Terry Moore's Blog, page 4

Drew Hayes & my Poison Elves cover

I didn’t know Drew Hayes very well when we shared a table at a small Dallas comic convention many years ago. He was big, loud and generally a happy guy and you knew if he was in the room, if for no other reason but the fact that his hair was always a different, bright color and, because Drew was tall, you could see that head coming at you through a crowd.

We were both struggling self-publishers that weekend in Dallas. We shared a table and spent Saturday morning meeting the 5 or 6 fans who knew us, and tried to bribe the rest of the crowd’s interest with cheap sketches. A con host offered to take us out to lunch and we readily accepted because “self-publisher” is Klingon for “broke”. Teri Wood joined us—remember Wandering Star?—and the 3 of us piled into this guy’s little commuter car. Drew filled the little back seat, so I called shotgun and let Teri sit next to him. As we rode to the restaurant, the car was quiet because it was full of lone-wolf cartoonists who didn’t get out much and didn’t know each very well. Not exactly a Kappa Kappa meeting. Only a car full of emoesque Fantagraphics cartoonists could have been quieter. But the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I saw a bird. It was a Disney day. In my best teenage-whatever voice I drawled a line Katchoo had already muttered in print, “Pretty day……. if you’re into that shit.” When Drew heard that he laughed and laughed. It broke the ice and we all started talking and had a great time at lunch. We became friends.

Back at the con, Drew and I resumed drawing anything for anybody and cracked jokes. After awhile, Drew stood and wandered off to take a break. About 15 minutes later he returned with a massive, elaborately decorated bowie knife—the chromed kind they sell cheap at the goth and fantasy tables, with a couple of holes in the blade and a wicked notch in the spine. I saw it gleaming in his hand as he walked up and before I could say anything he SLAM!ed it into the table. It quivered there as he sat down and smiled broadly at the people who’d stopped dead in their tracks to watch him. He bellowed like a stage actor, “Who wants a sketch?”

That was Drew. You just wanted to hug him for delighting you so.

Drew passed away 6 years ago, a victim of his own size, and I miss him. When you lose a friend you always have a hole in your life where that friend was. Nobody comes along and replaces them, they can’t. Today we can only appreciate the man and the labor of love he left behind, Poison Elves.

After the Dallas show, I later drew a pinup for Drew and included the super-sized knife in the girl’s hand, the weapon of choice for my girl elf to teach his main character a lesson for beheading his own creator. It was an in-joke and Drew got a kick out of it.

I heard Drew’s friends and family were resuming production of Poison Elves, creating new stories from Drew’s own notes and outlines. When I was contacted about drawing a cover, I immediately thought of the pinup and they agreed to use it. My cover will be extremely limited—the C cover of three variants—so if somebody wants this specific cover they’re going to have to hunt for it. Unless they read this blog. I got my copies today—a dozen or so. I only need 3 for my archive, so I will sell the rest in a few weeks when I know what the price should be. I promise it will be less than eBay.

Here’s the book.

Oh, and yep, that’s a page from Rachel Rising 16 underneath. That is not included.

Award News & more Emerald City Comic Con sketch art

Awards

This has been a good news week for me. First, my Italian publisher BAO informed me that Rachel Rising was awarded a Comicus Prize for Best Independent English Language Comic, and I won Best Artist/Writer. Coming from a country known for the arts, this award means a lot and I am very honored.

Here at home, the first Rachel Rising trade paperback, The Shadow Of Death, has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in the Graphic Novel category by the Horror Writers Association. It’s a great honor to be nominated for this highly respected award and it is, as the HWA notification said, “a fine recognition by your peers.” That made my day. Thank you.

Sketch Art

I promised to post the rest of the sketches I did for the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle last weekend. These are the preorder sketches I did before the trip and delivered at the show. If I’m coming to a con on your schedule, you can contact us to preorder a sketch at sipnet@strangersinparadise.com

Black Widow & Hawkeye…

Death, Takes Out The Trash…

The request was for “whatever you want”. So, drink?…

Francine and Katchoo reading…

I had a request for a sexy Ivy (Echo) and Tambi (SiP) being their baddass selves. So…

But Robyn saw that and said it wasn’t sexy enough. So I smiled and drew this…

And a page of phone doodles I made that day…

 

Emerald City Comicon report with pics & sketches

Robyn and I had a great time at the Emerald City Comicon. It certainly has grown since we were last there 4 years ago. This year they took over the entire convention center, every floor. I was told the event sold out and some 75,000 tickets were sold. Judging by the crowds we saw, I believe it. So much happened—too much for a blog brief—so I’ll just give you the highlights.

One thing I found odd was this button in the elevator. I was afraid to push it.

If you were brave enough to ride that elevator you could get to our room overlooking downtown Seattle. This was the view from our window. At night that Roosevelt sign glowed like the Bat Signal. Goodnight Seattle!

At the con we saw a lot of cosplay (costume play), like this couple. In Neil Gaiman’s story, Dr. Who’s Tardis was a woman, but in Seattle the roles were reversed.

Naturally the point of it all is to have fun, so it was a kick to see things like this, a boy posing with Spidey and crew.

I drew a lot of sketches for the con. Some beforehand, some at the show. Here are some of the sketches I did at the show. I’ll post the others in the next post. Sorry about the poor iPhone pics.

A couple of requests for Francine and Katchoo…

“Please draw me a sexy Jet and her bass…”

“Draw Annie (Echo) flying.” She’s taking a picture, by the way, because the view is incredible…

“Draw Katchoo and Dan (Echo).”

This next guy had a jam board going for horror sketches. Somebody had already done a nicely colored Swamp Thing face, so I added Natalie/Hannah and her snake…

On Saturday I was on a panel discussing the state of comics. The panel title was The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times. You can find a video of that panel, and all the other panels at Emerald City, on FlipOn.tv

On Sunday I did a 45 minute Spotlight interview that was also recorded and posted on FlipOn.tv. You’ll find it here.

Monday we rode to the airport with David Peterson and his wife Stephanie, then ate breakfast while watching planes take off over the snowcapped mountains heading for Alaska. A few hours later Robyn and I were back in sunny Houston and the whole weekend in Emerald City was like a dream. Except we didn’t keep telling people we wanted to go home,  we told them we’d be back.

 

Coming In June, The SiP Omnibus Softcover Edition!

It’s official. The softcover SiP Omnibus is coming in June. Two 1,014-page books for one price… $100. That’s every story, every cover, every page I ever published that had anything to do with the series, including the one-shots and short stories. That my friends, is a lot of drawing. About 13-14 years worth, in fact.

At some point between now and then, we will take preorders—this helps us in establishing an initial print run—and I’ve just listed it with Diamond to run the solicitation in the May Previews catalog for products shipping in June.

Help us get the word out, please. As you can imagine, we will need your full support to get a massive pair of twins like this in print! This will be the Dolly Parton of graphic novels, so start clearing space on your strongest book shelf.

Here’s the ad that will run in May Previews:

Today’s Hot Links—Also Sign Up For Free Online Comics Class

I was delighted to see a hearty recommendation of Echo: The Complete Edition by the Harvard Book Store.

Here’s a fun, detailed podcast discussion of the Rachel Rising: Shadow Of Death trade paperback by the guys at ECHORIFT.

NOW is the time to sign up for a FREE online class assembling: GENDER THROUGH COMICS. It’s the first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and it is free. All you have to do is sign up to be part of classes taught by university teacher Christy Blanch with a Who’s Who of Comics guest list: Brian K. Vaughan, Scott Snyder, Matt Fraction, Brian Bendis, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, and more, plus myself. Signing up for the class also gives you unique access to Blanch’s interviews with Jonathan Hickman, Jason Aaron and more. This is a no brainer, comics fans. You don’t want to miss this, ut you have to sign up now. Go here to sign up. Go here to see Mark Waid’s detailed post about the class.

See how I did that, I gave you five places to hit the sign up link. Now six. That’s called handing it to you on a plate. Go, sign up! Seven.

The Best Hot Links of February

I recently chatted for an hour with 3 Chick Review Comics at CBR and spilled the truth about self-publishing, hoping somebody can take the info and use it to conquer the world.

You can sign up now for a Gender Thru Comic Books online class. I will be a guest speaker, as will Mark Waid and Brian K Vaughn. Highly Recommended.

Flavia Pasqui in Italy wrote and recorded this song using “A Distant Scream” the song from Strangers In Paradise as her lyrics. Very cool rendition by a very talented artist.

Strangers In Paradise got some NPR love last week on the Pop Culture Happy Hour when the talk turned to great love stories. Go to 36:20.

For an incredibly list of the best webcomics out there, go through my February tweets when people responded to a call for the best and hottest webcomics. I retweeted everybody’s favorites and you now have a comprehensive list to check out.

What to expect at Seattle Emerald City Comicon

Wow, I can’t believe it’s just days away—the first convention of 2013. Next Thursday we’ll jam ourselves into a hot and smelly, germ-filled pipe and let a drunk pilot try to crash land it somewhere near downtown Seattle. We’ll check into a hotel and hope their water supply is corpse-free, the lettuce wasn’t washed by a nauseous out-patient and the elevator has a vent fan for those gaseous riders rushing nervously from the All-You-Eat-Buffet to their rooms. Ah, life on the road. We do it because the fun part is waiting inside the convention center—the comics community reunites!

The fantastic thing about a comic book convention is, everybody is there because they want to be. You can feel the positive vibe, everybody is chatting with friends, laughing, having a good time, excited to meet so-and-so or see a panel on their favorite comic/game/show. It’s just a blast, really. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon connecting with the people who love comics and the people who make them. Comic book conventions—highly recommended and worth the travel.

I’ll be in Artists Alley at this show. I’ll have the The Complete Echo hardcover there for $65. Buy one and I’ll try to get get somebody famous to sign it for you, depends on who we’re set up next to, I guess. I’ll also have the new SiP T-shirt and print (see earlier post for image). Wearing one of these is guaranteed to open doors for you the rest of your life. Easy street is as simple as wearing a SiP T-shirt. Who knew?

I’ll also be doing sketches at the con. I’ll take a short list of 10 people a day. $100 for 1 figure in pencil on 9X12 inch paper. $175 for 2 figures. If you want more than 2 figures it will be $1,000,000,000.

I just posted a bunch of sketch art on my twitter feed (@terrymoore), if you want to get some ideas. There is even more art at my tumblr page (terrymooreart.tumblr.com). Go look at them and follow me there. Check out the picture archives. I try to post something new every day. During the convention I will post updates and news and sketches on my twitter feed.

BTW, does anybody have any restaurant recommendations in downtown Seattle? Something yummy, casual and sensibly priced? I eat everything but rocks and dirt.

Okay, going to go look for my sweater.

 

Accepting original art commissions now!

If you would like an original drawing from me now is the time—I am accepting a limited number of commissions. This will be for a pen & ink drawing on 11 X 17 inch Strathmore paper… the same medium and size as a comic book cover. You tell me what you want, I draw it in pencil and show it to you for approval, if you approve I ink it and we’re done!

The price is $1,000 plus shipping, paid up front. Order now to secure your spot on the short list. When my list is full I’m cutting it off. Allow me 6-8 weeks to complete your order. I have arranged my schedule for this and I plan to do the bulk of the work in April when I have no conventions to interrupt me.

TO ORDER: email Robyn: sipnet@strangersinparadise.com

I have just 4… not rules, but more like requests/things worth pointing out:

1. There is a 3 or 4 character limit. No big teams or teams vs teams or Marvel Universe vs DC Universe. You’ll be wanting the masterful George Perez for that.

2. Please keep requests to my characters or other known comic book characters. No real people portraits or beloved pets.

4. Yes, I will draw erotic “good-girl” pinups, no I won’t draw porn. So, pretty woman with a serious wardrobe malfunction is a yes;  A Flinstones-Power Girl orgy with a herd of goats is a no.

3. Don’t expect a lot of architecture. I specialize in people, not buildings. But you probably already know that about me. Try forests instead. I can draw a tree.

If you wonder what one of these commissions might look like, here are a few from the past.

 

CBLDF mini-comic for 2013

At some point this year, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will release a comic featuring vignettes and short stories about freedom of speech.  To draw attention to this worthy organization and the book that will help raise funds for their cause, I thought I’d show you my 2-page contribution. I call it, DOUCHE BAG!

Support the CBLDF, I may need them someday.

CBLDF sketch cards

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund offered original sketches to supporters who made donations. I contributed the following three of Katchoo (SiP), Julie (Echo) and Rachel (Rachel Rising). These went right to donors so they’re not available. Just sharing so you will know, the CBLDF is a rewarding group to support.