so jazzed!
Just finished a double-page spread for MA Iron Man #12 and boyo- am I jazzed! It turned out nicely. I wish I could show it - you'll just have to buy the book in late April- The 11th issue ships at the end of March, so if you buy that you can tide yourself over until April..
March is shaping up to be a really busy month,and I'm actually pretty excited about going to the L.A. Con - I want to see if DC will leak what I'm working on next. The Con is scheduled for about 10 days before what I'm working on will be revealed in print in the pages of Action Comics 863. Should be fun to see all my Marvel friends again too - since Marvel showed up en mass to the last one, it stands to reason some of my favorite folks will be there again! It was really nice to talk to Kitchen T - it was the longest we got to talk in ages-
I'll probably do some stuff at the Platinum Booth too, just a few drop ins to help sell a few remaining copies of the Weapon and find out what their slate of movie and teevee projects are up to now that the writers strike is over.
Back to work!
who even needs to be there?
The convention season has begun and who even needs to be there? These things are just about the most
heavily reported productions on the planetThe New York times didn't have this much reportage for the 2000 election recount in Florida. There are like, 12 full time reporters in Iraq, all holed up in the same hotel. I know for a fact that only one reporter has visited Falluja in the past 3 years (heard an interview on Fresh Air with the one guy).
If you're at a convention, the guy to your right is liveblogging and the guy to your left is uploading his entire camera to flickr.
See you at the L.A. convention next month!
Watching it roll out-
One of my projects is in the process of being
teased out as the Convention Season begins. It's interesting to see how they dribble the info out, building up some excitement by dropping hints. I'm curious if they'll announce it fully at a convention before the promotional art is printed, or if they'll wait. I don't see the point in waiting necessarily, but I'm guessing they make it a little tough on themselves at these panels on purpose, slipping up a bit here and there so that people can puzzle out a riddle. I think back on when one of the Marvel Editors teased about what they were excited about and he replied "Amazing, Amazing Amazing." I had no idea it was a clue to anything.
I'm absolutely exhausted and the week is only beginning. i've been up late inking and pencilling and doing what I love to be doing (just not at this pace). I have no one to blame, except the devils of scheduling. I'll catch up. I'm on time with one of my projects, a little ahead on another, a little behind on another and somewhere beyond all time and space with another. I was able to ink 4 pages this weekend and pencil and ink one. Just a matter of keeping up the pace of working every day until May rolls around and I can get some breathing room. I've turned down more work in the past two months than I did in the last year (not really, but it feels that way)
On the plus side- I'm very excited about everything I'm doing. The Marvel Adventures Iron Man issue looks great and American Dream is a wonderful book - Todd's Naucking it out of the park (har har)!
the Brave, Diebold.
Issue 10 of the current volume of the Brave and the Bold is out- I'm the inker on it, although I think, just from glancing at it, Bob Wiacek is credited. Not a tremendous deal, I think about 2 or 3 percent of my output has been mis-identified as me, when it's not me, or not me, when it is me. Bob gets this one. I'm sure when issue 11 comes out, I will be credited, when Bob should be credited with that... I'm sure I should muster up the energy to get it straightened out before the trade comes out, but - whatever. as long as I get paid fairly for the work that I have done, I don't care.
I saw
this about Warner's animation making a Brave and Bold animated Series, but I'll believe it when I see it - Warner's is alergic to making money off of their Comic Book properties, preferring to hand truckloads of money over to other studio rivals. It makes sense, if you think of Warner Brother's as the Bizarro version of a successful company.
Marvel Adventures Iron Man #11
I got to pencil and ink an issue of Marvel Adventures Iron Man - issue 11: I think it comes out next month. Here's a pic-
Also American Dream with Todd Nauck was announced - I'm inking that.
Everyone will know what I'm inking for DC when Action Comics issue 863 comes out.
Mike! Good to see you again!
always a lot of fun to read you again!
How's your life?
Fun with RSS feeds!
Whew!
Still looking for the sketches I did for that proposal Steve Gerber and I did together. I remember running across them in my flat files a few weeks ago, but the vast amount of pages I've done in the meantime seem to have buried them. I'll keep looking.
In the meantime, as a friend of mine pointed out, keep Mark Evanier away from my corpse. If I were the guy who wrote and drew Garfield, I'd feel a little nervous about my legacy if I thought that I hadn't bought Mark enough sandwiches. I'm sure whenever Stan Lee meets Galactus that final time, Mark will magically appear, damp obit in hand.
Here's a taste of what I've spent the last month doing-
It should be out in a few weeks time. The hint is - that's a white Right Whale you're looking at. First to solve the book that'll appear in wins the no-prize.
The Infamous Proust Questionnaire
I found
this on the web, through an article about Cookie monster on NPR.
The implication here is somehow that this questionnaire and the Proust's answers are somehow "exceptional", except - they're not, in any way exceptional. I don't understand.
First off - the only exceptional thing I can see is that he's given a questionnaire at a party, which likely means they're going to be read aloud at some point during the evening. What i'd like to see is some of the other people's answers, but because only one of the people at the party became famous - Proust- we're stuck never seeing anyone else's response. It's more a warning to the rest of us, really. Become famous or never be heard from - even the opinions you wrote down at a party in a dopey questionnaire where some woman's idiotic 13 year-old thought he was being clever and all growed-up, you won't ever be heard from again. His answers will be held up for all time, but your answer will be lost to the mists of time and space. If you're not destined to be famous, you might as well have just gotten drunk and vomited on the questionnaire, which would only have wound up as a footnote to Proust's story anyway.
In both questionnaires he's obtuse and churlish. In both he's clearly trying to please his host, likely older women. In the first he answers nearly every one with a slant toward pleasing his momma, which at 13 is only slightly surprising, unless his mother brought him to the party, which is likely. There is nothing out of place about many of his choices - Mozart, Pericles, et al., it's not as if he said "the Rolling Stones", he's completely a creature of his time, what else would he answer? Pliny the Younger is a little weird, but I'm sure he just read about him in the past year of his life, so that wouldn't be odd at all.
In the second questionnaire - he's clearly trying to get laid. He's 20. When asked his favorite flower - he answers "Hers" which he might as well have pointed to his girlfiriend's pants. Under what his favorite occupation is he put "loving", which is different from a 20 year old - how? Steve Bunche would have answered the same damn thing.
I see nothing exceptional here - just a horny 20 year old who listens to the pop music of the day, dutifully reads his books (or at least names authors of books, which is no great skill) and at 13 is at pains to mention his momma, which would likely make an impression on the older women at the party, which is just playing to the crowd. And by older women, we're probably talking about chicks in their early to mid- 30's, which is an awesome target demographic at any party, in my opinion.
Ugh. What is wrong with people?
Rest in Peace Steve-
Well, yesterday the phone lit up with folks letting me know that Steve Gerber passed away.
I knew Steve at Stan Lee Media and then knew him closer through a project we were working on, and then abandoned. I still have the treatment and the sketches I did for it. I wish we'd made it. It really just suffered from lack of time - on both our parts.
There's probably a warning in here about the works of Ozymandias, but I've always thought that poem was it's own rebuke - certainly Shelley's remarks have long since outlived his own working life. I think Steve's characters and concepts will live on in their own strange ways past his mortal life. I think he's very lucky in that regard, if luck can be spoken of in the hours following his untimely death.
Immortality of our thoughts and conceptions -
Ah, to even get a shot at that - Steve Gerber certainly provided works that will influence generations yet unknown, and will give them something to read and to think about as they hurl toward their own final curtains. Influence over the wayward path of mankind; Steve Gerber showed us his deep footstep in the march of our own dreams.
Rest.
Rest in peace.
