Art Auction

My friend Charlie Harris, owner of Eisner-nominated Charlie's Comic Books, is hosting an art auction whose proceeds will be donated to EMERGE, Tucson, Arizona's leader in services for those whose lives have been affected by domestic violence. The auction will be held in-store as well as online on Saturday, May 1st. For anyone out there interested in bidding on art for a worthy cause, a couple of my drawings (including Tigra and Zatanna from my Superhero Alphabet, as well as the Domino Lady) will be available. Also, for anyone living near Tucson, feel free to swing by Charlie's on May 1st for Free Comic Book Day!

Charlie's Comic Books
5445 E. 22nd Street
Tucson, AZ. 85712
520 320 0279

I apologize for the lack of updates around here lately, I've been busy putting together a new project and working on a series of illustrations for an upcoming Hero Games book... news and art to follow soon.

Batman!

Just thought I'd sneak in a quick Batman sketch before the month was over:

Hero System Martial Arts

A few illustrations from Hero System Martial Arts, a book I had the pleasure of working on a few months ago for Hero Games:



If you're interested, copies of the book may be purchased directly from Hero Games in their online store, or in all finer game & hobby shops...

Rpg Characters

I have to admit, drawing medieval fantasy-type characters is pretty new to me… I’ve only played Dungeons & Dragons once, never tried World of Warcraft, and I haven’t opened a fantasy novel in over fourteen years. Even The Lord of the Rings* never interested me that much when I was a kid.

However, for the past few days, in-between drawing pages of my fencing story, I’ve been putting together some art submissions to send to a few American role-playing game publishers, and since the majority of them publish fantasy-related books and games, I thought I’d add a couple fantasy illustrations to my portfolio.


Like I said, I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to fantasy art and characters, so a hooded swordsman or a big panther-man with dreadlocks may not be particularly original. They sure were fun to draw, though.


*although I did play the Middle-Earth Role-Playing game based on J.R.R.Tolkien’s books… especially for Angus McBride’s covers and Liz Danforth’s interior illustrations.

Rat Face x2 (by Bruno Duhamel and Lamisseb)

You may already know this, but it’s a tradition here in France for the mailman and other public service folks to sell calendars at the end of the year. Well, I gotta say… my mailman must want me to buy a whole box of calendars off him next December, because he keeps bringing me some really cool stuff. Stuff like this:

The above drawing of Rat Face, from my friend and fellow writer-artist Bruno Duhamel, really made my day. A few months ago we'd agreed to swap drawings, and I chose to draw Bruno’s ruthless bounty hunter Patrick William Mullighan, from his two-volume western series, Kochka:

I attended art school with Bruno in Angoulême, France from 1996-1998, and he was one of those artists whose presence at the school I never really understood. Why was he there? His rough sketches were better than my finished pages, and he knew more about perspective, anatomy, composition and cartooning in general before he arrived than I did when I graduated. He has gone on to make a name for himself over here, and has co-authored and drawn several bandes dessinées, including Kochka, Butch Cassidy, La Comédie Humaine, Sillage, and Harlem, among others. Even if you don’t read French, I highly recommend tracking down his books….and if you can’t find them where you live, go check out his site, you’ll see why I hold his work in such high esteem.

And since good things almost always come in pairs, I thought I’d share this drawing young French cartoonist Lamisseb sent me the other day. He writes and draws the darkly humorous weekly webcomic Et Pis Taf!! Although he is just starting out, he has some good ideas and works hard, so go give him some support and feedback!


Merci beaucoup Bruno et Seb!

I’ll be back tomorrow with something you’ve most definitely never seen around here before. Stay tuned!

The Domino Lady

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that I am a big fan of pulp novels from the 1930’s and ’40’s. Although I do enjoy the occasional Lovecraftian pulp horror story, the detective pulps, with their mysterious masked avengers The Spider, The Shadow and The Phantom Detective, have always been—by far—my favorites.

One of the lesser-known pulp heroes… or heroines, I should say… was the lovely Ellen Patrick, also known as The Domino Lady. When her father, incorruptible California politician Owen Patrick was assassinated by the corrupt political machine who had failed to bribe him, young Ellen donned the black silk mask, cape and form-fitting gown of the Domino Lady in order to avenge him.

The Domino Lady’s adventures were more light-hearted than most of the other detective pulps. While The Shadow and The Spider fought demented scientists, cold-blooded criminal masterminds and unstoppable zombie hordes, the Domino Lady’s foes were mainly low-level jewel thieves, blackmailers, gangsters and people who looked like this. She was an expert shot with a pistol, but would only use her weapon to wound or fend off attackers; unlike her male counterparts, she wasn’t a killer. In fact, the Domino Lady spent more time undressing, taking baths and lounging around in skimpy nightgowns than she did actually fighting crime, which very well may explain the success of the stories among male readers.

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to stumble across a copy of Vanguard Productions’ The Domino Lady: The Complete Collection with cover art and chapter illustrations by the great Jim Steranko. If you’re a pulp fan, I can’t encourage you enough to track down a copy.

Anyway, here are a few drawings of The Domino Lady and her “kissable shoulders” (as author Lars Anderson often described them)…

Werewolves (3)

Here's one last werewolf sketch for the road:

Stay tuned, I've got something a little different planned for tomorrow...