JAVZILLA

Supernatural hitman due for my next Poster Comic

2012-01-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

While I've been actively working on a variety of ideas and other projects, I haven't posted here since early January! Well, I have some news here, and it involves my next Poster Comic, set to debut during the first week of February.

Here's a quick sneak peek at the brand-new character who's going to debut in that one-page comic:

Here's what I'll share about this individual: He's a supernatural hitman, a crystal gun-for-hire. I actually had done a drawing of him, from either early 2011 or maybe even sometime in 2010. At the time, the visual idea for the character popped in my head, and this is what he looked like originally:

When I found this sketch about 2 weeks ago, I started thinking about the whole idea in the back of my head. When I first drew him, I really don't think I knew what he was about at all! But for the last two weeks or so several ideas ran through my head, all given the directive that 'it must be something off-the-wall'. I think I finally settled on the final concept just a few days ago, and today finally solidified the look and story. At least the story I want to tell in a one-page comic.

These Poster Comics of mine, of which I've already done two, are kind of like my comic book version of a Haiku, those short form Japanese poems that can run as few as three lines. Since it doesn't seem likely to me that I can ever produce all the stories I want to, at least in the form of a comic book series or full-length graphic novels, I want to at least produce a body of work consisting of a wide variety of material, taking different forms of visual storytelling.

And to be honest, since I've committed to produce 12 monthly Poster Comics this year, it's actually an exciting challenge to create these short form stories, limited to only one page. While I have enough ideas for stories with new and existing characters of mine, I also have at least one biographic story, a historical comic, and an adaptation of a public domain movie I plan to tackle in this format.

As I mentioned in a previous post, another one of the goals of these Poster Comics is to craft a visually interesting graphic design piece, something that stands as an 11" x 17" image, but also works as a story someone can read and, hopefully, enjoy.

The new Poster Comic should be up here by the end of next week. Stay tuned...

My first comic of the year: "TO BE CONTINUED"

2012-01-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all my readers!

Here it is, I just finished my first comic of 2012, a brand-new Poster Comic, "TO BE CONTINUED":

If you're having problems reading the comic at this size, follow this link to my DeviantArt page where I was able to upload a much larger version (just click the image to enlarge it, once you open the page).

Part year-in-review wrap up, part autobio, but all full-color comic, baby! This was fun because it's the first time I've ever done a story with so many of my key comic book characters in it. Plus over the years I've enjoyed doing autobiographic stories, so this was a nice way to come up with a combo platter of a comic.

My first Poster Comic was done just this past December, "HAUNTED HOLIDAYS", starring two new characters of mine, Jacob & Joaquin: The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy. Check it out here.

I realized as I was working on "TO BE CONTINUED" that this is the second comic in a row I've done that starts out at a cemetery! I say it's a complete coincidence! But, if you're from my area, you know Rose Hills is a beautiful memorial park, and it's presence is seen for miles throughout the neighboring cities of Whittier, Pico Rivera, etc. So, if I had to have a secret studio hideout (with easy freeway access!) it would probably be right there atop that hill...

In between a couple of comic book projects I'm working on for this year, I'd like to attempt to produce one new poster comic every month. I want to work in different art styles and vary my subjects, as a way to keep myself stretching and experimenting as a creator. Stay tuned...

Behind-the-Scenes of the Jacob & Joaquin poster comic

2011-12-26T10:14:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! In the spirit of this gift-giving season, I'd like to share with you today a little behind-the-scenes look at my recent poster comic featuring a pair of brand new characters I created, Jacob & Joaquin.

Promotional image for the Jacob & Joaquin poster comic.

I had recently gotten the idea to create a one-page comic, to be printed up as an 11" x 17" poster comic. First step, obviously, was that I needed an idea. For a moment I thought about using one of my existing characters, but then decided that I wanted to feature characters that somewhat tied into the spirit of the holiday season.

For some time now, the names 'The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy' had been floating around in my mind. (In my EL MUERTO comic book series, Diego de La Muerte, aka El Muerto, has a best friend, Isaac Silver, played in the film by Wilmer Valderrama and Joel David Moore of AVATAR fame. I'd long since given the comic book characters the nicknames of 'The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy', just as a personal in-joke for myself. But those names always suggested to me an idea for a monster hunting duo, a pair of demonologists/exorcist types.

So when it came time to flesh them out, I fashioned them along the line of the old-school Batman and Robin archetype, with Jacob being the older of the two, and Catholic Boy the younger, brasher member. I dressed up Wandering Jew to evoke the look of a Rabbi, with a slight WWII-era look to his wardrobe. For Joaquin I went with a modified Catholic schoolboy look, the idea being to make both characters instantly recognizable as to their identities. I tend to create my characters in that mode, so their names, appearances and purposes all reflect one another.

For the story, I figured a quick hunt-and-destroy mission would work for what I wanted to accomplish. With a one-page story, you have to instantly introduce the characters (especially if they've never been seen before) and show them doing what they do best. My plot was simple: Jacob and Joaquin get called by the LAPD's monster investigation unit to assist on a case, but soon realize their spiritual-based powers won't work on this particular menace. A quick improvisational maneuver saves the day, and we've got a story!

In creating the comic, I decided to draw the original panels larger than their finished size. So instead of drawing the whole story on an 11" x 17" sheet of paper, I broke up the panels into three sections, drawing each section on a horizontal 11" x 17" sheet, using 3 sheets in total. I then scanned each page and shrank them down and put them together in Photoshop, ending up with an 11" x 17" single page.

The story was set in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles, a neighborhood with a shared Jewish/Mexican heritage. Not only was Boyle Heights a thematic reflection of the two heroes, but back in 2005 we had filmed a week of the EL MUERTO movie at the Evergreen Memorial Park and Crematory, located in the same area. I actually filmed my cameo with star Wilmer Valderrama at the very front gates shown in the first panel of the story.

A screenshot of the front gates using Google Maps. My cameo was filmed at the gate on the left, as El Muerto was walking into the cemetery and I was leaving!

It was quite fun setting a story at the same place we filmed the EL MUERTO movie, as the experience of making the film (some of it in East Los Angeles, where I was born) are among the most memorable moments I've had. Other than that though, the cemetery was a perfect location for my story.

Before starting the story, I took a look at the work of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, a comic book artist whose created the majority of his work
for DC Comics since the 1970s. Garcia-Lopez always had strong, vibrant pages, drawing figures overlapping into other panels, adding an extra dimension to the flow of the panels. I thought a technique like the one he uses would help me maximize the limited amount of panels I would have to tell my story. To the right is a page from Jose's SUPERMAN VS WONDER WOMAN comic book (1978).

Another element I wanted to experiment with was the coloring of the comic. In the late 50s/early 60s, Marvel Comics published numerous comics featuring monsters and sci-fi stories. What really impressed me was the coloring on many of those stories, often depicting a very expressionistic use of color. I love the bold patch of colors used, such as a yellow or blue background, with the characters painted in a monochromatic color, seemingly random in nature. It creates an unforgettable page, one where the rules of coloring flow with the story. Since I was doing the comic as a poster, it had to function as a story, but also I wanted it to stand on it's own as a whole, complete image, with a vibrant color scheme dancing across the panels.

"The Man Who Captured Death" from AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #9 (1962), written by Stan Lee, art by Steve Ditko.

My plot for the one-page comic came fairly quick, the challenge was pacing out the action over the limited number of panels I had. Like with any comic, regardless of length, the initial storytelling goal for me is determining each composition for each panel, and finding the best combination of narrative action from one panel to the next. And because I was conscious of how I wanted to approach the eventual coloring of the piece, I composed each panel with a possible color scheme in mind, such as leaving empty space in the background where I wanted to try a large, bright color.

Once I patched the 3 separate pages together into one 11" x 17" document, I spent time doing various touch-ups to the artwork. Then I was able to start playing with my color palette. This was actually the first comic book that I was coloring. Sure, I had colored some previous stories of mine in gray-tones, and I've had plenty of experience coloring single-piece illustrations, but this was my first full color comic to be colored from start to finish.

As you can see by the colored page in the right, for the background I tried to use colors that appeared elsewhere in the strip, such as the magenta from Catholic Boy's mask, or the orange from the monster. That was done to tie the panels together, as I wanted the viewer's eye to move around the whole page in various directions when taking in the complete poster image. From a story point of view, I need the reader to start at the first panel and proceed to the next, but as a single image, I wanted the colors to bounce across the page.

There's definitely more stories to tell with Jacob & Joaquin, as well as Inspector Claye and the LAPD's 'Gravedigger' squad. I've thought up a rough idea for the origin of The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy, but for now we leave them to their first comic book appearance, HAUNTED HOLIDAYS. You can read the comic here (click the image to enlarge it) and if you want to order a printed, signed copy, visit my earlier blog post when I first debuted the poster comic.

Ed Wood has proven that he is "All right"!

2011-12-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

This is the 3rd and final entry in my series of Ed Wood memorial posts. Starting on Saturday, December 10 (the 33rd anniversary of Ed's passing), I've posted two entries here on JAVZILLA about Ed's life & death and post-mortem fame.

One thing I didn't mention on the previous post was that in 1998, filmmaker Aris Iliopulos directed a film based on a then-recently discovered Ed Wood script called "I Awoke Early The Day I Died". The film, starring and produced by Billy Zane was titled I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED. Not unlike Ed's luck in his heyday, the film was never really seen by the public, screening at the '98 Toronto International Film Festival (where it didn't get picked up by any distributors) then it played and closed within a week at a New York theater in 1999. Apparently, the studio which made the film went bankrupt soon after and the film has been in limbo ever since, although it did manage to get German and Japanese video releases.

What's the film about? Well, Ed's script involved a madman escaping an insane asylum by wearing a nurse's outfit (!) then robbing a loan office. He inadvertently loses the money while witnessing a strange cult funeral for the loan officer he shot. From there the madman goes on a murder spree, killing everyone who attended the funeral, his thinking being that one of them must know what happened to his money. The ending takes place back in the cemetery and involves bagpipes, and open grave and an Ed Woodian twist ending. The real interesting thing about the script was that it was created as a silent movie, no dialogue whatsoever. (Which is pretty ironic, as so much of the Ed Wood magic comes from his often mumbo-jumbo dialogue!). The trailer's a doozy:

Zane is fearless in his portrayal, playing it like a classic silent film star with all the jittery exaggerated moves he can muster. The film is played with campy laughs, but at the same time there are lots of great atmospheric moments in it. Most of the critiques I've read about the film is that the director doesn't mimic Ed's style, but then, why does he have to? He's not Ed! Plus the film has no dialogue, so naturally Iliopulos isn't going to be able to capture any moments of wacky dialogue. What he does give the film is an original mash-up of silent comedy, slapstick, cartoon action and an excellent soundtrack built around Ed's decades old screenplay. Plus, there are a large amount of cameos by a diverse group of actors/celebrities including Cristina Ricci, Ron Perlman, Sandra Bernhard, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Rick Schroder, John Ritter, Tippi Hedren, Will Patton, Karen Black, Andrew McCarthy and even Ed Wood's wife Kathy and Vampira herself! There's also a neat appearance by Eartha Kitt performing a great song in a nightclub scene. Eartha Kitt's name was seen on a marquee in a scene in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, so it's cool to see her finally appear in an Ed Wood film almost 40 years after the fact!

You probably have to be an Ed Wood fan to like the film, and even then you might still hate it! I think it's a unique, wild experience, and I'm glad it got made, as the script was a favorite of Ed's in his later years. The film is currently available to watch on Youtube from a German print, and also apparently to purchase from at least one source online (I haven't bought from this site myself, so I can't vouch for the service).

Since 2000, there's been several new books worth mentioning. In fact, I literally just got one in the mail Monday afternoon!

MUDDLED MIND: THE COMPLETE WORKS EDWARD D. WOOD JR. by David C. Hayes was originally published in 2001 and then updated in 2006. As I mentioned, I only got this book in my hands a day ago, but I've read some bits of it so far and it looks like a great book. MUDDLED MIND deals with Ed's literary output, from all accounts a staggering amount of novels and magazine articles he wrote during his lifetime. Granted, most of these were for the porn book & magazine market (although he's got some dealing with horror and crime), but the man was a prolific writer (in addition to a large number of scripts that were never filmed). There are a few short stories printed in the book, and one of them, THE NIGHT THE BANSHEE CRIED is just over 3 pages, but it's an amazing well-told, atmospheric ghost story. I really wish more of Ed's writing could be published, as he had some really creative ideas in his head. As I mentioned in my previous post, it's really a creator's ideas and imagination that first appeals to me, prior to experiencing the final execution. Of course, a poor presentation can stifle the idea, but then we get into the subjective matter of personal taste. I ordered my copy from LULU's print-on-demand service, and got the book within two weeks. I'll certainly be reading the book for the next few days.

Another book that I actually just finished reading a few weeks ago is Rob Craig's ED WOOD: MAD GENIUS. Published in 2009, I only recently got around to buying a copy, and I'm glad I did. This is the first critical analysis of Ed's entire film output. The author's approach is interesting in that he looks at Ed's work not only as the low budget, exploitation B-movies they are, but actually feels that Ed's work was produced with perhaps way more thought than most everyone has ever given the director credit for. Craig presents his theories that Ed was not only consciously working in the tradition of Absurdist Theater, but often drew direct inspiration from ancient mythology and even Biblical stories. Certainly Ed's obsession with life, death & resurrection, sinners and saints, reflects some tenants of religious doctrine. While not a saint himself, Ed's work would sometimes reference the Almighty, religion and an understanding of an afterlife, so I don't think all of Craig's parallels are unfounded. There were instances when I wouldn't agree with some of his conclusions regarding the source or intent of Ed's ideas, but I think the book is an important resource for those interested in Ed's work.

It's just very interesting to see an author really explore Wood's themes and obsessions as a filmmaker. Craig doesn't try to rehabilitate Wood's filmography to the level of an Orson Welles or Christopher Nolan, but he does make the case that even an outsider artist like Wood had deep, personal ideas he often explored in his work. That Eddie would often trip over his own written words or rush through a production with little money and resources, well, that's what helps defines his work as his own. If it wasn't interesting, it wouldn't be captivating people's attention half a century later. Even today, Ed's work is inspiring new generations. There's a movie called PLAN 9 currently in production, a remake of some type. Only time will tell...

Two months ago, I had a the great fortune of finally seeing PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE on the big screen. The Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA, a palatial movie house dating back to the 1920s, ran a screening of the film on October 22. Walking up to the theater and seeing the name PLAN 9 on the marquee was a thrill. I took a seat in the huge balcony of the theater, which alone seemed as big as some modern theaters I've been to! It was really cool to sit with an audience of fellow Wood aficionados and catch the screening. The most exciting part was the opening titles, with the famous score blasting through the speakers. The applause as the credits flashed was heartening, with the loudest ovation upon seeing Ed's screen credit.

What was really amusing was that everyone laughed at the exact same parts, the same famous gaffs and blunders we've all come to know and love. It was a true fellowship of Ed Wood.

When PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE received it's release in 1959, it was part of a double-bill with a British film called TIME LOCK. Like me, you've probably never heard of that film either. (It featured a pre-James Bond Sean Connery, so it has something going for it!). Yet, decades later, despite being voted on as the so-called 'Worst Film & Worst Director of All Time", Ed and PLAN 9 continue to be written about, discussed, viewed and kept relevant.

Some people no doubt consider themselves fans of Ed's films while still calling him an incompetent and untalented director. I've always thought of his films as extremely entertaining, with an unforgettable mixture of clunky writing, over-the-top or underwhelming acting, clever ideas, not-so-special effects, atmospheric settings and a go-for-broke run for the finish line, having a ball the entire step of the way.

There's that terrible tragedy of his life, how beginning in the 1960s he slipped into heavy alcoholism and obscurity, working in the porn industry while always trying to get back in the game. In one letter to a friend in 1978 (9 months before he died), Ed talked about a new project called THE DAY THE MUMMIES DANCED, and how he hoped to film it in Mexico at the famous Caves of Guanajuato. "I feel", he shared in the letter, "this might be the vehicle to put me back in the field".

There's a scene in BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, where Bela performs a famous speech. He's playing Dr. Eric Vornoff, the proverbial 'mad scientist'. He's visited by a colleage, Prof. Strowski. Strowski is sent by Vornoff's former countrymen to get him to return and use his knowledge in atomic science to create an army of supermen. Vornoff scoffs because years ago his own government rejected his theories, and now they wish to call upon him when they realize his experiments in creating super beings have succeeded.

"My dear Prof. Strowski, 20 years ago I was banned from my homeland...I was classed as a madman, a charlatan...Now here in this forsaken jungle hell I have proven that I am all right!"

Ed wrote that in 1955. Years later, I feel it's a poetic epitaph for him.

So, while Ed Wood Jr. has been long gone, his work continues to find new audiences, new fans, new life. That's really the ultimate vindication of any artist. As an artist myself, I look at his work, and how he created it, and take a few lessons from there. One is to keep my ideas as directly transplanted from my head to the paper, keeping my gut instincts in control, making sure the work retains it's visceral quality. Also, be your own critic. Change what you think has to be changed, if anything. Use your own discretion in judging your work. Also, get the work out there, let it stand or fall on it's own. There are always the following projects to work on. Each work won't be a masterpiece, but overall leave behind an interesting body of work that says what you want to say.

Here's a series of 6 sketchcards I created while working on these blog posts, as my own artistic tribute to Ed Wood. Featuring characters from Ed's movies.

Starting at the top row, left to right:

Tor Johnson "Inspector Clay" from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Maila Nurmi "Vampira" from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Bela Lugosi "Dr. Eric Vornoff" from BRIDE OF THE ATOM, Jeannie Stevens "The Black Ghost" from NIGHT OF THE GHOULS, Ed Wood "Glenda" from GLEN OR GLENDA and Captain DeZita "The Devil" from GLEN OR GLENDA.

*As of Tuesday, December 13, 2011, I'm listing all 6 cards as a lot on Ebay! If you wish to bid on this set, please follow this link. Auction ends on Dec. 16.

Ed Wood has risen from the grave!

2011-12-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's post, I gave an overview of the life, and tragic ending, of filmmaker Ed Wood. Today I'd like to catalog the series of events that have helped propelled Ed from forgotten Hollywood has-been to cult film icon.

Ed Wood died on December 10, 1978. Having worked in Hollywood since 1947, his passing went relatively unnoticed in the press. By then though, some of his films had received rotation on television, featured on late night screenings and weekend 'Creature Feature'-type shows. When his films did air, Ed would happily call friends at all hours of the day to let them know one of his movies was playing.

In 1980, Harry and Michael Medved published their book THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS, in which they had asked their readers of their previous book, THE 50 WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME, to name the Worst Film Of All Time. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE was the winning Worst Film Of All Time with Ed himself awarded the Worst Director label. These 'awards' clearly helped spread much wider interest in Ed's entire oeuvre, sparking revival screenings and tributes to his work.

The 1982 comedy film IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD featured clips of forgotten B-movies, exploitation films and other shlock productions. One of the segments, hosted by John Candy, lampooned the films of Ed Wood, showing clips from PLAN 9 and GLEN OR GLENDA. While not a positive tribute, many more people were introduced to the work of Ed Wood.

In 1989, British TV host Jonathon Ross featured an episode on Ed Wood on his INCREDIBLY STRANGE PICTURE SHOW. The program featured interviews with Dolores Fuller (Ed's former girlfriend and actress in some of his films) as well as other Ed Wood cast members like Paul Marco, Maila Nurmi (Vampira) and Gregory Walcott. Really the first filmed production to try to present Ed Wood in a better light, with interviews with people who actually knew and worked with him. The film offers a quick sketch of the man and his work.

In 1990, the publishers of CULT MOVIES MAGAZINE, Buddy Barnett and Mike Copner, produced a movie called ON THE TRAIL OF ED WOOD, featuring one of Ed's loyal friend, Conrad Brooks. While shot with minimal production values, the documentary features an hour long interview with Conrad sharing his fond memories of his friendship and working relationship with Ed. I really enjoy this film as it presents Ed as a real human being who loved making his movies, especially when surrounded by his close network of friends. One of my favorite parts is when Conrad describes the time when he started to realize PLAN 9 was being revived as a cult film, with himself being invited to film screenings at festivals. The film doesn't appear to be available to view online, but you can currently find inexpensive copies via the web.

FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD: THE PLAN 9 COMPANION, a documentary film released in 1992, provided a two hour behind-the-scenes look on the creation and influence of Ed's most famous film, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. A fascinating look at how this one-time forgotten film went on to achieve cult status for itself, it's cast and creator. This is a very detailed account, with lots of location shots of the various places Ed filmed the movie at, including the graveyard and the soundstage. With great insights into the film by historians and cast & crew, this is one of the best Ed Wood related spin-offs to experience. The documentary is oft-noted for being a half hour longer than the actual movie it's covering! The film is included on Image Entertainment's DVD release of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, which is the perfect way to experience both films. The film is also currently available on YouTube, which I've included here as well. The version I found has German sub-titles.

Another milestone released that same year was Rudolph Grey's NIGHTMARE IN ECSTASY: THE ART AND LIFE OF EDWARD D. WOOD Jr.

First released in 1992 (re-issued in 1994 to coincide to the Tim Burton movie), this is the first biography of the filmmaker. Some reviews complain about the format of the book, which is composed of snippets of commentary from a wide array of people who knew Ed. While it's true the book isn't written in the standard narrative of most fiction and non-fiction, it's through the personal recollections of family members, friends and associates that an intimate image of Wood appears. Plus Grey has included various helpful extras such as a filmography, a bibliography of Ed's numerous novels, a chronology of his life and descriptions of every person interviewed for the book. There are numerous photographs from every decade of Ed's life, including his later years. What I found to be a real treasure trove was Grey's synopsis for many of Wood's unrealized projects. Ed truly had a vivid and hyperkinetic imagination, and while many people say the end results may have lacked so-called finesse, it's a creative person's imagination that truly is there thumbprint they leave on the world, I believe.

NIGHTMARE IN ECSTASY was instrumental in my immersion into the world of Ed Wood back in 1994. And of course, Tim Burton's ED WOOD film released that year really brought Wood to the mainstream. When I saw the film, it left a huge impression on me. Not just in appreciating the struggles and work of Ed Wood, but also on relating to the constant difficulty as an artist in trying to find one's audience and using every single method at one's disposal to get the work out there. It remains to this day both my favorite Tim Burton film and favorite Johnny Depp movie, by far. The irony of Ed getting a big budget, high profile biographic film on his life is both charming and bittersweet, because Eddie would have been flabbergasted to be the subject of such a loving tribute. But really, it's such a great thing that there is such a movie.

Depp of course knocks the performance out of the park, with a mesmerizing, award-winning performance by Martin Landau as the great Bela Lugosi. Bela himself has an amazing story, and the fact that he and Wood intersected for a few magical years only adds to the whole miraculous circumstances of Ed's life.

1994 was indeed a banner year for the cult of Ed Wood. Another film was released that year as well, this one by Rhino Home Video. LOOK BACK IN ANGORA, a documentary by Ted Newsom, featured Gary Owens narrating the life story of Ed Wood solely via clips from Ed Wood's own movies. Newsom's script very cleverly uses the dialogue from the films to illustrate and bring to life Ed's upbringing, filmmaking method & idiosyncrasies, gradual decline and eventual postmortem notoriety. When I first bought this videotape, I would watch it over and over again, quickly buying the videotape releases of Wood's movies as well. I was hooked! (Recently I upgraded my old videotape copy, which I haven't seen in years since I quit using my VHS player. Apparently, the film is only currently available as an extra on the DVD release of an adult film Ed wrote and starred in back in 1969, PRETTY MODELS ALL IN A ROW a.ka. THE LOVE FEAST a.k.a. THE PHOTOGRAPHER. So, wishing to once again LOOK BACK IN ANGORA, I ordered it.)

And in 1995, yet another documentary appeared, this one premiering at the Chicago International Film Festival. THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EDWARD D. WOOD JR. featured several of the usual Ed Wood players, but also featured appearances by Bela Lugosi Jr., among others. In the film, Bela Jr. isn't particularly fond of Wood, calling Ed 'an abuser and a loser'. However, on the commentary track of the DVD release of the movie, Bela Jr. offers a more balanced attitude toward Ed, stating that he did indeed keep his father employed in down times, allowing Bela Sr. a certain amount of self-respect. The DVD release actually has some really great special features in addition to the commentary track. Ed's first film, the uncompleted THE STREETS OF LAREDO (1948), was finally released in 2005 with a musical score by Dolores Fuller and Ben Weisman and a narrative track featuring Cliff Stone. This newly restored version was renamed CROSSROADS OF LAREDO. The DVD also features coverage of the premiere of LAREDO, a reunion of Ed Wood players at a film festival and several other extras.

HAUNTED WORLD is currently available to watch online for free on Hulu.com.

It may have been inevitable, considering the bizarre nature of the world of Ed Wood, but in 1996 Steve Galindo founded THE CHURCH OF ED WOOD! The church's site includes an on-line baptismal application if one chooses to get indoctrinated into the church. What can I say, it's Ed Wood's world, we're all just living in it...

The 90s certainly seemed like the Decade of Wood. But, there was more than enough interest in Ed's work to propel him into the 21st Century. I'll post about that in my next entry here, with a surprise or two...

"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives! And remember my friend, future events, such as these, will affect you in the future!"
-Criswell
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE

The Death of Ed Wood (December 10, 1978)

2011-12-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the movie "ED WOOD", starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton? Martin Landau won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for playing screen legend Bela Lugosi, who starred in 3 Ed Wood movies at the end of his career.

Depp plays Edward D. Wood Jr., the 1950s B-movie filmmaker behind such movies, to name a few, as GLEN OR GLENDA, BRIDE OF THE MONSTER and his most notorious creation, the infamous PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (which in the 1980 book THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS was named 'The Worst Movie of All Time', with Ed himself named 'The Worst Director of All Time'). Was he the worst director of all time, and PLAN 9 the worst movie ever made? I guess it depends on who you poll.

Edward Davis Wood, Jr. was born on October 10, 1924 and died on this day, December 10, in 1978. The fact that Tim Burton persuaded Disney to back his black & white biopic back in 1994 speaks more to Burton's clout at the time than any widespread appreciation for Wood. However, there was already a strong cult following for Ed Wood and his movies at the time, and Burton & Depp's film really propelled Wood into the mainstream (to a point, as ED WOOD, while critically acclaimed, failed to find an audience at the time).

Ed Wood served in the Marines during WWII, and upon leaving the service joined a traveling circus, where his penchant for wearing women's clothes came in handy when playing the half-man/half-woman!

His Hollywood career started in 1947, when he started directing commercials and westerns, wrote and directed a stage play, and even worked as a stuntman (in drag!) in the Vincent Price movie THE BARON OF ARIZONA.

His first big break though came in 1953 when he wrote and directed GLEN OR GLENDA, a film about a cross-dressing man (played by Wood himself) and his desire to be accepted by his fiance and society at large. Ed was originally hired to make an exploitation movie based on Christine Jorgenson, who had made headlines at the time with her sex-change operation. But instead GLEN OR GLENDA became a somewhat auto-biographical message movie told with a convoluted, surreal narrative with Bela Lugosi playing on omnipotent god spirit overseeing the whole affair.

Ed as Glenda.

From there, Ed went on to create more films in his singularly individual, peculiar style. Crime films and horror pictures were his specialty, and using a stable of friends as actors, he was able to knock out over a half dozen movies throughout the 50s. Maligned and criticized by many for his micro-budget production values, clunky dialogue, slapdash directing, nonsensical logic and often amateurish actors, Ed Wood today remains a cult figure of a status unimagined in his own lifetime.

The pinnacle of his film career is embodied by 1959's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, an endlessly fascinating picture featuring space aliens resurrecting the dead, in hopes of stopping the Earth from destroying the universe. Now, on paper that's exactly how the story reads, but by the time Ed got done with it he had created his surrealist masterpiece! Footage of Bela Lugosi which Ed filmed before the actor's death in 1956 became the genesis for PLAN 9, and eventually Ed got the local branch of the Baptist Church to finance the movie (their hope being that with the profits from the film the Church they would be able to fund religious-themed films). Populating the film with TV horror hostess Vampira, 400 lb. wrestler-turned actor Tor Johnson, the late Bela Lugosi and the famous television psychic Criswell, PLAN 9 was destined for cinematic cult status.

Criswell predicts!

In addition to his own films he wrote & directed, Ed wrote screenplays for other films as well, including his script QUEEN OF THE GORILLAS which became 1958's THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST and the girl gang picture THE VIOLENT YEARS (1956)

And in a startling bit of trivia a friend of mine informed me of a few months ago, Ed wrote a script in the 1950s called THE VENUS FLYTRAP which in 1970 was filmed in Japan by Toei Studios with an American and Japanese cast. Even today, Ed continues to surprise his fans....

There are several other films which he is reported to have written, but outside of speculation, none of these have ever been proven to be a fact. Although it's believed that Ed was a 'creative consultant' on Ronald Ashcroft's THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER (1957), which starred Wood regular Keene Duncan.

In 1960, Ed Wood wrote & directed his last 'mainstream' film, THE SINISTER URGE, a crime caper dealing with the 'smut picture racket' and a psycho murderer. From there, Ed's luck at securing evern meager financing for his films dried up, while his drinking seemingly increased to the point of making him unreliable for the film business. With a new career as a writer of trashy sex novels (upwards of up to 75 by one account), Ed managed to keep money on the table for booze, groceries, and a string of living quarters that seemed to get more run down as the years wore on.

Beginning in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s, Ed was writing and/or directing (and sometimes appearing in) a growing number of adult movies (the very same pornographic films his movie THE SINISTER URGE seemed to rail against). He even created a series of 8mm films for the 'Sex Education Correspondence School'. Clearly, the man who created such low-budget, classic B-films like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and NIGHT OF THE GHOULS deserved better... but due to his own penchant for drinking and unreliability, he had to find some way to earn money.

By 1978, the end was near. He and his wife Kathy, who had been married since 1956, were evicted out of their low-rent apartment at 6383 Yucca Street in Hollywood. By all accounts, the building was a den of derelicts and drug addicts, with plenty of access to liquor stores and neighborhood bars. With most of their personal belongings left behind, the Woods were taken in by a friend, Peter Coe. Within a few days, on December 10, 1978, Ed Wood died in bed, watching a football game. He was cremated and his ashes scattered along the coast. No obituary appeared in any of the Hollywood trade magazines.

With Christmas approaching, I think it'd be nice to remember Ed in a better light. Here's a photo of him at a Christmas party with his friend Bela Lugosi in the mid 50s:

Just like in the film industry though, there is a 'sequel' to this tragedy of Ed's final days. Tomorrow I'll talk about Eddie's stardom rising from the grave, much like the characters in some of his movies. Ed Wood has died, but the legend had now begun it's slow rise to cult film icon!

The set of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Tor Johnson rising from the grave, surrounded by Vampira, Dr. Tom Mason (who doubled for the deceased Bela Lugosi by hiding his face with the cape!) and Criswell.

Jacob & Joaquin POSTER COMIC!

2011-12-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

Here it, my first-ever Poster Comic! Featuring Jacob & Joaquin: The Wandering Jew and Catholic Boy, two brand-new characters of mine. Starring in "HAUNTED HOLIDAYS":

(To view the poster at a readable size, go to my DeviantArt page here, and click on the image to enlarge)

A special Holiday themed comic, with a little monster-hunting thrown in for good measure! U.S. readers, if you'd like to order this Poster Comic as an 11"x 17" full-color print, it's yours for $8. That includes shipping in a large, flat envelope with thick cardboard backing, and it'll be signed by me as well. Readers outside the U.S., please contact me at azteczombie (at) yahoo.com for shipping rates.

A poem for The Coma ( from COMA CON )

2011-11-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

COMA CON was held this past weekend at GEEKS Comics in Whittier, and it was far from comatose...

This was the release/signing event for my comic book THE COMA. I also debuted THE ART OF THE COMA & THE COMA COLLECTOR BOX
featuring both books, a button and a Coma sketch doll! (Order your copies of THE COMA and/or my other comics from my webshop or stop by GEEKS Comics)

Among the friends and fans who attended where my two sisters with one of my nephews and two nieces. There were even a few students from my Comic Book Workshops who showed up. The event went off great, and I was happily surprised to see some of the people who came. I slipped up and only took two photographs, but they're enough for this blog post, because I want to use the space to present a very special extra.

My friend Christopher Luke Trevilla attended as well and enlightened us all with the first-ever reading of his poem...THE COMA! I've had one comic turned into a movie, and now my new one has inspired a poem. (Still waiting for the MAN-SWAMP breakfast cereal!). Chris is a very active & imaginative poet/performer in the Los Angeles area, so it was truly a pleasure to be able to receive this from him. He also gave me his hand-written first draft of the poem, complete with a series of sketches he drew alongside the words. I'm reprinting his poem and sketches here, and I hope you enjoy what he wrote. He really captured various elements of my story in his piece, and intermingled with his particular inner voice, created a whole new experience.

The Coma(Inspired by the eponymous comic by Javier Hernandez, and the track "Peace of Mind/The Candle Burns" contestedly attributed to the Beatles)

Open eyes into absent skies,
my vision dulled with void
Inside burns
a flame to meet me here-

I leave
the cold shell there
emotions peeled away,
no laughter no tears,
I manage not a smile.

The world
around me
takes shape at will,
molecules, shadows, and worlds between
unfolding

Suddenly
there’s fear- a kind of ripping pain
Surely this
is not eternal – is it?

This world or whatever it may be
is only held inside
Repressed and now free
alive and changing
perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Can it be...
World and Time
have ended at long last?
Or am I?
still
silent
nothing
dead
No, I must be in my head.
Feels too real to be over now
Don't keep me
from begin.

I need
to find
a cause, meaning, purpose
can’t just float freely..

Inner ear
spoken to
by ancient man and serpent
at war,
at odds,
or one in the same?

I say
I want to hear, see, and be
in the world I knew before

I scream
into the void

Ancient man
looks into me
telling me to retreat further inside
Ancient serpent
slithers into me
telling me to give up hope, I was
meant to stay.

In the void
I listen
to sounds that say

All you want
ought be to fly all day
be led
into a free world newly borne
to build things
never built before
to do things
never before done
And just before
it’s over
it’s really
just begun.

Silent I run.
No pause, no coma, no doubt.
Silent I run.

CLT

New interview on LOS ANGELES EASTSIDE SCENE

2011-11-16T06:26:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed for a local website called EASTSIDE SCENE, which covers events and culture in East Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods. The upcoming COMA CON (this Saturday at GEEKS Comics in Whittier) is talked about in the interview.

Give it a read, as there are a good round of questions (and hopefully, answers!).

THE COMA finally available to order online!

2011-11-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

THE COMA has landed, folks!

Yesterday afternoon I received my shipments of THE COMA and THE ART OF THE COMA. These books will be available this coming Saturday, Nov. 19 at GEEKS Comics during COMA CON, my big release/signing party. But, I figure since many of you won't be able to fly out to California for the event, I'm putting them for sale in my webshop today. You can order your copies by going to the JAVZILLA webshop right here, right now.

Just to make sure we don't break our 'street date' of Nov. 19, I'll ship the books around the middle of this week, depending on where you live. Hopefully you'll get them by Saturday, but I would imagine Monday at the latest.

Oh, and for the folks who pre-ordered the now-out-of-print digest sized edition of THE COMA, (Thanks!) I will offer you a special deal. If you order the full-size magazine edition of THE COMA, (which features a brand-new 2 page prologue to the story, along with the new cover), I'll give you a rebate of $1.50. Just my way of trying to lessen the feeling of 'double-dipping'! I know it's not the way most greedy comic publishers do business, but what the heck, we do things a little different here around Los Comex! Just order the comic online, pay through the checkout, and I'll refund you the $1.50 through Paypal. And yes, I have the records of who bought the pre-orders, so everyone play nice!

If you do live in the Los Angeles area, I'd be great to have you come out to GEEKS for COMA CON. Nothing like meeting in person, ya know. Plus there will be food and lots of other stuff to buy like some original Coma comic book pages, other artwork of mine, a special GEEKS exclusive Coma print, etc.

If you haven't seen the Coma micro-documentary "IT'S ALL IN MY HEAD", check it out here.

EL MUERTO artwork on display at UCLA

2011-11-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

I have some artwork in a collection currently on display at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library.

The CHICAN@S COLLECT show features work collected by Mary and Armando Duron. The Duron Collection numbers about 500 pieces, collected over a period of almost 30 years. The exhibition began on September 22 and runs until December 9, 2011.

The exhibit catalog states that the collection "is comprised of books and catalogs that have a bearing on Chicano art, whether the subject is Mexican, Mexican folk, Spanish, Latin American, or North American art." I recently received copies of the catalog, in which both of my pieces in the exhibit are reproduced. One of the items is a copy of my comic book EL MUERTO. Judging by the date under my signature, they bought this at the Self Help Graphics festival on the Day of the Dead in 2002:

The screenprint above was produced back in 2006, when I had a week-long residency in East LA's historic gallery/art studio, SELF HELP GRAPHICS. Creating the screenprint, and contributing to SHG's art collection, is definitely one of the accomplishments I'm most proud of as an artist. And #51 of the series made it to the Duron Collection.

While looking through the catalog, my sister actually noticed the El Muerto image in the top right corner of this magazine, which is also part of the exhibit:

LA GENTE (The people) is the UCLA Latino students magazine about pop culture, news and events. Upon re-reading the article, I remembered when they originally contacted me. For some reason, I don't believe I ever received a copy of the magazine, but you can read it online here.

So basically, in the 12 page catalog for the exhibit, El MUERTO is represented on some 3 pages! But I'm glad that art collectors like the Durons and many others make these exhibits possible, allowing so many artists a platform to keep their work visible and made available to new audiences over the years.

I'd like to thank the Duron Family and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library for their continued work, and for letting me be a small part of this exhibit. I often tell folks that there is more to life than comics, and mind you, I love creating comics and enjoying the entire span of the culture of comics. But being able to reach audiences outside the comics medium has always been one of my goals, and also to celebrate and add, in my own way, to the Mexican-American experience.

COMA CON at GEEKS Comics NOV 19

2011-11-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

GEEKS Comics in Whittier, CA will be hosting COMA CON, my release & signing party for my new comic book, THE COMA and the companion art book, THE ART OF THE COMA!

For those who missed getting a copy of the sold-out Limited Edition version of THE COMA (originally printed up in a special digest-sized edition), the new release of THE COMA features an all-new 2 page prologue, and is published in an eye-popping 8" x 10.5" magazine format!

Featuring an all-new cover illustration penciled by me, inked by Michael Neno and colored by Mort Todd, this 40 pg, b&w comic book takes you on mind-bending head trip into the mind of Damian Arkadian....The Coma!

THE ART OF THE COMA is a full-color 32 page portfolio featuring tons of sketches, production art and other rarities detailing the origin of my new comic book character. There's also a Guest Artist Pin-Up Gallery featuring unique takes on The Coma by an eclectic group of artists: Mary Bellamy, Crystal Gonzalez, Celina Hernandez, Blair Kitchen, Rafael Navarro and Mort Todd!

Come out to GEEKS on November 19th and get your own copies. I'll have lots of other stuff there as well, including the original pages from The Coma, a special print created exclusively for GEEKS and lots of other products from Los Comex, my publishing imprint! Get your Holiday shopping done early and get yourself, or a friend , some cool comic swag!

GEEKS is located at:

6747 Greenleaf Ave, Ste A, Whittier, CA 90601

Steve Ditko, comic artist legend, turns 84 today

2011-11-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

A very Happy Birthday to Steve Ditko, the great comic book creator who's creations/co-creations include Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, The Creeper, Hawk & Dove and Mr. A., among many others.

Here's some artwork I did that was featured recently on the back cover of DITKOMANIA #85, the fanzine dedicated to the work of Steve Ditko. That issue featured stories on Ditko's work for black & white magazines, and one of the stories he did for EERIE Magazine that I wanted to pay homage to was one called 'The Fly':

Ditko's career began in 1953, and almost 60 years later, the man is still producing new work! Published under the Robin Snyder/Steve Ditko banner, his latest book was just released:

This is his 14th new comic book released in the last 3 years, so Steve Ditko still has some stories to tell. This one features another chapter in the saga of Miss Eerie, and also introduces The Distorter, a character who never once appears in the actual story (unless you count a trail of energy an appearance!) but you still see the results of his/her/it's crime fighting abilities.

In addition to his singularly imaginative artwork and storytelling, what's specifically appealed to me, as a self-published comics creator, about Ditko's work is his reliance for the last 20 years or so on creating his work for himself, without the editorial oversight or worse, marketing input, of any third parties. He's creating pure art at this point, and he leaves it up to others to decide the merits of that choice. His desire is to create personal work and release it to the marketplace, no other considerations come into play. I'm not saying I have the exact same mindset, but his example is one that inspires me tremendously often keeps me going in this crazy comics business.

Ordering info for Ditko's new books is available at the DitkoComics Blog. To order DITKOMANIA, visit the Ditko-Fever site. Bleeding Cool.Com, a comics news site, has a nice gallery of original Ditko comic book pages you might be interested in checking out.

2nd ANNUAL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS EL MONTE

2011-10-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

This Saturday you can find me at the Day of The Dead event in El Monte, CA.

This event is put on by the Nuvein Foundation, of which I've been on the Board of Directors for the last several years. Last years event was a surprise hit, so this year should be even bigger and better! Fun for the whole family, and it's free!

Event will be held at the Valley Mall:

10933 Valley Mall, El Monte, 10933.

Michael Lapinsky COMA artwork/Javier Hernandez FEEDING GROUND artwork

2011-10-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

Michael Lapinski, freelance illustrator and designer, is also the co-creator and artist of FEEDING GROUND, published by Archaia Comics. Earlier this year, Michael asked me if I could contribute a pin-up to the FEEDING GROUND series, which I was more than happy to oblige.

FEEDING GROUND is a story about border crossings across the Mexican/U.S. border, with the twist being that the story involves werewolves! But beyond that, it really highlights the very real drama in human trafficking, geopolitics, and the truly perilous trip across the land, both natural and supernatural. An innovative approach to a very modern and relevant political issue.

Flash forward a few months later, as I'm prepping my premier edition of THE COMA. I only had room to include one pin-up in the book, but it was a natural decision to ask Michael to contribute. I really liked his expressive artwork in FEEDING GROUND, and thought that he made a very imaginative use of color in the book as well. I had actually mentioned to Michael that just as Ennio Morricone's scores greatly enhanced the onscreen drama of Sergio Leone's 'spaghetti westerns', so too did his evocative coloring bring out so much of the story of FEEDING GROUND.

Here's Michael's Coma pin-up:

If you follow this link to Michael's blog, you can see his original sketches he came up with before finishing the final piece. And here's a brief, informative interview with him over at sketchmaven.com.

As of this writing, there's exactly one more copy left of THE COMA Premiere Package, featuring the limited edition, digest-sized copy of THE COMA and some additional extras. Available via my blog while supply lasts!)

Coma Premiere Package at APE this weekend!

2011-09-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

The Alternative Press Expo is coming this weekend, October 1 & 2, in San Francisco. Which means I'll be there debuting my newest creation, THE COMA! I'll have THE COMA PREMIERE PACKAGE, which includes the special, limited, digest-sized edition of THE COMA, an 8.5" x 11" color print made exclusively for this edition, and 1 of 25 hand-drawn & colored cards (5" x 5" Bristol paper squares), featuring the Coma.

For the folks who pre-ordered these sets, I'll have them shipped out between October 3-5. A few of the pre-orders will be picked up by their owners at the convention. And of course I will have a limited number of copies of the Package, or just the comic, available there as well. If I have any available after the show, I'll put them on my website for purchase.

I'll be at table #109, alongside Michael Aushenker of CARTOON FLOPHOUSE notoriety. Drop by and fall into...THE COMA!!

THE COMA PREMIERE PACKAGE!

2011-09-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those of you who pre-ordered THE COMA PREMIERE PACKAGE last week. I'll have these available for purchase at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco the weekend of October 1 & 2. If you pre-ordered, and you're going to be at APE, visit me at Table #109 (I'll be partnered up with Cartoon Flophouse, cartoonist Michael Aushenker's imprint). Otherwise, all orders will be mailed out by October 7.

THE COMA micro-documentary plus art by me and Jim Lujan

2011-09-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today's Coma color art, done as a warm-up drawing for the long, productive day ahead:

When I first created the Coma, I didn't actually have his name figured out (his "secret identity"). I knew what he looked like, but his name I just let percolate in my head while I worked on the comic. About halfway through the story, I settled on a name I liked, Damian Arkadian. I had told a friend that I was originally torn between 'David' and 'Damian', and he voted for 'Damian' and, well, here we are. For a variety of reasons, I wanted to give the character a Greek/Roma background. I'll share more on that later, but speaking of that friend of mine.....

Jim Lujan, the creator of numerous animated films via his Ghettomation brand, was kind enough to create this short film about my creation of the Coma......

Jim shot the footage and put together the whole package in an evening, all together he probably spent about an hour or so working on it! The guy's amazingly talented and intuitive with his art. And better than that, he's a great friend. Also, he gives art away like it was peanuts. I asked him if he could do his own Coma doodle on a sheet of 5.5" x 5.5" Bristol paper I use. Here's the spiffy piece he came up with:

Check out Jim's music video he created for MOONWALK, a new song by the band KOUNTERCLOCKWISE!

THE COMA production art

2011-09-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I shared with you the news that I was working on an all-new comic book, THE COMA. For the last month, I have been feverishly working on it, getting it ready to print and debut at the Alternative Press Expo this October 1 & 2.

Well, I'm finishing up the art on the book, so I haven't had time to post more on my progress. I have however been posting small updates via my Twitter, Facebook and DeviantArt pages. Usually I'll post some of what I call 'color doodles' (drawings on 5.5" x 5.5" sheets of Bristol paper, drawn with non-photo blue pencil and Pentel brush pen, colored with Tombow markers). I do these as warm-up drawings before starting a page of THE COMA, or sometimes as production art to get a feeling for a character.

So, for the readers of this blog who haven't seen these images via my other social networks, here are the various color drawings I've done of the Coma and related characters...

I'll be back soon with my previously promised post about the origins of the Coma. Until then, enjoy these pieces and keep sending me positive vibes until I get my book sent to the printers!!

The Coma & all related characters are © & ™ Javier Hernandez 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Cartoonista's SKETCH-A-PALOOZA event at GEEKS Comics

2011-08-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

A video shot/edited/produced from filmmaker Jim Lujan featuring the event held yesterday at GEEKS Comics in Whittier.....

SKETCH-A-PALOOZA! A day for free sketches for kids from the Cartoonistas. This was a great event with lots and lots of families showing up for free drawings. I had about 5 of my students from my comic book workshop show up as well. (As if they don't get enough free drawings from me in the class!).

Thanks to GEEKS for hosting us. This is truly a match made in heaven between the Cartoonistas and GEEKS. And thanks to all the wonderful artists who showed up to make the event happen. And of course thanks to all the kids and parents and grandparents who stopped by to visit!

Last night's comic book release parties for FOREVER FRESHMAN and USMZ

2011-08-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

So last night I attended two release parties for two, new different comic books.

"USMZ" by Roman Montes de Oca.

"Forever Freshman", Issue #1, by Ray Mendivil & Neil Segura.

Roman's event was held in the Art District in Downtown Pomona, a lively neighborhood featuring many art studios and galleries. The release party was held at the Foggy Windowz Gallery, and Roman's artwork was on display, as well as his brand new comic book.

Roman's book deals with a Marine squadron pulling back into port after months overseas and landing right in the middle of a zombie infestation! Roman's story has that air of authenticity about it due to his tenure as a Marine years previously. The zombie stuff....well, we'll have to ask him what his experiences are there!

I visited his home studio some time ago and he showed me the progress of his book. He also gave me a mechanical pencil, the kind you can use with replaceable leads. Since then, I bought another one and use them with non-photo blue leads for drawing my layouts as well as using graphite leads for drawing with. He got me hooked on mechanical pencils and now my Ticonderoga #2 HB pencils sit unused in a cup by my desk......

It was very cool to see Roman debuting his book there amongst the many art galleries that were open that evening. The great thing about comics is that they don't have to only be confined to comic book stores and conventions. They're art, so anywhere were art is displayed and sold is a potential market for a book. I got there at about 6, but when I eventually left the area the streets were streaming with people walking from gallery to gallery. Roman got the word out, as he had plenty of people stopping by to pick up the book.

I left the Pomona area around 8pm and headed back to Whittier, as there was another comic book release party going on with another friend of mine.

GEEKS Comics was packed with people when I arrived. Everyone was there for the release of FOREVER FRESHMAN.

Good ol' Neil Segura. He and his friend Ray Medivil created this comic as a way to relive, and greatly embellish, many of their High School antics they had together.

Ray and Neil had actually debuted the comic at San Diego Comic Con a month prior, but this was a chance for all their local fans, friends and family to pick up a copy of the book. They put on a really good show, with raffles, food, artwork and general fun being had by all.

If you read my blog on Friday, you'll remember that both Roman and Neil had taken my DIY COMICS CRASH COURSE right there in GEEKS itself exactly one year and one day ago! So it was nice to come back to the scene of the crime, where it all began....

Congrats to all three of these creators, Ray, Neil and Roman, for completing their books. We all have a myriad of different reasons for creating our stories and self-publishing our work. But that evening was real fun to experience. Comics, like most art, takes a lot of work. So it's great to see people spending the time, making the sacrifices necessary, to make their dreams a reality.

Two release parties for two new comic books!

2011-08-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

This Saturday night is a big weekend for new comic book creators. There are two comic book release parties going on in the Whittier and Pomona areas. I'll be attending both, showing my support and having some free food and fun.

Roman Montes de Oca is releasing his new comic book, USMZ, at the Foggy Windowz Gallery in Pomona.

Meanwhile, an hour later, Ray Mendivil and Neil Segura will be throwing a release party for their new comic book, FOREVER FRESHMAN, at GEEKS in Whittier.

I'm really glad for these guys, as they're all hardworking artists and slugged away at finishing their comic book projects. And I must say, I'm particularly keen on the fact that two of them, Neil and Roman, actually attended my DIY COMICS CRASH COURSE last year at GEEKS comic shop. It was back on August 12, 2010, almost exactly one year ago from their release parties!

Roman and Neil are the 2nd & 3rd from the Left. Me, I'm the Prof. Xavier of the group, sitting down and thinking "Hmmm...So who's going to be the first to put out a comic book..."

I guess I should open up an institution called Professor Javier's School for Gifted Cartoonists. Or I could go the Magneto route and form The Brotherhood of Evil Comic Creators!

Granted, they were already working on their projects at the time, and would no doubt have self-published their work. But they were still interested enough in taking the course, and there was plenty of discussion in the class about the do's and dont's of creating one's own comics.

Congrats to Ray, Neil and Roman for publishing their books. I'll be at both releases, and will be the first to ask "So, when's the next issue coming out?".

A question, mind you, that people never stop asking! (Trust me, I'm speaking from personal experience!).

Creating THE COMA

2011-08-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

As announced in a previous post, I've begun working on a comic book featuring a new character of mine, The Coma.

Here's page 6 of the story:

I've always liked the idea of mixing artwork with typography. Kind of like the James Bond films with their opening titles featuring the credits and lots of visual eye-candy.

In my next post, I'd like to share with you where many of the inspirations for the Coma may have come from. I say 'may' because who can really say what motivates someone to create something. Sure, I always mention the artists and things that gave me that creative inspiration to pursue my own ideas, but often the variety of sources that may inspire a project come from a tremendously wide range, seemingly unconnected. Until of course, you start crafting the project and then see clearly where everything came from and how you choose to use it.

This comic, by the way, is going to be published in what the printing company calls 'manga size', which is 5" x 7.5". Why print it that size? Well, one reason is that I haven't put out a comic book in that size, so it's always fun for me to experiment with varying sizes of comics. I don't feel that a comic book should always be in the same 6.625" x 10.25" format. Also, because of the nature of this story, with it's landscape of a character's dreamworld, a universe inside the mind, I felt that a smaller book would offer a more intimate reading experience. A book you might be more prone to up close and personal with, so to speak.

A doodle I drew one day while 'warming up' to work on a page. This

was drawn on a 5.5" x 5.5" piece of scrap Bristol paper (the same paper I use to draw the comic, Strathmore Bristol Vellum).

I was also trying out some new Tombow color markers I bought. The drawing was kept in a much looser style than I'm drawing the

book in, but for a warm-up that's good enough.

Sometimes to break up the process of the book, I'll switch from drawing the pages to working on some design work. Here's what I came up for the back cover (which will give you a bit more idea of what you'll find in the final story):

The color image is one I did a few years ago, with the new logo I created for the character. I penciled the front cover image over the weekend as well, with the intention to paint it with acrylics. I'll show that here when it's done. I'm going to print a limited number of this book for it's first release, and then most likely create new front and back covers for it once it's reprinted. The book is scheduled to debut at the Alternative Press Expo this October 1 & 2, so releasing a linited version of this is actually continuing a tradition I've had at APE over the years.

In the next post, I'll reach into the archives and share with you where oh where this Coma character may have come from....

New comic book and cartooning classes in Pico Rivera

2011-08-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

To my local readers: I have several art classes for kids that I'm teaching in Pico Rivera for the Summer! Take a look, and if you know of any kids who would be interested, please let them know:

"Cartooning for Kids", ages 7-12, at the Senior Center on 9200 Mines Ave (due to the construction schedule at Pico Park). Students will be given instruction on drawing and creating their own creations, as well as lessons on drawing other characters. New session starts this Saturday.

Class runs from 10:30am-12 Noon. It's a four week class, which will run until August 27. $38 plus a $5 supply fee paid to the instructor.

"Creating in Color", ages 7-12. This class already started today! Sorry for not posting this earlier. However, you can still register for the remaining classes. Students will be explained color theory, and create artwork using crayons, colored pencils and watercolors.

Class runs from Thursday, August 4 until August 25 at 10am - 11:30am. $38 plus a $10 supply fee paid to the instructor. This class will be taught at Pico Park, located at 9528 Beverly Blvd.

"Comic Book Workshop", ages 7-12, starts up again on Wednesday, August 17. Students will be creating their own 4 page comic book in class, with photocopies of their comic given to them on the last class.

Class runs from 5:00 pm - 6:30pm. It's a 5 week class, with the last class on September 14. $38 plus a $5 supply fee paid to the instructor. This class is also being taught at the Senior Center on 9200 Mines Ave (due to the construction schedule at Pico Park).

You can register at either location. The phone number for Pico Park is 562-801-4470.

As always you can email me directly with any questions:
misterjav@gmail.com

Here comes.....The Coma!

2011-08-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

I've started working on my next comic book. This one features a brand-new character of mine. Previously, I published some sketches of him in my COMIC POP SKETCHBOOK (available in my little ol' web shop) and a pic or two online. But now it's time to awaken The Coma!

The above image was created a few years back, as an exercise in determining the character's color scheme, and experimenting with some digital effects. A lot of times I create these characters in my sketchbooks, usually as a way of getting an idea out of my head. Sometimes I look at the finished drawing and put the idea away in the back burner of my mind. Over the years, as I'm working on other comics, I always go back to the old ideas and try to figure out a story for them. I created the logo a few hours ago, so it may change. But I really like the idea.

A large focus on this particular story will be the drawings and designs of the actual pages. Yes, there's a story to the character, but I really want to continue to push myself as an artist, and with the other-worldy dimensional environments and psychodelic landscapes of the Coma, I think I'll really be able to let my mind's eye run wild with the look of the book.

Here's the first page:

And here's a batch of sketches from a few years back, where I was figuring out the rough ideas for the character:

'THE COMA' is set to debut at the Alternative Press Expo this October 1 & 2, in San Francisco. I'm thinking of creating an exclusive APE edition with a painted cover. Also, I think some Coma Sketch Dolls would be cool to unveil there as well! I'll be updating my progress on the blog, so check back for more art and behind-the-scenes 'insider' secrets!

San Diego Comic Con 2011... Through my eyes

2011-07-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

Comic Con 2011, held this past weekend at the San Diego Convention Center, has come and gone. This was actually the first time I had exhibited at Con since 2005, so it was nice to actually get back 'in the game' of selling at the big show.

I was only there on Friday, Saturday and half of Sunday, but there was no shortage of things to do and talk about. I arrived in San Diego late Thursday evening, staying over at a friend's home for the weekend. By Friday morning, as I made my way toward the Small Press area of the convention, the first table I stopped at was the one occupied by my good friends Jim Lujan (Ghettomation) and Jose Cabrera (Crying Macho Man):

This was Jim's (on the left) first time exhibiting at Comic Con, bringing with him 4 DVD collections of his animated shorts, dubbed 'Ghettomation' for their quick and sparse style of animation. Jim has already stated that he'd back again for next year's Con, most likely with another couple of collections.

Neil Segura and Ray Mendivil made their first Comic Con appearance as creators of FOREVER FRESHMEN, their comic book title loosely based on their High School years. It's always great to see new talents taking the big steps to set up at the Con.

Neil (left) and Ray making a stand for indy comics at the big show!

I was fortunate enough to be a guest at the Possum Press/Ultraist Studios table. Blair Kitchen (THE POSSUM) was manning the table on behalf of him and his brother Mike, creator of SPY GUY. When Blair offered me a spot at their table, I knew it was an offer I didn't want to refuse. I have know Blair for about 3 or 4 years, having read his first issue of the Possum and becoming a fan from that first day.

Among the numerous friends/fellow creators I ran into were Jason Martin, creator/publisher of SUPER REAL and Dan Mendoza (ZOMBIE TRAMP).

A native of Portland, OR., Jason (left) and I had met several years ago at Comic Con, when we sat as neighbors in the Small Press area (ironically, it was in about the same spot Blair and I were sharing a table!). Jason's become a really good friend over the years, and he and I have actually exhibited together at various other shows. Dan's book is published by Jason, with ZOMBIE TRAMP proving to be a pretty strong seller for an indie comic.

Audra Furuichi, artist of the webcomic NEMU * NEMU, peeking out from her display:

Audra and her husband Scott (who was away from the table when I stopped by) hail from Hawaii. They work really hard at building their audiences and getting out to various conventions. It's people like them, and many others, that continue to inspire me to continually work at this whole self-publishing thing. Lots of hard work, and you have to keep finding what works best for your audience, but the rewards to that are unique to self-publishing. Anything goes, and you take pride in your efforts that succeed.

Jamie Baker (left) and Rhode Montijo have been sharing their booth at the same location for some years now. They seem like such a fixture of Comic Con! With their various comics and art prints and t-shirts, etc., they're like a corner store in the middle of the hundreds of vendor booths.

For me, and the people I mentioned above, we attend Comic Con to exhibit our work, make sales, and connect with old and new fans. We create because we have a desire to tell stories, we produce our work to sell and make a living. But also, like most shows, Comic Con offers a lot more than just artistic fulfillment and a commercial venue.

This costumed gal passed by my booth and I just had to have a photo of her:

She dressed up as SQUIRREL GIRL! Never heard of Squirrel Girl? Well, she was created by artist Steve Ditko with writer Will Murray for MARVEL SUPER-HEROES SPECIAL #8 (1991).

For Friday night's dinner outing, a group of us went to the nearby Seashore Village. Afterwards, we split up and Blair and myself found ourselves at one of the new hotels that's been built in the last few years to deal with the tremendous upsurge in attendance. We found a pool table on one of the floors and decided to play a high-stakes game of pool. America vs Canada...with the fate of the world hanging in the balance! In short order, Blair slowly began to outmaneuver me, scoring on his shots while I missed mine by miles.

Blair's Grammy-Award air-guitar rendition of "O CANADA". And yeah, he put in those red eye contacts to add to the effect!

At one point I had missed a shot and sent the cue ball straight into a pocket. "I saw that!" came the voice from the escalator just overhead. We looked up and see Sergio Aragones smiling at my mishap! Yep, Sergio Aragones of MAD Magazine fame. The world's fastest cartoonist. And faster wit!

Saturday at the Con was interesting. Traditionally, in my experience, it's always the busiest day of the whole weekend. More people streaming into San Diego and the convention center than on any other day.

My friend Michael Aushenker, whom I've exhibited with at so many other previous conventions, was found holding court at his CARTOON FLOPHOUSE table in Small Press.

If Sergio's the world's fastest wit, Mikey has gotta be a close second. Times are always better with Michael around, whether we're doing time at a comic convention or bouncing around the Greater Los Angeles area. Michael's upcoming projects include the first trade-paperback collection of his classic EL GATO, CRIME MANGLER series. I'm super excited about that because not only am I a fan of that gonzo character, I wrote the intro to the furshlugginer collection!

Meanwhile, back at the Possum Press/Ultraist Studios table, I gave Blair an early Christmas gift:

Yep folks, it's a super special linmited edition El Muerto Mini Sketch Doll: Possum Muerto!! ( The Possum © and ™ Blair Kitchen, El Muerto © & ™ Javier Hernandez)

On one of my walkabouts, I ran into Michael once again and a lady named Mayra.

Like the gallant knight I am, I introduced myself to yon damsel. Then I walked her over to my table where she was nice enough to buy my movie and a comic! If flattering such ladies to buy my stuff needs this approach, then I guess I better stock up on lip balm for next year!

A word about 'next year': I'm very grateful to have been invited by Blair to have shared a small spot at the table. While I've missed exhibiting at Comic Con for several years, I was eager to get back behind the table and do the 'Big Show' once again. I noticed a couple of things.

One: Not having my banner with me behind the table makes a huge difference. As a last minute invite, I certainly didn't want to clutter the table with my accessories, so I left it back home. But it does show me that people really do look at the large image and decide right there and then if they're at least curious to check out the table.

Two: I had several people over the two and a half days I was set up comment on the fact that they had seen the EL MUERTO movie. One person didn't like it (no problem, at this point I'm totally fine hearing all reviews of the film). One didn't finish seeing it and wanted to rent it via Netflix. Another liked it enough where he dressed up as El Muerto for Halloween. I asked him to please send me a photo if he could find one. Another guy walked by, saw the DVD, asked what it was about, bought it and whisked off! That was the quickest sale I ever made, outside of a button.

Three: This last opinion of mine if just my own personal point of view. Saturday was by far my least productive day in terms of sales, a far cry from the traditional sales patterns for this show. I heard from other self-publishers that they also experienced slower sales. A retailer friend of mine, whose been selling back issue comics for well over a decade, told me his sales were not keeping up with his expense of doing the show.

So, if there were record number of people in the convention, where were our sales? I'm guessing that many of the new people attending Con are there for the various movie and TV-sponsored panels and presentations. Also, with the ever increasing presence of video game and toy companies, perhaps the 'traditional' comic buying fans are getting 'squeezed' out by the new crowds? I can't sell stuff to people who aren't interested/looking for/there for the type of things I make.

Let me share a link here, for those of you who are interested, in a newsletter by retailer Chuck Rozanski, President of Mile High Comics. He's one of the world's largest retailers of comic books, and has been attending Comic Con for 38 years. I think he's more than qualified to speak on the status of Comic Con and it's trends and future plans. Some sobering information in his report, that's for sure.

I will say that I am not harboring any anti-Comic Con sentiments. They also put on the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco and later this year I will be exhibiting there for my 14th year in a row.
But Comic Con is an expensive show to exhibit at (I'm including travelling/lodging expenses as well) and we each have to make our own decision as to whether we can afford to do the show every year. And of course one has to be creative in making one's presence known at Comic Con.

I'll say this, my experiences at Comic Con, first as a fan then later as an exhibiting artist, are always full of great, great memories. I've made some good friends here, have gotten many new fans, met some legendary creators from yesteryear. We held our panel for the EL MUERTO movie here, and in 2007 screened the film here as well. This is the biggest comic book convention in the country, bare none.

I'll have to think about my plans for Comic Con 2012. And soon, as exhibitor space sells out way quicker than it did a few years ago.

But I had a great time this year. And I expect I'll have other great Comic Cons in the future.

A volunteer for the convention stopped by the table and asked Blair and I to sign his volunteer t-shirt.

See the Possum and Muerto drawings? I've always been a fan of the SPY VS SPY strip, from the pages of MAD Magazine. To be able to sign it, to add my character to that SPY VS SPY Anniversary commemorative souvenir, that's such a blast. As a comic book creator myself, it's just another of those little memorable, magical moments that make up yet another Comic Con for me.

San Diego Comic Con 2011...Here I come!

2011-07-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

And I'll be travelling with some little friends of mine.... EL Muerto Mini Sketch Dolls!

It's been several years, but I will indeed be at the San Diego Comic Con this week. I'll actually be there on Friday and Saturday. Look for me in the Small Press area, at table K-05 (The Possum Press/Ultraist Studios table). I'll be hanging out with my friend and fellow self-publishing cartoonist Blair Kitchen, creator of THE POSSUM!

I've blogged about Blair here in the past, talking about his Possum comic, easily one of my favorite comic books being produced this century! In 2010, I finally met Blair and his cartoonist brother Mike Kitchen at WonderCon in San Francisco. These guys each produce top-level work, and often keep up a pretty rigorous traveling schedule as part of their self-publishing efforts.

Mike won't be making it out to San Diego, but Blair will have all the Ultraist Studios product at the table. I actually did an interview with Mike last year on my old podcast, JAVILAND. Here's the link to my podcast's blog with links to the interview. And there's also a link to an older interview I did with Blair Kitchen on PLANET COMIC BOOK RADIO, an earlier podcast I used to host.

As for them mini sketch dolls I mentioned at the beginning.. .Yes, I have made some new ones just for Comic Con. El Muerto, as well as some variants, like Diabolico El Muerto, El Muerto/Diego de La Muerte, even a super special mash-up Possum Muerto! So new, so secret, even Blair doesn't know about it!! These 5" sketch dolls are all hand-drawn/colored by yours truly. It's like buying a 3 Dimensional sketch from me!

Looking forward to hanging out with Mr. Kitchen, as well as meeting up several friends of mine, some of who are making their debut Comic Con appearance as exhibitors. Hope to see some of you there!

Howard the Duck vs Dr. Bong

2011-06-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

A pencil sketch I drew last night. It's Howard the Duck and his arch-nemesis, Dr. Bong! Done in tribute to Gene Colan, artist on the HOWARD THE DUCK comic book series.

Gene Colan passed away on Thursday, and I wrote a personal recollection about him and his amazing career in comics on my blog yesterday. Howard the Duck was created by writer Steve Gerber, and artist Val Mayerick, when they introduced him in the pages of MAN-THING. Soon Howard got his own comic book series and by the fourth issue the art chores were taken over by Gene Colan, who really made the character his own. Dr. Bong appeared in issue #15, co-created by Gerber and Colan.

Comic book artist GENE COLAN, 1926-2011

2011-06-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

Gene Colan passed on June 23, having been in the hospital for various, long-term health issues. He was 84.

When I started reading my first batch of comics, Gene's work was amongst the pile of books my older brother Albert had given me. Included in that collection (dating from about 1968-70) were several titles drawn by Gene Colan, including DAREDEVIL, CAPTAIN AMERICA and IRON MAN.

I love that two-fisted punch Daredevil's throwing on Dr. Doom!

This issue stood out to me for the fight scene. Daredevil returns to his home, and there's a robot waiting for him in the closet. Daredevil approaches the closet door and the robot bursts out and demolishes DD. I mean he just wails into him and pounds him to a pulp! The robot takes his mask and shirt back to the villian's hideout as proof that he's destroyed Daredevil. The cover for this issue was a really clever way to preview the fight scene.

By 1975, I was buying my own comic books off the shelves at 7-11, King Cole Market, McCoy's Market and anywhere else I could find them. For 25¢ a copy, it was a pretty sweet deal for a kid with a buck or two from mom!

Besides all the superhero titles I was buying from Marvel (SPIDER-MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, HULK, CAPTAIN AMERICA) I picked up, with much curiosity, HOWARD THE DUCK, written by Steve Gerber and illustrated masterfully by Gene Colan.

Howard fights the Kidney Lady on a bus bound for Cleveland!! How's that for a teaser of a cover...?

As a kid, some of Gerber's writing may have been above my head, but Gene Colan's artwork had my eyes glued to the page. At the time I'm sure I didn't appreciate the fact that he could draw spandex-clad superheroes as easily as he could a talking duck. But as I grew older I realized just how talented Colan was to be able to so deftly imbue Howard with as many personal attributes as he did. Just look at that image of Howard waddling down the aisle, angry determination on his face.

One of my favorite covers of all time is this one:

Again, look at that angry indignation on Howard's face. He get's drafted to run for President of the USA by the All Night Party, and it looks like he's mad as hell and isn't going to take it any longer! Colan's great skill in displaying so much real emotion on a cartoon animal, combined with his naturalistic drawing abilities, gave HOWARD so much humanity. And of course with writer/creator Steve Gerber using Howard as a great sounding board for his own outsider sensibilities, it made for such a memorable book.

During the same time Colan was chronicling the adventures of the Duck, he was doing perhaps his most atmospheric work ever (certainly my favorite of his entire career):

Working with writer Marv Wolfman, (himself achieving a high watermark on this series), Colan imbued the lead character, a cunning monster in human form, with all the dignity, malevolence and high drama he could. Dracula's series took the immortal character to entirely new levels, sometimes even clashing with such Marvel heroes as Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer.

Colan's Dracula was all swirling capes and smokey mists. Like a ghost trying to live amongst humans. The scripts called upon Colan to conjure up haunted houses, nighttime cityscapes, demonic horrors and a grand design for Dracula, the proud Prince of Darkness, former king and corrupter of souls. All of which Colan handled with masterly skills. Credit must be given also to Tom Palmer, who inked Colan's painterly pencils with such precise attention.

In the last two years or so the book's run, Wolfman introduced an epic story involving Dracula's takeover of a Satanic cult, his subsequent affair and marriage to a cult member, the birth of his child Janus, battles with Christ and eventually the Devil himself. Gene Colan of course presented the storyline with all the skills at his command: suspense, haunting atmosphere, horrific scenes of terror, melancholy, action. Above all, a passion for storytelling, moving the story forward with maximum dramatic effect. No stone was left unturned in the unspooling of this supernatural odyssey they took Dracula on. I bought most of this run at a used bookstore in Uptown Whittier called Ames Books, and remember being totally enthralled at the entire opus. To this day it remains one of my favorite stories ever told.

And this is another one of my favorite covers of all time:

When Dracula met the Silver Surfer, it was truly two worlds clashing head-on. Dracula was an evil, supernatural enemy, all smokey mist and billowing cape, shrouded in black. The Surfer was a space-born hero created by alien super science, a pure soul, gleaming in metallic light. How perfectly Gene captured that confrontation on his cover.

Gene Colan's career spanned about 7 decades. Almost 70 years drawing comic books. His strengths to me were his unmistakeable style of drawing, his flair for dramatic camera angles, his sense of movement in his figures, and that overriding sense he gave to all his characters of being alive, whether they were aliens, robots, undead monsters or talking ducks from Cleveland.

Growing up with comics, taking them to heart as much as I did, makes me sad to hear of the man's passing. I never had the privilege of meeting Gene Colan, but feel so fortunate to have known so much of his work. His dedication to his craft, and his joy at doing what he loved, will always provide me with warm memories. And of course, I have so much of my favorite works of his at hand. Thank you, Gene Colan.

You can read a quick obituary about Gene Colan over at writer Mark Evanier's site.

Gene's close friend, Clifford Meth, who has been handling Gene's affairs since Gene's wife Adrienne passed away a year ago, has a very lovely final interview with Gene done just a few weeks ago, at his hospice bedside.

James Bond creator Ian Fleming: Happy Birthday!

2011-05-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

Ian Fleming was born 103 years ago today.

Fleming, who passed away on August 12 1964, was born on May 28, 1908. Fleming wrote his first James Bond novel, "Casino Royale", in 1952, in the span of about 2-3 months, at his Jamaican winter home Goldeneye.

A year later, the book was published and thus began his yearly cycle of writing new 007 thrillers until his death in 1964. His final book, "The Man With The Golden Gun", was published a year after his death, in 1965. A 14th book, "Octopussy", was published in 1966, collecting a few short stories he had written over the years. Sadly, he passed away only a few months before the release of the 3rd James Bond movie, GOLDFINGER, which became the breakthrough box office hit for the film series.

Fleming's health was in decline in his later years, only aggravated by his high-living. He smoke and drank as much as Bond, and really could not see himself slowing down. In the novel "You Only Live Twice", when it seemed that Bond died in Japan, his secretary in the 00-section offered a quote for Bond:

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time".

Fleming, with Sean Connery, on the set of the first James Bond film, DR. NO (1962).

Fleming lived life to the fullest, and in the end it may be what did him in. But in that life, he created a fantastic body of work. Most people will know James Bond through the long-running film series (which will be approaching it's 50th Anniversary next year). I first experienced Bond mainly through television, when ABC would run the films on their Sunday Night Movie slot throughout the 70s. I did see THE SPY WHO LOVED ME on the big screen though, back in 1977. But it wasn't until my years in high school that I read my first Fleming novel

It was this edition of the 1960s Signet paperback that totally caught my eye. I knew of Bond through the movies, and always noticed Ian Fleming's names in the credits, but seeing the books in front of me really caught my attention. These Signet paperbacks today are still favorites of mine, with their minimalist design, but well conceived visually and with just the right flamboyant flair with the synopses. I went on to collect the entire set by scouring the various used bookstores that at one time where within a block or two of one another in the Uptown Whittier shopping district.

While the Bond films remain my favorite movie series, it's the novels that provide me with the most fullfilling immersion into the world of Fleming's imagination. A professional journalist, as well as Naval intelligence officer during WWII, Fleming infuses his stories with very descriptive, tantalizing narratives, weaved in with real-life experiences on war and espionage. A self-admitted 'overgrown adolescent', Fleming's books are clear cut battles between good and evil (West Vs East), with strong doses of sexuality and violence, but also with a witty, urbane flair for melodrama and fun.

Fleming remains my favorite writer, only made more evident by my current re-reading of "Casino Royale". Here's a passage from Chapter 7:

"Bond has always been a gambler. He loved the dry riffle of the cards and the constant unemphatic drama of the quite figures round the green tables. He liked the solid, studied comfort of card-rooms and casinos, the well-padded arms of the chairs, the glass of champagne or whisky at the elbow, the quite unhurried attention of good servants. He was amused by the impartiality of the roulette ball and of the playing cards-and their eternal bias. He liked being an actor and a spectator and from his chair to take part in other men's dramas and decisions, until it caqme to his own turn to say that vital 'yes' or 'no', generally on a fifty-fifty chance."

As a 17 yr. old Mexican-American kid living in a working class suburban home in the 80s, I couldn't be further from the 1950s European landscape that Bond dealt in, moving among the gambling palaces and high-dining experiences while chasing super-criminals across the continent, usually with a femme fatale or stunning beauty in tow.

But Fleming's evocative and nuanced writing, fantastically conceived plots and unforgettable characters captured my interest and imagination. And that's the best thing I can ask of any artist working in the mass media. Fleming's own musings on his writings consisted of such thoughts as these:

‘I am not an angry young, or even middle-aged, man. My books are not “engaged”. I have no message for suffering humanity and, though I was bullied at school and lost my virginity like so many of us used to do in the old days, I have never been tempted to foist these and other harrowing personal experiences on the public. My opuscula do not aim at changing people or making them go out and do something. They are written for warm-blooded heterosexuals in railway trains, aeroplanes or beds.’

Fleming has mentioned that he writes to have an audience, and to make money. A very practical approach. But he was a tremendously talented artist, employing an innovative and dynamic flair for language that makes the Bond books much more than just spy capers. As a creator of my own comics, I take a lot of how Ian Fleming approached his work and career and apply it to my own work, in the ways that best suit what I want to achieve. He cranked
out each Bond novel over his 2-3 month stay in Jamaica every winter, writing about 4 hours a day and never looking back on the previous days writing. He wouldn't even work from an outline. Just getting the story down onto the paper first and foremost. Only when he went back to England for the remaining 9 months would he polish and edit the manuscripts. But really it was his fertile imagination, and a life-time of human experiences, that propelled his stories of James Bond. And maybe a little wish-fulfillment as well.

He often claimed he wrote his first Bond book to get over the shock of getting married at age 43! Well, it that's the case he left us one heck of a therapy session. While for the most part the Bond films have deviated greatly from the majority of his books, they are still adaptations of his works, and it's really the films that have secured his place on the world stage. For almost 60 years now, his books have been reprinted numerous times throughout the world. In the 1950s the Daily Express obtained his permission to produce comic strip adaptations of his novels, eventually leading to all new strips featuring brand new stories, well beyond Fleming's death.

Fleming also wrote the classic children's story, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", which he produced while recovering from a heart attack.

Among his greatest achievements in his work for Britain's Intelligence Service was his creation of the 30 Assault Unit, a top secret commando team that would scour a captured enemy base for any and all intelligence material. This highly valued unit is the subject of a new film called AGE OF HEROES, with Fleming himself portrayed by actor James D'Arcy.

Quite prolific in his 11 year span as a published author, but like all great works, the legacy lives and flourishes far beyond it's original life. I'm not a heavy drinker at all, but if I was one, I'd toast Mr. Fleming with one of Bond's vodka martinis.

Happy Birthday, Ian Fleming.

(If you're reading this via Facebook, this vidoe clip of Ian Fleming may not be visible. Visit my blog to see the clip.)

CELEBRATING WORDS FESTIVAL this Saturday in Sylmar, CA

2011-05-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

This Saturday I'll be attending the 6th ANNUAL CELEBRATING WORDS FESTIVAL in Sylmar, CA.

This worthwhile event celebrates the written, spoken and performed word. I'll be on a panel entitled THE ART & CULTURE OF COMIC BOOKS at 1pm, followed by a signing. I'll also be conducting a storytelling lesson on the Children's Stage between 4-4:30pm.

For a full list of the panels and events, please check out this link.

CELEBRATING WORDS FESTIVAL is co-sponsored by TIA CHUCHA'S CENTRO CULTURAL, a not-for-profit cultural art center and bookstore that provides and promotes literary and artistic resources to the community.

This free event will be held at:
LOS ANGELES MISSION COLLEGE
13356 Eldridge Avenue
Sylmar, CA 91342

LATINO COMICS EXPO Review Pt. 2

2011-05-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

The second day of LATINO COMICS EXPO fell on Mother's Day, which meant a whole bunch of cartoonists were calling their mom's first thing that morning! The Expo was held at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

Our first panel of the day was a talk on humor comics. That panel was represented by (left to right), Carlos Saldaña (BURRITO), Jose Cabrera (CRYING MACHO MAN) and Michael Aushenker (EL GATO, CRIME MANGLER).

One of the many nice things about this event was that we were able to provide space for several local cartoonists, who have recently published their first comics. Among them was Crystal Gonzalez, with her book IN THE DARK:

Here's a shot of (l to r) Rafael Navarro (SONAMBULO), Carlos Saldaña (BURRITO) and Hector Cantu (BALDO) working the crowds:

We had 3 panels scheduled on Sunday, and foot traffic would vary at times, but overall there was always activity on the floor. I know us artists spent a lot of time talking to those of us we haven't met before, and of course we always made the time to greet the patrons to the Expo.

LATINO COMICS EXPO Co-Founder Ricardo Padilla introducing the Mario Hernandez (LOVE & ROCKETS) panel to an enthusiastic audience:

And posing with 3 generations of the Padilla family afterwards:

Anthony Oropeza (AMIGOMAN) came all the way from Kansas City to attend our first Expo. A few years after I had started publishing my own comics (1998), Anthony had begun creating his AMIGOMAN comics. He wrote me back then, basically introducing himself as a fellow creator. It was nice to finally be able to meet one another in person:

Michael Aushenker, pondering out dinner plans for the evening as he signs up a book for a fan:

Michael's prolific output in comics includes EL GATO, CRIME MANGLER, the world's most bombastic masked luchador. Michael revealed some big plans for EL GATO over on his blog...

Rhode Montijo (CLOUD BOY, PABLO'S INFERNO) and I will sign anything a fan asks!

Mario Hernandez (CITIZEN REX) was a pleasure to meet:

He had a great time and is open to returning back again. We chatted about the Adam West BATMAN TV show and 1960s superhero comics! By the way, next year, the Cartoon Art Museum is hosting a 30th Anniversary LOVE & ROCKETS exhibition for all three Hernandez Brothers.

A local Bay Area cartoonist, Jaime Crespo:

I had met Jaime Crespo years ago at the Alternative Press Expo, held yearly in San Francisco. His comics revolve around slice-of-life scenarios, often detailing Jaime's life growing up in the Bay Area. He's always fun to talk to, as he's got stories about everything!

The last panel we had scheduled for that day was the SELF PUBLISH YOUR COMICS PANEL. I moderated the panel, which featured (l to r): Rafael Navaro (SONAMBULO), Jaime Crespo (SLICES) and a pair of new creators, Mario T. Lanao and Cristian Garcia of RELUCTANT ZERO.

Jaime, Rafael and I each have between 13-20 years of making comics. Several times throughout the panel, Mario and Cristian referred to us as the veterans of the group. Which got me thinking that, yeah, it's been a hell of a long time since I started self-publishing my own comics! It was a good mix on the panel, with us 'old-timers' offering our experiences in the trenches, and hearing from the younger artists about what they've encountered so far since releasing their book. It was actually their first panel, so it was nice to be able to provide a forum for a new group of artists.

Overall, I have to rank the LATINO COMICS EXPO as one of the highlights in my career in comics. An important event culturally, and historic in it's significance. My thanks again go to my friend and fellow Co-Founder, Ricardo Padilla. Along with his family, wife Rosalinda, daughter Sophia, son Andres, and even his parents, Ricardo pulled out all the stops in making this event happen.

Thanks also to Andrew Farago, Summerlea Kashar, Ron Evan, intern Megan and the entire staff of the Cartoon Art Museum for opening their doors to us and helping us launch the first ever LATINO COMICS EXPO.

Thanks to all our guests and exhibiting artists for really making the show what it was, a gathering of cartoonists and writers whose work celebrates the influence of the Latino culture in their art and lives. Special thanks to those that volunteered their time to the Expo (Kate, Jarrod and others). And thanks to the fans and friends and family who came to support the event, and support us everyday of their lives with there love and friendship.

One last pic I must share. I started self-publishing back in 1998. And at that time, my friend Rafael Navarro had started about 2 years before, with his SONAMBULO comics. Around that time, I had met Michael Aushenker through Rafael in Los Angeles, and Michael had been publishing a few years already. When I started my book, I also met a young fellow named Rhode Montijo, who had just begun releasing his PABLO'S INFERNO comic books. We soon began hanging out together at shows, and either rooming together or traveling together up and down the California convention circuit. For a few years or so, we even joined forces as a loose collective called BIG UMBRELLA.

It's amazing to me, that all these years later, we're still in the game, doing what we love. It had been a while since all of us were at the same event as exhibitors, so this EXPO was a great way to bring us all under the same roof once more. So, thanks to my dearest friends, earliest fellow self-publishers, favorite collaborators and inspirational artists for standing once more with me under that big umbrella!

LATINO COMICS EXPO review Pt. 1

2011-05-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

The inaugural LATINO COMICS EXPO is now in the history books, and was I ever glad to have been a part of it! Held at The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco the weekend of May 7 & 8, the event was a comic convention centered around Latino themed comics and their creators.

I have to give a very special thanks to my fellow co-founder, Ricardo Padilla, for all the work he put into this event. As a San Francisco resident, Ricardo took the lead with all the physical footwork coordinating the event with the staff of the Cartoon Art Museum (Andrew Farago, Summerlea Kashar & Ron Evans, to name a few!). Ricardo also set up our 'official' Expo hotel for visiting artists, and in fact had his mother, father, son, daughter and lovely wife all help out with the planning and execution of the event! Latinos are known for close families, and this Expo really reflected that.

I arrived in San Francisco late Friday evening at the Padilla residence, and was greeted by this wonderful bit of business: a Certificate of Honor commemorating Latino Comics Expo Day! This was not only deeply appreciated by Ricardo and I, but every single one of our attending artists was blown away by this great achievement.

The first day of the Expo was off to a good start, which coincided with FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. My spread for that day featured a stack of EL MUERTO MISH MASH comics available for free to anyone who'd like one.

I shared a table with good friend Rhode Montijo, who had a great display featuring his new SKELETOWN book and hand-crafted merchandise.

I've done a scores of conventions and festivals, signing in libraries, wharehouses, bookstores, parks and even a cemetery or two! But being set up inside an actual museum devoted to comic books and comic strips? That was a unique experience. Behind and in front of me were pages from classic Marvel and DC comics, comic strips like Peanuts, even political cartoons (there was Richard Nixon right behind me!).

I think a very popular component of the Expo turned out to be the panels. Working with all our artists/attendees, I think we came up with a really good variety of panels for the weekend. Saturday's started off with a kid's comics panel featuring (Left to Right): Carlos Saldaña (BURRITO), Rhode Montijo (PABLO'S INFERNO, CLOUD BOY), Moderator Hector Cantu (BALDO), Anthony Oropeza (AMIGOMAN) and Expo Co-Founder Ricardo Padilla.

Professor Frederick Aldama, who wrote a book entitled YOUR BRAIN ON LATINO COMICS, gave a lecture on the history of Latino comics. Many of the Expo exhibitors were both in the book and the lecture.

Comments from the fans were positive and supportive, with many asking if we'd be back next year. My personal dream for this Expo is to take it on the road, giving more people across the land the chance to attend the show. That would also allow for more artists to be able to make the trek to the show as well.

Me and the Professor!

Jeff's a great fan, and it's always a joy to meet up with him when I do shows in the Bay Area. He's a huge fan of outre cinema & pop culture and always brings great conversation to my table. He bought one of the miniature EL MUERTO sketch dolls and decided to carry him around like Freddy the Flute from H.R. Puffinstuff!

The Museum is divided up into 4 rooms, and we were stationed in two of them. Plus we had the use of the back room, where we held the panels. We even had access to their offices upstairs, where we set up a 'Green Room' for the artists to catch a breather. Ricardo's mother was kind enough to make two huge batches of burritos for us as well!

The Museum's staff was top notch, and there weren't really any problems all weekend. It really was a pitch perfect first-time outing. With me down in LA and Ricardo living in San Francisco, I think we were able to coordinate all the pre-planning and launch a successful show. No doubt our artists and guests really were the highlights of the show.

LATINO COMICS EXPO Exclusive TEX-MEX Vs. MUERTO Pack

2011-05-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 7 & 8, is the first ever LATINO COMICS EXPO!

This is a show I organized with co-founder Ricardo Padilla, and it's bringing together over a dozen writers and artists that highlight the influence of Latino culture and experience in their works. The Expo will be held at the Cartoon Art Museum, and admission to the Museum grants you access to the Expo and all the panels and presentations.

I'll be moderating and participating in a panel on Sunday, SELF-PUBLISHING YOUR COMICS. But as an artist, I'm bringing along my brand new comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO. And to really celebrate the uniqueness of this historic event, I'm putting together a very limited LATINO COMICS EXPO Pack! Here's what's included:

The new WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO comic book, the ROUGH CUT SPECIAL EDITION book, a color print, and an original penciled page I created when working on the rough draft of the comic. All 18 pages are being included in the LCE Pack, including the cover and back cover thumbnail pages.

20 packs in total, and once they're gone, that's it!

I'll also have a brand-new metallic EL MUERTO/LATINO COMICS EXPO button, plus my usual catalog of comics, buttons and DVD. But mostly, let's meet up at the first ever LATINO COMICS EXPO and have a really great time!

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: Coloring the pages

2011-04-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe 'gray-toning the pages' might be more accurate...

This is the 4th part in my series of posts chronicling my process in creating my latest comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO: THE BATTLE OF SANTA MUERTE!! This one is about the gray-tone coloring on the book. The previous posts cover:

1) The Inspiration
2) Creating the Story
3) Inking the Pages

The page above, which I showed the uncolored version of in the previous post about inking, provides a good representation of my overall coloring in this book.

I colored the book in Photoshop, after scanning in the inked pages at 400 dpi. I colored in gray tones, which is basically shades of black. I tried to limit myself to about 6 or 7 shades, which means in my color palette I would have 100% Black, 85% Black, 65% Black, 50% Black, 35% Black and 20% Black (as an example).

I'd have to make notes to myself (and in the Layers palette in Photoshop) to keep the colors consistent on the characters. So the 65% Black would be, let's just say, for Tex-Mex's pants and the Cadillac body. 35% would be for the shading on Muerto's skin and the beard stubble on Tex-Mex.

The reason for the limited amount of gray tones? It's my preference for coloring my own work. When I use actual colors, I try to keep the amount of colors I use limited as well. Aesthetically, since I draw my figures and environments with limited detail, or at least what we all call 'cartoony', I also like to keep the coloring on a somewhat consistent approach. My gray tones are meant to first of all fill in the line art, giving it volume and variety from other parts of the art. Some of the grays, like the beard stubble, are meant to provide an indication of texture.

Here's a sample of panels from the book. They're not presented in the chronological order they actually appear in:

In the bottom, right hand panel, the dark gray compliments the lines on the door to illustrate the appearance of wood. While the black is used to show a stark shadow from the light outdoors. It also adds to the mood of the panel (it's the interior of an abandoned church), heightening a sense of foreboding....

Basically I want my coloring to 'get to the point' of what I'm trying to convey in the art. Colored pants, ominous shadows, medium colored door, tanned skin tones, etc. Part of that comes from trusting the reader's judgement to see it how I hope they will, and part of it comes from wanting to keep the process somewhat quick for me to work through. The third reason, and my first concern as an artist, is just the way I want my work to look. My approach to all the art I create (drawing, comics, painting) comes from an internal, emotional gut feeling. There's universal precepts and fundamentals of art that inform my creative process, but at the same time, telling a story comes from such an intuitive mindset, at least the way I see my role as the maker of these stories.

The background on this page was colored to provide an interesting alternate to a plain white background. Also, the textured pattern somewhat reminded me of blood splattering, underscoring the brutality of the fight without resorting to showing the blood spraying patterns all over the page. (Although I've done that in the origin issue of El Muerto....).

Here's an image I colored in gray tones before I started coloring the actual story. This appears in the interior front cover of the book.

Mr. Smith, the instigator of the tale...

I spent more time on this that I would have if it was an interior page of the story. I knew this was going to be a promotional piece of art used outside the actual confines of the story, so I didn't mind making this a much more detailed piece. It was also more meticulously inked, again, because I knew this wasn't going to part of the story.
If I spent this much time and detail on every panel of the book, it would have taken me a lot longer to get it done, and as I've mentioned in previous posts, I had a deadline by when I wanted to ship this book off to the printer.

Even as I get quicker in using Photoshop to color, I still think I'd
maintain my more simplified approach to coloring. Perhaps in a few years, that would change...

A favorite creator of mine is Go Nagai, a Japanese cartoonist whose prolific output includes Mazinger Z, Devilman and Cutey Honey, to name some of his most famous properties. His work, which like most manga is printed in B&W, really provides me with a lot of inspiration on how to approach coloring in gray scales. Here are 3 examples:

Above, a page from MAZINGER Z. Followed by pages from MAO DANTE:

In the DANTE page above, I love variety and balance of white, black and gray shapes throughout the page. When you add in the variety of textures that are inked in, the whole page just crackles with a lively panorama of imagery and tones.

I don't show these to say that my own coloring choices are meant to match the work done by Nagai, but rather to illustrate that by looking at other work we admire, we artists can often feel emboldened to go beyond the work we're normally satisfied in producing. What they call 'outside your comfort zone'.

As for working in actual color, here's the back cover of my book:

The 'Wanted poster' piece was relatively simple, as El Muerto is basically three colors (four if you count his Superman-inspired blue hair highlights!). I put in a Photoshop texture on the wall, complimenting the cracks I drew in the illustration. Overall a relatively quick color job, but very effective in showing exactly what it needs to.

The bottom strip was more of a graphic design piece, picking some limited colors to tie the various elements together. Again, no fancy tricks, just creating something that looks good, and delivers a simple message.

In the next post in this series I'll share with you my writing process.

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: Inking the Pages

2011-04-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

Quick update: My new comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO:THE BATTLE OF SANTA MUERTE!! has been sent to the printers! Everything is on schedule for the initial batch of books to arrive in time to debut at the first-ever LATINO COMICS EXPO at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco on May 7 & 8!

In the meantime, I'd like to share with you another stage on the process of making the comic. In two previous posts, I talked about my inspiration for the idea and how I started to put the story together. In this third part of the series (collect 'em all!) I'm going to show you the actual inking of the comic book. Because I was working so fast, I didn't document any of the penciled pages, except for a very few panels. Here's one:

And here's one of the thumbnails to a page. 'Thumbnails' is just another word for rough draft, or loose pencils, of an actual comic page. In my case, it's a sheet of cheap, white 8.5" x 11" paper. It's done to layout a page, planning what the final, finished page will look like. Here's where I figure out my pacing for the story, how the individual scenes are visualized for best dramatic effect, tempo, mood, staging, etc.

And here's the inked page, after I penciled it on a sheet of 11" x 14" Strathmore Bristol paper:

If you compare the two, you'll see slight differences. But really the actual sequence of events in the panels is about the same. That's what I mean by establishing my pacing in the thumbnails. When I sketch out the individual panels, I try to pick the best shot for that panel, but when I redraw the page on the larger sheet of paper, that's when I really decide on the best composition for that panel, and making sure I'm satisfied I staged the characters as best I can.

Compare another set, this one where El Muerto and Weapon Tex-Mex first meet:

Here, again, the action is pretty much the same on both pages. One key difference though is that in the final drawing, I decided to shift the angle a bit on the central image. I liked the original version where Tex-Mex and Muerto are literally facing one another as if each of them is looking in a mirror. But tilting the angle in the inked version makes it look like Muerto is sliding downward into Tex-Mex's clutches, heightening the sense of danger. One of my chief priorities as a cartoonist is to always punch up the dramatic
cues in my artwork. If the scene, or even the characters, without any dialogue, can convey an emotional state to the viewers, then I feel the artwork has done it's job. But the visual impact is what I want to get across first, as that will be what the readers first process. This applies to quite, introspective scenes as well as chaotic action scenes. One of my favorite words to positively describe what I like about a comic book story, as a reader of comics, is visceral. If I can produce such a feeling with my art, then I've accomplished one of the things I hoped to.

For me, working on these pages allows me to totally disappear into the world on the page. In the thumbnail stage, I'm really focusing on crafting the actual story, pacing out the events panel by panel, page by page. Choosing the best shot, staging the characters, picking reaction shots from one character to the next. So much to figure out, even the size and shape of the panels. Everything on the comic page has to be given some consideration in how it's serving the telling of the story.

So as I work on the inking, my focus is on delineating the figures, picking textures for fabrics, hair and all the environments, determining shadows. While I wouldn't call that process mechanical,
there's a certain amount of peacefulness I get just working on this stage of the book. And temporarily shutting out the real world, that's where that peaceful sense comes from.

One of my most powerful tools I use when inking pages is..... music.
When working, I'll pick a playlist of music, usually film scores, that help me envision the world I'm creating. Soundtracks like BATMAN RETURNS by Danny Elfman and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY by Ennio Morricone were very helpful to me in staying in a particular mindset as I worked on my pages. Actually, those films have elements in them that I recalled when making my comic: the macabre mood and gothic nature of one film, and the Southwest grittiness and colorful characters (and their relationships to one another) of the other. It's an interesting well to draw from, but influences come from all sources.

Here's two examples of the soundtracks from the films that helped me zero in on the mood I was tapping into for my story (if you're reading this blog via Facebook, these Youtube clips won't show up, but if you visit my blog, you'll be able to play them):

As far as physical tools go, the photo below shows you what I use to ink the pages. On of my favorite new tools is the lead holder (the blue instrument). I've usually used Prismacolor non-photo blue pencils for the penciling stage, right before inking. But a friend of mine gave me the lead holder last year, and I like using it with a non-photo blue lead to do my penciling. Can't really explain why I like it better, but perhaps it's because I use less pressure (so the lead doesn't snap), which seems to allow me to get a little looser with my linework.

For brushes, I pretty much always use a '00' Winsor Newton and a #1 for larger areas. I'll be honest, I'm not that picky if it's Sable or synthetic or made from the nose hairs of an albino yak! Just as long as it lays down the ink like I need it to.....

Another favorite new tool is the Pentel Brush Pen, made in Japan, no less. I'm still getting the hang of it, but it does produce some nice long, delicate brush strokes. And I like not having to clean it, unlike a brush.

Okay, next time, I'll be sharing with you my process for coloring the story, in gray tones. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave comments. Always curious what people are thinking about in response to what I wrote.

Comic book workshop in Pico Rivera this April & May

2011-03-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have a new round of Comic Book Workshops starting this April at Pico Park in Pico Rivera, CA.

A comic created by one of the students in my January 2011 class. How awesome is that title? Poor Chocolate Chip Cookie Boy...

The description for the class is:

A five week class that teaches your child how to make their own comics! This class will cover character design, creating stories, tips on drawing and storytelling fundamentals. At the end of the course, students will receive a printed copy of their own comic book. There is a $5 supply fee due to the instructor on the first day of class.

Yes folks, that's right! Other classes may send your kid home with a bunch of loose, floppy sheets of comic pages they've drawn, but in my class they get photocopied editions of their 4 page stories! They can share them with family, trade with friends, even put them on Ebay and start their art school tuition fund!

We're offering two classes per week. Wednesday class is for kids ages 6-12, Thursday classes for ages 13-18. These have proved pretty popular, with many of the kids from the 2010 Fall classes having taken the class again this past January.

Schedule is as follows:

Wednesday (Ages 6-12): April 6 - May 4, 5:00-7:00 pm.

Second session May 18 - June 15

Thursday (Ages 13-18): April 7 - May 12, 5:30-7:30 pm.

Second session May 19 - June 16

Pico Park, 9528 Beverly Boulevard, Pico Rivera, CA.
Phone: 562-801-4470

Visit or call the Park to register, or register online at the Pico Rivera website. And feel free to email me with any questions: misterjav@gmail.com

Okay, I'll just come out and tell you right now: One of my nieces took the class, too. The story involved a group of kids at a comic convention trying to stop a thief who stole a copy of (I kid you not)...EL MUERTO #1!!

Aw shucks, Caroline....

New interview at RETCON Podcast

2011-03-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

On St. Patrick's Day I spent an hour or so talking to the RETCON Podcast, a comics and pop culture show. I was interviewed by Henry Barajas and Eric Schock . We talked about, surprise, surprise... me and my comics work!

Among the topics we kicked around were creating comics with a D.I.Y. aesthetic, race & culture, teaching comic book workshops, my in-progress WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs EL MUERTO comic and the upcoming LATINO COMICS EXPO at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

Interestingly, I was also asked about the EL MUERTO movie, which was released in 2007, but it was nice to talk about it again. As I had never been on the RETCON Podcast, it was a fresh subject for us to talk about. Actually, doing an interview about a film several years old now allows me to approach it with a certain perspective. I shared some behind-the-scenes anecdotes regarding the film, and it was nice to be able to relate the positive experiences I had with the production.

Another thing I mentioned on the podcast was that just this week a college student has ordered some of my books from my online shop, in preparation for his upcoming thesis on Latino comic books! That came out of the blue and it was quite a proud moment, I must say.

You can listen to the podcast by following this link, or listen via iTunes (just search 'Retcon Podcast' in iTunes and download Episode #9).

My thanks to RETCON for having me on the show, and a tip of the hat to hosts Henry and Eric for their engaging questions.

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: Creating the Story

2011-03-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay, but here's Part 2 in my series chronicling the behind-the-scenes process of my upcoming comic book, WEAPON TEX-MEX Vs. EL MUERTO: THE BATTLE OF SANTA MUERTE!!

(A sketch for an upcoming promotional piece of art)

The reason I haven't been posting for the last 3 weeks was that I've actually been busy drawing the actual comic book. As of today, I can say I've penciled and inked the entire story. Of course, I need to go back and finish details on most of the pages, a few panels here and there. The way I worked was to sweep through the 18 pages, making sure all the figures were inked, and most of the backgrounds. What I need to go back and finish are mostly drawings of cars and interiors of buildings. As those will take a little more time (such as the perspective involved with some of the shots) I didn't want to 'slow' down my inking pace.

In the first part of this series (scroll down this blog or click here to read it) I talked about what inspired me to create a Tex-Mex Versus Muerto story. Here I'm going to talk about how I put the story together.

Once I came up with the idea of having my two characters duke it out in a comic book, the first thing I did was come up with a sketch, something I thought could be used as a cover. Well, the second I finished the sketch, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this had to be the final cover. There was something about the outrageousness and sheer audacity of the image that made me both laugh out loud and tingle with that excitement you sometimes get as an artist when you've 'stumbled' across a gold nugget in your own mind. Often in these type of superhero crossover battles (again, see the images from the previous blog post) there's a strong desire, at least for the cover image, to make sure each hero has equal standing with the other, where one character isn't getting the upper-hand on the other.

Well, these are both my characters, so I didn't have to worry about offending anyone. And since Tex-Mex is a rip-snorting, hulking brute of a man, why the heck wouldn't he be plowing the 5' 10", 160 lb El Muerto through a concrete wall?! Plus I like the fact that even though El Muerto is my signature character, with much wider recognition (the dude's got a movie made about him, for cripes sake!), he's on the receiving end of a good ol' Texan butt-whippin'!

This isn't actually the first time Muerto and Tex-Mex have been seen on the same cover. That milestone happened on my last book, COMIC POP, (with me thrown on there to further increase sales) :

They didn't actually appear in a story together, that comic was a collection of reprints featuring individual stories with them as well as some other rarities. But the idea putting them together really appealed to me.

My plan for the Versus story was that I wanted to make it a short story, primarily for the fact that the two previous Weapon Tex-Mex comics were short tales, really short. The first was 3 pages, the second a whopping 4. Since this is technically a Tex-Mex story, I wanted to keep to the shortened story format. Originally I thought I could do this story in about 8-10 pages. Eventually it clocked in at 18 pages, but it's the only way to have told the particular tale I came up with.

When I sat down to thumbnail the story, I didn't really have a definite idea where I was going, or at least how I was going to get there exactly. Just so you know, I don't actually write scripts for myself, I literally have to see the story in visual form, that's my 'script'. I prefer to deliver the story from my mind to the paper with the actual images of the story, unraveling the narrative through images, panel by panel, page by page. I knew the main story points I had to hit, but when I sketched out the first pages of thumbnails, it was almost like watching the story unfold right before my very eyes.

Here are the first three pages of my thumbnails (these are drawn on plain 8.5" x 11" sheets of white paper). Page 1, first panel was going to have the title and credits, then followed by the first two panels, setting up the opening:

Page 2, a meeting between Tex-Mex and someone looking to hire a zombie hunter:

As you can see on Page 3, I stopped drawing when I got to the bottom of the page:

The reason I stopped was I realized that I was eating up 3 pages already, and I was hoping to tell this story in under 10 pages! So I knew right away I had to find a quicker way to start the story. I eventually got rid of the guy hiring Tex-Mex, or at least substituted another character for his role, and reworked the opening into a tighter narrative. So these pages go into the 'deleted scenes' folder...

Getting the tone of the story was something I always had to keep in mind as well. Tex-Mex is more of a satirical, humorous character, and his two previous stories reflect that, while El Muerto is much more along the lines of a tragic, cursed-hero figure. I don't want to give too much away here in regards to the final project, but I just crafted the story with the idea that these two have to meet in a story, and they have to be who they are, and the narrative has to tell their story. Obviously what they have in common is that I've drawn them before in their own stories, and even though they have their own distinct voices, I'm the one doing the 'talking'. So I think the way I confronted this issue was to simply just write them together in a story, keeping their unique identities intact, and make the story work.

Another reason I wanted to bring these two characters together was I plan to debut this comic at the inaugural Latino Comics Expo, being held in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum on May 7 & 8. It seemed like such a natural idea to have a comic featuring Weapon Tex-Mex and El Muerto at such an event. In fact, I'm also aiming to produce a special limited edition of the comic exclusively for this event, with an entirely different cover and some extra added bonus item. More on that later...

In my next post for this series, I'll share some of the actual inked pages and how I approached that stage of production.

Weapon Tex-Mex vs El Muerto: The Inspiration

2011-02-20T22:38:00.000-08:00

So the other day my mind was struck with a stimulating bolt of creative lightning. Once it hit, my brain was sizzling from the primal energy of the idea. So I made an executive decision and immediately put my current comic book project on 'Stand By' status, as I want to get this new book produced and sent to the printer by the end of March.

There's a couple of reasons I'm doing this. One is that I have a couple of upcoming conventions in a few months, and I want to release a new book at these specific shows. But what really gave me the actual idea for the story was the influence of some old favorites of mine growing up.

As a kid, watching this on TV, I thought it was the coolest idea ever. Having watched the original KING KONG numerous times, and my fair share of GODZILLA flicks, it as a real kick to see the two of them going at it. I'm not going to say I was real media savy, but I knew it was a rare treat to be able to see the two of them in the same movie, as Godzilla was a Japanese property and King Kong was a homegrown movie monster.

Even the superheroes got into the act:

I actually had this comic in a collection my older brother had given me in the early 70s. Not only was the Jack Kirby cover just screaming to me to read it, but the whole idea of Captain America fighting with Daredevil was a thrill. (Spoiler alert: Daredevil had a fever, causing him to recklessly attack Cap who was performing some exhibition fighting matches for charity!).

By the mid-70s, when I was buying my own comics, the greatest cataclysmic event in my young comics-reading career happened, right before my very eyes!

SUPERMAN VS SPIDER-MAN (1976), the first-ever superhero crossover comic between DC Comics and Marvel. And the really sweet thing about this was that it was printed up in the giant-size Treasury Edition format both companies were using at the time for special projects. This is truly one of my favorite comics of all time. The Treasuries measure about 10" x 13", and the size of the book really added to the impact of the historical nature of the story. In 1981 they followed up with this whopper:

As a comic fan, there is such a special excitement about seeing superhero characters from rival companies battle it out. It's not something that's going to be done frequently (if ever again), and they each bring their own extensive histories to the battleground. (If you want to read more about these books and Treasury Comics in general, check out my friend Rob Kelly's entertaining and informative site, TREASURY COMICS.COM)

In the mid 90's I became a fan of Go Nagai, the Japanese cartoonist who created both MAZINGER Z and DEVILMAN, two very famous properties of his that debuted in their own mangas (Japanese comics) in the early 70s. Amazingly, within a few months of launching each title, there were animated series for both characters. And within a year of that, there was the MAZINGER Z Versus DEVILMAN animated movie!

Here we actually have a crossover between one creator's characters. Such a smart move, because this way any profits (outside of whatever arrangement he made with the animation studio) go into Go Nagai's production company, Dynamic Productions. Plus he's getting two of his fan bases to watch one of his productions. And don't discount the merchandising possibilities, either...!

Just a few short weeks ago I learned that Go Nagai had published a brand-new team-up in manga called DEVILMAN Versus GETTER ROBO (another of his creations). I actually ordered it from a Japanese bookstore in Little Tokyo, and while I can't read Japanese, I was able to follow along somewhat with the story.

I really think this book is what really got me thinking about matching up two of my characters in one story. El Muerto and Weapon Tex-Mex seemed like an interesting fit. While the Tex-Mex stories (two short stories to date) are done much more in a humorous light, the El Muerto comics are created with a more melodramatic tone, with the gothic elements and human interest aspects blended in with the supernatural/superhero tropes.

They're actually the first two comic characters I created that saw print (Tex-Mex in 1997, Muerto in 1998). So it's been a battle 14 years in the making! (Hey, gotta use that in the PR!)

I've already finished drawing the rough draft of the comic (the thumbnails, as we sometimes call them) and you can see the cover at the top of this post. (By the way, this is slightly revised from my first attempt at the cover. If you want to compare, check it out at my DeviantArt page).

I'll be sharing some behind-the-scenes progress reports here for the next several weeks. Next post in this series will be how I came up with the actual story and the struggle I had in creating the rough draft. Taking two different types of characters, and putting them in a brand new story was an interesting exercise in creativity. Plus more insight into why these two characters actually work very well for what I have in mind.

And if you haven't seen it yet, my first ever WEAPON TEX-MEX comic is available to read, for free, right here on this very site, just click here, or scroll up to the top green tabs.

Upcoming shows: Latino Comics Expo and San Gabriel Valley Comic Book Festival

2011-02-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

Two upcoming shows I'll be participating at include the first-ever LATINO COMICS EXPO being held on May 7 & 8 at the CARTOON ART MUSEUM in San Francisco.

(Logo and illustration by Jose Cabrera)

The LATINO COMICS EXPO was an idea between myself and Ricardo Padilla (he curated my COMIC POP solo art show last year in San Francisco). We envisioned an event that would encompass a wide range of voices from Latino-themed comics from a variety of artists of Latino background. We approached the Cartoon Art Museum and they were very supportive of our proposal. I'll be posting up the names of confirmed artists next week, so please check back and make plans to attend!

(Robot monster painting by Ted Seko)

This is our 4th year in a row presenting our San Gabriel Valley Comic Book Festival. When I approached my fellow Nuvein Foundation Board Members with the idea of hosting our own local comic book show, they wholeheartedly agreed and now we have what promises to be our biggest show yet. Again, details on this will be forthcoming, but we're eyeing a June event this year.

When I started self-publishing my own comics years ago, it never occurred to be to one day become an organizer of shows. But sometimes you have to just take a step forward and make things happen that you believe should happen. Of course, nothing like this gets done on it's own, so thanks go to the many people involved in helping put these events together.

In memory of Lisa Nguyen

2011-01-30T21:52:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I was informed of the death of Lisa Nguyen, a 27 yr. old artist. I had met Lisa through another friend several years ago. Lisa was always very friendly and outgoing every time I met her, and her best friend would tell me of their many hilarious adventures the two of them had over the years.

Lisa's death is even more tragic, as she was murdered. The entire ordeal is a huge tragedy, and out of respect to her memory, her family and her friends, I'm not going to use this space to recount that incident. The fact that Lisa is gone is such a terrible fact by itself.

What I will share with you is that all my memories of Lisa are those of a young woman with a huge zest for living, a true passion for all matters of art, and a person with very close relationships with her large group of friends. I can't claim a close friendship with her, as I really only saw her through her best friend (my girlfriend at the time). I felt a real gratitude toward Lisa, because she would remark that I was 'good' for her best friend! But I feel she and I considered one another friends, because Lisa just made me feel that way.

The grief for those who knew, and loved her, has been tremendous. But so has the outpouring of support, friendship and love. I created the above piece of art for the tribute show her friends have put together to honor Lisa's life and artistry.

The Fabulous Life of Lisa Nguyen
A tribute show
February 6 – 10, 2011

Opening Reception:
Sunday, February 6th in the Werby Gallery, 5:00-7:00PM
Student Gallery courtyard at Cal State University, Long Beach

Gallery Hours:
Monday – Thursday, 12:00- 5:00PM
Wednesday 12:00-7:00PM

Proceeds from the sale of work go toward the Lisa Nguyen Memorial Scholarship

My upcoming comics for 2011 and beyond...

2011-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

I'm working on my latest comic book right now, I've written a script for another book to be illustrated by another artist, and my research for a 3rd project has begun. Here's a look at what I have coming up in my publishing plans for 2011:

EL MUERTO: DEAD & CONFUSED Pt 2

In the time since Pt 1 was published, we saw the publication of MANGA MUERTO Vol 1, MAN-SWAMP, COMIC POP, The COMIC POP SKETCHBOOK and the limited edition WANTED:WEAPON TEX-MEX (all currently available in my Web Shop!). But now it's time to finally getting back to the continuing adventures of El Muerto!

Here's the first page I've inked. It's not actually the first page of the comic, but I wanted to start off with working on a splash page as a way to hit the ground running. Also, this way I have something to show you with a little extra pizzaz! The page needs just a couple of details finished, then it will be scanned and taken into Photoshop for the inevitable clean-up.

Here are a couple of shots of my thumbnails, the 'rough drafts' of the actual story:

I plan out the majority of the issue in my head, kind of like running a movie in my brain, where I literally see the visual narrative of the story. Then I scrawl out the story onto paper, often noting the placement of word balloons. Sometimes I'll add the dialogue, but more often than not I keep drawing, as I haven't decided upon the exact words I want the characters to say, although I know what the scene is about, and how they're expressing themselves. Once I'm done doing the thumbnails for the whole book, I'll pencil and ink the entire story, at full size, after which I scan the pages into the computer. I bring the images into Illustrator and create the word balloons, and dialogue the entire story, at this stage.

I'll be posting lots more about the production of DEAD & CONFUSED Pt 2 over the next several months, along with sneak peeks and publishing dates/details. The other comic that I currently have in the works is:

CALACAS OF JUSTICE

Dead Dinosaurio, Sharpie drawing on canvas board.

This comic is a change of pace from the Muerto story I'm working
on for several reason. One of the things about this comic is that it's conceived and geared to be an All-Ages book, meaning the content is appropriate for younger aged readers. Clean, action-packed, comic book fun, like a Saturday morning cartoon. The other thing that makes this book different is that while I created all the characters, I'm only going to writing this one. I'm working with a fellow comic book creator, John Narcomey, who'll be penciling and inking the book. We're doing a coin toss who see who'll color it!

BatiCalaca, acrylic painting on canvas.

John's the creator of GHOST FACE, JUNGLE JIVE and a few other titles. I've know him for some years. A lot of times, artists tell each other "We should work on a project together." Well, the timing, and project, were right, and so John's on board to help me launch the CALACAS OF JUSTICE. I'm finishing up some of the character designs for John, but I'll update you folks here in the coming months on the progress of that book as well, including the first look at John's take on these characters.

Spider-Calaca, acrylic painting on canvas.

Who are the Calacas of Justice? A team of superheroes from the afterlife city of Posadaville. 'Calacas' are the skeletal figures which are commonly used in the art of Dia de Los Muertos (The Mexican Day of the Dead). These characters are inspired by the popular superhero archetypes we all know and love. Visually, I wanted to give them a certain design that calls to mind those illegal, knock-off toys you occassionaly see of Superman or X-Men, for example. The colors and details are sometimes off, but they resemble the original characters to a point. But they're often wonderfully garish and bizarre looking.

Calaca Americano, digital drawing created in Adobe Illustrator.

SECRET MYSTERY COMIC

My final major project I'm working on this year is Top Secret. It's a fictional tale based on a real person. A famous person, for that matter. What's really interesting for me is to actually be researching my subject. I've never really had to do much research for my previous comics, other than the usual visual references (what's a crocodile look like, carnival scenes, taking photographs in my city, etc.).

But due to the fact that this is based on a real person, I wanted to get a pretty good idea how the person thinks, acts, talks, etc, plus accumulate as many relevant biographical anecdotes as possible. This has included purchasing a handful of books (autobiographic & biographic) and DVDs, and even getting a Researcher's ID card at particular local library/museum. Also, doodling the character's likeness, along with other supporting characters, is something I do to help me get familiar with the subjects.

The primary focus about this Top Secret project that I'll be working on, while I produce the new El Muerto and collaborate on the CALACAS, will be to continue taking notes from the various books and films I'll be watching when I'm away from the art table. I won't start drawing any of the actual pages until El Muerto and the CALACAS are done and printed. I'll also be updating you here as I go along into the research, and how it impacts my storytelling. My best estimate is that I'll start drawing this book in the Fall of this year. For now though, I guess we can refer to this mystery comic as:

PROJECT: Z-XOZ

One word about another project people have asked me about. Last year I announced that my political/satirical comic, DEMOLITION DOVE, was going to debut as a web comic. Well, it's still going to be my first webcomic, but I'm going to move it to next year.

What happened was that after the horrific tragedy in Arizona, with the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the murder of 6 innocent bystanders, the airwaves were filled with all kinds of emotional and vitriolic talk about violence and the so-called 'targeting of politicians' by political 'hate speech'. Well, I'm not going to turn this post into my own political rant on the subject, but it was because of this climate that I decided to hold off a year on putting my story out in the public arena. Of course, predictably, even as the President himself declared that the shooting was not a direct result of the influence of political speech, the same hysterical feuds between the left and the right have resumed. There really is no hope for the two parties, is there? And to be very honest, having the webcomic run during the 2012 election year is just a way more smarter move, as a publisher!

DEMOLITION DOVE deals with an alternate world, parallel to ours to a point, populated by a different species. Think PLANET OF THE APES with bird people. It's a nightmarish world, told through scorching satire and black humor, where the most extremist elements of the left wing and the right wing are battling for control of the government, the media is an immoral law unto itself, and the world's terrorists have formed a corporation.

The main protagonist deals with it in the only way that works in this world gone mad:

(You can read the Demolition Dove preview story online at Webcomics Nation by clicking here)

There will be no shortage of targets and bullseyes and surveyor's symbols in this book! But, and I'm going to have to make sure to repeat this periodically, this is a fictional, satirical story, not a blueprint for political assassination.

So these are the primary comic book projects that I have on the assembly line. There may be a short story or two that pop up, and of course there are other matters to attend to this year, like conventions, my increasing amount of comic book workshops and any other artistic endeavors that I end up pursuing. But this year, the focus for me will be on producing some new comic books!

Personalized artwork from a student and an El Muerto birthday party

2011-01-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

Last evening in my comic book class, one of my students gave me this:

Me dreaming about my comic book creation, El Muerto...!

The student's name is Matthew, and for Christmas I had given him a sketchbook to encourage him to keep a lot of his drawings together in one place. I met his parents at a Starbuck's over the Christmas break and gave them the gift. That's such a cool drawing, and very much appreciated.

Matthew was in my class last Fall, and I actually met him and his parents earlier that year at a local library where I was doing a Live Art presentation with the Cartoonistas. One day I received an email from his mother asking if I'd be willing to perform a Live Art/comic drawing demostration at her son's upcoming birthday party. I thought it was a neat idea, and so we settled on a price and some months later I did my first ever birthday party performance. We even ordered a custom-made El Muerto piñata for Matthew! And his mom had ordered a custom-made El Muerto cake as well. It was a superhero themed party, so the whole day turned out to be a real fun event, even for the kids!

It's great to see such supportive parents of a talented child. Matthew's got a lot of creative outlets for his talents, and there's no reason to think he won't remain active with his art as he gets older.

Thanks to Matthew for the wonderful drawing he gave me, and to Ben & Cathy for being supportive of my work as well!

Comic book workshop starts this week in Pico Rivera

2011-01-02T17:41:00.000-08:00

This week I'll be conducting a couple of 5 week Comic Book Workshops at Pico Park in Pico Rivera, CA.

If you know of any young artists who like drawing and telling stories, consider signing them up for my class. I've been teaching classes in the city of Pico Rivera for about 7 years now, and I'm always glad to see a new group of kids taking the class and seeing their individual takes on comics creating.

If you need any more info, please call or email the Park at:
562.801.4470
recreation@pico-rivera.org

Or email me directly at:
misterjav@gmail.com

You can also register online at:
Pico Park Online Registration

STAN LEE WEEK: My favorite Stan Lee comics

2010-12-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

It was a little tricky having STAN LEE WEEK run across the Christmas holidays, but I wanted to make sure I would be able to crossover with his birthday (which was yesterday's post). There was so much going on during Christmas week, and even this week leading up to the New Year's Day. Often that's a time I use to catch up on end-of-the-year tasks, and also a time when I catch up with certain friends and acquaintances. So I wasn't able to cover all the topics I wanted to, or stay on a tighter schedule for posting, but, I guess we can all come back here next time for SON OF STAN LEE WEEK!

But I have one last post today to wrap up this series. I'd like to share with you some of my favorite Stan Lee-written comics. After all, his role of writer and co-creator of some of my favorite heroes and comics books is really the core of his legacy, in my opinion.

AMAZING FANTASY #15, the first appearance and origin of Spider-Man. By far my favorite superhero, and this is actually my favorite single comic book of all time. AMAZING FANTASY featured several short stories, dealing with sci-fi or mystery/horror stories, ending in Twilight Zone-type twist endings. Well, for the final issue, #15, published in June 1962 , Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created a new, off-beat brand of superhero: a teenager with zero popularity amongst his friends, given superpowers by a radioactive spider. A stupid, arrogant act on Peter Parker's part leads to the death of his beloved Uncle Ben, and henceforth decides to use his newfound powers to fight crime. What a hang-up! Immediately appealed to my young Catholic guilt when I read it for the first time (as a reprint in the mid-70s)! The peculiar art, fascinating costume and atmospheric nature of the storytelling by Steve Ditko had the strongest appeal on me. Stan's deftly clever and melodramatic scripting was the perfect icing on the cake.

Stan and Steve produced 38 issues together of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, (plus two Annuals) and ranks as my all-time favorite run of superhero comics. The early soap opera life of Peter Parker was a tumultous tornado of emotional turmoil: Constantly caring for his Aunt May, who was terrified of Spider-Man (whom he actually made a widow by not acting to save his Uncle when he could have), not being able to commit to Betty Brant because of the specter of Spider-Man coming between them, his destructive relationship with his boss, and Spider-Man's constant foe, publisher J. Jonah Jameson, and on and on.

Stan was relentless in getting the maximum emotional angst out of all the situations Peter Parker found himself in. And Ditko's artistry and storytelling made me a life-long fan of his work, even after he had left Marvel. So much of what I love about good old-fashioned American superhero comics is found in the 1000 or so pages of Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

My other favorite Stan Lee written superhero comic book series has to be the first 100 issues he created with artist Jack Kirby. Debuting in 1961, THE FANTASTIC FOUR was to be Marvel's answer to the then popular JUSTICE LEAGUE published by DC Comics.

Right from the beginning, the Fantastic Four were different. They had no secret identities they kept from the public, and didn't even get costumes until the 3rd issue! They were also banded together as a family, not just a group of people joining together to form a team. Reed Richards and his girlfriend (later wife) Susan Storm were joined by her younger brother Johnny Storm and Reed's friend Ben Grimm on a private flight to space. Bombarded by cosmic rays, they returned to earth with fantastic superpowers, which they soon used in a lifetime of adventures thwarting giant monsters and evil masterminds.

What was so gripping to me about the Fantastic Four was their very nature as a family. And being a family meant they could actually fight amongst themselves, even as they're trying to go about their duties as superheroes! Ben Grimm, now The Thing, would sometimes go off his rocker with anger at being turned into a monster. Or he and Johhny Storm, the Human Torch, would try to one-up each other with wicked pranks, never mind that the Torch was a teenager and Ben was pushing 40!

Again, Stan's whirlwind writing had to give each member a distinct personality as well as move the story along with a mix of science fiction, adventure and family melodrama. The other half of the creative team was of course Jack Kirby, by far the most imaginative, dynamic and inventive storyteller and creative dynamo Stan has ever worked with, in my opinion. In Kirby, Stan found a creator who pushed the boundries every time with new imaginative ideas, a plethora of amazing villians & guest stars, and enough explosive drama in his penciled drawings to inspire a round table of writers.

For me, the entire 100 issue run of FANTASTIC FOUR by Lee and Kirby is the pinnacle of 1960s Marvel Comics dynamic superhero action. Kirby left after issue 101, and Lee stopped writing the book at issue 114, but what a great run they had.

Another one of my favorite runs of Stan Lee's writing is THE SILVER SURFER, the 18 issue series done in collaboration with artist John Buscema. Originally created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee a few years previously in the pages of the FANTASTIC FOUR, the Silver Surfer was given his own title in 1968.

Granted cosmic powers from the Fantastic Four's supreme adversary Galactus, under Stan's hand, the Surfer was often portrayed as a sort of extraterrestrial philosopher, commenting on the inhumanity he often saw displayed upon the planet he was exiled to, Earth.

With the expressive, classical and lush artwork of John Buscema, Stan was able to really expand on the Surfer's role as an almost Christ-like figure of piety and innocence. The Surfer would often find himself attacked for no reason other than being a stranger, or he might get befriended by someone only to have them turn on him once their trap was set. And always, the Silver Surfer would travel our world and lament the bigotry, the wars, the crime, the inhuman suffering he would witness.

I read these stories as reprints in the early 1980s, but the emotional content was just as relevant. It was really fascinating to see someone write a character like that, even though it was in the context of a cosmic powered superhero, fighting fantastic monsters and
supervillians. While just as melodramatic as his earlier comic book writing, the Surfer really gave Stan a platform to write more poetic, flowery dialogue, speaking to concerns the author and a good percentage of his readership shared. The Surfers quasi-Biblical metaphors, his Zen-like reflections, his commentary on man's cruelty to his fellow man did something to raise the content on a superhero title.

These are only a few of my favorite Stan Lee comics, but they're definitely the top of my list. I can surely fill a lot more blog posts reminiscing about more comics, but we'll close off the STAN LEE WEEK with this entry.

Thanks for reading along, and thanks to those of you who've been commenting to me hear or elsewhere how much you've enjoyed these posts about Stan Lee, and how much his work has affected me as a reader and creator.

Until next time.........

STAN LEE WEEK: Stan Lee turns 88

2010-12-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday, Stan Lee!

STAN LEE WEEK: How I learned to draw comics... my way!

2010-12-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

After a brief interuption for the Christmas holiday, I'm back with a new entry for STAN LEE WEEK!

In my previous post, I provided a link to a Youtube video showing a clip to Stan Lee and John Buscema from the "HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY" video. Based, of course, on their best-selling book of the same name.

My actual copy of the book, some 30 years old and well-read.

I must have been around 13 or 14 when I first got this at the local bookstore, BOOKLAND. What a thrill it was to get this, after reading about it in STAN'S SOAPBOX (published in the Bullpen Bulletins every month in Marvel Comics). Here was the book that showed the techniques and steps an actual Marvel artist took to create a comic book.

John Buscema, one of Marvel's top pencillers (SILVER SURFER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, THE AVENGERS), had been teaching a comic book art class in NY, and it was decided that he should design and illustrate an instructional book showing his process. Stan took the writing chores, and giving it the hyper Marvel spin, added a friendly, conversational tone to the project.

This image, early on in the book, really captured my attention, and made me fantasize what it would be like to become a comic book artist, sitting at my very own drafting table creating my own comics. The artist in the drawing didn't look that much older than me, making the possibility even more tangible.

The book lots of the basic lessons you see in most books of this kind, demonstrating how to look at the human figure as individual shapes, and how to construct your drawings using stick figures which you late flesh out. Because this book was to show you how to draw like a Marvel artist, though, emphasis was placed on choosing the more dynamic pose available. Not stiff and pedestrian like Marvel's competitors!

I certainly wasn't even thinking of becoming a self-published cartoonist at that early age (if I even thought that that was even a possibility), but I wasn't necessarily wanting to become an artist working for Marvel either. I just loved seeing how the comics were created and hoped to one day do the same.

As in the sample below, Stan's commentary planted in my head that the artwork should always attempt to really showcase the action and emotional intent of the scene, before the dialogue is even written in the word balloons.

The chapter where they finally showed you how to create an actual comic page was probably the highlight for me back then. It was interesting to the how figures were constructed, and how perspective and panel composition are created, but to see all the elements come into play for an actual page, well, that was the whole gist of what I wanted to see.

Around the same time, 1980 or so, I most likely had read or seen other cartooning books on how to draw characters and faces. But this was my first time really seeing how an actual comic page was done. Stan's commentary clearly explained what John was demonstrating, and with his relaxed conversational style, Stan made the lessons much more approachable, instead of feeling like a dry textbook.

I think that, as a kid, knowing the comic book characters probably also added to the interest in the book, making the material all that more familiar.

As I mentioned, Stan would often emphasize how many of the approaches in the book were the way which Marvel artists worked, creating more dynamic artwork and storytelling than the 'average comic book company'. But even without that layer of hype, the book was an extremely important tool in my development of a comic creator years later. While there were many other influences that developed my style of art, and personal aesthetic, HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY was an early and powerful influence.

I recently taught a 5 week comic book workshop to a group of young kids. I don't use this book in class as a guidebook, but the fundamentals found in it's pages are still a part of the lesson plans I use. I think one of the things I always try to stress to my students is to vary their 'camera angles' in their panels, so as to not always get those static shots that an 'average comic book art student' would do!

The actual comics themselves are of course the first and primal inspiration, but books like this and ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS took away the fourth wall and gave me a direct access, through Stan Lee, of the secrets behind the comics.

Speaking of 'Secrets Behind the Comics'....

In 1947, Stan Lee wrote this 99 page booklet, with illustrations by Ken Bald. It's one of the very first 'how to draw comics' instructional books ever made. A few years ago I bought my copy on Ebay. This was a reprint from sometime in the 1970s. At least, that's what the listing stated. I very much doubt I got an original 1947 edition. But if I did, I got a great price and it's in miraculous condition!

Tomorrow on STAN LEE WEEK, we'll take some time to celebrate Stan's 88th birthday! See you then, heroes!

STAN LEE WEEK: Stan Lee video "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way"

2010-12-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

With Christmas Eve and Christmas Day upon us, I haven't had too much time to make a longer post, but I think this video clip will actually be a good lead in to my next post for STAN LEE WEEK.

Back in the late 1970s, Marvel published this book:

"HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY" was a big deal to many Marvel fans, and young artists. A book by Stan Lee and Marvel Comics artist John Buscema on how to draw comics like the ones published by Marvel?! I got my copy around 1980 or so, and this opened my eyes to how the comics I loved to read were actually created.

Like the book I reviewed in my previous post, "ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS", this drawing book was another principal factor in really setting me on the path to inspiring me to make my own comics.

In the late 1980s, Stan and John actually performed a reading of the material for a videotape (remember those?!) version of their landmark book. Here's a link to Pt. 1 of the series via YouTube. (The embedding feature has been turned off, sorry). Take a look at it, and in my next post I'll go into more depth on the actual book, and how it appealed to me as a kid.

Thanks to the folks who've been letting me know how much they've been enjoying this series of Stan Lee related posts. I'm glad the material has been appealing. And for anyone who actually gave a copy of "HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY" book for somebody's Christmas gift, you've just earned a No-Prize!

Have a great Christmas, and see you back here for more Stan Lee Week!