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!

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 :)

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)

INKTOBER 2018 & PARANORMAL

I wasn't able to participate in the Inktober art challenge in 2017, but this year I was determined to throw my hat in. 31 days, 31 ink drawings, posted on social media with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober2018 is a lot tougher than one might think. I have to admit that I went through a couple of rough spots and had a case (or two) of cartoonist's block, but thanks to encouragement and kind words from friends and followers, I was able to finish a drawing a day up until the end.

 Day One: Robin

Day Two: Maria, from Rick Remender & Wes Craig's DEADLY CLASS

Day Three: The Spider

Day Four: Magik

Day Five: Daredevil

Day Six: James O'Barr's THE CROW

Day Seven: Jean-David Morvan & Bengal's NAJA

Day Eight: Teacher, from Nagabe's THE GIRL FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Day Nine: B.P.R.D agent Ben Daimio, from Mike Mignola's HELLBOY

Day Ten: Black Kaiser, from Victor Santos's POLAR

Day Eleven: Shaggy & Scooby-Doo

Day Twelve: Ana, from OVERWATCH

Day Thirteen: Stick

Day Fourteen: Maya Lopez, aka Echo

Day Fifteen: Ikari

Day Sixteen: Manji, from Hiroaki Samura's BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL 

Day Seventeen: Grifter

Day Eighteen: Marv, from Frank Miller's SIN CITY

Day Nineteen: Angelino & Vinz, from Run's M*F*K*Z

Day Twenty: Hellcat

Day Twenty-one: Ser Arthur Dayne, from GAME OF THRONES

Day Twenty-two: Tujiro XIV, from Matt Wagner's GRENDEL

Day Twenty-three: Paul Pope's ESCAPO

Day Twenty-four: Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's PRIVATE EYE

Day Twenty-five: Ramona Flowers, from Brian Lee O'Malley's SCOTT PILGRIM

Day Twenty-six: Bruce Lopez, the One Man Gang, from Mike Hawthorne's HYSTERIA

Day Twenty-seven: The Werewolf of London

Day Twenty-eight: Azrael

Day Twenty-nine: Archangel

Day Thirty: Vixen

Day Thirty-one: The Joker

Most of these drawings are available for purchase on my BigCartel shop. I plan on adding the remaining Inktober drawings in the weeks to come as well, so don't hesitate to swing by and take a look from time to time if you feel so inclined. 

PARANORMAL

Ever since I recovered publishing rights to Paranormal back in 2016, I've been trying to decide what to do with it. I don't know whether I should pitch the trilogy to established publishers, self-publish it, launch a Kickstarter campaign...there are a lot of possibilities these days.

I'm still trying to figure it all out, but one thing is certain: I've missed drawing Ogre, Rat Face, and the rest of the Paranormal cast, telling their stories, and creating new ones with characters I introduced in the original trilogy.

I'm currently working on an espionage story that takes place in the Paranormal universe, as well as developing new stories, but while I work on them, I'd like to share the first volume of the trilogy with you.

PARANORMAL: THE OGRE will be launching tonight at midnight (4:00 pm Pacific Standard Time) as a daily webcomic on Tapas. The first episode will be five pages long, with one-page updates following every day at the same time. 

I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to subscribe, bookmark the link, spread the word, and let me know what you think. Thanks for your support!  

PARANORMAL: THE OGRE

Archer Coe & the Way to Dusty Death - on sale NOW!

Just a quick reminder to letcha know that Archer Coe & the Way to Dusty Death, written by Jamie S. Rich and drawn by me, is now on sale in bookstores via Simon & Schuster, and tomorrow (Wednesday) will be available at comic shops worldwide via Diamond.
To locate a shop near you, try findacomicshop.com or
comicshoplocator.com. The book will also be available on the Oni Press Shopify and order links for major bookstores are all located on the Simon & Schuster page, using the keyword: Archer Coe V2.

Also, as anyone following me on Instagram has probably noticed, I'm hard at work on some new Paranormal-related projects. Feel free to head over there to check out some more sketches, but in the meantime, here are a few to give you an idea of what I've been up to since I finished Archer Coe vol.2 a couple of months ago.

Thank you for stopping by. Stay tuned for more updates!

Okay, 2017, You Win.

As 2017 comes to a close, I thought I’d take a minute to update the blog and post some recent drawings. I don’t update much, I know. I almost get the feeling there’s a weird echo around here, like when you walk into an abandoned building and say “is anyone there?”

I went through all the links in the sidebar the other day, and discovered that a lot of them were obsolete or no longer worked, so I did some necessary cleaning. It made me kind of nostalgic, to tell you the truth. At one point, I even considered deleting the blog, since I’m not even sure anyone even comes around here, or if comic book artists even keep blogs anymore, now that Instagram and Tumblr are so popular, and allow us to show our work to so many people on the internet.

For now, I’ve decided to keep the blog up and running, but we’ll see what the future brings. In the meantime, feel free to track me down and follow me on Instagram and/or Twitter, as I post art there a lot more often than I do here. I also have a Facebook page, but only use it to keep in touch with friends (people I actually know) or artists and colleagues whose work I admire, so please don't feel offended if you send me a friend request and I never reply. It's not personal, believe me.

Anyway, 2017 was far from being the easiest year of my entire life. My family situation changed. I moved. Some terrible things happened. Some wonderful things happened. I worked on some amazing new translation projects (for Ankama Editions, in particular), attended the Malta Comic Con, accomplished some things I never thought I was capable of, didn't sleep much, and despite all that, managed to finish several chapters of...

Archer Coe & The Way To Dusty Death

I’ve nearly finished Archer Coe vol.2 (only 18 pages left! Woo hoo!), and the book is scheduled for release by Oni Press in 2018.  I’m working hard to meet my deadline, and hope to finish the art before the end of January.

Paranormal 

I'm afraid Paranormal is on the back burner for now, but as soon as I’ve finished Archer Coe, I’ll be getting back to work on it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks of what’s to come, once I get time to work on all the stories I have for the Paranormal “universe” (daily comic strips, that espionage story I keep talking about, origin stories for Rat Face, Black Jack, and Dr. Eclipse, among other stories, including the return of the Ogre, and a short one-shot featuring The Snake).

Thank you all for stopping by, and for your continued support. I wish all of you a safe and happy New Year’s, and hope to see you around here soon. Take care.