WOW! The JACK OF FABLES Fanvid is on the Shelves!!!

Kelsi Parker has been VERY busy!
Thanks, Kelsi!!!

Kelsi Parker's Fables Fan Vid

Kelsi is a regular contributor to the Fabletown Community. Go, GO! Check this out.

JACK of FABLES #1 Review Threads

Well, JoF has been out for just over a week, now.
The numbers are really good; up in the low hundred thousand. Click on the title of this awesome entry and you'll be taken to the Fabletown page containing the reviews. While there, feel to chat. Seems Matt Sturges is ALWAYS awake and doing the admin thing. Bill? Bill is Zeus. He just sits back a laughs at us foolish mortals. And when I say "us", I mean you.
BHWAH HA HA HA HA!
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Kneeling to the Moleskine God

This really wasn't what I was expecting to happen. I tried to offset the trauma by the little racist bug in the corner; I think it worked, no?


Harry Eyeball Hits the Road. He seems to be somewhere in Pennsylvania as pants are optional throughout that state.
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Harbor Egress Noxum Mandus

I Live Yet.
Between 247A and 341A, my 3rd time wandering from bed sleepless, I sat down to the old Moleskine for solace.
In half sleep I was finding it easier to break away from the tried and tired things that normally ramble through my head and find their way onto the page.
The ferocious deity on the left hand page kinda wigged me a bit...So out of some sort of ad hoc piety I left the opposite page open for him to write my destiny.
Christians; NEWSFLASH..."No GOD Before ME" means precisely that.
When confronted by crazy, meet it head-on.
My friend Mike calls these days, "The Shank of Summer"...
It's 100 degrees out. Jehovah's Witnesses are bursting into flames in mid-salutation.
Winter is Kindred; un cour en hiver.
Summer kills is all I'm saying.
Sigh.
So who's going to the Con this weekend?
Notice that I'm blogging?
Rereading Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".
Pretending that I'm living 40 years in the future and I'm fortunate enough to be granted temporal license to revisit these days; it seems to help.
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How They Remade Jor-El

This is freaky and cool all at once. Mouseclick the title of this entry.
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This Is My Raygun! This Is My Gun!

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Gaming Haze, er...Daze. DAYS!

More virtual hardware from our friends at Chewy Software. These are concept sketches for the ingame assets used and bled for by players. Basically, I'd thumbnail ideas on anything, napkins, typing paper...sometimes in an actual sketchbook.
Do a little refining, nothing too involved to...OH! Fireworks over the lake. Hang on!

OK, then I'd use 20%, 40%,60% grey Ad Markers to begin the actual drawings on marker paper (the reverse side of the paper takes the dye better). 20% for the initial sketch then detail and resolve the drawing with 70% or black marker.

Had to design assloads of random shit. The art asset list was phuckin' endless. This is a fraction of the stuff we thought of to kill/cheat death with; sniper kits, body armor; counter measures...even burning bags of doggie doo.

I don't recall what exactly this boot does; leaves a print in ass possibly.

Fuel pods..

More Fuel Containers..

This is your Mama.
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Jim Woodring On Blogspot!!!!

Man, oh man! I really enjoy Woodrings' art and, um.."stories". I try not to think too much about it because sometimes I find myself fending off things like charging, luminous, sabre-toothed kangaroos (or, fuck, maybe it was a Wallabee, idunno) in my dreams. Yeah. THAT happened Wednesday night, thank you. I woke up yelping. Normally E. pats me soothingly during a nightmare; that night she just half-rolled over and said, "Shut-UP!" I thought the dream was so absurd (and yes, cool/awesome) that I fell back to sleep chuckling.
Yes, the title is a link. GO FOO-EL!
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Boilerplate; Nominee For Eisner Award

My good friend and colleague, Paul Guinan has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the "Best Painter" category. He and his lovely muse/wife Anina Bennett have worked together since the late Devonian; they are dedicated and prolific comic creators. Paul and I have collaborated in the past; Aliens:Colonial Marines and Andrew Vaachs' "Hard Looks", both under the Dark Horse banner. Click on the title to be taken to their website BIG RED HAIR.

The BoilerPlate work is astonishing, to say the least. I constantly fret over the abandonment of wet media for digital, but this is a very good argument for the latter. A few years back I ran into Pauls dad, Bob Guinan. "Have you seen Paul's article in US News and World Report?" No. I found a copy and saw that the Boilerplate page of Pauls website had taken an assload of hits by actual "experts" in history and "shit" wanting to know how and where Paul had uncovered the existence of a steam-powered robot.


LOL, Paul, is very diligent and thorough about his research. By grounding the fictive elements of the site with a convincing strata of history, copious links to some relevant and authoritative pages and MAD-ASS Photoshop skills to pull of some photographic tricks, Boilerplate became a hoax of note; although, inadvertently. Paul never intended to pull the wool over anyone's eyes; he simply wanted to create a seamless backstory. Done and done.
Cheers to Boilerplate; and I look forward to seeing Paul and Anina at San Diego...Eisner in hand.

Here's a Pin-up I contributed to Hearbreakers before Boilerplate made the team. Carnage is such fun.

X-Men 3: The Last Stench

I'll TELL you what I won't stand for; I will not tolerate the energy of one more photon being expended so that the same images I saw flickering across the screen this evening can stimulate the rods and/or cones of some other unfortunate moviegoers' retinae.
"Retinae", plural, right?


OUTRAGE!
the "Last Strand" is more like it.
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"What Did You Do In The Gaming Industry, Daddy?"

What?! Who the hell are you? I ain't your daddy! Gaming? Bes' step awf, peewee. I've got some gaming stuff from our friends at Chewy Software...but not today. So gape at this page from last years sketchbook; lol, I sound so bitter! I should pity these poor moops that are slaves to their biological impulse. Don't get me wrong, I love kids...just keep them out of my way, and quiet while I'm enjoying my promenade, yo. I actually saw two babies battling from their respective strollers, like phucking age of sail men-o-war passing on the high seas. The parents just had that stunned, overwhelmed look that I so enjoy on the faces of parents. Did I mention that I get NINE HOURS of sleep a night? Muhwhahahahah!!!! Well, like I said. I love kids...I'm just smart enough not to have any. Not making a judgement on those of you who do! But GOD KNOWS some of you idiots should have been sterilized at puberty...keep you from spreading your demon seed...God help you.

Here's an example of what Brian Azzarello makes me do; "I want you to draw this...." Fine. Now I have this artifact. Enjoy.

Oh, here's something righteous; this is a design from what would have been my tenure on "Rune". Don't ask.

Cu-cu-ca-choo.
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Go Apeshit, Young...Ape

Way back when, I was working on a series of covers for a Planet of The Ape line of comics. I can't recall who the publisher was then. But whoever you were; here's what the next cover would have looked like had you not gone under. The first cover saw the light of day and can be seen in a previous blog; it's more of a "traditional" or standard theme for them bad monkeys of the future. For the cover shown here, I somehow got to do this wild-assed Western theme....
I don't remember the story or writer at all; the editor probably just talked me through what was needed over the phone.
If I had my 'druthers, I'd work this bad boy up. Man, how can these guys open so many cans of Whup-ass without opposable thumbs?
Huhn...go figure.
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Franky and the Martlets

I've about recovered from seeing "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow". One day I may even find it in my heart to forgive.
In the meantime, here's a nice shot of Franky in formation with her flight of Martlets.

...and this is another grab from my pile of sketches; a non-conventional configuration for a prop driven fighter done long before the film. It's nothing earth-shattering, anyone that has a reasonable grasp of aircraft from the period would have stumbled along the same design eventually. I just enjoy the similarities the film display to my design, even down to the Commonwealth roundel forward of the cockpit. Of course my aircraft NEVER go aquatic.

...and here's a REAL Martlet. Salute!!!
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Japanese Develope Robot For Remote Colonoscopy...

Gerbils everywhere breath a sigh of relief.

Speaking of Allegorical Fecundity

My father, Douglas Akins, was a pioneering cartoonist "of color". In other words; a Negro who drew. I accidentally stumbled across some of his work on a site dedicated to early Black Cartoonists whose works were featured in newspapers with robust circulations. Surprisingly, George Herriman, the creator of Crazy Kat is "outed" as Brother who was "passing". It's rumored that he was told by Hearst to not be photographed with his hat off else the character of his hair (probably wavy) would betray his swarthy good looks and ancestry. Hey, I had brother to my Great, Great maternal Grandfather who COMPLETELY intergrated with White society in the 1920's after immigrating to the U.S.. At a recent family reunion, I met plenty of "blue-eyed" O'Meallys who didn't know they were of African descent.
I grew up in an artists' house, in the shadow of my Father, the Artist. Things became SO competitive by the time I was 19, I dropped out of college at the School of the Art Institute and joined the Air Force; just cause I needed to phuck something up. Several years later I landed my first real job as an illustrator in Advertising along Michigan Ave. I realize now that a lot of the tension between my Dad and I was there because, sadly, in the time he lived Black Folk couldn't do the things we do now professionally.
My father worked his entire career with the press at the lauded Chicago Defender. After his cartooning stint (although he would always contribute the occasional strip or editorial illo) he became the Defenders' Society Editor.
What's here, below, are images from something I had no idea existed. It's a wartime strip my dad created and drew (1942) featuring the Brown Bomber Joe Louis as an action hero. Ironically, fittingly, I came across these files while I was drawing the Bigby "War Stories" for "Fables" year before last.
Racism was so rife in those days, on all fronts, that I can't imagine what I would have done had I had to live in that shitty America. No lie, anyone, ANYONE who pines for the good old days is a fool, a fascist and probably eats children. These are the Great New Days. The Past Kisses Ass. My Aunt Henrietta, who's well into her 80's sets it straight,"The Good Old Days,...nothing good about them; bad refrigeration, bad medicine, unsafe cars and roads, racism, disease...nothing good on television."
Anyway, as far as Sgt. Joe goes, forgive the racist language if it's legible; but I'm pretty darn sure that that Imperial Japanese Officer had it coming (the clobbering, not the slur). Always be polite to the people whose asses you find yourself justifiably kicking (Hello, PETER).


Anywho, I'm just trying to get that Nixon image futher down the loaded page.



Here's some randomness.


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Nixon In China

No, I'm not Gay. But if I were, I'm sure I'd be Fabulous at it. That resounding affirmation of my sexual security aside, Chicago Opera Theater (sort of the Bush League for the Civic) is putting on a production of one of my favorite works by John Adams, "Nixon In China". There's a few performances left; it's in English: it's Awesome. If you go to see this bad fella and your head doesn't explode from trying to hear and SEE all the stuff that is happening on stage, you will find other opera quite enjoyable.
John Adams' most recent work was the controversial "Klinghofer". Check the spelling on that. Anyway, I'm going. E, I'm sure, couldn't get dragged to within a Dutch Mile of this show.
(Don't bother looking that up. It just came to me.) But I'm sure if such a thing existed, the allegorical fecundity would sting the nostrils....
Wow, am I having a stroke?
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This must some kind of goddamned "RED" jpg, because it's not loading right.

Holy GHz! 24/7/365 Apple Store!!!!

(title is a link, remember)

The Dredge Report: Item One-Eleven

Writer Rafael Nieves and I are two bad-ass mofos; he's Puerto Rican and I'm Black...together we form an abbreviated part of a Mondo Honcho Hombre Brain-Trust-with-the-Pelvic-Thrust known as PaperMammoth. Currently, Raf is acting Managing Editor and Wrangler for a project that I can't mention until I clear something pressing from my desk. But Raf wrote the phuck out of it and I get to draw it; 'nuf sed. At any rate, we have come up with our share of stillborn schemes; here's one that is still close to my loins ("heart" would have sounded too fuzzy; but fuzzy nonetheless...). Of course I'm not going to tell you what it is. Or was; or could be.
Simply relax the sphincter and let whatever happens happen; I did and look what happened....

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Lark Trump

So a while back, a few months, E was in Paris< France looking at Underpants with her sister, Laura. They both enjoyed the trip. I had asked E to bring back a little brass L'Arc pour moi. She couldn't find such a thing but, "I was able to get a shot of the Arc for you! I saw it from about a block away..."
So here's the photograph; more like a frame taken from the gun camera of some low-flying barnstormer, but a photograph of the L'Arc, nonetheless.
Mon Dieu!