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And how can we have a great hero without an equally evil villain. This is Johnny Bates - also known as Kid Miracleman. Yep, his child sidekick grew up to be the biggest, baddest, most evil villain ever.

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A few more drawings of Mike Moran (Miracleman), figuring out how I want to draw his costume (he's been drawn a few different ways).

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I've got a few Miracleman sketches from this past weekend to put up, so I apologize if it's not your thing.

The next big assignment in class is a four-piece Miracleman story, so I've been drawing the characters a lot to get loose and comfortable.

I'm planning on throwing down some colors when I have some time.

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And, finally, I chose to draw the moment when LBJ was sworn in. This is only two hours after the shooting. JFK is dead, in a casket, only about twenty feet away as Jackie is made to stand next to LBJ as he's sworn in. This is aboard Air Force One.

She was still wearing the same outfit she was wearing when her husband was shot to death inches from her.

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After JFK was shot, Jackie climbed up on top of the car to get off the back, in terror. Very chilling image.

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Next we have Jackie riding in the Continental as they turned from Houston St onto Elm in Dealey Plaza, November 23, 1963.

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This is the first of four historical pieces I had to do for class. I chose the Kennedy Assasination and researched the crap out of it. Instead of focusing on the major dramatic events, I wanted to tell it all from Jackie's POV. So, I decided to start back a year or two before the day in Dallas.

This is from an actual photo (diff angle, of course) of RFK, JFK, and Marilyn Monroe intimately chatting.

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Okay, this was the final piece for my midterm project. A Frank Frazetta inspired piece (if you don't know Frank - look him up - Fantasy god).

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Aaaaaand a Miracleman sketch.

Mark my words - I will color this.

And I want to start a gallery that is strictly MM.

Quick History:
Miracleman was originally Marvelman - a UK ripoff of DC's Captain Marvel. It ran for years in the 50s and 60s. It was goofy and campy and he had all these sidekicks and what not. The title lapsed into obscurity until the 1980s when Warrioir magazine had Alan Moore relaunch it (I'm simplifying all the details here, but just go with it).

Moore, instead of ignoring all the goofy history with the character, did the first Superhero Deconstruction story.

Side note: Superhero Deconstruction is a storytelling technique where an older, goofier hero's origin is updating/placed into a darker context of reality. Since Moore (who did this with Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and other titles), who really invented this, it's been done to death.

MM was the first one. Moore took all the goofy history and placed it in context - making MM the most thrilling, trippy and risky comic out there. Moore posed and explored the question of what a superhero should do to the world when he's the most powerful being alive. What role/responsibilities does/should he have.

Anyways - incredible stuff. John Totleben drew the last 4 or 5 issues - where a returned villain destroys London and Miracleman ascends to a god-like status.

The stories haven't been republished since a massive legal battle began 15 years ago over who owns the rights to the stories. Marvel has announced that they now own it, but have yet announced plan to republish the 1980s stories. Here's praying they do.

And I would love, with all my might, to draw new stories.

Hence why I'm constantly drawing MM. I will keep doing so.

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Another artist I looked at was Johnny Craig - who drew all the great horror comic covers from the 1950s and 60s. LOVE his stuff.

My homage (and might be my annual Halloween pic cause I'm having a hard time finding the time to do one):

Date of the Living Dead

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This is the Swamp Thing done in the stylings of John Totleben.

John is an amazing artist who primary inked others and worked in the 1980s. He gained popularity on the Swamp Thing and, later, a EYE-POPPING few issues on Alan Moore's Miracleman.

Miracleman is nearly impossible to read - very sold out and old. I was lucky enough to get about 10 of the first 15 issues at con for only about $65 - killer deal - but the few issues I'm missing will cost me about $200-250. So, I will wait on those.

Anyways, as part of a school project I was supposed to pick some artists and draw some images using techniques I learned from them. I love the detail John does - it's incredible. So that's what I went for.

You can just feel the swamp, can't you?

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This is Lori from The Walking Dead - the UHmazing comic by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. READ IT.

If you don't like reading - WATCH THE SHOW - which premieres October 31st on AMC. I've seen a lot of the footage and heard from the cast and crew (twice now), and it is going to be amazing!

Sketch done at NYCC. Copic Markers (still getting the hang of them).

I did some other sketches at NYCC, but I gave them out to cool people I met without making a scan. Whoops.

NYCC Update:

So, after a year or two of wanting, I finally decided to get my butt to the great northeast and go to the NYCC.

It was awesome. 

Highly recommended.

I came with fresh samples (everything in my portfolio was (at most) three weeks old) and more confidence than before. The first day was open to professionals and exhibitors THREE HOURS before it opened to the public. After about ten minutes of wandering, I realized what a great opportunity that was. I ran to all the publishers I wanted to talk with and got as many portfolio reviews as I could before it got too crowded with all the regular con riff raff 

Over the three days at the con I talked to every publisher I wanted to, chatted up people I had met at other cons, stalked Artists Alley, and even got a few panels in. It was great.

For the first time EVER, I got more positive feedback than negative. I was blown away. Thank you SCAD and Tom Lyle for kicking me into shape (and continuing to do so - I'm doing this to give my brain a quick break from days of straight drawing). Instead of getting the general "Work on anatomy, reference, storytelling" etc that they give you when you're hopeless, I got actual pin-pointed advice. Specific things I was doing well and what I needed to work on.

Needless to say, this was great to hear. I'm going to kill myself to fix those problems. My plan is to get a handful of submissions together before next March (when my Con season starts back up again) and hopefully have worked all my issues out.

Major thanks to Robert Atkins who gave me a ton of great advice and feedback (and let me hang out at his booth with him for a bit). It was a great time and very encouraging, for once.

I cannot wait for next year.

Now, back to work...

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Time away. Apologies. Combination of massive amounts of school work, being in NYC for a weekend, and being too lazy to scan stuff has slowed down my updating.

I'm working on a solution to this. Since my laptop is now a desktop (can't recognize any battery), I have to unplug, move, and replug - so it's a pain to move it around. So, I usually scan a lot of docs in one chunk. And then publish them. In order to post more regularly, I'm just going to scan all my pics at once, but post them periodically. We'll see how it goes.

This is Invincible and Atom Eve from the comic Invincible. The best superhero book on the market.

This was sketched at NYCC with my brand new Copic Markers. They're awesome - but take some getting used to (hence the rough look to the picture).

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Okay, here are the pieces I've been slaving away at for nearly two weeks. Again, the best pieces I've done to date (which will not be the case in about, oh, a week - things move fast around here), but still room for improvement.

I'll probably hate them when I post them on the wall for the class critique tomorrow - ha!

Assignment was four environment pieces. Contemporary setting, two point perspective, with (at least) four people. Two pieces were interior and two exterior. They had to contain a common thread/story. Mine was just a character in all pieces.

I had a blast drawing them. It was challenging to add as much detail as possible - also, to up the blacks to make the composition pop more. The professor challenged me to not add any cross hatching (the abundance of lines you typically see on my work), which indicates gray. It was hard. I love cross-hatching. And it works great in gritty scenes. But I resisted and pushed myself. I think it worked out well.

What do you think?

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And, I'm back from the dearth. In the past four days I've done about 9 detailed pages worth of work.

Here are the six that I'm using as a sample when I go to the New York Comic Con next week. This is from an actual script (I know, I'm branching out - ha!) from Ultimate Fantastic Four Requiem. The script was great to work with since it was very descriptive and detailed - I knew just how it was going to look when I read it.

I'm pleased with the pages cause of the amount of work I had to put into them. I'll still do some tweaking and am a bit disappointed they're not better. But I'll always be that way. Plainly put:

They're the best I can do (at this point), and I'm proud of that.

Page 1 - This thing took FORever - there are over 40 buildings on this page. And I hate/suck at buildings.

I can draw this kitchen in my sleep now.

My first "Double Page Spread" - where we use TWO pages for one image. It was fun to have that much space, but tough to make sure I filled it out right.

Drawing a broken Times Square was really fun.

Aaaaaand done.

What do you think? Getting better yet?