PARANORMAL: DEATH STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT

 

PARANORMAL. 

The word itself conjures up images of abandoned mansions at the end of lonely roads, unexplained noises in the dark of night, restless spirits with sinister intentions. Dictionaries define the word as “that which is not scientifically explainable; supernatural.” 

Indeed, in the world of PARANORMAL, the presence of the supernatural is undeniable. Shadowy apparitions prowl in the darkness; beings possessing frightening, unexplainable abilities walk among us. The impatient man standing in line at the bank can turn air to ice with a single word. The smiling woman at the coffee shop can kill with a touch of her finger. How is this possible? Is it dark magic? A scientific experiment gone dreadfully wrong? A curse from beyond the stars? The echo of a half-remembered nightmare come to life? No one knows. Or if they do, they aren’t telling.

Or are no longer able to.

But whatever their origins—and they may be legion—in the world of PARANORMAL, only two things are certain: nothing is ever as it truly seems, and danger lurks in every shadow. 

You’ve been warned.

Los Angeles, present day. Henry Wade Johnson, the Paranormal criminal known as The Ogre, has just been released from prison. When one of his former accomplices, Rat Face, murders several police officers and vanishes with a cocaine shipment belonging to the city's deadliest Paranormal crime lord, Henry Wade finds himself drawn back into the life he had sworn to leave behind.

Well, it's official: after many years of trying to find a good home for PARANORMAL, it has finally happened. The original trilogy, which was first published in France, then partially, briefly self-published by me on different webcomic sites and online shops, will now be published by Canadian publisher Black Eye Books in just a little over a month from now.

 PARANORMAL: DEATH STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT has now launched on Kickstarter, and is already over 100% funded. Please feel free to join us and help make this enhanced, remastered, definitive version of PARANORMAL come to life by checking out and sharing the above link. Thanks a million!

BATMAN BLACK & WHITE: THE LOTUS AND THE DEMON

When I came home from my artist’s residency in Iceland a few months ago, I was enthusiastic about working on my daily comic strip project, but as I began drawing the first panels, I was suddenly overcome with self-doubt. I feared I was too out of practice to ever finish a long-term project like the one I was about to undertake.  

I was about to sink back into the Bottomless Chasm of Cartoonist Depression when I began rereading Batman: Black and White, the legendary anthology published by DC Comics in which some of the world’s greatest comic book writers and artists were given the opportunity to share their personal visions of Batman. 

As anyone who has ever spent more than ten minutes in conversation with me knows, I’m kind of a huge Batman fan. Ever since I was a kid, he’s been my favorite superhero. There’s something about the character that has always appealed to me: a “street-level” vigilante dressed as a bat who risks his life every night, protecting innocents from depraved lunatics and remorseless killers. 

I decided that writing and drawing an eight-page story in the Batman: Black and White format, like those that have inspired me over the years (including Matt Wagner’s Heist and Paul Pope’s Broken Nose, among many, many others) would not only be a creative challenge for me, but would also allow me to get back into the groove of drawing comics before working on my personal projects. 

The story I chose to tell was inspired by the terrible mass shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011, where the perpetrator wounded sixteen people, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, and took the lives of six innocent people: Christina-Taylor Green, Dorothy Morris, John Roll, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard, and Gabriel Zimmerman.

The shooting occurred 100 yards from where my little sister worked, and a few miles from my childhood home. I remember hearing about the incident on French television, and the feeling of panic when I couldn’t reach my family and friends by telephone, since the lines were saturated.

Although I didn’t know any of the victims personally, the shooting had a profound impact on me. It has been lurking in a corner of my head ever since, and is the inspiration behind The Lotus and The Demon.

Since then, countless other atrocities have been committed, the most recent ones being the horrific shootings in Colorado and Georgia. The opening scene of the story you are about to read depicts—and condemns—a mass shooting in Gotham’s Chinatown, and coincidentally echoes these tragic murders. As a result, I am admittedly hesitant to even publish this. 

I’m a mediocre activist, and an even worse preacher, so I’ll refrain from telling you how I feel about mass shootings and hate crimes. The Lotus and the Demon will tell you everything you need to know about that. I will say, however, that my heart goes out to the families and loved ones of the victims of this and all other shootings, and I hope that these atrocities will cease. 

The Lotus and the Demon is now available on the excellent French website Grandpapier.org.

Since Batman is ©copyright DC Comics (and DC doesn’t stand for Dan Christensen) I am neither asking nor hoping to receive any money for this story. I simply hope you enjoy reading what a Batman: Black and White comic written and drawn by me would look like.

However, for anyone out there who wishes to make a donation—of any amount—to the National Center for Victims of Crime, which exists to help survivors and families of mass shootings and other violent crimes, I will be happy to send you a hi-res PDF file of The Lotus and the Demon, which also includes several of my Batman drawings you may have seen floating around the internet over the past few years. All you need to do is:

1) Make a donation

2) Take a screenshot of your receipt (feel free to black out any personal information)

3) Send it to me in a virus-free e-mail at dcartoons0213@gmail.com 

Thanks for reading, take care, and please stay safe. 

Artist's residency in Iceland

Last year, from October 28 through November 16, 2020, I participated in an artist's residency in the beautiful city of Reykjavik, sponsored by the Centre Intermondes, the Maison des Écritures de La Rochelle, and the Alliance Française de Reykjavik. 

For three weeks, I stayed at the magnificent Gunnarshús, the home of the Writers' Union of Iceland, and was able to make a great deal of progress on one of my future projects, a daily black and white comic strip, like those that began appearing in American newspapers towards the end of the 19th century (such as Peanuts, Terry & the Pirates, The Phantom, etc.). Thanks to this residency, I was able to develop and refine the script, define the final format of the project, and finalize the characters.

I also had the pleasure of teaching a week-long workshop on the theme of character creation at the Visual Arts School of Reykjavik, (Myndlistaskólinn í Reykjavík). Each student produced detailed character sheets (descriptions, preparatory sketches, final drawings) of his or her character, as well as two short, four-panel comic strips featuring an important aspect of the character's personality. The workshop allowed me to discuss different drawing techniques with the students, as well as different techniques of comic book narration. Every country, every culture has a unique way of telling visual stories, a unique voice of its own, and Iceland is no exception; I sometimes felt like I was learning as much as I was teaching.

I had the opportunity of exhibiting a series of my original comic book pages at the Alliance Française, where I also taught two drawing workshops for children aged 11 to 15, in addition to giving two conferences (on Zoom) for Icelandic students taking French lessons. These exchanges were particularly meaningful for me, because it was an essay contest sponsored by the Alliance Française in 1995 that allowed me to come study comics in France, to deepen my knowledge of the French language, and to immerse myself in this culture that I love so much.

Here is a link to the guided tour of the exhibition at the Alliance Française:

I was honored to be interviewed for the Morgunbladid, Reykjavik's morning newspaper, during my residency. Here is a link to the article, which appeared on November 7:

Due to the current health crisis, the tourism industry in Iceland has pretty much come to a complete standstill; as a result, I wasn't able to go sightseeing and discover the country's wonderful, unique landscapes. That didn't stop me from walking through the streets of Reykjavik and go running along the coast (in -2° C weather!) several times.

I would like to thank everyone who made this residence possible and so enjoyable, and for all the Icelanders and French folks who were so kind and welcoming; it was an unforgettable experience and particularly beneficial for my projects. I look forward to going back when the conditions are better.

In the meantime, I've been working on a (top secret) short story, which I will be publishing online very soon. News to follow!

INKTOBER 2019

After spending several weeks on the fence, I finally decided to participate in this year's Inktober art challenge: 31 days, 31 ink drawings, posted on social media with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober2019.

For the past year or so (ever since I finished drawing Archer Coe and the Way to Dusty Death, in fact), and despite having tons of ideas for projects and stories, I've had a particularly difficult time getting back to drawing comics. I felt that maybe, just maybe, this year's Inktober might be what I needed to get me motivated to draw comics again.

And it was.

I've never followed the official Inktober prompt list, and I wasn't in the mood to draw a different comic book character every day (as I had done in my previous Inktobers), so this year, I opted to tell a story. I'd been itching to draw a daily newspaper strip for a long time, and thought that this might be my chance to practice telling a story in that format.  I had a few false starts, but eventually came up with the idea of an action/adventure story starring Black Jack, one of the characters from my PARANORMAL comic book trilogy.

As I drew the comic, I tried not to think ahead about what was going to happen next, and just let the story unfold, from panel to panel, before my eyes. It was both a challenging and exciting experience.  Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and sent along good vibes and kind words, I managed to finish a drawing every day (even though I ended up posting one or two of them a couple of hours after the daily deadline, because sometimes, there just aren't enough hours in a day).

I was recently accepted to be a contributing cartoonist on the French webcomics site GrandPapier, and have posted the entire 31-page story over there if you want to go check it out, (instead of reading it by scrolling up and down my Instagram page).

I hope you enjoy reading The Delivery as much as I did drawing it! Here's hoping I'll have some more comic book news to report soon. Stay tuned :)

Joe Abercrombie's THE FIRST LAW

 Back in 2016, one of my favorite artists, Daniel Krall (One Plus One, House of Night, Doom Cannon) , posted two incredible drawings of characters from Joe Abercrombie 's THE FIRST LAW trilogy, Ferro Maljinn and Logen Ninefingers. I was so intrigued (to say the least), that I went out and bought the books the very next day.
The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings were the first sword & sorcery novels I'd read in over twenty years, and they reconciled me with a genre I'd all but turned my back on, in spite of my love for rpgs (MERP, D&D) and a handful of fantasy novels (Michael Moorcock's Elric, David Eddings' The Belgariad, Weiss & Hickman's Dragonlance Saga, etc... sorry, I haven't read George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire yet, and I was never a Tolkien fan. Once the only character I cared about died at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, I kinda lost interest in LoTR).
I was immediately captivated by Mr. Abercrombie's characters, universe, and unique writing style, and I promised Dan I would try drawing some of my favorite characters. Three years later, I finally got around to keeping my promise. A couple of weeks ago I posted some daily drawings on my Instagram and Facebook pages, to get me back into the swing of things for Inktober (if I end up deciding to throw my hat in this year).

Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody-Nine

Ferro Maljinn

Inquisitor Glokta

Jezal dan Luthar

Yulwei, the Fourth of the Magi

Yulwei (pencilled version)

The finished, inked drawings

What I used to draw everything: 

Yasutomo Sumi ink, a sketchpad of Danish paper( from the local Flying Tiger), and a Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2 sable brush

Now go read the books! :) 

POSTCARDS

A few sets of postcards featuring some recent comic book covers & selected Inktober drawings (from 2016 and 2018) are now available on my BigCartel shop. Feel free to swing by and take a look if you feel so inclined :)

Featured art:

RIPOSTE (cover)
ARCHER COE VOL.2 (cover)
PARANORMAL (Rat Face illustration)
BATMAN
THE JOKER
IRON FIST
THE MAN IN BLACK (from Princess Bride, not Johnny Cash)
ANA (Overwatch)
GENJI (also Overwatch)
EAGLE (fan illustration of Neil D Vokes and Jack Herman's fantastic character)

RUN

A few years ago I had the pleasure of writing and drawing RUN, a wordless, 21-page comic book story in issue 5 of David Lloyd's comic art magazine Aces Weekly (see original blog post here). 

The story is still available in Aces Weekly, but I've decided to offer it as a pay-what-you-want PDF download on my Gumroad shop as well:

RUN

RUN will be available this Friday (June 7th) at the stroke of midnight, but you can pre-order it this very second if you feel so inclined. A seven-page preview episode is also available on Webtoon. Feel free to go take a look.

Thanks for your continued support and for stopping by. Hope you enjoy RUN!