KNEEL!

I was very excited about the new Man of Steel trailer. I've got some small reservations from what I've seen so far - it feels like the film is going to move VERY SLOWLY through the whole "will Clark Kent live up to his destiny" business, then cram a metric ton of collateral damage and fisticuffs into the last half hour. OR (more likely), it'll be very, very long indeed - essentially two films bolted together - which seems to be a given with these summer b-busters at the moment. The Hobbit's just shy of three hours apparently. Three hours! Christ.

And then there's the whole bit with the world being too big, and Ma Kent (for it is she) advising him to "make it small". Weird, creepy advice, though not a patch on Pa Kent's "kill 'em all and let God sort it out" admonishment. I bet when these bits turn up in the movie they'll be incredibly potent and effective, but they're maybe a bit too ambiguous for the purposes of a trailer (particularly with all that soaring, inspirational warbling going on in the background - I'm not supposed to find Pa Kent's "maybe" stirring, am I?)

But balls to all that, because as soon as Superman takes off into the sky the whole thing suddenly makes thrilling sense. And then this guy turns up:

Michael Shannon as Zod. He's going to be the best thing in the film, you wait and see.

Sketchy stuff

A page of sketchy stuff, featuring some oblique spoilers for a couple of projects I've got coming up. Hmm!

YOU'RE Thor??

Thor warm-up sketch on a cold November evening.

Time Share - just the colours

HOT off the presses, here's the colours for a page of Time Share I just finished. No inks, cos I don't want to spoil the plot (and I think the colours look pretty nifty by themselves...!)

FRANKENSTEIN: RIP?

Finally finished this Frankenstein commish. Loads of fun, though I think I enjoyed drawing his 'orrible teeth the most.

Monster Monster!

Quick sketch of Alec and Abbey from Swamp Thing, one of the best couples in comics history. There might be inks (and colours?) in this thing's future.

EDIT: And here it is! I over did the background texture, and messed up a nice detail I had planned, but it's otherwise not bad. Sigh. I knew I'd lose something with the inks, I always bloody do. Still a nice drawing though.

FRANKENSTEIN LIVE!

Sorry, that's supposed to read "Frankenstein Lives!" I'll fix it.

Ink study for a commission I'm working on. Trying to figure who my Creature will be, and I've kind of settled on a cross between Mary Shelley and Hammer Horror. I love drawing this guy! "I want to drink your blood!" - classic!

The Fuzz - IN COLOUR

A gritty-ass panel from Alex de Campi's forthcoming ASHES. 

Hulk... pensive

Digital sketch. Trying to use my power of Photoshop FOR GOOD.

Here comes the fuzz!

A snippet of a page from Alex di Campi's Ashes. I love drawing SWAT guys!

DOOOOOOM!!!

Latveria's favourite son in some borderline upskirt action. Why, you can almost see his Cosmic Cube!

Sorry.

D

She Ain't Buyin' It

A panel from Time Share - coming soon.

MONSTER!

I completely botched today's page, so I made it up to myself by drawing Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy. 

Really wanted to work the monolith from 2001 in there as well, but couldn't figure it out. Ah well - next time.

Goddamn, I loved doing this. Jack Kirby, you were the best.

She's on the Phone...

A panel from Alex de Campi's forthcoming ASHES. I've seen some of the other art in this book and I must say it looks BLOODY LOVELY so far.

Glasgow Comic Con

Dan’s too busy to write up his visit to the Glasgow con so I, in my role as Best Girlfriend Ever, am doing it for him.

It’s a fairly small con but the guest list was excellent – Rufus Dayglo, Alan Grant, Jon Haward, Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Jim Starlin, John Wagner, as well as various small press publishers. 

Dan before the crowds

Loads of people came for sketches and poor old Dan didn’t stop all day – 40 sketches by 3pm! Suffice to say, he was knackered by the end of it, but still a happy bunny. We sold out of sketchbooks and met some very nice people - including Twitterfriends Mark Toner and Colin Bell. Here are some of Dan's sketches from that day:

Godzilla

Cthulhu

Commissioner Gordon

Dan, Rufus and Jon

Braveheart

Drawing Matt Smith

Man-Thing in progress

The finished Man-Thing

Hellboy pencils

Robin and Superman

Drawing the Hulk

Magneto

Penguin

Love that Joker!

Cosplayers - Scottish Spider-Man with Storm

On a break outside the venue and another sketch for a nice man and his son. 

Request of the day goes to Colin Bell for asking for Dan’s own character- Sky-Knight (watch this space!) 

Captain America

Last sketch of the day – Spider-Man/Peter Parker 

Thanks to everyone who came along to chat and who bought a sketchbook. Also to Sha Nazir for organising the event and inviting us.

Deborah

Optimist Prime

When I was a kid, the Transformers looked a lot less shiny than they do these days. John Ridgeway and Mike Collins' take on the big metal tramps was especially gnarly, with Ridgeway's looking almost like wood at times. I loved that - that extra bit of British texture made the Transformers mythos smaller, more mundane, but also somehow more magic. Anyway, with that in mind, I drew Optimus Prime:

Roll out!

D

RTA

A snippet of today's Time Share work. This is me trying to get away from the - to my mind - rather fey line I'm getting from my brush at the moment. I'll probably go back to the brush at some point - I've spent too long mastering it to give up on it now - but I'm very pleased with how this came out. This bit was made using PITT brush pens, PITT superfine pen, chunky black marker, crayon and zipatone. Blimey!

The rest of the page will be visible very, very soon...

VROOOOM!

Panel of the day, Time Share, soon from Oni Press.

Face On!

My favourite thing I drew today:

The Bat and the Banana!

The latest in a long line of increasingly bizarre crossovers from some weird alternative universe where all notions of good taste and sense are thrown to the wind, this sees DC Comics' and DC Thomson's finest united against the Clown Prince of Crime and, uh... well. See for yourself:

Yes, shark-infest custard. I can now die happy.

If you don't know who Bananaman is, here's the title sequence to his 80s TV show, moderately beloved by a generation:

And this is Batman:

The Brave and the Daft

A sneak peek of a VERY silly thing I drew today:

Open All Hours

HEY YOU! If you're interested in buying one of my prints or sketchbooks, but you can't be bothered arseing about with emails and what-have-you... Well, I can't say I blame you. So you might be interested to know I have a BIG CARTEL shop now. And here it is: http://danmcdaid.bigcartel.com/

You'll find this sort of thing waiting for you there:

And I'm going to be adding more prints and probably original artwork there in the months to come, so stay tuned. Hey, does anyone even know what stay tuned means these days? Like the record scratch effect (still ubiquitous in trailers for hack comedies), hasn't it become completely passe? How much "tuning" does one do on a daily basis these days? I'd argue almost none. That said, I bought a new TV recently and was surprised to find that extensive tuning was still necessary to find the channels (and I couldn't find *any* channels as it turned out, because Freeview is a f*cking joke). Hours - or it felt like hours - were spent staring at static, as my useless new telly tried to find BBC Four, ITV3... Christ, I would have settled for QVC. Nothing. When I was a kid, I called the static between channels "trash", and it scared the bejeezus out of me. It still creeps me out a bit, I don't mind admitting.

If there's a hell, this is what it looks like.

Gun n' Run!

Pencils, inks, colour etc.

Egg Hunt!

From the latest Doctor Who Magazine - here's a room full of treasures from across time, space and reality itself! How many can YOU spot?

Space Jockin'

Sort of influenced by all the Prometheus talk that was in the air a couple of weeks ago, here's how a couple of panels from my current Doctor Who strip worked out.