New Stuff - May 2007

Here is some new stuff I have worked up over the last couple weeks for a potential project, these pages were made to show the publisher, the first batch wasn't what he was looking for, so per his request I went back and slightly altered some stuff and my style, so hopefully the second group will pay off.



and the newest batch, done this week -

a productive night -

working on the sketchjam anthology and sweating my nuts off. It is hot. No doubt about that.

random 05.09.07

Ever hear of the "piss rule". (My apologies for the language) It goes something like this; You never have to take a leak until you have finished your 3rd beer, but then you have to go after every sequential beer. It's math. It's a fact, and it doesn't matter the volume, 3 bottles or 3 pints, it makes no difference. It's fact. Like physics, it has never ceased to be 100% accurate, in my case anyway.

Today was no better (see last post)

Randomness

Scrubs is a really, really good show.

All of today sucked except the 30 minutes I played with the boys and a 6 minute phone call. 36 out of 1440, that's .025% of a good day, maybe tomorrow will be better.

That's all for now.

Weekend Round Up - Free Comic Book Day 2007

This past weekend was Free Comic Book Day 2007 and I loved (almost) every minute of it. Once again this year Mike Malve of Atomic Comics, comic fan, retailer and all around PIMP, took wonderful care of everyone and while I wasn't able last year to enjoy all the festivities, this year I soaked them all in. Friday night I arrived at the Hilton's hospitality suite just in time to hop a ride to a courtesy viewing of the latest (and hopefully last) Spider-Man movie. This one was terrible and while I loved the the generosity of Mike, this was the low point of the weekend for me. Best part was the trailers for Order of the Phoenix and The Bourne Ultimatum. After the movie we all piled back in the cars and headed south to a fantastic Drink and Draw that was set-up for us at a wonderful local place called Pita Jungle. I love Pita Jungle, I love drinking and I love drawing, so it was perfect. The best part was getting to meet some of the other artists and we all sketched on a giant bed sheet that Mike is giving to the Phoenix Children's Hospital, hopefully the kids like it. I shared a crazy cab ride back to the hotel with Francisco Herrera, I was so busy talking his ear off I apparently missed the 3 cop cars the driver almost hit and the red light he ran.

The next day was the signing and sketching at The Atomic Comics Mesa location with myself, Marat Mychaels, Shannon Denton, Scottie Young, Rick Remender and Jim Hanna. Our store was cool because everyone there was an artist and could do sketches so we all kept pretty busy. Scottie is a pimp and overall we all had a blast and the line was pretty busy all day long. Spider-Man was there and his line was about 3 times the size of ours, kids love the guys in spandex (yeah, kinda creepy).

After the signing we all hung out by the pool and shot the shit, we had a lovely dinner afterwards and then I called it a night. Overall the weekend was great and I'm glad I got to meet and hang out with alot of cool people, so thanks to Scottie Young and Casey, Josh Blaylock and Courtney, Shannon, Francisco, Marat, John Layman, Patrick Sherberger, all the other creators that I really didn't get to talk to much, the Atomic Comics staff and especially Mike Malve for for making it an awesome weekend.


Me, Scottie Young and Rick Remender


Francisco Herrera sketching Spidey, next to Scottie's Joker




cross posted to myspace + sketchjam

Recent sketches

Indie Spinner Rack

I did an interview for this podcast months ago, it's finally available, I haven't heard it yet so I hope I don't sound too retarded. Checkcheckcheckcheckcheckitout!

Musings and Mayhem

So while blog-surfing today I came across Becky Cloonan's blog, where she linked to Corey Lewis' blog where they were both discussing the problems with the comic book industry in respect to the independent comic creator. I thought I would chip in my 2 cents as well. In most indy comics (and many mainstream comics), monthly single issues do not sell well enough for the publisher to recoup costs, and are in essence, loss leaders that lead up to an eventual release of the books in trade format. Like my book VILLAINS, issues #1-4 were released, and then a few months later, the collected trade was released (still available too, clicky on the links to the right and grab a copy!). Now I was very lucky, I knew from day 1 that my book was going to lose my publisher money, to this day I am still eternally grateful they agreed to publish it. The loss leader mentality can only go so far. The percentage of profit on a collected trade is much more than a single issue, so many publishers have started following the Asian market and began producing OGN (Original Graphic Novels) to try and stay alive, while still producing titles.

They problem with OGN's are the massive amount of work that must go into completing them in one giant, singular effort. When doing a series of individual issues, Issue #1 can be released while the creator is working on Issue #3, they can get an instant sense of satisfaction to help keep their creative energies flowing, and the book can begin to get reviewed, gain momentum, and build an audience. When doing an OGN, the creator might labor for months on end, half a year, more than that maybe, on a single volume. During this time, there is little to no momentum being gained, no audience being built, nothing. The creator can easily get dis-heartened, with no book out there with his/her name on it to promote or discuss, it's easy to feel let down and have your creativity sapped. This is part of the reason I am so frustrated with not having anything on the schedule or set up anywhere. I have plenty of projects I am working on, but with no deadline, or schedule, it is easy to become stagnant. The biggest problem seems to be money. It shouldn't come as a surprise to many, but 90% of comic creators make very little to NO money for doing what they love. We work at night after our "real" job, we work on the weekends, we do it all for the love of storytelling. But putting 6 months or a year into a 150 page book, to never see the light at the end of the tunnel is a hard thing to do.

Personally, my idea is to meet in the middle. Instead of releasing a 150 page OGN, break it up into three 60 page installments, sell them affordably and they can be released every 3 months or so. I have two current projects in development, Coral City Aeronauts and The Ronin of The Ryukyu series that I think would be perfect for this format and that is really the only way I am interested in publishing them. My dream for RoR is for it to be 6x9, 60 pages, b/w and priced at only $5.95. I have 3 volumes in mind, for a total of 180 pages or so. Now I just need to convince a publisher of this....

Be there or be square...

Mike Malve yet again hooked me up with a great store to sign and sketch at for May 5th's Free Comic Book Day. Mark it down on your calendar kiddos.

The Ronin of The Ryukyus

The Ronin character I have is something that has been brewing in the back of my mind for years. I have 2 story lines already mapped out for him, one is written, the sequel is in my head. I love drawing him and I can set him in any environment I wish. He actually pops up in the last page of my short story for the Legendary anthology as well. For the sketchJAM sketchbook I decided to do a short idea I had for him that I wanted to do last year. The Ronin & The Island of Beralku will run about 7 pages and will be a fun introduction to the character. This story actually takes place between the 2 others, which are The Ronin & The Shisa, and it's sequel, The Ronin's Revenge. Someday I will do these books, maybe in 2008. Anyway, here is a pic of my blueline paper after I blew up and printed out the thumbnails....



and here is a small version of the final page. This type of project is very spontaneous and fun, I thumbed and inked the first 3 pages in a total of maybe 5 hours.

News and Notes

Just got an email today from Mike Malve at Atomic Comics & The HERO Initiative saying that my sketch cover for Ultimate Spider-Man #100 sold for $300, which is a lot better than I thought it would, but also tied for the lowest, so maybe they had a minimum bid or something, either way, I was in great company and I'm glad I could help even a little.



also today, I was playing around on http://www.deathclock.com/ and according to that site, if I am slightly overweight (which I am) and pessimistic (which I currently am), I will die in 20 years. BUT, if I keep my current weight and be happy (optimistic), I will live until 2073 and be 97 years old. So that gives me another reason to try and get happy. Oddly enough, if I lost weight I would live 2 years less. huh.....................

Aqua

My buddy Mark Smith writes a great book for Image called The Amazing Joybuzzards and he's setting up a great looking graphic novel called Aqua Leung that will come out later this year or beginning of next. This is my version of Aqua.

updates

I have posted a few new bits of art over on the SketchJam blog, there are also lots of new stuff from Charlie Clark and Brent Schoonover. Check it out. Also, be sure to bookmark the Coral City Aeronauts blog, page 2 is up now with page 3 dropping on Monday. Thanks, and have a nice weekend.

What I need to do....

apart from lose weight, re-connect with my family and try to be a better overall father and husband (but who wants to hear about that?), I need to buy a laptop and wacom, just for comic/illustration work. I'm never happy with the quality of my scans and I know inking digitally, once I learn will be much faster, plus it make coloring faster when I need it. The laptop is needed so I can still be portable with my artwork and my home computer is about to die because of all the hi-res files I have on it. Now I just need to convince my wife to let me pull $1200 out of my "rainy day" fund to do it. Sounds like a plan! Who's with me?

Coral City Aeronauts

I launched my web-series this morning, here is a taste of page 1, for the full size please hop on over to the Coral City blog.

Sketch dump!

Most of this is from a Drink & Draw session last night. It was sparsely attended, but still fun.

Villains news

Needcoffee.com has done their list of best ofs for the year in every category in pop culture, and Villains gets a nod in the Best Limited Series category, with some other, not too shabby notables.

Best Limited Comic Book Series:

Blackgas by Warren Ellis & Max Fiumara (Avatar)

The Middleman, Vol. 2 by Javier Grillo-Marxuach & Les McClaine (Viper)

7 Days to Fame by Buddy Scalera & Nick Diaz (After Hours)

The Surrogates by Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele (Top Shelf)

Ultimate Extinction by Warren Ellis & Brandon Peterson (Marvel)

Villains by Adam Cogan & Ryan Cody (Viper)

A fun little thing I did for my buddy Daryl's book.

HUlk sketch

My second favorite character to draw.

again, go buy this......

Dan has really outdone himself with this book, go out and get it, you won't be sorry. Here is a tribute to the main character.

Lilly Allen

I've fallen in love with a British girl. Her name is Lilly Allen and I met her last Saturday night. I was getting drunk on Full Throttle energy drinks and Rum and there she was, on the TV, on Saturday Night live. She's cute, talented and mixes jazz sounds with a bit of dance, old school vocals and maximum charm. Her voice reminds me a bit of Nina from the Cardigans, but I bought the CD last night and it's a gem. Clicky-click here from some goodness.

That's my boy!

I did a very loose, quick sketch for my son Aiden last night and he inked it with a sharpie. Not too shabby for a 6-year old. I may have a future assistant on my hands, his brother Ash gets to do one tonight.

Ha!

CBR has posted all 100 covers to the "Ultimate 100" charity series for HERO Initiative. They credited me as Rich Cody. Oh well, I'm in good company. I'm in the sixth row up from the bottom. Thanks again to Mike Malve at Atomic Comics for inviting me to be a part of this.

We're loved!

Variety really likes Villains!

new sketches

my all-time favorite for a thread on the Drawing Board...


and an Iron Man for Michael Cho's blog, after seeing Brent kick ass on it!

Phoenix Comic-Con wrap up.

The weekend started on a sour note as my posters for Coral City Aeronauts still hadn’t arrived. It eventually turned out that I shouldn’t have worried. I got to the convention center in time for “Preview Night”, and once the doors open I chatted with some people but ultimately it was a wasted effort. 90% of the artists went to a dinner (to which I was not invited) and I wasn’t about to pay the $40 for a meal I probably wouldn’t eat (I’m a pseudo-vegetarian), so I packed it up and just went home after Preview Night ended.

Saturday was still slow for me, I had the trade of Villains available, but with the last Phoenix conRob Osborne who was a local guy up until a while ago, and he was super cool and very genuine and his sketchbook is the shit so I recommend getting it. I look forward to catching up with him again in the future. Nobody draws a secret agent Abe Lincoln in an eye-patch like Rob. Hopefully someday we could see a Super Agent Abe mini or something by him, I’d pick it up, that’s for sure. I sold some trades on Saturday and its always cool that even though the book doesn’t sell as well as I had hoped, the people who do get it love it, and that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Saturday night I tagged along with Shannon Denton to dinner with Phil Hester, Andy Kuhn and novelist Derek Benz & his lovely wife. It was a great time just shooting the shit and talking about comics and shit. only 4 months ago, I had already sold the first 4 issues to most of my potential audience, and I had no prints of Goth or Manga characters that would cater to 80% of the convention goers. I did get to finally meet

Sunday was very slow as I anticipated but I did give a copy of my VILLAINS trade and a piece of original Hellboy art to Mike Mignola, a bit geeky, but he was very kind (even though I interrupted his lunch) and gave me a sketchbook and thanked me for the art. I got the chance to catch up with local bloggers, retailers and comic fans, local creators like Mike Bullock, Dan from SteamCrow and I even got yelled at by Raven, so it was a pretty cool day all in all. Financially the con wasn’t great, but it was an overall good experience and helped re-invigorate me for some upcoming projects.

The Doji-Giri

Here is a page for my Legendary Anthology story, it's called the Doji-Giri and hopefully this anthology will be out later this year. I did 6 pages in it.

Here are a couple new pages for Legendary that I need to color and letter and a crappy warm-up sketch of Cap. His face is waaaaay-off.

a peek

something new, that I won't really be talking about until it's all done and wrapped up.

Sketch Cover

I had a chance to do something really cool this morning, Mike Malve is the owner of Atomic Comics which is probably the biggest retailer in the southwest with several stores and tons of publicity. I've done a few things with him over the last year and he emailed several artists asking us if we wanted to do something for the HERO initiative. I was happy to and it turned out that Marvel is doing this thing with HERO where they wanted to get 100 artists to hand draw "sketch" covers for Ultimate Spider-Man #100 and then they will auction them off for the charity. Well, Marvel came up a bit short and asked Mike to see if he could pitch in, so he contacted me and BAM! I did a sketch cover for USM #100. Below is my initial sketch I thought of and the final. The design is terrible with the Ultimate Venom logo behind him, but I like the character, hopefully someone will bid on it when the time comes. I'm in amazing company as guys like Mike Wieringo, Mark Bagley, Todd McFarlane and many other top pros have contributed, so I thought that was cool, I can't wait until they all get posted so I can see how everyone else schooled me.

New Stuff!

Here is a teaser for a web-project I want to start in March, and then collect in TPB form when it's done. It'll be a rip-roaring, all-ages adventure story. Also at the link below is the teaser poster I will be selling at the Phoenix Comic-Con in January.



The Coral City Aeronauts page.

Why don't we have heated toilet seats?

Here is a couple new things, the Hellboy is a sketch for my buddy, comic writer and Dabel Bros. guru, Derek Ruiz, he had an apartment fire a few months back and lost everything, including his comic collection which numbered close to 30,000 if I remember correctly, so this is part of a "care package" I'm sending off. The other sketch is for my Actionopolis project, I'm still trying to nail down the kids' looks, they are supposed to be around 12. My publisher is happy with this except for the 2 girls, who I still need to tweak.

- sigh -

I am depressed and bored and stressed. I have a lot of work to do and cannot get motivated. I finally got a paying gig and the first half payment was gone within 24 hours to bills, and the second half payment is going to bills. I wish I had the money for a new laptop with a stylus.....

Momma wants some toast!

A fun sketch for a project I'm doing, it probably won't see print until next winter, but it's still fun and something I haven't done before.

Legendary Page 1

this is for the Legendary anthology, dunno who the publisher will be but it's a fun little experiment. I have no time to really go all out, so I'm cheating and using mostly flat colors and a texture overlay, I'm about 75% happy with it though.

Work

Whew, after speaking to one of my publishers last night, it really came into focus how much I have on my plate that I want to do. I'm finally getting paid for some of this so it is getting excited and I have a few offers that I'm waiting to hear back from that might continue this trend. I'm doing the sample pages for a potential one-shot, working on my illustrations for the Actionopolis book I'm doing, working on my story for the Legendary anthology, and potentially getting a work-for-hire gig, all within the next month or so. Some stuff will have to hold over into January. Also in January I would like to possibly work up another pitch with Grant and there's a good potential for me to work with an established writer on a mini-series for a major indie-press company. All that plus a con in January that I need to work up some prints and a sketchbook for and my Empty Glasses project that I am writing that's looking good for publication.


wow. 2007 is looking to be a good year so far. Also check out this kick-ass preview of Dan Hipp's new Tokyopop book. Damn if it doesn't look like the best thing to come out in a while.

New/Old Art

these are from early this year/late last year. The first 3 are my designs for the 70's era VILLAINS cast, which Charlie Clark redesigned and re-drew for his back-up series in VILLAINS. Then we have some discarded logo ideas that went unused.

Europa!

There's a better than fair chance that a project I'm writing and developing with Italian wonderboy Federico Milella will be published in Europe. More specifically in French I believe. I would link to his site but he's never finished it, but keep in mind that every publisher and editor that has seen his work has loved it and I'm just along for the ride. It is all very exciting and once I have more news I will be posting it. Also, keep in mind to order VILLAINS Vol.1 Trade as it is released next month from Viper Comics. Thanks!

It Works!

Just wanted to give everyone a quick pat on the back for a job well done on Tuesday, the people voiced their disapproval of the last 6 years and we now have an opportunity for a new approach and a fresh vision. Also, I love this photo that is circulating the net, I stole this particular one from Warren Ellis's site and he stole it from somewhere else. It's lovely.