In which Jason Richardson is just as awful as advertised.
Yeah, sorry this one’s a week late. Lost all of April to new toys, anxiety, and filling in for sick and loaned out coworkers. Anyway, think the drawing turned out okay, especially the latter half where I was playing with new pens. Might polish the dialog later, because, I dunno, it seems kind of perfunctory.
Then again, on second read, I dunno. I’m reading it over again and it seems alright. Hm.
This is what I saw as I was walking to Culver’s last night for a quick bite between working on panels of today’s comic page.
What’s wrong with this picture? Oh, that’s right, SNOW IN MAY. Cripes. I mean, I know, yes, Wisconsin, but seriously, folks. Something wrong with that.
Another picture something seems to be wrong with: the CBS affiliate here tonight. Letterman didn’t have sound (or had static-filled sound) for practically the whole first half, and now Craig Ferguson’s broken up and disappeared. Methinks someone in master control’s going to be flogged tomorrow.
But enough of local concerns. Let’s talk about something else. Like, I dunno, Doctor Who. GOD, Steven Moffat’s River Song/Weeping Angels two-parter was glorious. Everything about it was beautiful, imaginative, and brilliant. Images in the mind that can kill you, cyborg trees, gun-toting clerics, “I made him say comfy chair,” and some moments where despite the fact that I knew the Doctor and Amy are going to be back next week I was actually concerned for their safety. And hey, Vampires in Venice this weekend! God, the girls they got for the vampire girls are cute — and the story looks like a lot of fun, too.
HEY, I’M PROBABLY STILL GOING TO SPRINGCON IN ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. Probably. We’ll see. Depends on if I can get a ride there. Might be one day, though. Will update later with definite yea or nay.
See you all next week, for sure. Got enough days off this week that I assure you, you’ll see fifty-eight next weekend. Even if it sucks.
Writing this mere hours before the page goes live, laying in bed, iPad in lap.
Two quick points:
1) Next week’s page is all drawn, but still needs to be colored and dialoged. I think I know how I’m spending most of my Saturday.
2) Ye gods I’ve got a lot of comics to read. Forty-six single issues piled up on my bed, and that’s not counting the final volume of Urasawa’s PLUTO or the eighth volume of the ever-charming YOTSUBA&!. I think I know how I’m spending the REST of my Saturday.
(And of course, new DOCTOR WHO! Last week’s “Victory of the Daleks” felt slight and like a mere prelude — to the computer games coming out in June, I guess — but bless ‘em, the Doctor and Amy continue to impress. I’m starting to think this TARDIS team is incapable of a bad episode. Just by their presence, the episode is made not bad. Amazing.)
I’ll update later with a link to reviews of most everything I’ve got In the pile. Need to flex those muscles again lest they grow soft and mushy. Probably gonna chill at one of the coffee shops with the laptop and the comics pile and trade off on the two piles of “work.”
That’s all for the moment. See ya next week!
Oh dear, time’s a-wasting and I’m not drawing. What am I doing? Playing with my new toys, of course. This week I got my stylus for my iPad and conjured up this sketch of Dani. Check it out.
Unfortunately, while I keep toting around my drawing supplies, I’ve also been toting around the iPad as well, so I get distracted and wind up playing Frogger, or obsessively checking Twitter, or my email, or Facebook, or reading Sherlock Holmes stories. (Yay, freebies off of iBooks!) Oh dear. Whatever shall I do …
MEANWHILE:
Oh good lord, last week’s Doctor Who was brilliant. It really was. The United Kingdom transformed into a spaceship, a mystery below-decks, a masked gun-toting woman seeking the truth — and all the running about felt like proper classic Doctor Who running about. And the moral dilemma at the end was just heartbreaking, until — well, let’s keep up the vague spoiler-free nature of this bit of gushing praise. Two episodes in and already I think I like Matt Smith more than I liked David Tennant, just as I liked Tennant more than I liked Christoper Eccleston. Let me put it this way; there are very few episodes of Tennant’s era of Doctor Who I turned right around and rewatched compulsively. Right now I’m on my third viewing of “The Eleventh Hour,” and right after that’s done I’m watching “The Beast Below” again, and THEN it’s gonna be time to sit down for today’s “Victory of the Daleks.”
I don’t think it’s just that in the last year and a half I’ve become a much bigger Who fan. I think it’s that the new season, under Steven Moffat, is just that good.
ALSO:
One month ’til SpringCon in St. Paul, MN! One month ’til I sit behind a table selling stacks of iffy-looking comic books and drawing crude Sharpie-done scribblings in sketchbooks! GRAND DAYS AHEAD!
FURTHERMORE:
Back during the summer of 2008, when I was tabling at WizardWorld Chicago, the phenomenally talented Ryan Kelly, who I knew of from his staggeringly great work on his and Brian Wood’s Local, came by and chatted up Evan and I. Since Evan didn’t have any product, he spent a lot of time helping me talk up Scwonkey Dog, and as the two of us explained that this is something based on characters and ideas I’d been developing all my life, he told us that he had something like that he’d like to do one day.
Well, give the man a hand, he’s finally found the time between paying gigs for DC and the like and gone and done it. The series is called Funrama, and the first one-shot is subtitled The Mutant Punks. And of course, he’s like a REAL comic book artist, so it looks just freakin’ awesome. I’ve thumbed through it and honestly I can’t wait to dig in. Looks like he’ll be selling these wherever he goes on the convention trail — like this weekend he’s selling them at C2E2 in Chicago, and he, too, will be at SpringCon — but he’s also selling ‘em on-line, which is how I got my copy. (But they’re all sold out right now. More coming the weekend of SpringCon.) Visit his site here and watch this space next week for a review of Funrama Presents: The Mutant Punks beyond a vague, “Boy, that Ryan Kelly draws good.” (Heh.)
AND FINALLY:
I read some Yotsuba&! today. It was, as always, happy comics bliss. If ever life gets you down, read some Yotsuba&! because you absolutely cannot remain depressed after a volume of that crazy little green-haired girl and her odd little take on the world around her. (Well, except for the moment you realize you don’t have any more to read, but thanks to Yen Press there’s always another volume on the horizon.)
More next week. See you all then!
Comics printed thru
