Happy New Year!

I'm spending New Year's Eve at the art table, penciling and inking like a madman, but I did want to take a moment and say, "Happy New Year!".

2010 was a good year for me. I got to work on IDW's Doctor Who comic book -- my all-time favorite character -- which led to not only doing more art on the book, but even getting to write and draw my own Doctor Who story for the 2010 IDW Doctor Who Annual. Definitely a career highlight for me. Not to mention, I also got to write a prose story for the 2010 Witchblade Annual, my first professional credit as a prose writer.

Speaking of Top Cow, I'm closing the year working with my old friend Ron Marz on two issues of Witchblade, which is a thrill. We haven't worked together since our days at Crossgen, and it's good to be a team again, if only for a couple issues.

And I even got to do one last project with Ben Abernathy at WildStorm before they closed their doors for good -- a few pages from a FRINGE graphic novel/motion comic they've been serializing on their Facebook page. Always a thrill to work with Ben.

So, yeah... it's been a good year. And there are lots of things either already on my slate or currently in development for next year. So here's to 2010, and to whatever 2011 will bring.

Have a great 2011, everyone!

Random Bits and Pieces

Just hit the halfway point on the first of my Witchblade fill-in issues, so still buried under work, but two nice things happened this week --

IDW Publishing's DOCTOR WHO comic made MTV Splash Page's Best Comics of 2010 list as "Best Licensed Comic", with a nice mention of the work Tony Lee and I have done on the title. Big thanks to Rick Marshall and the Splash Page crew for including us in such heady company.

And the first reviews of the 2010 Witcblade Annual (which features my short illustrated prose story, "Witchblade: the Devil's Due") are coming in and seem positive so far, especially a fun review from Graphic Policy, where the reviewer ended up enjoying my story despite finding a prose story in a comic book a little jarring.

-- Both nice ways to round out the year for me. I hope to have a few 'End of Year' posts up in the next couple of weeks, and maybe even a holiday image if I can get around to actually doing one at some point. In the meantime, I hope you are all enjoying a great holiday season.

On The Nightstand

MYSTERIES OF THE DIOGENES CLUB
by Kim Newman
Monkey Brain Books

It's a working weekend for me, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned the book currently sitting on my nightstand, Kim Newman's MYSTERIES OF THE DIOGENES CLUB. Anyone who knows me know two things about me -- I like Doctor Who and I love Kim Newman's books. This is third collection of Kim's incredible short stories featuring various incarnations of the Diogenes Club.

I first encountered Kim's take on the Diogenes Club in a series of inter-connected stories in Stephen Jones' excellent DARK DETECTIVES anthology, and I've been hooked ever since. Those stories are actually in this collection, which is nice, since I'm a little afraid to touch my DARK DETECTIVES hardcover after getting it signed by both Steve and Kim a few years ago. It holds pride of place in my office, along with my signed HERETICS OF DUNE, SHADOWLAND, and my shelf of random signed F. Paul Wilson novels.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this latest collection, along with the previous Diogenes Club collections, THE MAN FROM THE DIOGENES CLUB, and SECRET FILES OF THE DIOGENES CLUB. These stories hit all the right notes for me, and each time Newman puts out a new collection, I feel a powerful urge to grab people on the street and tell them to go buy a copy.

So, yeah... go buy a copy.

On The Shelves: 2010 Witchblade Annual

Buried under work right now - please forgive the lack of updates here on the blog and the lack of any developments on the Act Three Project - but I wanted to poke my head out and let you know that the 2010 Witchblade Annual, with my short story "Devil's Due" in it, hits shelves today.

(I'm actually kind of nervous about this one, since it's a bit of a departure for me, not to mention my first professionally published prose story. Here's hoping everyone gets a kick out of it and the illustrations I did to accompany the story.)

I'll be back to regular updates on the surprisingly large number of projects I've got going on right now just as soon as I've caught up on the one I'm currently working on.