JAVCON Thursday Night: New artwork for DITKOMANIA and more

Earlier today at the JAVCON, I showed you a sneak peek at my upcoming comic book, COMIC POP. For our evening programming here, I'd like to show you two recently finished illustrations I've contributed to other people's projects.

First up is my pin-up for my friend Grasiela Rodriguez, whose debut comic book is currently at the printing press:

 

Grasiela's first comic book has been an interesting production to hear about, as she's not shown any artwork from the book. (In fact, I think she's only just now posted the cover on her website). She's been pretty low-key about the contents of her story, and in fact when she sent several of us requests for pin-ups, she only gave us a few key words to create a pin-up from! Some of the words were 'romantic, feminine, strange, melancholic', so from there I thought about imagery that, to me, captured some of these elements. Right away I thought of the image of a woman playing a violin, and then I thought of a surreal image combining the graphic designs of paisley patterns and some ambiguous idea of a romance that no longer existed. I envisioned Steve Ditko-type surrealism and listened to Morrissey while working on this piece, if you want to know! I'm very anxious to read her book, and very curious to see the printed pin-up, as she told me she added an element or two to tie it into the aesthetic of the entire book! Now that's interesting...!

Speaking of Ditko (as I often do on this blog!), I also contributed another piece of art to the zine DITKOMANIA, #80. This one accompanies Michael Aushenker's DITKOTOMY column, which spotlights Ditko's 1980s collaborations with writer Bill Mantlo. Ditko worked with Mantlo on the last half of the ROM, SPACEKNIGHT series, so naturally I focused on that imagery:

 

I'm also going to be contributing my own regular feature to the zine, starting in issue #81:

 

I designed this logo using illustrations Ditko created for a behind-the-scenes feature he and writer Stan Lee did in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1. My column will take an artist's look at the more unique and imaginative looking characters that Ditko has created over his long career and highlight the reasons I think they're successful.

Those are two of the most recent projects I've contributed to. Now it's back to working on my own comics! Enjoy the rest of the JAVCON, there's plenty more coming for the next 4 days.

Free art on Facebook, from cartoonist Jim Mohan!

The other day on Facebook (yeah, I got a page!), I saw the Profile for JIM MOHAN, a Minneapolis-based cartoonist. He's currently the artist of "The Rat Race" in the local APWU (American Postal Worker's Union) newsletter! That's just cool that a Union's member's newspaper is running a comic strip.

Jim is running a promotion to coincide with the opening of the Facebook Comic Con. The first 1000 people who ask for a drawing will get one from Jim's own hand! I figured I'd throw my request in, and sure enough:



This is a very cool piece. Yeah, I know, surprising that I requested a Rom, SpaceKnight, right?! C'mon, it was either going to be Rom or The Human Fly! (Hmmm...)

Anyways, this is a nice little thing Jim's doing. In this day and age of billion dollar comic book mergers, and ding-a-ling company wide continuity crossovers, it's refreshing to find artists doing things for fun (and for free!).

Thanks to Jim for doing this!

ROM, SpaceKnight...He lives! He walks! He conquers!

Yep, it finally happened! I got my hands on a ROM action figure today!!



Alas....it was only for a short while......

My friend Michael Aushenker, (cartoonist, writer, bon vivant) has a major article on the 1970s Marvel Comic ROM, Spaceknight coming up in the January issue of BACK ISSUE. He was looking for a good photo to accompany his article and I informed him that our mutual friend Steve Ross had an actual ROM toy in his collection. ROM, the toy, apparently bombed when it came out, but the Marvel Comic book based on the property continued on for over 5 years!! The series was written by Bill Mantlo with art by Marvel Bronze Age mainstay, Sal Buscema, then later by Silver Age legend Steve Ditko.
The book was definitely a favorite of mine when I was in my formative comic collecting days. The character design was unique in it's day, and the story of a man becoming a cyborg and sacrificing himself to save his planet, and traveling to Earth to eradicate the evil Dire Wraiths was for me more exciting than any sci-fi movie could be at the time (sorry STAR WARS!!).

But I digress....

So Mike contacted Steve Ross and asked if we could shoot his Rom figure. Steve said yes and so me and Mike traveled to Pasadena to meet Steve at the bookstore he works at and began to photograph Rom right there at the desk where the store does there presentations and signings!



As a kid I never saw a Rom in any store. Only the ad in the comic would taunt me and torture me for decades....



One of the really cool things about the Rom comic was whenever Rom exposed one of the Dire Wraiths hiding amongst the human race he would vaporize them with his Neutralizer! HE EXTERMINATED AN EVIL ALIEN RACE...in a kids comic!! (Okay, so he was really just vanquishing the Wraiths to Limbo, never to return again. But the way the Wraiths would fear the Neutralizer and the screams of horror they would utter when 'neutralized' was spectacular!!). The original Terminator folks: half-man/half-machine and 100% exterminator!!



It's nice to grow up and be able to give something back to the great times one had growing up as a fan. I was able to give my own homage to Rom when I contributed a pin-up to a Rom gallery show in Portland last December.



And I was fortunate enough to interview writer Bill Mantlo's brother Mike on my radio show in January. So, to all the Rom fans out there (and I know they are out there, like so many Dire Wraiths, waiting, waiting....), enjoy this little tribute to Rom, the greatest of the SpaceKnights!




YouTube ROM toy trailer!


And here's a brief clip of a song 'ROM, Spaceknight" by HB3! Go to iTunes and buy the song!!


Me, my friend Michael and our ol' buddy, Rom! (I'll remind you folks when Mike's Rom article comes out!)

Thanks to Steve Ross for sharing his cool toy with us! And great lunch, eh?