Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 29

In Stores Now: Goon #35

Script by me, art by Goon creator Eric Powell, who was kind enough to invite me along for the ride. Available at shops that ordered it, my thanks to those of you who chose to pick the book up. Hope you enjoyed it. 

Meant to plug it on Wednesday, but we've been super-busy working on a couple of deadlines and trying to other deadlines on the schedule.

Hey

Between prepping for Irene, the book club appearance Friday night (went really well, thanks to those who came out) and losing our power Saturday just around midnight, things have been a little crazy here at the H.O.F.

Got our power back earlier today, spent the day cleaning up, house is a mess, we've lost a lot of work time, so, if I'm not here for a while, I'm moving boxes around, inking, and finishing up a writing gig Sarah and I need to get done.

Hope everyone in the Irene corridor made it through unscathed. Happy to hear the CCS library books were unharmed, I hate to see books destroyed in any circumstance, but I'm partial to the place, as a bunch of those books used to be ours.

Oh -- almost forgot, Goon #35 hits the stands tomorrow. Hope those who pick it up dig it. We worked hard on it, yo.

Anyway, take care, and again, hope you're all well.

Midtown Comics Book Club: Beasts of Burden Discussion This Friday

A quick reminder -- I will be appearing at Midtown Comics on August 26th for their next Book Club meeting, which will spotlight  Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites.

The event will be held at the Fulton Street store in downtown NYC, and starts at 6:30 p.m. I'll be happy to sign stuff, comics, copies of the book, rubber checks.  Hoping to bring some process stuff along, scripts and roughs, what have you. 

Full info on the event can be found here. Hope to see some of you there. Any of you. Drifters welcome.

Also, speaking of Beasts of Burden, thanks to the folks who voted for Jill and I in the recent Harvey Awards. Awards don't seem to have any real-life impact in comics -- if they do, it's news to me -- but the press and word of mouth certainly doesn't  hurt, and it's always nice to be reminded that there are some folks out there who enjoyed the book enough to give us the nod. 

Later, skaters.

Dork Art For Sale

We recently added a batch of Fun strip pages from various issues of Dork to our original art list. Pretty much all the Fun pages we've got left, save three or four I'm holding on to, for now at least.

There's also a new Pirate Corp$! page available. More pages from a few projects (PC$!/HP, The Urbz/Sims online comic I did a few years ago, more Yo Gabba Gabba! and Welcome to Eltingville production art, etc) should be going up on the list in the coming days and weeks. Also, we're putting together some more eBay listings, I think the Rhino pin-up I did recently will be in the next batch along with some other stuff I can't recall at the moment.

There's too much paper floating around the house. Getting sick of looking at most of it.

Late 90's Hectic Planet Pin-Ups

Crink

Hellboy: Weird Tales Character Sketches

Character sketches for the Hellboy: Weird Tales story I did called "Professional Help". The story featured Roger the Homonculus and a fellow B.P.R.D agent investigating a series of church burnings in Norway. And a bunch of other stuff crammed into ten pages -- a Black Metal cult, a Quisling Universist scientist enclave, a baby Frost Giant, and the entire affair book-ended with a second story involving a murder investigation. I worked the whole thing way too hard, stiff-armed the pencils and ached the inks, intimidated by Mignola's shadow and the caliber of artistic talent on the anthology.

Live and learn.

Maxx Trading Card

The latest in a series of xeroxes I've been scanning and tossing this week. This one's from 1996.

Scary Godmother Pin-Up

Scary Godmother meets Action Girl and Milk and Cheese in 1998, I forget which Scary Godmother comic this ran in.

I remember having a good time working on this, trying to meld my style with Jill Thompson's for her cast of characters. And drawing Bugaboo, the multi-eyed monster, was lots of fun. Always loved his design.

If you haven't read Jill's delightful Scary Godmother books (yeah, I don't write the word "delightful" often, but they are just that), Dark Horse has recently added a collection of all the black and white SG comics to last year's Scary Godmother collection of the painted storybook/comics hybrid books. The comic collection features a story Jill did for Sarah's late, lamented Action Girl Comics anthology. Ah, the 90's. More fun than I realized at the time.

Speaking of Milk and Cheese, you can now pre-order the DHC collection on Amazon. We've been working on the book design elements this week with our editors and the designer, picking drawings and catchphrases for the back cover layout, working on a book plate. This weekend I have to caption the supplemental material. Very exciting and very nerve-wracking. Can't wait to see this thing in print this December. It'll include the Scary Godmother pin-up, by the way.

Sin City Pin-Up

This was commissioned for a Sin City series, if I recall correctly, but it ended up being published (several years after I turned it in) in The Art of Sin City, one of four books in a slip-cased set entitled Sin City: The Frank Miller Library Set 2 from Dark Horse in 2006. I think there's a standalone version of the book,  published earlier and then repackaged in the library edition.

Sarah helped with the logos and text stuff and assembled the art on the computer (the small figures were drawn separately and dropped in). If I had it to do all over again I would probably have gone with a different concept. I like the idea but I didn't have the chops to pull it off. I worked hard on it -- it was a good paycheck and I was flattered Frank asked -- but I'm not a good design or graphics guy, I don't paint, I can't do tones or gray washes or anything like that which would have more effectively put over the paperback approach. After I finished it I came up with a two-page gag strip that I wish I had done instead. I convinced myself Frank didn't like the pin-up and that he was disappointed that I didn't turn in a humorous piece. This comes not from anything Frank said or did, this was purely my own self-doubt and paranoia. Every job I do has that wonderful element added to it to some degree, it's a great way to work.

Anyway, there's the exciting story of my Sin City pin-up. Few folks have seen it so I thought it might be of interest. 

Back to work. Having trouble doing what should be a series of simple layouts. Very frustrating.