Mar 11 2012

Geof Darrow on Moebius (Panel From Heroes Con 2011)

If you’re even tangentially involved in comics you’ve heard by now of the passing of Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius. Moebius was one of  the last living giants of the comics field (Robert Crumb being the only other one I can think of off the top of my head) and despite his having been ill for some time, news of his death yesterday sent shock waves through the comics community. You can find plenty of places online that provide a far better retrospective of his life than I could–here’s a solid writeup at The Beat and here’s a great roundup of Moebius videos at The Comics Reporter–but one thing Moebius-related that I was involved in that came immediately to mind when I heard the news was the panel that Craig Fischer and I did at last year’s Heroes Con, Master of Screaming Metal: A Tribute To Moebius.

Among the components of the panel was cartoonist and Moebius collaborator Geof Darrow discussing his career and his involvement with Moebius. I was pretty sure Darrow’s talk had been recorded, but when I searched for it online I couldn’t turn it up. I contacted the folks at The Dollar Bin podcast, who run audio/video at Heroes Con, and Adam was nice enough to dig through his archives, find the audio from the Darrow talk, and post it yesterday (thanks, Adam!). So, here posted for the first time is Geof Darrow discussing Moebius. He touches on everything from Moebius’s oft-glossed over involvement with a religious cult to his early infatuation with Robert Crumb:

The Dollar Bin – Master of Screaming Metal: A Tribute to Moebius

Mar 05 2012

U is for Umber Hulk

Yet another fairly silly Dungeons & Dragons character design: the umber hulk. You’re asking for trouble any time you put together a creature that has a set of eyes where it’s nose normally would be–and then eliminate the nose altogether.  I found the original published image of the umber hulk on the webpage of someone who’s written a pretty hilarious “umber hulk love poem.”

U is for Umber Hulk

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

The dopey design of the umber hulk is made even sillier by depicting him busting through a brick wall in the style of The Kool Aid Man:

You can follow the other “U” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Mar 01 2012

For Creator Owned Day: The Georgia Peach

So apparently the comics community has decided that March 1st is “Creator Owned Day” and who am I to argue with them? To celebrate I figured I’d post some of my own creator-owned work. Actually, other than the Amelia Earhart book I did for Hyperion, pretty much all of my work is creator owned–so I decided I’d just post my very first story from my very first book: “The Georgia Peach” from Farewell, Georgia. Farewell, Georgia was published in 2003 by SLG Publishing, an indie comics publisher who recently celebrated 25th anniversary–that’s a quarter century of publishing great creator-owned work! You can purchase Farewell, Georgia from them here.

Feb 27 2012

T is for Thought Eater

From the original Monster Manual: second only to 1986’s live action Howard The Duck in the “simultaneously creepy/dopey duck-based character design” department, the Thought Eater.

T is for Thought Eater

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “T” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

Feb 23 2012

Sketchbook 2/23 – Baseball Players

For the last few days I’ve been on a baseball kick in my sketchbook. Maybe I’m just ready for spring to arrive–who knows? I’ve posted phone pics of some of these to various social media sites, but here are decent scans of them all together. They’re all taken from Ken Burns’s Baseball: an Illustrated History, the companion book to the great PBS documentary series.