Cap! Jumping!

I've always struggled with how to draw Captain America, trying to assimilate the "black, blobby mask" look of 70s Byrne and 80s Zeck, the inky, muscular approach of Jack Kirby... and the underrated, energetic style of Ron Garney. Man, Ron Garney... what an underappreciated talent. Anyway, it's never really clicked for me. But...!

I did this today, and I'm super-pleased with it. I felt like I'd subconsciously worked a hefty slice of Mazzuchelli into the mix, but someone on Twitter pointed out this has a Calvin and Hobbes vibe. Which wasn't deliberate, but is definitely on the money...

So there you go. Cap! Jumping! Thinking I might draw in a Bucky to complete the pic...

Cheeky!

A few panels from my Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tryout pages. These were a TON of fun to draw. I don't want to jump the gun or anything, but I was born to draw this book

SEX!

A few snippets from issue 17 of Image Comics/Joe Casey's SEX. I'm a big fan of this book, and it was a thrill to be a part of it. Joe gave me a fantastic script to draw: all shadows and urban grit and kung fu. You'll see the rest of it in, I think, October. Should be good.

Kirby

Happy Birthday to Jack Kirby, who would have been 97 last week. An endless source of inspiration and energy. Here's his comics avatar, Ben Grimm AKA the Thing

Vandroid - NUMBER THREE

Vandroid Issue Three hits tomorrow - GET SOME.

If you want to catch up, issues 1 and 2 are in the Dark Horse digital store.

-D

ART STORRRRRRMMMMM

Hello there! Just thought I'd put some of my recent colour here, in one neat, easy-wipe, handy-dandy place and... Uck, what an irritating shctick. Yeah, so... no one looks at blogs any more, do they? But still, this tends to be the address I send people to when I want to showcase my work, so I REALLY SHOULD UPDATE from time to time.

As threatened - here comes the art:

This is Abslom Daak. I've got a big colouring job coming up soon - finally finishing Time Share for Oni Press, if you can  believe that. It's been years! Anyway, in order to get myself set for it I've been doing some colour warm-ups. This is a slightly older piece, but it looks pretty nifty in full colour.

This is the Question. I love drawing the Question. The vibe I was going for here was kind of a Graham Greene, American in Tangiers during WWII thing. He's roasting in that get-up, but he's damned if he's letting standards slip.

This is Clara de Noche, who I know next to nothing about but I think she's a character from Bernet's Torpedo? It's not a great likeness, so honestly it could be *anybody*, but I really like the colour job I did here.

And finally here's Abby and Swamp Thing. A bit of a love letter this, to Wrightson, to Moore, to Totleben, Veitch and Bisette and of course to big, ugly old Alec himself. If someone offered me a Swamp Thing job tomorrow, I'd take it like a shot.

OK, that's it. Thanks for stopping by. If you want to see more of my art, you can follow me on tumblr or on my Twitter feed, where I post quite a lot of art on the reg, as they say. And I'll be back here with more stuff... soon. Ish.

Dan

Samples for J

Click to enlarge!

F-F-Fantastic!

This is an unfinished, partly coloured, not quite there yet Sue Storm/Doctor Doom piece I did. Why do I keep calling her Sue Storm, instead of Sue Richards? She's been married or about 40 years, fer crying out loud. Sue Storm just sounds cooler, I guess.

This is her in her Future Foundation duds, which I really liked.

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

Mind the Gap!

Mind the Gap issue 14 alt cover. I went with something a bit more stark and design-y in the end, but I still really like this one. It’s a bit different from my usual stuff. It also nicely reflects how I feel when I'm sat at the drawing board.

Have a Daredevil New Year!

Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil!

I'm Looking For the Doctor...

Favourite Doctor? I'm calling it now: JOHN HURT.

DOOMCOCK!

Doctor Doom warm-up sketch. I don't know if this helped me do a better page or whatever, but it WAS fun - and it came out nice! I like how Doom carries a gun when he really, REALLY doesn't need it. He fires power bolts from his hands, is a top-level mystic and has an army of obedient robots at his disposal. But still... got to have the pistol.

Cool guy.

His is the Power Cosmic!

It's... THE SILVER SURFER!