From The Closet: Batman

Another piece I found while digging everything out of my closet. Just a photocopy of the pencils, unfortunately. No idea what happened to the original art. I drew it for Mark Chiarello at DC to show him that I could draw traditional, slick, superhero art when I sent my mind to it. At the time, I was still heavily influenced by the work of Mike Mignola, but I wanted to add in some other art approaches I'd picked up from guys like Joe Quesada and Ed McGuinness. It was an interesting mix. Never drew a book in this style, which is probably for the best. It took me days to pencil this one piece. That's about four times as long as I usually take.

Now Playing

LISEY'S STORY
by Stephen King

Long week of work. Longer week of work ahead. And my writing muscles are itching for a long stretch of work on FADE. But the writing marathon will have to wait until I get caught up with the art assignments I already have.

In the meantime, I'm trying to immerse myself in more audiobooks to keep the writing part of my brain awake. This weekend it's another one of the Stephen King books I never finished -- LISEY'S STORY. Finally got through the CELL audiobook, which picked up in the last act. I suspect this one won't come together until the last act as well. It's a dense book (even on audio) with a lot of flashbacks, so we'll see where all these little details lead.

From The Closet: JACKSON KING, part 3

And here's the third and final STORMWATCH: PHD pinup from my closet. I found these with the original art from the issue they had me draw -- #5. Still have all the art from that issue. I think I'll pick a couple of the better pages and put them up for sale along with the pinups.

From The Closet: JACKSON KING, part 2

And here's the second of the three pieces I did while preparing for STORMWATCH: PHD #5. This time, I drew Jackson King in his various incarnations over the course of the Stormwatch books.

From The Closet: JACKSON KING

And here's the first of the pieces I came across while cleaning out my closet. It's a pinup featuring Jackson King from STORMWATCH that I drew as a sample for Wildstorm a couple of years ago. They wanted me draw an issue of the new (at the time) STORMWATCH:PHD series, so I did three pieces with King to show them what I could do.

Spring Cleaning

I've been meaning to go through my old files of original art for a while now, but I didn't get around to it until this afternoon. Probably just the usual Spring cleaning urge, or the fact that the closet in my office is starting to get a little cramped with all the boxes of art and books.

As I started to sort through the boxes, finding old art and comics that I barely remember drawing, I suddenly realized that I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pages of original art collecting dust there in the closet. I now have four stacks of art sitting on the guest bed. One is old stuff, one is SUPERNATURAL: ORIGINS artwork, one is MIRROR'S EDGE artwork, and one is pinups and other odds and ends.

Yeah, it's definitely time to get rid of all this stuff. Still not sure the best way to start selling off my original art, but for now I think I'll have to set up an 'Original Art For Sale' page on my website. Look for that in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I'll post scans of some of the pieces I've discovered as I go through all of it.

Jim Royal, 1970-2009

Living where I do in Upstate New York, I'm pretty well out of the loop of the comic book world. Most of the news I get comes from my close circle of friends in the industry, and most of that news is about some really great new artist they think I should check out, or a new website for some really great artist from the 40s or 50s.

So, almost four months after it happened, I'm only now learning that one of my oldest friends in the business has died just short of his 39th birthday. You may not have heard of Jim Royal, but he was an inker who worked for almost every company in the business, from Caliber to DC to Marvel. But for me, he was the guy who single-handedly got me in the business.

After college, I was down in Birmingham, AL where my father was running a television station. I hadn't had a stellar college career and I was stuck in a succession of retail jobs while working on my own comics and dreaming of a chance to break in. One night, a lanky guy walks into the record store where I was working and asked to speak with someone - a friend of his who worked for the record chain - that I'd never heard of. Turns out his friend worked at one of our other stores and the lanky guy had shown up at the wrong location.

While we sorted out where his friend was and how to get there, the lanky guy and I got to talking. Turns out he was a comic book inker by the name of Jim Royal. When I told him I was a wannabe comic book artist, he asked if he could see any of my stuff. In those days, I always had something with me, so I showed him zeroxes of my latest pages there on the spot. He loved them.

Before he left, Jim gave me his phone number and invited me down to Montgomery to hang out with him and his studio mate, Andrew Robinson. I went down a couple of times to sit around, drink beers, smoke, and talk about comics. I always brought whatever new pages I was working on and showed them around. One night, Jim asked if he could send some of my pages to a guy he knew at Caliber Comics.

And that's how I got my first comic book work. Jim sent the pages, the guy at Caliber called me, and I got invited to do a story for NEGATIVE BURN.

I haven't talked to Jim in a while, but he's never been far from my mind. Every few years one of us calls the other and we spend a few hours on the phone catching up, talking, and laughing. I've always looked forward to those re-connecting phone calls.

The horrible thing was that in trying to re-connect with him now (last time Jim found ME, so this time was probably my turn), I came across the news that he'd died. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that he's gone. He was always there with a big grin and a story, and beer or cigarette if you needed one.

I'm not a religious man, but Jim, I hope you're out there, and I hope you know how much I'm going to miss those phone calls. Thanks for everything you did for me, and I hope wherever you are, it's a good, happy place.