HIT ME!

Remember that bit in the Dark Knight when the Joker's stood there in the middle of the street, and that crazy old Batman is speeding towards him on his massive bike, and then Batman pussies out because the Joker is too awesome to kill? Imagine that but with Adam West and Cesar Romero:


This was another recent commission. It's the most fun I've had with my drawing in bloody ages - I almost don't want to give it away. The commissioner (lol) asked me to take a moment from Batman's "dark" era (ie. everything since 1986), and recast that moment with the 60s Batman and Joker. I was torn between this and the neck-snapping bit in Dark Knight Returns. But no one wants to see Adam West snapping Cesar Romero's neck - that's too frigging horrible for words. So I picked this fairly iconic bit from The Dark Knight. Which in turn, let's be honest, is not a million miles from this:



Love that Joker!

Adding Burt Ward's Robin was my idea - sixties Batman is nothing without his monkey wrench, after all.

Knock, Knock!

Another recent commission piece:



I do miss David Tennant.

FFed!

And here's the rest of yesterday's picture. I get a huge kick out of drawing the Future Foundation, especially Spider-Man. Only when sitting down to draw the character, do you realise how cleverly they've stuck to the original design AND inverted it. Really smart stuff - and I love the integration of the hexagons into the spider motif-thing.

Fun.

Snippet!

A wee glimpse at an upcoming commission piece - very pleased with this one. Especially the balls!

D

Me and Batman

Me and Batman:

Home and Harley!

Commission sketch I did for Thought Bubble. Fun!

Drawing Tom III

Thomas Stewart Baker... now with inks!

Happy Doctor Who day!

D

Out of the Sketchbook...

A clutch of Matt Smiff studies:



D

Superman is "TECHNO-ACTIVE"!

A wee snippet from a commission I'm working on. This bit features Superman in what I think of as "Euro-Kirby" armour.

D

I've got TB!

Hey! I'll be at Thought Bubble in Leeds this weekend, so why not come and see me? When I'm not spending time at the NELSON/BLANK SLATE BOOKS tent, I'll be mostly stinking up TABLE 76 in Saviles Hall. Check out this sweet map:



With me will be Mr Dave Stokes and Mr (?) Marc Laming. Stop by for sketches, chat and "inappropriate" touching!

D

Drawing Tom II

More Tom!

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Drawing Tom

Turns out I love drawing Tom Baker:



Scarf: cool. Hair: cool. Big nose: cool. Beat THAT, Smith!

Who Killed Cyclops??

Here's another recent commission piece - with added colour pizzazz by yours truly.


The characters are: Deathstroke the Terminator, Elle Driver from Kill Bill, Nicholas Joseph Fury of Shield and SD Bob "Snake" Plissken. But which of them shot Cyclops? I couldn't possibly solve this mystery... CAN YOU?




D

A perfectly good FF cover...

...ruined.

This was another recent commission piece, and my first stab at drawing the Future Foundation costume. I was originally going to go with the Thing for this cover (cos I love the Thing) but I've drawn him a lot, and I fancied a stab at drawing Invisible Woman instead.

Cool story, right?

The Funk of Forty Thousand Years!

Just posted this on Comic TWART:


And if you like that sort of thing, here's the inks:


And the pencils:



AH-HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
*coffin lid closes*


D

Batman, She Wrote!

THERE ARE NO WORDS

(OK, there are SOME words. This was a recent commission by Billy "Aqualec" Tournas, who asked for a team up between Jessica Fletcher and Batman. Bruce and Alfred, as per every other episode of Murder, She Wrote, are a pair of old friends who live out of town. I went for the "Year Two" late eighties Batman, so Bruce is a bit younger here than usual (and I used the David Mazzuchelli Wayne Manor for the background in panel one). Check out the label on Bruce's champagne bottle - he'd have his own vineyard, right? And for one night only, he's the butler. What a mensch.

(Massive thanks to Billy for the commission - thanks, man!)

-D

...With a Bullet!

This week's Comic TWART subject is The Punisher! Here's the colours:



The pencils...

And the inks!

D

Hercules - After Dark!

Hercules doing what he does best.

D

Big Green Love Machine!

When I was a kid, my go-to character for doodles was Batman. I've got that pretty much out of my system these days, and prefer to draw big-ass, hulking green buggers in purple trousers. This means NOTHING, Dr Freud!

Kirby-gasm - THE "LATINO EFFECT"

Warning: looking at these colours will actually make you a little high.

Gorgeous hues once again supplied by Kyle "Omega Sanction" Latino.

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OMAC-Colour!

Scorching colours by Kyle Latino. Thanks, Kyle - it's gorgeous!

D

One Man Apple Core!

Really enjoying the all-new, all monstrous, Keith Giffen-ized version of OMAC. Here's my take on the big, beefy bugger:



Colours to come? Maybe!

D

(kudos to Kyle Latino for the blog title)

Kirby-gasm - INKED!

Click to King-size it!

Here's yesterday's pencils if you want to compare and contrast. I tightened up the Kirby logo, removed Infinity Man (sorry Kevin), removed Darkseid's pupils (couldn't make them work) and did a bunch of other small fixes and tweaks.

I had a blast - hope you like it!

D

Kirby-gasm!

This is a commission I'm working on at the mo - I was asked to do a whole bunch of Kirby characters in the style of one of those Marvel Handbooks. Remember those? Anyway - cool stuff, and it's nice to scratch that Kirby itch again. Inks to follow!

Harry Potter on a unicorn, flying out of the TARDIS

A semi-recent commission piece. Three of Jen Vaughn's favourite things, as requested by Chris "Chris Sims" Sims.

Enter: Sandman (literal version)

This is a pic that's been yelling at me to draw it the last few days. It's almost certainly been done before, but it's pretty irresistable nonetheless.

I'd like to reiterate here how much I love drawing Sandman. Striped top, cornrow hair - he's an inker's dream. Actually, both he and Spider-Man are brilliant for this sort of abstraction - Sandman cos of the stripes, Spidey cos of the webs and spot blacks.

The first one I did of these was a bit Romita-esque. I think this one is quite "Ditko-ish".

D

The Crimson King!

(Not final art)

So, the cat's out of the bag - The Crimson Hand, a collection of comic strips from Doctor Who Magazine written by yours truly and drawn by a host of top flight British talent (and me), is finally coming out next year. I'm totally thrilled to bits about this, for any number of reasons: primarily, it's going to be nice just to read the whole thing as a novel, with its subplots, callbacks and running jokes plain to see. While I was writing TCH, I was hugely influenced by my other half (AKA The Brains of the Operation), who has a fondness for The Great Gatsby, Gothic fiction, and the freewheeling chutzpah of mid-century screwball comedy. So all that's there, and I'm hoping that when read as one piece, all those influences and levels will have an extra resonance.

The other reason I'm chuffed to see The Crimson Hand out there at last is that I'm a writer. I don't get to do much writing at the moment - I've got so, SO many art jobs on at the moment, it's untrue - but I don't want to forget that I'm a writer, and it'll be nice to point at an object and go "See that? I wrote ALL of that."

Now. All being well, I expect the trade paperback to include the following strips from Doctor Who Magazine:

Hotel Historia (art by me)

Thinktwice (art by Martin Geraghty - this is one of my favourites)

The Stockbridge Child (stands up quite well, despite my reservations at the time. Has some lovely Mike Collins art)

Mortal Beloved (my actual favourite, probably. This is where the influences mentioned above really come into their own. Fantastic, mordantly funny art from Sean Longcroft)

The Age of Ice (another cracker from Martin Geraghty. When the pages started coming in for this, I pretty much flipped my lid - bold, slick, sexy stuff. Why Martin isn't a bigger deal in comics I don't know)

The Deep Hereafter (a story I'd been struggling with for ages finally unlocked itself in the middle of a dark and stormy night. Beat poetry, noir, Eisner's The Spirit, all beautifully drawn by Rob "yer actual genius" Davis. Something a bit special, I think)

Onomatopoeia (how many times did I have to write that sodding word while working on this strip? Bit of an experiment: an entirely silent strip, with a story told entirely through sound effects. Detailed, vivacious art by Mike Collins)

Ghosts of the Northern Line (Bloody hell! It's Paul Grist!)

The Crimson Hand (the grand finale! Even I was surprised at how well the threads all tied up at the end. More gorgeous work from Martin Geraghty, apocalyptic colours by James Offredi)

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Even if I hadn't written this thing, I would still be all over it. So feel free to soil your pants with excitement, because this is going to be GREAT.

D

Absorb THIS!

A little belated tribute to The King - Absorbing Man gives the New Gods' Orion a bit of the old Ultra-Violence.

D

The Golden Age!

UPDATE! Now with added INK!




This was a recent commission piece, where the commissioner asked for 10 (actually 11, but I couldn't fit the Atomic Thunderbolt in) of his favourite Golden Age heroes in one super team. My initial instinct was to do something really dynamic and showy, with the characters all racing towards us, lots of speedlines etc. But I feel like I do that sort of thing quite a lot, so I had a go at doing something a bit more thoughtful. A bit more - dare I say it - Alan Moore-y.

These heroes are, going clockwise from the left: Stardust, Moon Girl, Hydroman, Green Giant, Blue Fire, Doc Strange, Iron Vic (that's the guy with the cigarette - my favourite, as you can probably tell), Kid Tyrant (how about that name??), Black Cat and, in the centre, a guy called Strongman. As you can probably tell, I've worked out a whole backstory to go with this picture - I might work it up into a pitch sometime.


- D

Goin' Underground!

My favourite panel from this week:


This is from TIME SHARE, coming soon(ish) from Oni Press!

D

Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with Some Cables

This is the panel Doctor Who strip editor Scott Gray described as "Kurtzman-tastic". Shamefully, I know next to nothing about Harvey Kurtzman (and he's never been a direct influence), but I've been compared to him enough times that I need to find out more. Where should I start, gentle reader?

The panel above is from a recent strip I drew for Doctor Who Magazine, script by Johnny Morris (not that one. Or that other one. That one). Doctor Who has a beard now. Beards are not, and never will be, cool.

D

Panel of the Day! (no. 6)

I loved drawing this panel SO MUCH.

- D

Panel of the Day (no. 5 in an occasional series)

This is my favourite thing I drew today:


This is from mine and Patrick Keller's TIME SHARE, coming soon from Oni Press. Watch out for it!

- D

BIZARRE!

My friend Andy Suriano very kindly aksed me to contribute to his and Joe Casey's magnificent DOC BIZARRE, MD. And how could I refuse??



Slight departure in style for me, drawn quite small with a slightly chunkier, more precise line. The rest of the book is glorious, vivid SPACE-BUG COLOR, so I figured the only way to really stand out was to go for mono with a wee bit of fake zipatone.

Doc Bizarre, MD will be in comic shops everywhere on October 19th. Make a note in your diary, gang!

-D

BFF!

Two more characters who will never turn up in an Avengers movie. Beast, cos he's also an X-Man, and they're all tied up over at EvilCo... I mean, FOX. And Wonder Man because he's... well, because he's Wonder Man. Ironically, Wonder Man in the comics is a semi-successful Hollywood actor. Pff, couldn't make it up, could you?

Regardless, they're two of my favourite Avengers. If they're in Avengers Mansion, then good times can't be far behind!

-D

The Doctor is IN!

The chances of this doofus appearing in the Avengers movie - or, indeed, *any* movie - are pretty slim. But I sort of love him all the same.

Savage? Moi?

Nailing my colours to the mast here: She-Hulk is the best female character in superhero comics, and if she doesn't turn up in Marvel's forthcoming live action Hulk show, then there ain't no justice.

D

ME(N)TAL!

A recent (quite mad) commission piece.



My undying love and respect if you can name all the robots in this picture!

-D

Screw HYDRA!

I love the Black Widow! When I went to see Iron Man 2 at the flicks, there were audible sighs of appreciation (from both sexes) when Scarlett Johansson arrived on the scene. The only other time I've heard that at the cinema was when Chris Hemsworth took his top off in Thor. Phwoar!

Hulk Out!

All A-Quiver!

I have literally never drawn Hawkeye before. I am 34 years old.

Hail to the CAP!

By Odin's Raven!

Dear Thor - you're awesome. Signed, Everyone.

D

THUNDER Struck!

THUN-DER! DC Comics' fantastic THUNDER Agents 10 is out in all good comic shops today... and I drew a big chunk of it!

Thumbnail!

Inks!

Colours (by Brad Anderson)!

You'll recognise my bit - I'm squeezed between comics legend MIKE GRELL and modern marvel NICK DRAGOTTA. Hell of a thing.

Go buy it. Then go back and buy all the issues so you know what's going on. It's one of the best books out there, so... you know. Do it.

DO IT!

D