Old City Blues - Cyberpunk graphic novel, done by a greek, set in ‘New Athens’. Obviously heavily inspired by the like of Akira and the works of Masamune Shirow, but it’s nice to see this sort of thing still getting made. It’s been a while since I got into some Cyberpunk.
Variant Covers for Before Watchmen - Can’t hide that I’m disappointed that these exist. I mean having this in the first place is bad enough, but rather than having a couple of pinups they’re doing variants just comes across as screwing a dead horse. Nice art though.
Ryan Woodward’s Bottom of the Ninth - an animated graphic novel, looks and feels absolutely incredible.
When I first got into American superhero comics in the early 90s, the two companies that completely captured my imagination were Image and Valiant Comics. What made things even more exciting for me was that these two universes had just had an inter company crossover, with the likes of Jim Lee, Joe Quesada, Mark Silvestri, Bob Layton all contributing. For me it was and still is a magical time in my comic book reading history, painted with nostalgia and a simpler time.
Nearly 20 years on, and things in the comic book landscape have changed. Jim Lee sold his company to DC Comics and now is Publisher at the company. Joe Quesada went on to become the EIC of Marvel and then Chief Creative Officer at Marvel. Valiant disappeared from the comic publishing scene, unable to really use the properties that they had at their disposal. A connected universe that resembled Marvel in ways that no other comic publishing company had achieved since - mainly thanks to the founder, Jim Shooter. If you’ve not understood yet, I’m a huge fan of that period in comics.
Valiant was bought by Acclaim comics and that was their second coming. They tried to revitalise the universe, with new creators and new directions. Ultimately it wasn’t good enough and sales faltered, with the company shutting it’s doors.
The third coming of Valiant comics came under the direction of Fabian Nicieza, but wasn’t really all that memorable.
The fourth coming of Valiant comics was revealed this week, with the release of X-O Manowar #1 - and I think that they finally have the right direction to build something that might last. What makes this attempt different you ask?
The first and foremost aspect of all of this is the fact that they’ve combined some exceptional high level talent for their books. Not only that, they’ve secured Cary Nord onto an exclusive contract, which hopefully means 12 solid issues of X-O manowar, their flagship title having a consistent creative team.
The books they’ve chosen to release have also been considered. The cover to Bloodshot #1 is arguably one of my favourite comic book covers of the year so far.
The most telling part of this new vision, is the logo. They went direct to the top and best creative talent in Rhian Hughes to update their logo. The original compass dial is iconic (at least in my eyes). Hughes cleverly kept that motif but updated it to include the Valiant ‘V’ in there. It feels modern but at the same time reminds you of the past very clearly. Something he has done with the rest of the trade dress for these books.
The biggest loss in my eyes is the fact that they don’t have the Gold Key characters in the fold as well. The presence of Solar, Magnus and Turok in the Valiant Universe feels natural and so the loss of these characters is definitely one I will miss moving forward. Having said that they still have a huge library of characters from which to choose from, the likes of Ninjak, Dr.Mirage and Rai all come to mind.
And of course it would be great if they could get Jim Shooter to write a graphic novel for them…but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.
Table-Taffy-Studios - The art of Sean Galloway and Ryan Benjamin. Also you can check out Sean Galloway’s Bastions 7 webcomic (in progress I guess). He’s bought in one of my favourite writers in J.Torres, so I’m all over this.
Just been listening to the Sidebar nation, and they have this fasinating interview with El Coro, about the graphic novel he’s created in his spare time, it’s called ‘The Transient Man’ and it’s seriously interesting, seeing as you can read 120 pages of the book online.
The Top Ten Comics of 2010 - by the New York Magazine. Predictably going for the indie market, but I’m impressed that Chew is on there. I’ve not been able to get into Pluto X, it just really doesn’t appeal to me, but it keeps getting rave reviews. The first volume has left me cold, I must admit.
I’ve been drawing a panel a day of my new comic. It’s going to be an online comic that comes out daily. Currently I’m trying to sort out a backlog so that if I can’t do a panel on a day it’s not the end of the world. This has been incredibly fun to do, as I’m seeing this world being built before my very eyes, in an incredible fast way. Is it as complex as my graphic novel? Of course not, it was never going to be that. This is a fun comic to read in the RSS reader on your way to work.
The special thing about it I guess is that it’s in full colour (or at least the limited pallete I’ve chosen) and was created on the iPhone. The reason I guess I’m doing it on the iPhone is part convenience and part novelty. The convenience is the fact that I can open my phone at any point and just doodle some more on a panel and then get back to whatever I was doing. The reason why this works rather than my using a Wacom pen, is the fact that the artwork is being created right underneath my ‘pen’ rather than infront on a screen. Closest to a digital sketchbook I’ve got, so I’m intrigued to see what opportunities an iPad will provide.
The creative process has been interesting, in so much as I’ve basically not written a script. The script get’s written as I draw. It gets updated and an idea will take another form, and I’ll end up drawing like 5 new panels or something taking the story in a completely different and interesting fun direction.
The thing about it all is that the world and the characters are becoming real very quickly. As with anything the more you do it the better you get at it, and it’s also interesting seeing how the look of the characters is evolving as I get more proficient at drawing them, with my current tools. There is a slow but constant evolution to the characters, which I’ve found to be very rewarding.
2 weeks ago I didn’t have anything, now I am looking at about two week’s worth of comics and several sketches and images of the various characters. The thing about this endevour is that once I hit play, I need to make sure that I create this thing in a timely fashion. I hit my daily deadline and if I don’t I have to make it up over the weekend. That gives me a two day buffer. I don’t want to share anything at the moment, but once I’ve got a month’s worth of stuff, I’ll be sure to start sharing and hoping you’ll share the love by telling others around you.