Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein: The French Edition!

Satoshi Kon "Opus" and "Tropic of the Sea"

I'll start out by saying that I am not a huge manga fan. Back in the early 90's I tried reading "Lone Wolf and Cub" because Frank Miller was inspired by that...it was very good, but I liked Frank Miller's interpretation of that more than the original material.

I was blown away when I read "Domu" by Otomo Katsuhiro. Since then, I have also read "Akira" and purchased a few art books by Otomo Katsuhiro. Also, when I was in Japan in late 1990's, I somehow stumbled onto the work of Katsuya Terada and I have been keeping up with his art books and his Monkey King comics. But apart from those two creators I don't really read a lot of manga.

At least that was true until about a month ago when I "discovered" the manga work of Satoshi Kon. WOW!

As I understand it, Otomo Katsuhiro was his artistic mentor and I guess the art style was the first thing that I noticed. I liked the art and thought the story idea behind "Tropic of the Sea" was interesting. Big development firm moving into a small sleepy sea side village and starting to change the way of life. The catch is that the village supposedly has a pack with the mermaids. Will the fisherman be pushed out? Will the economic factors outweigh tradition? Are there really such things as mermaids?

I gave it a try and loved it. As always there were a couple of places in the story, where I felt that there was a cultural factor that I didn't understand, but overall it was an excellent story, beautifully drawn, and wonderfully laid out (I still get chills when I remember those night time scenes in the still waters of the bay).

So I looked for other books and found "Opus", the story of a manga artist who ends up being sucked into his manga and eventually pulls his creations into his own "reality". That was just fantastic (in any sense of the word). The only regret is that the story was never finished...but that is OK.

I have just purchase a 420 page collection of earlier Satoshi Kon's short stories from the 1980's called "Dream Fossil". I am looking forward to start reading it :)

Muirwood from Amazon's Jet City Comics

For the last few months I have been working on a comic book adaptation of "Lost Abbey", a short novella by Jeff Wheeler. The comic book will be a bridge between Muirwood trilogies and apart from the book covers will be the first graphic visualization of the special world that Jeff created in his books.

I am working on this project with writers Matt Sturges and David Justus. On the art side of things I am re-united with Lizzy John, who did such brilliant work painting my Dark Crystal pages (as well as the Cave Girl story from Moon Lake). 

I am also re-united with editor Paul Morrissey. Paul and I worked together on "Legends of Mouse Guard" #1 as well as a portion of Dark Crystal Vol 2.

I had the pleasure of exchanging e-mails with Jeff Wheeler, who reviews all the artwork, and provides feedback when we don't quite "hit all the notes" just right. I think with Jeff's involvement we will be able to create a graphic novel that will enhance his creations and give his fans a visual treat.

So, 5 issues, 22 pages each...total of 110 pages :)

More info as images get released!

Dark Crystal III is complete, now on to Amazon!

It is hard for me to believe, but after almost 4 years of work, I have completed the art for three original Dark Crystal graphic novels. There were other projects throughout (Strangeways story with Matt Maxwell, Outlaw Territory story with Ryan Sook, Cave Girl with Dan Fogler, Kristo with Sam Roads, and the newly printed Odd Ball with Norman Felchle), but Dark Crystal work has always been present...now it is out of my hands, going through lettering/coloring/formatting. The solicitation states that the final third volume will be out by August of 2015.




Dark Crystal volumes 1 and 2 have already sold out and volume 1 (that once made it onto the New Year Bestseller List) will get a new softcover edition this year.




Working on Dark Crystal helped push me in developing as a better visual storyteller and I got a chance to work more on my process of actually drawing finished comic book pages. I am far from my ideal goal, but I am making progress (in the right direction).




As I was nearing the end of my work on Dark Crystal, I got a call from Paul Morrissey. Paul was my editor on Dark Crystal volume 2, as well as Legends of Mouse Guard volume 1. He was now working for Jet City Comics (a graphic novel division of Amazon.com) and wanted to see if I would be available to work on one of his projects. I have always enjoyed working with Paul, so the answer was "yes", but Paul also told me that he would like to also have Lizzy John on the art team. Lizzy has done a fantastic job painting over my scribbles for all three Dark Crystal volumes and on the 50+ page Cave Girl story. My "yes" became a resounding "YES"!




There hasn't been an official announcement yet, so I'll hold off until the next post to talk about the actual title of the project and the writer associated with it, but I can mention that apart from a chance to work with Paul and Lizzy again, I am really excited about a chance to draw a fantasy graphic novel of over 100 pages and try to make it as unique as the source material!


More next time...

Dark Crystal III starts ... now

I have started drawing pages for Dark Crystal: Creation Myths III for BOOM! Studios. Written by Matt Smith and colored by Lizzy, this promises to be a great project.

Solomon Kane

The coming of Conan....

Thanos sketch covers

Conan the Cimmerian

Kristo is now available for sale!

"Kristo" is a re-imagining of Alexander Duma's "The Count of Monte Cristo", set in Stalinist Soviet Union of 1930-1950s. It is a story that I wanted to do for a while, but until Sam Roads got involved in finishing the script and helping raise funds to pay for finishing/coloring/lettering all of the artwork it was just a dream. Now, thanks to Sam and to the folks who got involved in the Kickstarter campaign, "Kristo", a 50 page graphic novel, is available for purchase from an online on-demand printer:

"Kristo" at Indy Planet

Here is the preview, the first 6 pages of "Kristo":

If you like what you see, please help spread the word about the book!

A couple of cool upcoming books.

So just to make it clear, my blog is not "monetized" (is that a real word?). I am not trying to sell anything to anyone, but I think there are some wonderful artists who are finally getting their due and more and more collections of their work are being reprinted. It would be a shame if the new publications went unnoticed, so lets help spread the word :)

All are available on amazon for pre-order.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez: 
Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex Volume 2 TP Paperback – March 25, 2014

There is only about 5-6 issues of his work in this upcoming collection,

but each one is a gem and will be printed here in black and white. I am truly

looking forward to this volume of western adventures!

Cinder & Ashe Paperback – July 8, 2014
It is just a crime (a real crime!) that this series has been out of print since it's original
publication. I would love to see a hardcover collection of this modern "crime noir"
story with extra pages devoted to sketches and character studies, but alas...I
might have to wait another 20 years for that :)

Howard Chaykin:
Satellite Sam Volume 1 TP Paperback – February 18, 2014
I have seen individual floppies of this series. Black and white murder mystery in the
middle of Hollywood is a perfect setting for Chaykin and Matt Fraction seems to
be on the same wavelength with Chaykin writing this as a crazy ride through
blackmail and plunging TV ratings.

Katsuya Terada:
Dragon Girl and Monkey King: The Art of Katsuya Terada - August 5, 2014

A long time ago I went to Japan. I was really looking forward to going to bookstores and buying some cool books (this was all before the explosion of the internet). My dreams were destroyed when I realized that ALL books were shrink wrapped. It was funny to see, how the Japanese, who are so proper, had no problem sitting in a bookstore for hours and reading books that were available...and how the store owners kept trying to kick them out and re-shrink wrap the books. But not being able to read Japanese, I had no idea what was the content of the books. All the covers look great, but I did not want to spend $20 on a nice cover and 300 pages of text in a foreign tongue. So I gambled and bought only one book, "Monkey King" by Terada. I lucked out because I loved it. Later on Dark Horse reprinted same volume (and vol 2) and I could finally read it. Now Dark Horse is putting out a collection of this fantastic artist. No idea what will be inside, but I already pre-ordered a copy :)

Corrado Mastantuono, Disney, and Tex...all in Italian!

I sort of stumbled on the art of Corrado Mastantuono by accident. I was looking through a website that catalogued French comics and saw a cover for a comic book called "Elias Le Maudit" ("Elias the Cursed"). The cover was drawn by Mastantuono and reminded me a bit of Liberatore.

My search lead me to find out that Mastantuono is an Italian artist who was working for Disney at the time, but he did some western stories for the Italian market. I needed-up purchasing some of the French reprints of his Tex comics and I highly recommend them. All stories are over a hundred pages long and are printed in gorgeous black and white. They are done in a looser style than the above cover and have a cool John Buscema/Frank Frazetta vibe to them.

I also found a bunch of images on the web featuring his designs for Disney. They looked great! His "cute" stuff had real structure to it and was very expressive. But his stories were always part of some Disney magazine with just a few pages at a time, available only in Italy, and costing a more to ship to US than reasonable. I kept looking for a collection of his Disney work but could never find it...until about a year ago.

Le Grandi Storie: Bum Bum Ghigno is a black and white 222 page collection that got published in 2002, but I only saw it last year. It was a bit pricey, but I picked up a copy on e-Bay that, after shipping, cost me $55. It's well worth it. I enjoy looking at it and seeing the wonderful way his characters move around the page.

So does it mean if you live in US you have to shell out $55 to enjoy this? NO!

Just a few months ago a new collection has been published. "Disney D'Autore: Corrado Mastantuono".

It's 520 pages (!). Full (wonderful flat color) color! Includes a few sketches and a few roughs, but mostly all comics. It reprints the previous collection and an extra 300 pages of material. It is in Italian, but has such wonderful storytelling that it is enjoyable even if you don't speak Italian. For example, the episode where Mickey goes back to find his old boat "Steamboat Willie" is both charming and nostalgic.

And here is another good news: it is available on amazon.com for $27 plus $4 shipping, or you can buy it on amazon.it for 14 euro plus around 10 euro shipping, or e-Bay for something in between those two options.

The full story!

And the English version.....

Michael Kaluta drawing Flash Gordon ?!?!?!

I stumbled on a few pages of Kaluta's artwork featuring Flash Gordon...beautiful pages! I have never heard of any Flash Gordon storylines done by Kaluta!

 Does anyone have any ideas?

Сталин, Берия, Отечественная Воина, и конечно МЕСТЬ! Серп и Молот! Новый Коникс!

Jim Starlin Returns to Thanos in an original Marvel Graphic Novel in 2014!

There was the "Death of Captain Marvel" that was incredible and now Starlin is returning to Marvel with a new graphic novel centered around Thanos called "Thanos: The Infinity Revelation". Here is what Starlin had to say in a recent interview: "...it's mainly Thanos' and Adam Warlock's story...I think Warlock is the closest thing Thanos has to a friend. Warlock has always approached him after they've gone through a few things, saying, "How can I minimize what he's going to do?" Thanos at this point has come to the realization that he is insane. He's working on a whole different level of reality than anyone else, other than perhaps Warlock. Warlock is also out of the norm. Death doesn't have a real heavy sway on either one of them. They tend to be cast as players in cosmic dramas that are way beyond their plane of existence. Both have learnt to expect the unexpected, to try and let as little damage be done by what we're doing as possible. That's not always a consideration for Thanos, but certainly for Warlock. This is a story of undefined obsession, mostly on Thanos' part. I know that's obscure, but I'd rather not go any farther than that." Can't wait! More on Marvel.com: http://marvel.com/news/comics/2013/12/31/21691/unlock_thanos_the_infinity_revelation_with_jim_starlin#ixzz2pRyxmXrx

Howard Chaykin, Lee Child, Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher, and ... I

Howard Chaykin has recommended Jack Reacher books to me. The above statement makes it sound like Howard Chaykin actually knows who I am, but thats not quite true. We are "Facebook friends" and we once in a while exchange messages recommending books to each other. Through this friendly exchange I have discovered Alan Furst, Lee Child, Amor Tower's "Rules of Civility", AND Richard Price (whose "Samaritan" is the best crafted crime fiction book I ever read...thank you Mr. Chaykin!). I am actually pretty amazed at the range of Howard Chaykin's reading interests and his ability to absorb information. I believe my only contribution was recommending Bernard Cornwell, Mary Renault, and Erik Larson's "In the Garden of Beasts". So anyhow, I started picking up Jack Reacher novels at the library, either as regular books or as audio recordings. I think I got through 5 or 6 different books. Some I liked more than others, but on the whole I enjoyed them all. In fact I enjoyed the genre enough to pick-up a few Jesse Stone books as well (and I watched all the Tom Selleck movies based on Jesse Stone character). And just about as I was in the middle of this crime fiction serial book phase, I read that Tom Cruise will be Jack Reacher on the big screen. I don't know who I expected to play Jack Reacher, but it definitely was not Tom Cruise. Jack Reacher (in my mind's eye) was big, ugly, and looked more like Robert Mitchum (with a broken nose). Tom Cruise is trim, compact, and graceful...he looks more like a ballet dancer to me. I did not make it a priority to see "Jack Reacher" when it first came out in the theaters, but just last weekend I saw it at the library and I picked it up. Got to watch it over the holidays, and I have to say Tom Cruise did a great job. In fact I liked the angle that a lot of big guys did not take him seriously because he was shorter. Also this movie definitely tried to underline the fact that in a gun fight, your height is not the deciding factor. This was not a perfect movie, but it was enjoyable and some parts of the novel were perfectly adopted to suit the strengths of film and some were re-written to fit the new medium better. There were one or two scenes that made me "stumble" as a viewer, but over all (just like the books that inspired the movie) I enjoyed the film. I think I would have also enjoyed Howard Chaykin graphic novel adaptation of one of the Child's books :)

Frank Frazetta ... Russ Cochran ... Artist Edition

In the last 3 years I have been caught-up in the “Artist Edition” frenzy that got started by IDW with their reprinting of Dave Stevens’ “Rocketeer” from the original art boards. I already have an entry on this blog about my opinions about the origin of this trend (posted back in 2012), so I won’t repeat myself about that but I would like to write about a recent “discovery” on my part. Three weeks ago I was flipping through a Frank Frazetta book called “Icon”. Just getting inspired to try to push myself and try to do interesting art, and on one of the biographical text pages in the book, I saw a little insert reproduction of a cover for a publication called “Untamed Love”. Oh, sure "Untamed Love", I have a copy, published by Fantagraphics almost 30 years ago, reprinting Frazetta’s romance comics. Three or four stories, drawn by Frazetta in the 1950, that just blew my mind when I first read them. It is one of the few comics that I keep in an easily accessible drawer next to my drawing table. Incredible stuff for sure. But funny enough, the cover does not look familiar and as I read the text I realize that this is something different. A quick search on the web and…it turns out Russ Cochran, back in 1970s produced two oversize black and white Frazetta reprints. First, “Untamed Love”, collecting four Frazetta romance stories from the 1950’s shot from the originals that Frazetta had (stored in his closet no less). Second, was the collection of all the Thunda stories drawn by Frazetta also shot from originals (also stored in Frazetta’s closet). Both editions are oversized, bigger than modern magazines (but regretfully not the full size of the original artwork). Years later, Fantagraphics used these editions to produce comic book sized colorized versions of the same stories that I am familiar with.

I thought that these must be obscure, limited print runs that are impossible to find and must be worth hundreds of dollars at this point. Right? Wrong! Just for the fun of it, I went to e-Bay (but of course) and searched for them to see if maybe I can find a ripped-up copy without a cover for a decent price. I was greeted with a pleasant surprise. After about a week of looking through different listings I was able to purchase both, “Untamed Love” and “Thunda”, collections for about $30 each. Both have arrived and they are in great shape with no missing pages, coffee stains, or ripped covers. $60 is nothing to sneeze at, but considering that this is as close to a Frazetta Artist Edition that I am likely to ever come…I am very happy I found these, and I recommend for anyone who is into Artist Editions to check them out!

Another interesting note. In an art book called "Frank Frazetta: Testament", there is a wonderful reprint of another Frazetta romance story. It is also shot from originals and is reproduced in a wonderful gray scale that shows every brush stroke. Regretfully the last page must have been lost because it is clearly NOT reproduced from the original artwork. This must have been the reason why it is not included in the original "Untamed Love" collection. If I could find a cheap copy of "Testament", I would be happy to rip the pages out and hard bind my own copy with all 5 stories in one book :)

Kristo ... soon!