Silver Surfer Sketch Card

Human Fly Sketch Card

Iron Man Sketch Card

M.O.D.O.K. Sketch Card

Hawkeye Sketch Card

Supreme Intelligence Sketch Card

Iron Fist Sketch Card

Doctor Doom Sketch Card

Black Bolt Sketch Card

Spider-Man Sketch Card

Back From the Burn

I survived another year at Burning Man and this was the best year yet. Much love to every one at Camp Esperanza (you know who you are!). I was going to write a long blog entry about everything that happened this year, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep! Which is a fancy way of saying I have a shit load of work to dig myself out from under before I can even think about things like blogging. And sleeping. So there!

Make Mine M.O.D.O.K.!

It has begun!

I've sketched out 30 of these little bastards, now I have to ink them and send them off to Upper Deck, who will then randomly pack them in with their 'Marvel Masterpieces' collector sets. They've got some great artists contributing original art sketches. Guys like Travis Charest, Eric Canete, Chris Bachalo, Andrew Robinson, and Ryan Ottley just to name a few! How I wormed my way onto that talented list, I'll never know! I was just going to do little head sketches (do you know how hard it is to draw on a tiny trading card? I'm used to working 10"x15"!), but Eric has set the bar so high, that I'm going to try to step it up and do full body shots! Damn you Eric! You are way too good! He packs enough energy and detail into every card, it looks like a full sized cover shrunk down!

Everyone seems to be doing the mandatory Spider-Man, Wolverine, etc. sketch cards. So I'm going old school with characters like M.O.D.O.K., Blackbolt, Man-Thing, The Destroyer and all the off-beat characters that I love but no one remembers! Remember The Human Fly? That's right, you heard me, The Human Fly AKA The Greatest Superhero in the World.

I only wish Marvel still had the licenses for ROM and The Micronauts! Damn!

Elvis Has Left The Building...

30 years ago today, on August 16, 1977, Elvis Aaron Presley died. He was many things to many people. "Who built the pyramids? Elvis! Who built Stonehenge? Elvis!" Mojo Nixon understood, in his classic song Elvis is Everywhere.

A few of my favorite verses from that song:

When I look out into your eyes out there,
When I look out into your faces,
You know what I see?
I see a little bit of Elvis
In each and every one of you out there.

Lemme tell ya...
Weeeeeeeeeellllllll...

Elvis is everywhere
Elvis is everything
Elvis is everybody
Elvis is still the king

Man o man
What I want you to see
Is that the big E's
Inside of you and me!

Soon all will become Elvis.
Everything everywhere will be Elvis.
Why do you think they call it evolution anyway?
It's really Elvislution!
Elvislution!

Long live the Elvislution!

Loss of Inspiration

I woke up Monday morning to stumble into my studio with a cup of coffee and answer emails while waking up. The first one was from Tim Townsend, and it carried the report from Newsarama: "The comics industry lost a luminary this weekend - Mike Wieringo passed away Sunday of a sudden heart attack. Details are still sketchy as of this time, but according to close sources, the acclaimed artist had chest pains at some point during the day and called 911, but the responders did not make it in time." I was stunned. Unbelievable. It felt wrong somehow, like I was still half asleep or hadn't read the news correctly. He was only 44.

I had only known Mike through emails and conventions, but he was an inspiration to all of us in comics and the kindest person to talk to. His personality shown through in his art; innocent and playful, dynamic and heroic, passionate and stylized in such a way as to make it all look effortless. So much so, he posted a sketch a day on his blog. A sketch a day! He inspired me to do the same. I lasted maybe three days. He loved what he did, and it showed through in everything that he did. His drawing looked fun.

I was lucky enough to ink him on one occasion, on this Batman and Robin commission. I don't really have time to ink comics much any more, but when I was asked "wanna ink Ringo?" I jumped. Of course I did! And I'm glad I did. I got the chance to touch a piece of his art, one page in a huge body of work that has touched us all. Thanks Mike. You were one of the best.

Someone once said of Mike, "he draws like we all wish we could draw." That sums it up perfectly for me. The only consolation is the work he left behind. It's bound to continue to inspire artists and amaze children for generations to come.

Transformers Teaser Trailer

Below are the storyboards for the first Transformers teaser trailer. You can see it here if you missed it. A lot of stock footage was used to give it a realistic, documentary feel. As if NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) had really discovered something on Mars!

Fun With A Ruler: Super Simple Supes

I almost never have time to just draw for fun (I know, I hear you playing The World's Smallest Violin) so I sat down yesterday and messed around just for fun in my sketchbook. I've been looking at a lot of Shane Glines and Kyle Baker lately, and it amazes me how effectively they can break a character into simple shapes. They boil the character down to its core elements and lose all the extraneous details. I figured I'd try it with Superman, since he's so iconic to begin with, how hard could he be?

Taking a cue from his classic "S" logo inside a diamond type triangle, I thought I'd try to use only triangles or straight edges. I had to cheat a little bit, but it was a fun exercise and forced me to think in a different direction than I normally do. I inked almost all of the big shapes with a ruler. I'm a huge fan of the old Fleischer Superman cartoons so I used that costume, from his very first appearance in Action Comics. I even threw in the logo just or fun. It works well since it's triangular too.

You can see in my initial sketch I had to revise some things, most notably the legs by foreshortening them a lot more! Just a quick warm up exercise, but it forced me to draw and think off the beaten path and that's important. So remember to have fun and try something different!

Boogeyman

My friend Scott Rogers co-publishes Shooting Star Comics where he writes and draws the feature Bedbug - the single father superhero. One of the main villains is the Boogeyman. I did this pin-up for him in an animated style. The book should be out in time for San Diego Comic Con. Fun stuff!

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

"Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time."

My favorite author of all time, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., died on April 11th in Manhattan. He was 84. We was a humanist and a humorist of the highest order. He had fallen at his Manhattan home several weeks prior an suffered irreversible brain injury. So it goes.

He was most famous for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, but I've read and treasured all of his 14 plus novels. Cat's Cradle, Mother Night, Breakfast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan are among my favorites. If you haven't read any of his novels, do yourself a favor and pick one up. They are a pure delight in every way to read.

My favorite quote from Mother Night is "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

And from The Books of Bokonon in Cat's Cradle:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why?

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand

His epitaph for the human race was "we could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap." And for himself:

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

I Grew up on Groo

Every year the San Diego Comic Con publishes an official program book with tribute drawings for various characters celebrating milestones and anniversaries. This year is the 25th anniversary of Sergio Aragones' "Groo" one of my favorite comics as a kid. You could say I grew up on Groo...

As a member of CAPS, we did a "Group of Groos," a jam piece with each artist drawing Groo in their own style! Since my take wasn't going to be exact, on-model Groo, I thought I'd draw an actor in the role of Groo on the set of Groo: The Movie. Fun to do! Viva El Groo!

More Monkeys

More monkey designs for an upcoming children's book. A cute lil' chimp and a big ol' gorilla.