Vader in Colour...

But *which* colour? I couldn't decide if red or blue worked better... Can YOU?

Tell Your Sister...

I've been thinking a bit about Darth Vader recently. He's good, isn't he?

CATALYST COMIX - NIBURU STRIKES!

This is pretty much the penultimate design for the creature that attacks New York in CATALYST COMIX 1. The only note from Joe was to set the head lower into the body. I also ended up changing the head into some sort of pitted skull-thing, as though lots of different kinds of creature had all simultaneously materialised in the same place at the same time, killed each other, and the remaining creature had somehow retained enough primal sentience to go on a destructive kill-spree. I might be thinking too much about this. Anyway, a nice design.

CATALYST COMIX - The Baba Lama

My early designs for the Guru, the Baba Lama, Frank's spiritual advisor on his quest for relevance. This approach more or less made it to the final page, with a few tweaks. My thinking was to make him like a fighting guru, someone who could convincingly dole out existential advice, but also hold his own in a dojo. I wish I'd given him more doohickeys and paraphernalia now: cord bracelets, pendants  and the like. Oh well,
LIVE AND LET DIE.

Exclusively for YOU...

A very, VERY small look at Vandroid issue 4:

Catayst Comix - AN HOUR OF POWER

Did you enjoy Catalyst Comix? I know most of you didn't read it. It's cool. No really. Anyway, it was a pretty good book that I worked on and had a LOT of fun with. There's a collected edition of the series hitting - I believe! - in May, and it's going to be huge. As in, a really enormous object. Possibly too big for most post boxes, if I'm absolutely honest. Here's an Amazon link if you want to pre-order it, it's probably going to be the best book of year. I'm not kidding about that. LINK

And here's a little behind the scenes action FOR YOU! This is an early-ish Frank Wells sketch that I did:

And here's a design for the "Man From the Vortex". Actually, as per Mr Wells, this is a redesign. He had an awesome muscular Chris Warner design before, but we decided to go with something a bit more spectral and ethereal. A real boogeyman figure, something that would haunt Frank's dreams. I think this design was a little influenced by that Doom Patrol villain... I can't remember his name right now. The leader of the Brotherhood of Dada? Anyway, him. I always loved that his eyes didn't work in any meaningful sense, they weren't stuck to his face, they just kind of floated there. So I pinched that:

AND FINALLY: an early design for the Niburu character who destroys the world in issue one. Yes, it's that sort of comic. I did a LOT of different designs for this guy, and I might put them up on the blog at some point. The vague idea I had was something covered with foul black fur, like a spider or a bee. This thing would just be one of the main protuberances of the beast itself. BRRRR

There might be some more of this soon - please stay tuned!

D

NELSON, the Spice Girls and the End of the World

Not sure if I posted this before - I don’t think I did? Anyway, this was my portion of the graphic novel NELSON, which came out a couple of years ago (and is still available here). I wrote and drew this over the course of a week I think, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of in my career. My chosen year was 1997, hence all the chat about the Spice Girls, the oblique reference to Princess Diana and the generally febrile, hangover-y feeling everything has. Britpop was on its arse, the horrible next century was hoving into view. Travis and the Stereophonics were beginning to trouble the charts. Chris Moyles rising.

Click to read these - they're worth a closer look.

Dan