Was taking a brake from Sea of Red work and contemplating what kind of art i might be able to sell on ebay [managed to move some Dr Strange work recently but my T3 pages didn’t get any bites, hmmm] when I came across this, some Colour guide art [colours by Kevin Tinsley] for sale in the UK from my very very first Marvel job, done back in the early early 90's! kind’a neat.

I got this gig just after I did these test pages for DC, the first one, which this art comes from, was an emergency replacement to do the last 19 pages of a book the lead artist had bailed out on. I later discovered duriing later gigs with the same editor that it may well have been in part due to a fractious relationship with said editor.

But at the time it was just a golden opportunity to show what I could do. I set my then all time speed record, drawing 19 pages in 10 days. On the last 48 hr stretch I came down with a nasty bug and popped codeine pills to keep lucid, at the desk and working. They also caused me to have very lucid and disturbing dreams when I did sleep. On the last day of the job, at 8 am I finished the last page and headed to the copy shop to fax it to marvel’s office. I arrived to find the 24hr shop closed over night for a Holliday weekend that I had failed to notice with my head in the work for the last two weeks.

I had to have it in for that morning, so I waited till 10am on a cool drizzly day as the sun came up coming down from the codeine and feeling the sleep depravation badly. When the doors opened I went in and while waiting to be served Chester Brown came in to copy his panels for the Playboy book too. I knew him from around the hood and ran into him at that shop a lot, and attempted to make small talk. But being twisted on pharmaceutical and natural drugs of various sorts, only succeeded in stammering junkie like and wining a startled expression from him. :-P

I did manage to impressing the heck out of my editor, leading to a second one shot on Night Breed, followed but landing the contract to draw Saint Sinner.

SEA OF RED #1: Image has provided Newsarama with a seven page preview of Rick Remender, Kieron Dwyer and Salgood Sam’s Sea of Red, an ongoing series debuting in March.

CONCEPT
Sea of Red tells the tale of a young sailor turned undead by the crew of a cursed Pirate ship, his century-spanning search for revenge and the tricks that time plays on the mind.

THIS ISSUE
1533. Deep in the night, a ship sinks under mysterious circumstances. Twenty-three year-old Marco Esperanza is the only survivor, left adrift with only a plank of wood to keep him afloat. After days of drifting, he is brought aboard a strange ship. But his salvation turns to nightmare as he learns the ship is the dreaded Black Galleon. The evil mates of the Galleon aren’t just pirates, they’re vampires, and Marco is soon forced to join the damned crew.

2004. Marco Esperanza has spent the past 400 years clinging to life tied to the bow of a sunken vessel in the dark, briny, deep. Surviving on the cold sour blood of fish, Marco awaits his release and a chance for revenge that may never come.

...so i can take a day trip to White River Junction, Vt, and visit the Center for Cartoon Studies, just 3 hours, 19 minutes away buy car. Hmmm. I'll have to due with this till then.

I’m feeling slightly inspired by this post over on my old friend Jim’s site about what he calls extreme flaneuring, something I came across while channel surfing at a friends who had cable over the holidays, I saw a documentary about the French guys who invented the formal sport, Free Running. It fetured a demonstration of their foot work over the roof tops of London.

Makes me wish I had a 20 year olds body agine, but still, I can do this still, if not quite as extremely.

I used to do this in fact, when I was a kid. Run flat out and treat anything that got in the way as something to jump, climb, or dance around. In the beaches of Toronto, where I spent part of my child hood, there are big water brakes made up of chunks of rock and concrete, plied up in huge mounds with crevices and gaps, off kilter surfaces and ridges all over. It was great fun to race across the tops, having to pick out contact points as you went along, trying to just keep going, as fast as you can. I don’t recall ever failing to make my leaps and falling, it felt great to do, makes you feel alive.

It’s the same thing that I still get out of riding my bike in the city – I’m very careful and conscious at all times on the road, but I’m sure my approach to riding in traffic would make many people cringe. I never let it go to my head or allow my guard to drop, but after nearly 20 years of riding in the midst of it all - treating the cars as moving dangerous obstacles that I can navigate and dance around on my second wheeled skin without so much as a few minor bumps and flat tiers – I still have the first bike I bought in fact, in full working order 20 years latter - I now feel as safe in that environment as I do on my feet on the sidewalk, safer really.

At least on the road I’m expecting and looking for trouble. On the sidewalks I always wonder some what paranoidally if one day I’ll end up as one of those stories you hear about in the news, about some car jumping curb and taking out a few people like so many pins. I never have that kind of thought about cycling, I feel at least like I have a fighting chance on my wheels, on my feet, as I get older, I feel more and more like a target for the hazards of the world. Not a new years resolution as much as a general trend of the last few years has been to work on that. Trick is finding ways to make it fun, to keep at it. Maybe this? I’ll have to get me some good cross trainers and start free running, hone those road instincts for the sidewalks.

So that if I ever hear that tale tale sound of tiers and engines from behind while walking down the street one day - sounds I’m already highly attuned to on my bike and react to instinctively – I\ll be able to step lightly, and dance over the hood of the fossil fuel eater, skipping away as though it were all part of the plan, like some big urban cat. Hmmmm.

It’s sot of an obvious sport really, like walking or normal running, though calling it a sport is not something anyone would have done till the age of ‘extreme’ sports. Ah, my fellow sideways thinking slacker comrades make me feel proud. I’ve always loved looking at things upsides down.

I’m about to dig into some recent work by Jim, something we talked about collaborating on in the near future.

And by the way, spacing is a really good magazine/movement, do your self a favour, check it out.

Ok, here’s a link to all my current E-bay sales

Dr Strange, Song Of The Blood Opal & A Love Supreme

These are both from the early mid 90’s. Both written by David Quinn. Song Of The Blood Opal took place during a stoline involving several mystical clones of Strange, and features Blade as well [pre movies] and Morbius the Living Vampire. This is also the first appearance of the Tempo, a skyscraper Strange called home briefly. I had to design this as part of the job.

These pages were drawn size as, two to a sheet. So with the exception of the fist page, and the last [which I don't own any more] they come as sets of two. They were done with drawing pens, markers & white paint on Bristol. The first page also has two parts, the original art and a past up I did, reworking of the layout and redrawing the key supporting figure, a girl in a sexy cat suit. - I'm selling them as a set as well so you'll get both if you buy that.

Here are links to galleries of the full sets of pages that I have [Song Of The Blood Opal & A Love Supreme]. If you see one you want to buy that’s not up on ebay right now feel free to contact me about buying that. I’m open to negotiation so pitch me a price you think’s fair, and I’ll let you know it it works for me…;)

Inking from TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, books one and two.

I was working with Ivan Brandon on Script, inking over masterfully drafted pencils by Goran Parlov, and toped off with colours Paul Mounts. This work was completed in early 2003. Here's the gallery section on my site for the project.

This is a new ongoing series of GN being published by Beckett Comics. It was launched in tandem with the third film in the franchise, the last made before Arnold became governor Schwarzenegger. Historic factoid: this work im told represent the first time ever Arnold Schwarzenegger signed off on his likeness for a comic book. There is a quote on the front of the page of issue 1 of RISE OF THE MACHINES praising our work on the book from him. “These guys are amazing. They really get terminator. They have a real understanding of what makes these characters and situations so powerful. It’s exciting to see their work expand on the franchise” - he likes it, he really really likes it!

Ironic factoid: Arnold ran on a platform that included some very vocal decrying of the farming out of film work to Canadian production houses instead of home grown Hollywood studios. But he didn’t seem to mind a Canadian inker on the book. Oh well, not for me to complain, I got paid nicely by the folks at Beckett and it was one of the most pleasant and painless jobs I have ever had to date.

These pages are as seen now, in some places the blacks were not filled in [done digitally later] – in those cases I’ll ink them in if the buyer requests it.

Some of these are full pages, done using a light box. Then ½ of the way through or so of the first issue I switched to printing the pencils out onto 8.5x11” sheets of Bristol [braking them up into single panels or sets of a few per sheet] and inking them like that. Id scan them in and reassemble the pages in Photoshop.

These were done with mostly a small brush, though I used a brush pen on some of the first few, and a drawing pen for some of the detail work in general.

Most of this work is done on Strathmore Bristol, but a few of the light boxed pages were done using velum. Those will be mounted onto some Bristol for shipping and presentation.

Prices don not include shipping or special requests. The art will be delivered with a certificate of authenticity singed by me and detailing some of the provenance for the work.

these are the first five of a small lot i'll be posting for sale over the next two days.



you can brose the whole lot in advance by looking here, and here. Also there is my regular comix art gallery as well, and the illustration gallery. If you see something in any of them that you want that's not up for sale yet feel free to contact me about purchasing it [dont forget to check the address for spamspelling!].

B&W cover art peeks.


interested?
Tell you mom,
tell your pa,
Tell them you want to see the-Sea-of-Red. [ala the clash]

Not one to put people on pedestals, I have few true larger than life heroes or idols. This guy was one of them.


Will Eisner consistently made some of the best, most well thought out and considered comics published out of the US. He was absolutely pivotal as both a creator and publisher in defining the medium, showing what it could do, and showing how much could yet still be done with them that hasn’t. His career spanned over 60 years and has influenced directly or indirectly more young artists and writers than just about anyone else I can think of.
If you are an aspiring creator and haven’t seen his work yet, now would be a great time to get familiar with it. Better late than never.
Rest in peace Will
Long live the Spirit.