Pow!

Finally coloured last year's Jersey Gods Christmas card...!

Blam!

This was my go at drawing Warwick Johnson Cadwell and John Hoffman's The Nun with Two Guns. I botched it a bit - the original idea was to have her pointing the guns at us, with rosary beads strung between her arms, but I did her head too big and that left no room for the guns. So... no guns. The little "BLAMS" were a pain in the bum to colour (my own fault, I drew them very crudely, lots of open lines, difficult to flat), but they look rather good. And spent cartridges. Oh man, I *love* spent cartridges.

Look for more of this sort of thing in the New Year, fingers crossed!

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THAMMMM!

Or do I mean MMMMAHT? Whatever, here's a sneak preview of issue ten of JERSEY GODS. Ooh!



After the relatively formal first issues, I'm trying to see if I can have some fun with the layout without breaking the story flow.



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In Livin' Colour - Mk II

It's Batman!

Jersey Gods 9...

...is out today, folks! Behind a cracking Mike Allred cover, you'll find:

Nightmares! Barock confronts a figure from his past.
War! Helius discovers the truth about Hecticus.
Secrets! What is Barock's hidden weakness?
Death! Which God has reached the end of the line?
Gratuitous nudity! No, really.

And here's my favourite page from the ish...



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In Livin' Colour

Really pleased with the Gordon I did, so I thought I would lay down some colours on the aul' fella. Apologies for the cheesy background - who's got time to draw cityscapes?



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Get in the Ring!

This is a little something I'm kicking around at the moment. It might come to something, it might not.

Re: Animated

During my convalescence (I had an eye problem that's too complicated and dull to talk about right now - it seems to be on the mend, though) I bought and watched A LOT of the Batman Animated Series. At the risk of sounding redundant - cos everyone knows this, don' t they - it really was bloody good. Weirdly, the Joker episodes are the weakest of the series - as though the presence of Batman's arch-nemesis forces the show into a shape that doesn't quite suit it. The best episodes are the smaller, quieter ones, the morality plays, the detective stories, where Batman is almost a peripheral figure. The Joker of the Animated Series is an abstract, immutable figure, as fundamentally unchanging as Batman himself, so Joker plots mostly amount to: Joker does something evil/mischievous; Batman gets angry; Batman finds Joker and a) captures him or b) doesn't capture him (the honourable exception to this rule is Joker's Favor, which uses the big J as a plot element, and focuses instead on the woes of a perfectly ordinary Joe Bloggs).

Anyway, it's great. Also, Robin rules. His first "big" story - Robin's Reckoning - is an absolute cracker.

So, all this Bat-thinking got me digging through my sketchbooks for Bat-stuff. And here (some of) it is! I did these a couple of months back, with PITT pens and graphite pencil.

Hey, Commish!

A couple of commission pieces I did. From Robert Kirkman's Invincible, here's The Immortal:



And from Marvel Comics' Spider-Man, here's, uh...



I love Spider-Man, but I find drawing him tricky. Maybe 'cos he was one of the first characters I really loved as a kid, so he's, I dunno, important to me. Anyway, I shot for a pseudo-Romita look here, and that pretty much got me through.

I'd be thrilled if any of you clever, talented folks would like to colour these - drop me a line or leave a comment if yer interested...

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Jersey Gods Issue 8...

...will be in your local comic store this Wednesday. Hooray!

I am fantastically proud of this one - the script is super, super sharp and I have to put false modesty aside here and say it looks pretty damn good, too.





The good people of Comic Hero News have more preview stuff on their site. Well nice.

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EC on the eye!

This is from a sequence in Jersey Gods issue 9. Unusually for JG, this scene required a bit of added spookiness, so I decided to bring a bit of an EC Comics, Creepy/Eerie vibe into the inks. Dunno if it came off, but all those extra little lines were a lot of fun, and added some nice texture to the scene.

God, is this the most boring blog in the world, or what? Something fun next time, promise.


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Jersey Gods numero 7!

These pages (and three more) from JG Number 7 are up on Comic Hero News. Check 'em here!

Batman vs The Crow

Remember The Crow?

I've had an idea for a wicked Batman/Crow crossover brewing for about, bloody hell, fifteen years. Back from when The Crow was kind of a big deal amongst my Gothy/metal-y friends. It'll probably never happen, but that's not gonna stop me doing some Crow/Batman fan art!


See?

Blue line pencil, india ink on bristol board, ink wash. I then attacked the board with a compass to give it an appropriately scratchy, Gothy look. Came out quite nice, I reckon!

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It's JERSEY GODS 8!

OK, I'm not allowed to show too much of this yet - obv - but I just finished drawing Jersey Gods 8 and felt I had to show off. So cop a loada these:


Barock, shown here blasting... is that *Zoe*?

Really pleased with this sequence. It's just three people talking - albeit in space - but it works quite nicely.

OMG!

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Hard Science!

A few years ago - probably just before I landed a job with Doctor Who Magazine, and maybe six months before I got into Comic Book Idol - I had this idea. As ideas go it wasn't up to much - basically a remix of Challengers of the Unknown/Fantastic Four - but it would've been lively, fun nonsense, mixed in with a lot of daffy comics science and some fun time travel/soap opera hijinks. It was called HARD SCIENCE - and here are the first (and only) pages.

I think it stands up quite well - especially the colour stuff. And it was around this time that I realised I *loved* doing my own lettering. Woo!

Next time - something new!

UPDATED: image 3 now works. Knock yerselves out.

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Minions!

Well, I've been saved some bother by the awesome Mr Luke Pickett and the superfly Mr Matthew Schuler, AKA Cosmic Pencil, who have kindly coloured two of my recent pics. Luke Pickett did a beautiful job with Jersey Gods' BAROCK vs SUPERMAN and Cosmic Pencil knocked the GREEN LANTERN out of the park (as they say). Good work, my colouring minions! :)





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Superman v Barock - updated

I stuck in a background and some logo stuff. I'm gonna end up colouring this, I just know it.

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Superman vs Barock!

I love drawing Superman. And I love drawing Barock! But who's better? There's only one way to find out...



By the way, Jersey Gods 6 came out this Wednesday. A new storyline, new enemies, more action - more romance! Buy it and help make the world a better place. Or better still, lobby your local comic shop to put aside a future issue - it's preorders that count, kid!

And if you've missed the previous 5 issues, the trade paperback of Jersey Gods 1-5 also hit the shelves this week. It's on Amazon and everything. Americanos go HERE and Brits go HERE. French people go HERE.

That's it!

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Fan Art Friday

OK, this is the last post for the day, promise. But I had to post this nifty rendering of Jersey God Helius by Pixar animation bod and all-round good egg, Ev Downing.



I love it - thanks Ev!

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The Cat

Meet Cosmo. He's our cat. Isn't he bloody marvellous?







That's me in the background, there. Ha ha, I am fat.

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Batman Black and White: II

Pencils by Dan, inks by Declan Shalvey. See his blog or blogs!



Dec brought something a bit different to the pencils - emphasising their wildness - where Chris brought a pleasingly formal, inky quality to proceedings. Needless to say, I love both approaches to bits.

(And if anyone else would like a go, do let me know!)

King of the Schill

Jersey Gods issue one is now available - gratis, free and for nothing - on Newsarama.com! If you haven't read it yet, why not give it a try?

In the meantime - here's a peek at what issue 7 looks like. Barock and Helius storm the Paris runways during Fashion Week!

Batman, Black and White

Pencils by Dan, inks by the phenomenal Chris Samnee, who is currently tearing it up on DC's terrific THE MIGHTY. See his blog!

Helloooo...?

So I've pretty much had my head down for the last couple of months, working on issues 6 and 7 of Jersey Gods. I'm not gonna say too much about what's coming, but believe me, it's good - Glen's writing up a storm, cool things are moving into place, and there's some really wicked stuff coming up. And if you've yet to give us a go, why not pre-order the rather lovely JERSEY GODS trade paperback, and see what you're missing?

Shilling aside, there isn't much to report to be honest. OK, there's tons, but most of it is pretty hush-hush, or, y'know. Boring. Oh, there's this thing I did for Mr Matt Zitron, who is, as they say, a bad-ass:


The brief was for something with GL and Star Sapphire. I think I did alright, but take a look at this gallery to see some proper artists working wonders with the same brief. The D'Israeli one is fuckin' magic.

While we're on a DC kick:

Batman. If anyone out there fancies inking this, let me know and I'll send you a blueline.

Catwoman. Bashed out on the Wacom on a gloomy Sunday.

An' finally, something from one of those hush-hush things I mentioned earlier. Ladies and gentlemen, he is floating in space:

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Gouache!

Is it "goo-ash", or "gwash"? Whatever, I bought a set of goache paints over the hols and did some arseing about with 'em.

HERCULES!


DARKSEID!




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I Noo You'd Say Dat

About a year ago, I put together a sample package for 2000AD. And honestly... it was rubbish. The art was okay - it was early Jersey Gods stuff - but I was really busy at the time, and so made little effort to come up with much in the way of Dredd/Tooth-specific stuff. So, inevitably, I didn't hear back. This hasn't worked out too badly for me - with JG and Who, I'd be too busy to do much else anyway - but I have a soft spot for old Stoney Face and feel a little sad that I won't be drawing him any time soon.

This isn't what I sent to Rebellion - I drew these in the park over the weekend, based on a vague idea for a sample strip I had on the go a few years back. Working with these characters - and in a coarser, slightly wilder style - was a LOT of fun.

The putative villain of the piece, plus a futuristic bike.

Old Stoney Face in a bit of hot Lawgiver action. Or do I mean Lawmaster?

Judge Dredd. As played by Dan Hedaya, apparently.



Judge Anderson, PSI Division. REALLY fun to draw. And note the cross around her neck - the last time I was seriously reading Dredd, she had gone Catholic, see.

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