The second hardcover omnibus volume is out now, collecting the last (and best) volume I did with John Arcudi, Pirate’s Ghost and Metal Monsters of Midtown, as well as the first book, The Iron Prometheus by Jason Armstrong and Mignola, and short stories that were originally collected in the fifth paperback, A Chain Forged in Life. Roughly 470 pages of Lobster.
“What can be done? Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It’s done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it. It has profound importance in my life.
Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.
(…) Do you. It isn’t easy but it’s essential. It’s not easy because there’s a lot in the way. In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, take it off the table. Agree. Perhaps I’m not interesting, but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.”
Continuing Lobster week and stepping a year earlier with this one. All the covers back then started as watercolor thumbnails. That was a pretty satisfying way to figure things out, as well as a good method of keeping it simple in terms of color.
Hey, pencil and paper. I don’t remember why this one wasn’t finished (or why it was started) – maybe I gave up when I got to the part that included any actual drawing – but it’s a view into how things were (not) done circa 2014.
This is for a graphic novel that has so much going on that I thought the best course for the cover would be to include everything (or at least as much as fits on one page).
I don’t know why the release image is missing the Dark Horse logo in the top left corner, though, but the roughs below have it. Edit: It bothered me so much that I went in and added the Dark Horse logo myself. (Why even bring that up? Because balance takes at least fifty times as long as the drawing part, usually– it’s a chronic cartooning condition that eats up the brain. See black areas below.)
I’ve been thinking if there’s a way to replicate some of the good parts of the scattershot mosaic we get on Twitter and elsewhere – “here’s a few of the things looked at, things worked on, scribbled, noticed, etc.” – not strictly chronological and not meant to be comprehensive, just a slice through someone else’s moments. So here’s an attempt at a condensed version of it. Feels like it might work?
note: I suspect RSS readers will strip it all and just give you a bunch of images in a row; I was considering removing these posts from the RSS feed altogether, but I’ll just say the blog presentation works a lot better.(and it also shows the picture captions when you click on them)
(Maybe it’s fine as long as I don’t go overboard with twenty pictures every time.)
This one could qualify as archival too, since it was drawn in 2021, but it’s personal work, and not out yet, so instead it’s a peek at the ongoing present, as I rework some of it this morning.
Last year I spent a fun afternoon coming up with some “home-made” costume concepts for an IKEA ad. The idea was that the girl in it progresses from making cardboard outfits as a child to growing up into a career in 3D and VFX. The final commercial mashed together pieces of my other ideas, but these were my favorites as drawings.
(Free Halloween idea, and maybe the green screen one can work in some sort of St. Patrick’s Day scenario too.)
When I set up this new blog six months ago, I made a very conscious effort not to start with a big statement of intent. No manifesto about Why Blogs or I’m Leaving Social Media For Good or anything like that.
I just posted a current thing — a photo I took from the window of a moving car — and then posted a few quotes next, and didn’t make it a big deal in any way. No big plan, no attempts at comprehensiveness. I just needed it to exist without needing it to be anything in particular just yet.
What I was looking for was a better way of being online in some approximation of “real time.”1
Twitter is no longer an acceptable option, if it ever was. Its alternatives, even the good ones, all have the same problems — while they still serve some of the social functions, I need a better way of sharing work and pictures and thoughts in progress at my own pace, with more continuity, more permanence, and more depth (when needed)2.
The blog did already survive the threshold of “two posts, then a three year gap, then an apology for not posting, then death” that most blogs don’t, but now it feels like I do need to decide on -some- approach to it before it sort of peters out.
For artists and creative people, the easiest, go-to model for an “online presence” is to share “process.”
