four parts), and as is always the case with anthology-type books, the quality was varied.  There were plenty that I thought my and Ruben's story could stand up to, just as there were some that I thought blew our particular tale out of the water.  Below are some of my favorites:

Alcoholism Spaceman by Ben Stenbeck
The title for this story is actually very literal: it features outer space, flying (floating?) sharks, and rampant alcoholism.  To be honest, this entry was a bit short on story, but WOW!  Look at that art!  It's just beautiful.  The colors nearly melt off the page.  Ben has worked on some stories at Dark Horse in recent years, and it's easy to see that he deserves it.

Mighty Skullboy Army by Jacob Chabot
I've mentioned before how much I love the Mighty Skullboy Army, which has a collection of stories out through Dark Horse.  Jacob (Jake?) does humor well - both his writing and art lend itself to it.  Strip Search was how I first became away of the Skullboy Army, and I've since become a big fan.  I can see this concept taking off and making it big one day.

Haunted Cipher by Eric Haven
Strip Search split five different editions of Haunted Cipher throughout the book, and each was a one-page delight.  Some were darker than others, but all were extremely entertaining and usually parodied a different concept - the one pictured above was an obvious sendup of something like Aesop's Fables and was funny, but the one spoofing the old Charles Atlas comic book advertisement and the "girlfriend lie detector" strip were genius.

Insomnia by Nir Paniry
This entry did the most with the least, I thought.  There's only one sentence of text throughout the entire story, but it still comes off as a touching, sweet tale of the value of companionship.  The main character, I think, looks like Art Garfunkel, which has no bearing on what I think of the story.

The Seneschal by Tom Scioli
What, you didn't think Tom Scioli only did Teddy and the Yeti covers, did you?!  Ah hem.  In any case, it's easy to see by the page above Tom's prodigious talent and uncanny Kirby style of artwork.  The Seneschal just exudes energy and creativity.

You, Robot by Nicholas G. Perks
I'm not sure what it is about this story that does it for me - I think it's the simplicity in both art and storytelling.  The artwork reminds me of Jerry Ordway's, which is to say it's got a classic feel to it.  The story has a twist that isn't necessarily unpredictable, but it's different and it deserves some credit for that alone.

Tangerine by Ron J. Wimberly
This story was another that took a minimalist approach when it came to text.  The story was again a bit simple, but it let the reader's imagination fill in most of the blanks, which is sometimes hard to do (for me, anyway).  The artwork was very fluid and seemed to combine both Western and Eastern influences.

That's it for now.  Look for page six early next week!  For real this time!  I think.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 4

This story's second "act" begins with page four - we're all caught up to date and now we're working in the present.  The dog cages look more like jail cells, but hey, that's artistic license for you.

Now that I think about it, it's because of this story's publication in Strip Search that I came up with a way to sign my name on comics...that is, a different way than I sign, I don't know, a check or something like that.  The first time I saw a copy of Strip Search was at my local comic shop, Impossible Dreams Comics in Bridgeville, Pa.  The owner of the store ordered a copy for himself (probably because it's all I had talked about for a month) and asked me to sign it.  I wrote my whole 14-letter name, stopped to look at it, and said "I've gotta come up with something better".  What I came up with over the next few days is basically my initials and the date, so whether or not it's "better" is debatable, but at least I have a comic book signature to go with now.

Oh, and by the way, the best comic book signature I've ever seen has to belong to Mark Schultz (of Xenozoic Tales fame).  I'm told he worked on it for quite a while.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 3

The moment  I found out that "Eye of the Beholder" had won Dark Horse's monthly contest and would soon be printed in its Strip Search collection, I ran to the phone and called artist Ruben Cordero on the phone at his office at work.  As soon as he picked up on the other end, I yelled "Congratulations, you magnificent bastard!", thinking he had probably been to the website and therefore had heard the good news.  Instead, he didn't even know it was me.  "I'm sorry," he replied, somewhat tersely, "who is this?" I meekly explained the situation and once we were on the same page things went more smoothly.

The prize package from Dark Horse was actually quite nice, even though we had to split it in two.  For my half of the haul, I managed to snag a number of cool things, including a copy of Comics Between the Panels, signed by co-author and Dark Horse editor-in-chief Mike Richardson, the second volume of the beautiful Xenozoic Tales collection and some "Shag Tiki" stationary by Amanda Visell.

Ruben and I also split a $150 gift certificate to the online comic shop Things from Another World, with which I bought one of my first Thing statues - a Bowen full body design that's still one of my favorites (Bowen does great work, let me tell you).

All in all, just another reason I was spoiled by this, my first comic publication.  I hope you enjoy page three - I'll post the next page on Saturday...and probably write stuff in between now and then.  So keep checking back!

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 2

Here we are with page two of the "Eye of the Beholder" story that ran in Dark Horse's Strip Search anthology.  Here we see the "demons" for the first time - angry little fellows who carry on the Hansel and Gretel metaphor by eating this poor old lady's house.  The colors really stand out on this page, I think - it's something that this piece really had going for it.  Even though this was being put together in 2003, when webcomics were much less prevalent, Ruben had a keen eye for what worked on the screen and how it was different than a printed comic book page.

I mentioned in my last entry that each submission to the Strip Search contest was voted on to see which ones would eventually get printed - that is, readers could choose which ones they liked best each month. I'm sure that nearly everyone did this, and even though it didn't matter in the end, I still have a little twinge of guilt when I think back to the dozens (and dozens) of times I voted for myself.  It went against the democratic nature of the contest, but man!  I saw this as a chance to break in to the industry and I couldn't resist temptation.  I voted for myself every day when I got up, every day before dinner, and every day before I went to bed - multiple times.

Some time after the voting was complete, main editor Adam Gallardo (who later went on to write the title 100 Girls for Arcana Studio) explained that to calculate the winners of each round, only votes from unique I.P. addresses were tallied - meaning that although I probably spent hours of my life clicking "submit" on the Dark Horse website, only one of my votes actually counted.  Part of me feels good that this story did apparently win on merit, and not just my obsession, but another part feels stupid for wasting all that time.

I'll post the next page on Tuesday or Wednesday.  In the mean time, enjoy page two!

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 1

The first comic work I ever had published came in early 2004.  I had no idea what I was doing (that's not to imply that I do now, either), but I lucked into a great situation.  Dark Horse Comics was sponsoring an online comic contest - creators would submit their stories and an editor would choose the ones he thought were the best to showcase online.  Readers would then vote for their favorite comics of the month and each month's winner would be published in a collection titled Strip Search.  The contest ran, I believe, for an entire year.

This contest absolutely spoiled me with how perfectly everything came together.  I happened to read about the contest one day at a computer in my college's computer lab, and I said to myself, "heck, I'll give it a shot."  I had written a short story for a creative writing class and decided to use that as my subject.  The story was a fairly straightforward inversion of the classic Hansel and Gretal fairy tale, where it was told from the evil stepmother's perspective and took place in modern times.  I went right to a comic book message board (Digital Webbing, I think?), posted a quick message, and met up almost immediately with the extremely talented Ruben Cordero.

And that was pretty much it.  Really.  Ruben drew and lettered the story, we submitted it to Dark Horse, the story was selected and put up for a vote during the final month that entries would be accepted.  "Eye of the Beholder" was voted in and a few months later, Strip Search was published and I had something for sale all over the world (I had someone tell me he saw a copy on sale in Japan, which continues to blow my mind).

At this point I thought publishing comics would be easy, based on the only evidence I had at my disposal.  More aptly, I think I ran into the perfect storm - Dark Horse just happened to have the perfect contest, I just happened to find the perfect artist, and things fell in to place.

I'm generally happy with the result, although hopefully my writing has gotten a little less melodramatic over time.

Dark Horse retained the publishing rights to this story for five years, which means they have since reverted back to Ruben and me.  I thought it would be fun to revisit this story over the next few weeks in the format it was originally intended to be read - as a webcomic.  I'll post the first page today and continue at least twice a week until all eight pages are posted.  Just click on the tumbnail at the top of this entry to read the first page.  I hope you enjoy!