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.