From The Closet: How To Be a Post-Modern Cartoonist

As many of you now know, I've been working on four issues of the new Doctor Who ongoing series at IDW, which has kept me pretty buried for the last few weeks. Since I haven't had any time to finish and scan the next installment of my Pilot Season project, I thought I'd put up another of the pages I discovered while cleaning out the art in my closet.

As far as I know, this is my first published comic book work, at least the first work that was published without a photocopier. I drew it when I was still in college, 19 or 20 years old, and apparently incredibly cynical, maybe even more so than what I like to think of as my Dark Years (i.e. my time in L.A.). It was published in the college literary annual, the name of which completely escapes me, though I'm pretty sure I still have a copy of it somewhere.

A few years later, I would make my 'professional' debut in the pages of Caliber Comics' NEGATIVE BURN anthology, but I guess you could say this short piece is where I really got my start.

Project News: DOCTOR WHO

For those of you who have been wondering about the secret project I've been talking about for the last few months, I'm very excited to be able to finally tell you that I've been drawing a four-part story in IDW Publishing's new DOCTOR WHO ongoing series.

As anyone who knows me or has read any of my blog entries is surely aware, I'm a huge DOCTOR WHO fan, so the assignment is a real thrill for me. And as excited (and a little terrified) as I am to be working with one of my favorite characters, I'm equally excited by the script I've been given. Tony Lee, who wrote the excellent DOCTOR WHO: THE FORGOTTEN is handling all of the writing for the ongoing series, with rotating art teams coming in to draw each story. My story starts with issue 3, which is in this month's Previews, with a September release date.

And the best part? Paul Grist is providing the covers. I'm a big fan of Paul's work so it's a dream come true to work on a project with him doing the covers. I'll be doing a couple of variant covers for the run (the piece above is the variant cover for #3), but I'd rather have the Grist covers.

On The Nightstand

NECROSCOPE II: VAMPHYRI!
by Brian Lumley

I'm on the last leg of this issue of my secret project (which I hope will be public knowledge soon), so I don't have a lot of time to read, but I've still managed to make it through the first two books in Brian Lumley's NECROSCOPE series.

I hadn't really heard of Lumley before I went to work at Borders, but I'd vaguely heard of the first book in the series, NECROSCOPE, probably because there were a couple of NECROSCOPE comic books in the early 90's, including one at the company where I started out -- Caliber Comics.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have read any of these books if I hadn't developed a serious interest in learning how to write prose around the same time I started at Borders. I'd always read a lot of Horror, so I was pretty sure that if I was going to write anything it would be in that genre, so I started educating myself by reading as many Horror novels as I could get my hands on.

I read a lot books by authors I'd always loved, studying how the constructed sentences, paying attention to the flow of their plotting and the various ways they kept the narrative moving forward. When I'd finished with those, I started in on many of the classics of the genre, like THE EXORCIST, THE STEPFORD WIVES, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and others. And when I'd read as many of those as I could, I started in on the authors my favorite writers were always talking about, which led me to guys like Richard Matheson, Richard Laymon, Fritz Leiber, and Brian Lumley.

I tried some of Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos stories first, which to be honest, was a bit of a mistake. It's good stuff -- well-written and evocative -- but the NECROSCOPE series is where Lumley really seems to shine. His blend of Vampires and British espionage is original and engaging, written with his usual flair, but tackling old subjects in a new and interesting way. I burned through all of the NECROSCOPE books at the time, skipping over the VAMPIRE WORLD novels (which I thought were going to be more Fantasy than Horror) and the two LOST YEARS novels (since I have a hard time when an author goes back to do a new story stuck in the middle of a long series you've already gotten to the end of).

But with the DARK TOWER books finally read and back on the shelves in my office, I'm now on a mission to read all of the NECROSCOPE books -- including the ones I skipped first time through -- from the start of the series to the end, and I'm pleased to discover that I still enjoy Lumley's writing as much as I did when I first picked them up.

I'm not as interested in the Horror genre as I was when I started figuring out how to write prose, but I learned a lot about writing from reading Lumley. He's a tight plotter, excellent with characterization, and very good at the old pulp rule of "if your hero is in trouble, throw more trouble at them whenever possible". It's an entertaining way to write, and a lot of fun to read, especially when the writer creates a sympathetic and complex main character like Harry Keogh.

And seriously, how can any book with an exclamation point in the title not be entertaining. Pure Pulp fun written by a real master of the craft.

Original Art Requests

I'm going to put another big batch of original art up on my for sale blog to help with my mission to clear out the stacks of art in my office, not to mention the always helpful extra money to help cover the time off I'm going to be taking to finish the Fade novel. Trying to decide whether I should upload the art from my issue of STORMWATCH:PHD, more art from SUPERNATURAL:ORIGINS, the first issue's worth of pages from MIRROR'S EDGE, or random leftover pages from the NIGHTCRAWLER mini-series I drew. Not too mention the various pages I have from other projects that have been gathering dust in my office. There's a lot of original art to chose from, but if there's anything you'd like to see go up, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Original Art Update

Buried under week this weekend, so I still haven't had time to pull together the JOHNNY CHAOS pitch for my Pilot Season project, but I'll jump on it as soon as the issue I'm currently working on is wrapped up. Gonna' be a long week, though. Lots to do before I can put this issue to bed.

In the meantime, I've put all of the art from SUPERNATURAL: ORIGINS #1 up for sale my original art blog. Still hoping to get this stack of art out of my office, but every time I turn around, I find more pages from various projects. I'll post a few of my discoveries after I'm done with this week's work.

Pilot Season: JOHNNY CHAOS layout

I've been buried under deadlines all week, but I found a little time to work on the next concept for my Pilot Season project, JOHNNY CHAOS. After looking through the old CHAOS material from my closet, I decided to make a few major changes, including turning Johnny into a teenager as opposed to the slightly cynical twenty-something from this projects earlier incarnations. I also found myself shifting his origin around a bit, since I'd stolen some of my ideas for Johnny and incorporated them into the FADE novel.

Now that I've got all of that sorted, here's a look at my design for the presentation piece I'm working up to go along with the new proposal. Hopefully I can steal a little time this weekend to do the finished piece.

On The Nightstand

DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA
by Stephen King

I remember when the first Dark Tower book came out, and I remember reading in the afterword that King wasn't sure he'd ever finish the entire story, and I remember thinking that he HAD to, and that I HAD to be around to read it.

Well, he DID finish the story, and I AM around to read the rest of the books, but for some reason, I never did.

Don't get me wrong, I bought them all, and in hardcover, no less. But somehow, the burning desire to know how the story ended faded over the years. I got about halfway through the fourth book when it came out, set it down, and never picked it up again.

(Though I DID leaf through to look at all of the illustrations by the brilliant Dave McKean. I might have lost some of my need to finish the stories, but I'm not an idiot.)

The seven Dark Tower books have been sitting on the bookshelves in my office for years, gathering dust and mostly forgotten until a few months ago, when I took the 4th book down for another look at the little pen & ink illustrations McKean had done for the start of each section in the book. And suddenly, I realized that I actually needed to know how it all ended. I already a pretty good idea from the parts of DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD & GLASS I'd read years before, but I really wanted to know for sure.

I started with the beginning of book 4, realized I had no idea what was going on, and decided to start over with book 1. It's been long enough that the storytelling subtleties, not to mention large portions of the actual plot, are long gone from my memory, so it was like reading them for the first time.

To be honest, I stalled again in the middle of book 4, but after a long day of drawing, I was lying in bed, awake and worrying about my deadlines and had to do something with my brain other than thinking. So I picked it up, settled in for a few hours of reading, and finished it in one gulp. When it was done, I went into my office and grabbed the fifth book, WOLVES OF THE CALLA, and got it started before I lost momentum.

I don't have a lot of time for reading these days, but I downed WOLVES in a handful of big gulps. And without giving anything away, I'm pretty sure it's heading in the direction I thought it was, but that need to know how it all ends remains. In a strange way, I think I never really wanted it to end. And maybe that's why I avoided reading the last books when they finally came out.

I'm on book 6 now, SONG OF SUSANNAH, with book 7 still waiting for me. I'm not sure it can live up to the expectations of the teenager who first read THE GUNSLINGER, but one way or another, I'm going to find out.