SPIDER-MAN: JACKPOT TPB

Spider-Man: Jackpot trade paperback comp from Marvel.  Worked on a bunch if pages for the one.  In stores now.

Marvel Comps

Got a bunch of Marvel comps today.   Very cool.  They're all in stores now.  I've already blogged about them when they were first released.   Here they are...

Cloak and Dagger #1
Amazing Spider-Man Back in Quack #1
Deadpool #27
Deadpool #28
Age of Heroes #3
Dark Reign War Machine #12
Age of Heroes #4

The credits/splash page for Cloak and Dagger I found online.

Speaking of Cloak and Dagger... Cloak is sucking me and Dagger into his darkness.  Arghhhhhh!

SUPERMAN #704

I've inked the whole issue over Leandro Oliveira's pencils.  Here's a picture of what happens to the comp copies when there's too much time on my hands.  

Picture of the variant cover for this issue.  With less time on my hands.

This issue focuses on Lois Lane.  Here's a splash page with her.  

Lots of hair to ink especially with Lois Lane.  

A habit I have while inking hair is to hold my breath.  Thinking that it'll steady my body and hands to give it a much smoother/slicker line.  It's not really necessary to hold my breath.  Just a habit I developed.  With this issue, there was a LOT of hair! So much, I decided to create a collage of all the hair to illustrate how much.  By the time I finished this issue, I think I can hold my breath for minutes on end.  Become a deep sea diver or preform under water escape tricks.

Lots of hair, yes?  On top of that, a huge amount of tapered inking techniques.

There's even more hair in this issue that I didn't include in the collage.  Like the pages below with Superman and Lois Lane.

Close up with more tapered ink lines.

Below you'll see a black backround next to black hair.  To avoid both blacks meshing together, I added a white line in between.  This separates the two blacks and pop the figures away from the background.

The background with the stars (also called Black with Stars) is done by using a toothbrush and white ink.  I would spot the backgrounds in black first, wait for the ink to dry, then spatter white ink on top with a toothbrush.  There so many ways create this effect.  Othertimes, I would use a masking fluid instead of white ink,  Work backwards ending with spotting blacks on top.  Once everything dries, I just rub off the dried masking fluid and presto, the white stars are there.  Finally, I go back on top with a white out pen to create the bigger white stars.

Superman's so smooth!  He definitely knows how to sweep a girl off her feet.  *Swoosh*

Superman 704 is in stores now.

DEADPOOL #28

The second installment of a three part story.  I inked the whole issue over Carlo Barberi's pencils.  Here's the cover to this issue as done by Dave Johnson.

BOOOM!  A splash page from this issue.  Since I ink in the word "BOOOM", does that make me a letterer as well?  I miss those days when penciled art use to get sent to the letterer before it gets to the inker.  The letterer would ink in all the panel boarders, draw in all the word balloons, letter them, and letter/ink all the special effects that were on the page.  Today, any pencilled in lettering or special effects would need to be inked in by the inker.

The same page with colors by Marte Garcia.

Another page where I though Carlo did a great job on sequential.  Especially with the first three panels.

Splash pages are always fun to work on.  Nice big images.  The bigger the image, the easier to ink.  Smaller images take more concentration especially when inking on Blue Line printouts.  Bigger images, it's all crisp and clear.

Colors again.

Splash!  I found out Carlo likes the way I taper lines over his work.  So I concentrated more on that with Black Widow as shown here.  Lots of tapering all over her costume which took some time.  Then there's the individual bricks which took some time to complete.

Colors over the Splash.

Not quite a splash below.  Almost.  There's two smaller panels below.  I've seen some people giving the term "Half Splash" on pages similar to this, especially when dealers are selling original comic art.  Which made me wonder... Could car dealers sell half a car?  Perhaps a "Half Loaded" vehicle, as supposed to a "Fully Loaded" one?  How about food?  Instead of saying, "I like a pizza with the works!", how about... "I like to order a half assed pizza?"  Not much of a selling point.  Anyhoo... Let me get back on track...

Here's a "DPS" as comic book people like to call Double Page Spreads.  BONG!  Right before I posted this here, I had the urge to manipulate the letter "B" into a "W".  Having it read WONG!  But then, that's just too much work to entertain my crazyness.  

And the colors over it.  The colorist made two version of this.  In the end, everyone liked the second version below with the waves.  That was voted to be printed in the issue.

*BONG-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle*

Deadpool #28 is in stores now.  More info here.

SUPERMAN: LAST STAND OF NEW KRYPTON VOL. 1

Here's a Hardcover comp copy I just received.  It collects some work I've done for Superman Last Stand of New Krypton #2.  

Here's a couple of pages for it.  First the pencils by Travis moore.  

And my inks over it.  Aside from the first, the following panels seems to lack backgrounds.  As you can see in the pencils above, the penciller requested stats of the backgrounds from the first panel.  When I'm done with the inks, here's how it looks...

The following pencilled page.  Again with the stats.

And my inks over the pencils.  This time, the stat was pulled from the last panel.

After I'm all done with the inks, all of that goes to the colorist, Blong,  who'll cut and paste the background and color everything up.  When all is said and done, this is how it looks.  Comic Magic.

More info on Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton Volume 1 hardcover here.

BRUCE WAYNE – THE ROAD HOME: OUTSIDERS

Another project where I helped out on.  Five pages for this issue over Javier Saltares pencils.  Here's my dandy picture of the comp copies I took.

Javier is the same person who I've inked over on Predator for Dark Horse Comics last year.  Before Predator, I've inked him on 'Avataars: Covenant of Shield' for Marvel.

I think Javier is the only penciller whom I've inked over for all three DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse comics.  All of which were helping out on a few pages because of deadlines.  I was already comfortable with Javier's pencils so I was confident going forth.

 Some of the pencils were sketchy which gave me an opportunity to go in there and tighten things up a bit.

Add some lines here, hatch here, cross hatch there, textures everywhere.  Which was a lot of fun.

Before I knew it, I finished all five pages in one night.  Of course,  when got the FedEx package in the morning, I worked all the way until the next morning without any sleep.  There was a tight deadline to finsih the five pages over the weekend when I got the pages on a Thursday.  Still, I was having so much fun, I decided to work through the night.  By the time I was finished before the weekend, I surprised myself as well as the Editors.

And then I went to sleep in the morning after I turned in the pages and woke up in time for dinner.  

Bruce Wayne - The Road Home: Outsiders is in store now.  More info here. 

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: BACK IN QUACK #1

Quack-Quack!  Twip-Twip!  Those are the sounds I was making while working on Amazing Spider-Man; Back in Quack #1.   You know... A duck "quacks" and when Spider-Man spins a web, the sound it makes is, "twip".   Annn-neee-waaay.... Here's the cover to this issue.

There were two pencillers on this issue which I've inked both of.  The first twelve pages were pencilled by Mark Brooks.  Here are some of my inks over Mark.  

 I dig the way Mark draws Spider-Man.  He makes him look cool and modern without the need to change anything.  Below is another nice page especially the last panel with Web-Head again.

Then there the page below with the backgrounds.  Mark apologized in advance about me inking this page because of all the backgrounds.  I told him I welcome it.  Bring it on!  I don't know about other inkers out there, but inking backgrounds is very therapeutic for me.  I enjoy it.  Not that I need therapy or anything.  The inks just seem to flow automatically.

The last ten pages were pencilled by Ray Anthony Height.  Below are a couple of pages that we did together.

I remember working on this issue thinking....  Man... I'm turning around these pages quick!  Faster than what I'm used to.  What's up with that??  I looked back at the issue and noticed all those characters with the round smiley faces.  Just a circle for the head, two dots for eyes, and a curved line for the mouth.  How easy is that?  I hardly had to ink any faces with eyeballs, nose, mouth, ears, and hair.

Then I realized, when it comes to faces, I spend a lot of time on them.  Making sure everything is inked and chiseled correctly.

After I finished all the inks, there was a last minute adjustment request from Marvel.  Below, I did some photoshop drawing/inking for the correction.  On the left is the original page before, and the right is the after printed page.  See if you can find the difference.

 Finally, here's another page all colored up my Andres Mossa.  *Twip-Twip!*

This one shot issue is in stores now.  More info here.

DEADPOOL #27

Here's the cover to this issue.  

I inked the whole book over Carlo Barberi's pencils.  Actually, over blue line printouts over Carlo's high res scans that he sent me.  Here's one of the pages where I spent more time inking upside down.  The actual page upside down, not me hanging lover my head like a bat.  Mainly because Deadpool was upside down.

Working on this issue brings back a lot of memories.  One of the first books I've worked on for Marvel many years ago was on Deadpool.  So it was nice to be back on the title again.  Here's a splash page from this issue with Black Widow, Steve Rogers, and Moon Knight.

On top of being able to work on Deadpool, another bonus was being able to work with Carlo Barberi again.  Carlo and I did a run together on JLU (Justice League Unlimited) for DC Comics a while back.   I've always been following Carlo's work.  Even after our JLU run, I would hint him that we should work together again.  And here we are today.

Below is a double page spread from the issue.  I was a little rusty inking Carlo after all these years.  After a few pages into it, I got back into the groove.  By the time I got to this double pager, the inks were flowing better.  I'm especially happy with how the tapered lines are coming out of the blacks.  In the earlier pages, I was pulling them out with a quill.  Towards the end, I was working that effect with brush since I started to understand the pencils more.

Carlo's gotten so much better since our JLU days.  Lots of fun inking over him again.  Here's the same page all colored up by Marte Garcia.

Deadpool #27 is in stores now.  More info here.