Top 5 Dream Jobs - #4

#4 - Comic Book Publisher

This is both selfish and creative. It would give me an outlet to put out my own work and other work I feel needs more attention. In my dream scenario I would be a successful publisher and success can be defined both creatively and financially, and I would need both. Financial success generally means that my books would be getting into the hands of the most amount of people, and that would be the goal. I have self published 2 books so far, both with just a small handful of a print run. In 2007 I published the SketchJam sketchbook along with 4 other artists and it was a mixed experience. I did not anticipate all the costs involved in dealing with artists from other countries, or all the headaches involved with wrangling and designing a book featuring 5 different artists. Early this year I self-published an issue of a book called HOLLOW, this time I did it solo and was much happier with the results. In January 2009 I will putting out a new Hurricane Kids book as well, with a new story by Grant Alter, art by me, with hopes of drumming up interest in that property again. I love the idea and creative control of it, I just hate the marketing end of it, trying to get people to pick it up and give it a chance. In my dream job as a publisher, some rich old man with nothing to do but throw money away will give me money to pay creators, a marketing department and offices. No need to half-ass it. There are plenty of publishers that make it, and many that don't, but it is an intriguing business and something I think about often.

Top 5 Dream Jobs - #5

Totally and shamelessly ripped off from High Fidelity (a top 5 John Cusak movie, in at #5, with Better off Dead at #1 with Grosse Point Blank a close second and Say Anything in there at #3. The #4 pick goes to One Crazy Summer). So anyway, my top 5 dream jobs;

#5 - Mixed Martial Artist

I have become obsessed with MMA over the last few years. One of the bandwagon fans who got on board with everyone else, I'll admit that. I'll watch as many fights as I can and I follow the websites and I try to educate myself on the sport. I love watching a good knockout as much as the next guy, but the beauty in watching a submission expert make someone tap is even more exciting. I'm a bit old to start training now, but I would if I could find an affordable gym. Check out www.mmalinker.com for a wide selection of fights. My favorite fighter and my pick for best pound for pound is probably a motivated and in shape B.J. Penn.

Some guys in their 30's want to be rock stars, I want to make someone tap out by armbar.

Let's get to know each other...

For you handful of viewers, yes all 3 of you, I've decided to touch base and let you know what I'm up to, where to find me online, etc. A progress report if you will. I figure if Warren Ellis can do it every once in a while, then I surely can.

Name: Ryan Cody
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Currently Working on: 11-page short for CAKE V2. and Villains V2.
Upcoming Work: 8- page short in Popgun Volume 3 (December 2008?)
Favorite Tools: My wacom for layouts and coloring, photoshop, red pencil, bristol, Pentel Brushpens, and assorted pens.

My Daily Sketchblog
My Gallery on DeviantArt
Me on Myspace
Me on Facebook (?) I don't know how to find my direct link...
Me On Twitter

email me at hurricanekids(at)gmail

Feel free to please post your info in the comments section, let's get to know each other a little better. The we can save the world with harmony and song.

Check it daily for new sketches, started it off with a quick digital sketch of Wildcat.

Happy Birthday

A very special Happy Birthday to my son Ash who turned 10 today, and also Barack Obama who Ash was thrilled to learn he shares the date with. I share my birthday with a bevy of talented folks including;

George Thorogood
Val Kilmer
Steve Rude
Ben Kingsley
Sir Anthony Hopkins
Paul Westerberg
Nicholas Sparks

This looks great.

Regrets?

I am wishing I was actually in San Diego right now. I should have gone.

Comic Creator Survey (I stole it)

Seen via Radiomaru, stolen from Jake.

PART ONE: COMICS PERSONALITY TYPE Name: Ryan Cody Age: 32 Sign: Capricorn

Introverted or extroverted?
Very introverted I would say, which makes networking and talking with other creators very difficult in an industry where that contact is easily 85% of getting work.
What are your top 5 procrastination tools? Internet, TV/Movies, reading comics, my kids and my girlfriend.
What gets your juices flowing? Excitement over a new project, or reading a really, really well done comic. Also, if I'm being honest, positive feedback from my peers or those I see as better than me in my field.
PART TWO: COMICS CONSUMER What kind of comics do you like to read? Mostly American superhero and crime comics. that's what I grew up on, that's what I still love today.
What kind of comics do you dislike? Most manga, just because it's not for me, I never got into it. Also, I've never really gotten into alternative comics much either, just from lack of exposure to them or lack of effort into getting them.
When were you first introduced to comics? Mid to late 80's. Right after the creative boom of 1986.
What were some of your first comics?
Spider-Man, X-Men and Excalibur. I absolutely loved Claremont and Davis' first 7-8 issues of Excalibur.
When did you first get "The spark"? When Liefeld starting going absolutely apeshit on New Mutants. The energy and craziness he put in there was very infectious to a 12-year old boy. Couple that with Lee and Silvestri exploding and I knew what I wanted to do. Years later, Mike Oeming did they same thing to me to get me re-interested in comics.
What is your favorite animated movie? Probably The Incredibles. The scene in the plane with Elastigirl and the kids is flat out one of the best, most tense scenes I have ever seen. Right up there with Will Smith yelling at Ben Vereene on Fresh Prince. I'm not joking either. I really enjoyed Akira and Steamboy as well.
What is your favorite anime series? Dragonball. I still love the team, but not a team, mentality of that show, as well as the utter destruction these guys caused. Non anime would be the Bruce Timm/Glen Murakami Batman & JLU stuff.
PART THREE: COMICS CREATOR What kind of comics do you make? I try not to limit myself to superhero stuff, although everything leans that way. I change my mind constantly, but never stray too far from my comfort zone. I want to make stuff that's accessible and fun, and maybe a bit political or something that expresses my views on environment and society, but without any type of preachiness.
When did you first start making comics? When I was around 13.
What are your favorite comic artists right now? Eric Canete, Mignola, Jeff Smith, Darwyn Cooke, Mike Oeming, Jim Lee, and a whole bunch of new guys like Toby Cypress and Kristian Donaldson. Anything that's exciting and doesn't look exactly like a photograph.
What are your main influences in comics? Mike Mignola, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Oeming. Artistically? See above.
Who do you admire in comics?
See above, and anyone who has the balls to be a publisher in today's market, including self-publishers.

Also, some new artwork I found in a box from 2006, and an Elephant guy, an idea I stole from Ottley or Walker from Invincible.

San Diego Comic-Con 2008

It's time for the annual geekgasm known as Comic-Con, and I for one, will NOT be going. I've gone the last 3 years and short of some amazing announcement happening in the next week or so, I'll be passing this year. I have nothing new to promote with Viper Comics or Villains, and I don't have a booth to sell copies of Hollow or commissions at. I don't really like the crowds, and the trip is financially a burden, with nothing new to show for it. Seeing other creators and networking is always a plus, but I don't think it outweighs the hassle. If you, dear reader, are going, let me point you towards a few people and places I was looking forward to seeing, for your amusement.

Steamcrow Press for the best books, atmosphere and monsters around.
Viper Comics (Publisher of my comic book Villains), wonderful group of creators.
Image Comics, all around great publisher of great books.
Khepri retail booth, get your graphic novels here, the best retailer of indy books out there.
ArtJumble/CAKE booth, pick up your copy of CAKE Vol1.
Pixu, looking to be the best book to be released @ SDCC.

And search out local AZ creators Jeff Mariotte, Bret Blevins, Tony Parker, Ben Glendinning and Johnnie Allan (Stykman). All great guys, all deserving of wider recognition. Sorry if I missed anyone, my brain is a little hard boiled right now.

If I did make it out to San Diego this year, it would probably just be for Friday and Saturday, I would really like to make it out to the drink and draw out there.

digital girl

After working for hours last night on freelance and anthology stuff that I can't show yet, I capped the evening with a quick digital sketch. Pencilled in Painter, colored in Photoshop.

Weekend Comics

I recently paid my $137 in fines to the Phoenix Library (ironically using the money they paid me to teach a series of seminars on comic book art), and yes I said $137. That got me free and clear of over a years worth of late fees, and one very used copy of Ultimates Vol.2. I was very happy to do it though, as it got me and my boys back on track to library good karma. In the past week I have checked out and read, a volume of Noble Causes, the Invincible Hardback, Paul Pope's Batman 100, a volume of Ultimate Spider-Man and most notably, the first Immortal Iron Fist volume by Fraction, Brubaker, Foreman and Aja. I loved every inch of that book, their legacy of the Iron First is fantastic comics.

I also picked up CAKE vol1. on Friday and chatted with those guys a bit. Fun release party, great book, good beer, and I only wish I could have stayed longer. Big congratulations to those guys for having the balls to take on such a big self-publishing venture.

cha-cha-changes....

If anyone actually uses the www.super75press.com domain name to get here, then please note that I'm not renewing it, so please change your bookmarks to http://ryancody.blogspot.com/

CAKE!

I'm part of a wonderful collective of online talent in the ArtJumble blog, and tonight in central Phoenix there is a release party for the first volume of CAKE, an anthology featuring local Artjumble members to the Phoenix area. I know some of these guys through friends, some through the jumble and some through freelance work, but they are a great group of guys, so go on out if you're local, I'm going to try my best to make it out there tonight.



Also, I will be participating in CAKE Vol.2 as well, My story will feature a character of mine called Cara del Fantasma, and I'm pretty excited to get working on it. Here are some quick character sketches and assorted other artwork done this week. Sorry for the lack of updates, I'm doing a lot of freelance work lately that I cannot show, but I'll try and squeeze more comic stuff in soon.

I used wordle to create an image map using key words from this blog. Obviously, in the 2+ years I've been posting here, the manga discussion from last month had the most impact and conversation.

I really need to work on a regular comic again.



click to enlarge and go to the wordle site.

HULK #1 100 Covers

My HULK sketchcover I did for the HERO Initiative is one of 30 unveiled @ Comic Book Resources (CBR) today. Check it out.

sketch for Tuesday.

A few quick notes to finish out the week.

A follow-up to the earlier post, I never meant to imply a manga vs. American comics debate, I was just posting about how I personally found it a bit depressing that there are very few kids who seem to want to draw American comics anymore. It's my opinion and a reflection, and not a condemnation on one form or another, and getting kids to draw in any way, is a great thing in today's age of computer games and entertainment bombardment. I really like teaching the kids who seem interested and want to learn.

Now, onto other things. Set your Tivo, DVR, VHS, Betmax, whatever you have and be sure not miss the premiere of THE MIDDLEMAN on ABC Family on Monday night. Based off of the Viper Comics series of the same name, I'm proud to call Les and Javi friends and very proud of them to have gotten this show made. I contributed a very small bit to the 2nd Middleman volume in a back up feature called "Legends of Middleman" where I illustrate a WW2 version of the Middleman. It was my first published work and while it has many flaws, will always have a soft spot in my heart. So don't miss out, if I recall correctly Javi has an Emmy for working on LOST, so he knows what he's doing.

Manga killed the Comic Book Artist

First off, I do not dislike manga in all it's forms. I read some when I lived in Japan and despite it's flaws, I still have a soft spot for old Dragonball cartoons and comics and I think Battle Angel Alita was wonderful sixteen years ago.

For the past week (and for the next three weeks) I have been teaching a series of lectures at the Phoenix Library branches. The lectures/workshops are designed to introduce teens to proper sketching and gesture drawing, basic anatomy and storytelling techniques. Over the course of the last five classes and roughly fifty kids, one, only one, has admitted to reading American style comic books, and many of them, probably about 50% do not read any types of comics.

The breakdown generally goes like this, a 70/30 girls to boy ratio and 99% to 1% manga reader to american comic book reader. They all ask about Fruit Baskets and Naruto and they all draw in a strictly manga style. They also have a hard time understanding what I am trying to teach them, because I don't draw the way they like to draw, even though I reinforce the fact that the rules and guidelines are universal.

At the end of the class I recommend books by Scott McCloud and Will Eisner, and they all ask me if I've read "How to Draw Manga". There is good manga and good manga art out there, but the problem is I don't see any kids out there right now, at least in my neck of the woods, learning how to draw like Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Ron Garney, Ryan Ottley or Eric Canete. They all want to draw gigantic eyes, tear drops on the forehead and spiky hair.

Bottom line, I don't hate manga; but if I'm part of the last generation of comic artists influenced by Kirby, Toth, Lee and Mignola, then we are in sad, sad shape, because I am neither that good nor influential.

Please deposit hate mail and support for the manga art form in the comments section. Here is a recent commission.
*edited to remove a line that makes me sound very rude and conceited, my apologies.

Summer Comic Workshops

I'll be giving workshops all this month at the branches of the Phoenix Library for ages 10-18. We'll be covering anatomy, sequential storytelling and drawing construction. If they have been to a previous workshop, this will not cover anything new however.

It's time to make some changes.....

image courtesy of my good friends @ STEAMCROW PRESS