I love new comics Wednesday. Every week I go to my local shop Hurley's Heroes, here in Joplin, MO, and pick up my stack of books.  I get a lot of comps from the companies I work for, so I don't pick up EVERYTHING that I read from the shop.   That said, there's a lot of stuff that I'm either so excited about, that I can't wait until my comp box arrives or I just want to support a book and am willing to throw down a few extra bucks to do my part.

I'll do my best to start posting what I'm picking up each week here on the blog.  It's just going to be a simple list.  No real frills or commentary.  Maybe one or two images of covers I particularly like.  Other than that it'll just be simple.  I'm not arrogant enough to rate these books.  I'll leave that to the self titled "professionals". :)



So here it is the first "New Comics Wednesday" and what I bought!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22nd--

TEEN TITANS: COLD CASE

BATMAN INCORPORATED #2

ARTIFACTS #4

ULTIMATE DOOM #1

THE 6TH GUN #7

SHADOWLAND: AFTER THE FALL

SECRET AVENGERS #8

PUNISHER: IN THE BLOOD #2

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #33

THE CAPE #1

CYCLOPS: THE RECRUIT #1

MORNING GLORIES #5

SUPERIOR #3

INVINCIBLE #76

HAUNT #12

FANTASTIC FOUR #586

SAVAGE SWORD #1

There is a lot of fun stuff in this week's stack.  I'm really looking forward to settling down and getting to reading tonight. I'm especially looking forward to Fantastic Four, Teen Titans: Cold Case, Batman Incorporated, Artifacts, Punisher: In the Blood, and The 6th Gun! Exciting stuff!!



Well, that's it for this round of  New Comics Wednesday.  Keep reading!

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 9:02 PM No Comments »

Okay, here's the thing.  I don't buy a lot of albums each year.  I'm not a HUGE audiophile.  For that you'll need to talk to my friends Clay, or maybe even Addison.  Those guys really know their stuff.

Last year I bought fourteen albums, all told.  Eleven of those actually technically came out in 2010.  One didn't quite make the cut for me.

Here are the ten albums that I really dug from 2010, in no particular order.  I'll spare you my thoughts on 'em other than I like them a lot.  :)



BLACK KEYS- BROTHERS



DAFT PUNK- TRON LEGACY



ARCADE FIRE- THE SUBURBS



SUFJAN STEVENS- AGE OF ADZ



BROKEN BELLS- BROKEN BELLS



DANGER MOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE- DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL



HORSE FEATHERS- THISTLED SPRING



CEE LO GREEN- THE LADY KILLER



THE DEAD WEATHER- SEA OF COWARDS



GORILLAZ- PLASTIC BEACH

So there it is, day one of my countdown to 2011 and the first of my 10 favorite things from 2010.  Check back tomorrow for my 10 favorite video games of 2010!

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 2:22 AM No Comments »

In the these last ten days of 2010, I'm going to be ASTOUNDINGLY original and  post my top 10 favorites of the year.  It's silly.  I promise.  I don't take myself too seriously.  I probably won't go into some crazy depth and write a dissertation on how I feel about most things.  This is just stuff I really dug over the past year.  Some of it is awesome.  Some of it is probably crap.

I'll kick things off today with my 10 favorite albums of '10.  I hope you enjoy...at least a little. :)
Thanks, as always--

-Jeremy @ 12:41 AM No Comments »

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but every other Wednesday, I host a life drawing session in my studio.  We have about 10-15 local artists come in and spend a couple of hours drawing the figure.  I try to bring in a variety of models ranging in age, race, gender, shape, and size.  We do 10- one minute, 5- two minute, 4- five minute, 2- ten minute, and 1 twenty minute drawings in the medium of our choice.  It's been very successful for us.  I'm really proud of the group, the work we've done, and the growth we've had as artists.

This week our model was Tara and we did a Christmas theme (hence the hat and giant candy cane). She was an excellent model and we had a great time.

I really try and work differently in class than I do in my comic work.  I want to keep things loose and step outside of my comfort zone. I mess around with things like continuous line drawings and various shading techniques. It's a good time and really helps recharge the batteries for going back to comics.

I tend to work in sharpie most of the time.  It's fast, loose, and not messy.  I REALLY hate getting chalk everywhere when I draw.  It's a great medium, but I just get it all over the place.  I bring in other stuff when I get the chance or if I just want to change things up.

Anyway, I hope you dig em.



1 minute drawings:  These were done in Sharpie on a few different pieces of 11 x 17 paper. 1 minute pieces are little more than gesture.  I fight with myself on em.  I constantly want to add detail.  That isn't really the point of quick one minute drawings. Still, they're fun to do.  I'm pretty happy with a couple of these.



2 minute drawing:  This is one of the two minute pieces.  I just tried to get as much information up there as quickly as possible.  I'm really happy with what I got in such a limited amount of time.



5 minute drawing: Five minutes is deceptive.  After one and two minute drawings, it seems like all the time in the world. I always go bigger and try to add detail, focus more on shape, and mess with shading. A lot of times I fail miserably.  Didn't do too bad with this one.



10 minute drawings:  I had a good time with this one and the one below.  I was really wanting to focus on the likeness from this point out. She has this great nose and distinctively almond eyes. I think I did a good job with it. I'd really messed up one of the five minute drawings where I was focusing on the face when I went from the pencil underdrawing to the "inks" on the face.  This time around I skipped it and just stuck with pencil.  It allowed me to get more of the figure, the likeness, and some nice pencil shading in. Pretty different from my comic work.  I like that.



For this second 10 minute drawing I worked again on the likeness, but I worked quickly in pencil and then went in with a medium sized marker for the inks.  I really wanted to stay loose with it.  A lot of the lines are continuous in there.  It's not a proper continuous line drawing, but it was fun to try and keep the pen on paper as much as possible. I also did some shading with a couple of Copic brush markers.  I really love bringing in the Copics for shading whenever I have time.



20 minute drawing: I didn't QUITE get what I was wanting out of this one.  Again, I ran into the thing where the pencil underdrawing caught the likeness then I messed it up in the inks.  By the time I had futzed with stuff here and there I just didn't have time to get everything where I wanted so I just ran with it.  This is a mishmash of pencil, large 1. Micron pen, a brush pen, and a couple of Copic brush markers.  I am pretty happy with the marker shading. I had fun quickly adding some freckles with the gray.  All in all, not great, but not terrible.  I prefer a couple of the 5 and 10 minute pieces over this one, but c'est la vie. On the models end, it was really a great pose.

So there you go. A few drawings from Life Draw Studio session 19.

Thanks!

-Jeremy @ 5:02 AM No Comments »

It's going to end up being a "POSITIVE SATURDAY" this week.  I've been swamped and the artist I want to feature is going to take a little longer than usual to blab about. I'm almost finished with it, but there was just no way it was happening on Thursday this week.  Sorry to both of you that look forward to "POSITIVE THURSDAY". :)

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 4:27 AM No Comments »

I thought I'd post a quick desk shot tonight. This is a piece I finished this evening to go on the back cover to my art book. It's a turn around from sketch to pencils to finished inks featuring a character I created a while back called "Skulldigger". It was done using 2H pencil, 01, 05, and 08 Pigma Micron pens, 102 Hunt crowquill with Sumi ink, Neutral Gray 2, Neutral Gray 4, and Special Black Copic sketch markers.

Hope you dig it!

Thanks!

-Jeremy @ 2:10 AM 1 Comment »

Here is a very small sneak peek at the project I'm working on.  It's a hodgepodge of various panels from all over the place in the series, so it's not really going to make much since.  STILL, I absolutely had to share something from the book otherwise I was just going to go crazy.  I've been working on this book for a LOOOOOOONG time now.  Slowly pecking away at it.  It's almost ready though.  More on it very soon.  In the mean time, I'm slipping you this on the down-low.  Don't tell anyone. :)

-Jeremy @ 1:00 AM 1 Comment »

"Doing my part to counteract a little of the bitchiness here on the internets!”

It's still Thursday on the west coast, right? :)  This week for Positive Thursday, I wanted to focus on one of my favorite books of the past year-- King City.  It wrapped up with issue twelve yesterday, so I type this a little sad that such an amazing book is finished...at least for now.  So read on and just ignore the sobbing.  That's just me.

KING CITY



As I mentioned, King City was easily one of my favorite books of the last year.  Every month, amidst all of the company wide events, gloom, and doom there was this wonderful, odd ray of sunshine.

I first ran across Brandon Graham's work with Multiple Warheads from Oni press.  It was this beautifully packaged strange little book.  The art immediately caught my eye. It was this interesting mix of cartoony yet sexually charged style.



The story itself was just strange.  Strange good, though.  And decidedly not for kids.  A lot of people, even Brandon refers to it as a porn comic.  I wouldn't go that far by any means.  There's a lot of adult content in Multiple Warheads...I wouldn't go so far as to call it porn.  For one thing, it's SUCH a compelling story.  Give me a good story and beautiful art and I can forgive anything.



But I digress...back to the King City.



A couple of years (or so...I have a horrible memory for these things) later I was in the local comic shop and I ran across the first issue of Brandon's new book, King City.  Based on the cover alone I was hooked.  I immediately added it to my stack of books for the week and to my pull list for as long as it was coming out.  Unfortunately from there, the book sat on the stack of books by my bed.  It was a busy year.  I read comics before bed.  Most of the time I can only make it through a couple before I pass out.  I tend to put off books that I really want to pay attention to.  King City was kind of the perfect example of that.  A fun but visually complex book.  I wanted to absolutely absorb these pages.



About three issues into the series, I couldn't take it any more.  I went to bed a little early with the sole intention of reading my way though all three issues of the book.  From moment one I was hooked.   Cover to cover King City is a work of art.  It's obvious that Brandon is having the time of his life working on these pages.  His style has the feel of Geoff Darrow, with more than a dash of manga thrown in, and a bit of  Seth Fisher (may he rest in peace).  The world he creates is visually complex and fully lived in.  He hides a ton of fun (and often "dirty") little in jokes and puns throughout the city in it's windows and on it's signs and billboards.  Like I said, fun.





I guess I should mention a little about the story.  King City is a near future metropolis filled with owl gangs, alien slavegirls, ninjas, and demon gods.  Catmaster/thief Joe and the Cat (who can become anything from a weapon to any type of tool) returns to the city for a job.  From there things go...well...pretty crazy.







One of my favorite things about the series is the added little bonus bits like this one below: "Anna's Drawers".  Beyond the story, Brandon throws in little short comics, character facts, and games that take the book from your average comic into a book worth reading from cover to cover.



So yeah, I'm sad to see King City wrap up. The series ran twelve issues from Image comics.  It was definitely worth it every cent and minute I spent reading it.   Please do yourself a favor and check it out.  Once again, I'm not sure how soon the collected edition(s) will be out, but it can't be long.  Check with your local comic shop.  If they're worth their salt they'll be able to get you the trades or singles.

Well, that's going to have to be it for this edition of Positve Thursday.  I need to get back to inking my own book.  Drop back by next week when I talk about another book or creator that I think is just hella awesome!
Thanks!

-Jeremy @ 2:27 AM 1 Comment »

Here is part two of my Red Hood: The Lost Days Retrospective! I'm really proud of the way a lot of these pages turned out.  I finally figured out "my" Batman on the pages from Red Hood #6.  I'm as proud of the first panel of that first page as anything I've done in a long time.



















So there they are.  I hope you enjoyed this look back at some of my favorite work from Red Hood: The Lost Days.  I'm pretty sure the collected edition/trade paperback should be available soon.  I'll post about it as soon as I have a street date!

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 12:58 AM No Comments »

Last month the final issue of the Red Hood: the Lost Days mini series hit the stands.  I came in on the book to help out with the third issue and had a blast working on it.  I decided that I'd share a few of my favorite pages from the series in glorious black and white (not to detract from the brilliant color and lettering on the book).  I hope you enjoy them.

Oh, one more thing.  I don't think I've put up TOO many pages with major spoilers.  Still if you're concerned, go to your local shop, pick up the mini series, give it a read, and then come back and check out the pages. :)

-Jeremy @ 2:51 AM No Comments »