DARK REIGN: YOUNG AVENGERS #5

Here's a sneak preview of DARK REIGN: YOUNG AVENGERS #5 which I did the inking work on. As usual, you can click images to expand it. This is the last issue of the mini series. Lots of action in this issue. I'll post some of my black and white inks soon. In the meantime, enjoy.

This is in stores October 28. And you can click here for more info.

Flooding at VIZ Media

This past Monday, without notice, there was a storm that hit San Francisco. The weather was nice all morning, then around 2:00pm in the afternoon, it came out of nowhere. So much rain that it started to flood certain areas. Manholes started bursting with water because there was too much rain. I saw this footage from a local news station and notice the manhole was right down the street from VIZ Media (publishers of Dragonball, Pokemon, etc). I didn't think anything of it until I got an e-mail from VIZ today that the the building was closed all this week due to flooding.

If you watch the video, you'll see the red brick building down the block in the center of the video. That's the VIZ Media Building. The tan colored buildinhg on the right building belongs to the USPS. Just those two buildings on that one side of the block. I hope it didn't do much damage. If you walk in the first door at VIZ, right next to the USPS, it goes one level down. That would hold a lot of water. Man... all those comic books, ruined!!! Just wait for the commercial to end if it pops up. The local news station put that there and I can't get rid of it.

SUPERMAN: RED SON DELUXE EDITION HARDCOVER

Complementary copies again! It's always nice to open up a package delivered to me when I'm not expecting anything. Feels like opening up presents. Except it's not wrapped in colorful wrapping paper packed with nice tissue paper inside... just a plain crushed brown box with bubble wrap where you can make annoying sounds by popping them.

I crack open the box, make some annoying popping sounds and see what's inside. Seven copies of SUPERMAN: RED SON DELUXE EDITION in hardcover that I did some inking work. All still sealed in plastic. I ripped open the plastic seal on one of the books to check it out. I remove the dust jacket and notice the hardcover in black with a gold foil logo of a Hammer and Sickle. You know what could have been nicer...? The hardcover being in the color red with the hammer and sickle inside a diamond like Superman's logo. Still looks nice. Aside from the regular Superman: Red Son that's been published, collected, and reprinted numerous times, this Deluxe Hardcover version has a little something extra. There's about fifteen pages of sketch book art material that's never been seen. Here's a few of those pages...

As usual, you can click on any image to expand.

There's also colored sketches, drawings of how the logo was developed, commentaries, and so forth. Fun stuff to look at.

Finally, I look at the credits page...

According to the credits, it says I only inked Killian Plunkett on his part of the book. That's true, but I also inked quite a few pages over Dave Johnson which the credits didn't list. It should have been "Dave Johnson with Andrew Robinson & Walden Wong". But that's okay... I can see how it could get confusing for people to read that. Besides, if that did add my name right after Robinson, then my name would appear twice. Nah... after all... "Two WONGS don't make a right." :)

This book will be on sale in stores November 11, 2009 and you can click here for more info.

DEADPOOL #900

I usually buy my comic books by mail, ordering them with a Previews catalogue that gets sent to me. I would flip through the whole comic store catalogue to see what I want and order it. When the books are published 2-3 months later, it'll be sent to me.

Anyways, every so often when I find myself near a actual brick and mortar comic book store, I would walk in to see what's new for the week. This past weekend, I found this little nugget. DEADPOOL #900. I always had a heart for Deadpool because he's was one of the first Characters I worked on when I started inking for Marvel Comics. When I picked it up, my thought was "Nine hundred?? How did Deadpool get to issue number 900? Did I miss something in between? Was there a lot of mini series with different issue numbers where Marvel decided to add them all up and release this issue #900?" So I took it to the counter and bought it. Here's how the cover to DEADPOOL #900 looks...
I picked it up and give it a quick flip through. Found out that it's a special issue which reprints some older previously released Deadpool stories. The numbering was a selling gimmick. Good gimmick because it got me to pick it up. It's a thicker book with 104 page for a $5.99 price tag. Not bad considering some of the comics these day are $3.99 with only 32 pages. As I got towards the middle of the book, I saw this reprinted cover...

HEY!!! That's the book I worked on over a decade ago. One of my earlier inking gigs for Marvel Comics. DEADPOOL TEAM-UP STARRING DEADPOOL AND WIDDLEWADE. They reprinted the whole issue. This was a nice surprise. How do I know I worked on this over ten years ago? I can actually tell you the exact month and year. In the art, you can see Pete Woods' name, my name, and the year written in kanji. A little Easter egg I put in there. At the time, the penciller, Pete Woods, wanted to have kanji characters written on some of the background art. He drew something there, but it didn't really look like kanji. I spoke to him over the phone and asked if it's cool for me to fix it. He gave me the green light, I did some research on kanji characters that sounded like both our names and wrote/drew that into the art along with the year we did it. Below is a scan of the two pages from the comic that has those kanji characters. I circled it in green. You can also click on to the image to blow up it up. Both pages has Pete Woods and Walden Wong written in Kanji. On the left page, it had the year 98 in Kanji and on the right page, 97 in kanji. Which means, I inked the page on the right on 1997 late December, then I inked the page on the left in 1998 early January. In the middle the New Years I believe.

Seeing this reprinted is a nice surprise. Hum... I wonder if I'll get royalties on it. DEADPOOL #900 is in stores now and you can read more about it by clicking here.

I got it for the articles!

First time buying one of these. Playboy Magazine!!! Why did I buy this? Because of Marge Simpson of the cartoon show, Simpsons. Today's the first day of release. I went to a few stores and they didn't have them. I could have bought one off EBay, but didn't feel like paying over $25 to get a copy from the secondary market. Besides, I wanted to see it now! NOW NOW NOW! After a few more shops, I finally found one and bought it. Look that it... all sitting there by itself in the "Adult Interest" section. Here's a close up photo. This is really a Playboy Magazine. No joke. I bought this because I wanted to see how Marge Simpson looks in her birthday suit.

Apparently, the cover is an homage to another Playboy issue from October of 1971 where they first had another person of color on the cover with an extreme hair due. Why do I know this? No, I don't have a collection of Playboys in my attic. I know because it was on the news a week earlier where it was mentioned it. That's what made me want to buy it in the first place. Anyway, I rip open the polybag and flip to the table of contents so I can find Marge Simpson quicker. "Page 52 The Devil in Marge Simpson". Flipping pages can't flip fast enough.

I quickly got to page 52. Bingo! There she is! You can't see it, but I'm smiling ear to ear.

There's an interview with Marge Simpson as if she was a real person responding to an interviewer. If you want to read it, just click on the picture below and it'll expand. Haha. "Springfield's Sexiest Celebrity Reveals All". Every part of that sentence is so make believe.

Here's a closer look at the splash page on the right. Look at Homer Simpsons shadow in the background. Such a nasty man. I also notice a subliminal drawing around Homer Simpson's crotch area. That can't be an accident. It's a drawing. Every line is drawn there for a reason.

I notice Matt Groening's (creator of Simpsons) signature on the bottom of the page. Of all the people to draw Marge Simpson, I would expect it to be by the creator for this. Anybody else drawing Marge Simpson for Playboy would be the same as looking at fake breasts. Just not original. I want the real deal.

I turn the page and it's the pull out image. I'm thinking AWESOME! THIS IS COOL! A CARTOON CHARACTER TOTALLY NAKED! Gotta turn the magazine sideways to get the fill effect.

Not much of an effect at all. Here's that pull out page. Wasn't what I was expecting. The image is just two pages tall. The top page is the interview page which we already saw. Aren't these Playboy pull out images supposed to be three pages long? Nice can of Duff Beer near her butt. What's up with the donuts? Is Marge Simpson supposed to be seducing some police officer? I turn the page and it's the Model Date Sheet with all of Marge Simpson's stats. If you like to read it, click on image to expand. Funny stuff especially her measurements. 26,26,26...

stright as a pipe. Nothing sext about that. Funny though. After this page... That's it!!! There's other naked pictures of real people, but I don't buy this magazine for that... I wanted to see more Marge Simpson in the buff. I feel gypped. No totally naked boobies of her either. Just a see through blouse. For all I know, that could be a white blouse with boobs painted on. Seriously, wouldn't it be easier to draw totally naked breasts? It's just two half circles and a couple of dots. So this is as close as any of us will ever see. For Homer Simpson's eyes only. *sigh*

You know... I never imagined her nipples would be colored like that. I thought they would just be black dots... same as Homer Simpson when he runs around topless in the cartoon show.

That said, here's a picture of Matt Groening and myself. Yeap, This is the guy who created the Simpsons.

After that Playboy issue with Marge, this picture of us makes me feel so guilty inside. Like I saw a father's daughter in the nude. *yeesh*

UPDATE: Just read in the magazine that the Marge Simpsons illustrations were drawn by someone else. Which means Matt Groening's name was slapped on. Great... Fake Boobs.

TRINITY VOL. 3

Got a comp copy for TRINITY VOL. 3 which I did some work in. Here's a picture of it.
It's out in stores now and you can read more about it by clicking here.

Packages and Comp Copies

Yesterday, I stepped out for a moment only to come back to see my door with these tags. Shipments from three different carriers. When pencillers send me pages to work on, I would know in advance that I'll be getting a package so I hang around for it. Other times, I would get unexpected packages of comp copies, art returns, or whatever it is. Every once in a while, I may get one door tag. This is a first for me. Three tags in one day.
At least one of packages was left behind. In it, were these Comic Books wrapped with a packaging list from Marvel. Very nicely organized.

There was this one packaging list that didn't include comics. Just a stamp that reads "Out of Stock". I wasn't expecting any comp copies, so getting anything is always nice. Getting this "Out of Stock" packing list is like someone saying you won the lottery, but they ran out of money so you get nothing. This could have been left out of the package and I won't be the wiser. But it did tickled me funny.

Here's all the comics in the package. Comp Copies of Comics that I did some inking work a long while back. Three copies of each title.

Below is THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #6. There's a bunch of different stories in there. I worked on two of the stories. On the right are pages from the different stores I inked. One story was pencilled by Tim Levins and the other by Adam DeKraker.

Here's MARVEL APES GRUNT LINE SPECIAL. I opened up one of the books to the double page spread in which I inked over Reilly Brown's pencils.

This here is DARK REIGN YOUNG AVENGERS #2. On the far right is the FIRST page I've ever inked over Mark Brooks who pencilled the book. I remember being asked to help out on three or four pages over a weekend because of deadlines. That weekend came and I ended up helping out on eight pages. Everybody, including Mark, was so impressed with the way I work that I got to do more issue later on. Working with Mark is a blast! This one is for MARVEL APES SPEEDBALL #1. Again, two pages from the interior over Chad Hardin's pencils.

The comics above, I inked on Blue Line except for the Speedball Special which I inked over original pencils. These books are out and in stores now.

Strathmore Comic Boards

In the past, I've bought a lot of Blue Line Pro boards. Pad after pad they always seem to bleed on me. When I say bleed, what that means is when I'm drawing a line with pen and ink, that line starts to look like a caterpillar with all those legs because of the bleeding. I actually still have quite a few pads that are useless to me for inking. I buy a pad, pull out a page and ink one line, then it bleeds. Which makes the whole pad useless for me.

A package of Strathmore samples was sent to me recently. That was very kind of Strathmore. They started making Bristol boards with pre-ruled blue lines with comic book dimensions on the boards. So I inquired about the boards and they sent me these samples. Here's what was included.

Two packets of 11x17 bristol boards, 200 series and another I'm not sure of. A smaller pad of Bristol boards in the 500 series surfaces. A pamphlet/comic called Attack of the Sequential Artist with different artists testimonials about strathmore products they use and how they like it. A folder of Bristol & Illustration Board which consist of small swatches of different boards, thickness, smooth and rough. This will come in hand in choosing which boards to buy and the difference of each. And finally, a sample pack of Illustration for Wet Media.

The quality of Strathmore boards are up there when using it for pen and ink. The ink won't bleed and drys faster on these boards. In the past, I would buy these big pads of Strathmore drawing boards for pen and ink. I would cut them down to size to match comic book boards. The extra cut up boards, I would just throw away. Seems like a waste of money because Starthmore boards can get expensive compared to other brands out there.

I'm glad Strathmore is producing these comic book size boards. Not only are they already cut to size, they also have the blue lines mark ups for print. And the good new... They don't bleed.

JUSTICE LEAGUE of AMERICA #37

Got three comp copies of JUSTICE LEAGUE of AMERICA that I did some inking work in. I inked two pages. Pictured here is the actual issue and each page I inked.
Below is the page for "Epilogue the First" as seen above.

This one is for "Epilogue the Second". Both of these pages are the last two pages of the book.

You may recall this last page with the gun on the last panel. This is the same page I blogged about when FedEx damaged the artwork. If you haven't read that blog, you can click here for it.

This issue is out in stores now and you can read more about it by clicking here.

Commission and Sound Effects

No... This isn't a a cover to a comic book called SHINE. I finally finished this commission piece of Colossus, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler. Scanned it and decided to add some special sound effects. Here's what happened when I added those effects to this piece. We all know when Wolverine pops his claws, you hear the sound effect, SKINT. When Nightcralwer teleports, you hear BAMF. I was going to type FART because that effect was right under his butt. Then decided to just go with BAMF to give each character their own distinctive sound effect. As for Colossus, he doesn't have a special effect. Didn't want to leave him out, so I gave the effect SHINE behind him. Is that even an a sound effect? How does SHINE sounds?

Below is my completed inks without any lettering. Well... I did letter my name by hand. The scribble that I do.

This piece was pencilled by Mike McKone which I printed out in blue line. Before I printed everything out in blue, I used photoshop to only print McKone's signature in black so I won't have to ink that. Everything came out blue except for his signature. Then I scribbled my own name under his.