#147:Omens

Lion-Os, Turtles and 'Raven', oh my!

ALL THE LATEST

Welcome back to more Declarations. Just wanted to say thanks for all the kind relies to the last Declarations where I shared my pitch work for ALIEN. I admit, I was a bit nervous about sharing it, but I know it’s the type of stuff I’d like to see from creators so figured I should be able to do the same. Been spread fairly thin at the moment, all good stuff but very hard to be moving seven different things along, where I feel I’m not making a lot of progress on one single thing. But I’m getting there! Anyway, what am I at…?

-Reminder I’ll be at MCM London on 24th-26th of this month!

-I’ve half of PROJECT RAVEN Issue One pencilled! It’s a 30 page issue so a bit chunkier than what I’m used to. Have started inking it as of yesterday, looking to get the first cover done in the next week or so.

-I have my first two covers of the month done… well I need to colour them so they’re nearly done. Three more need to be done by the end of the month.

-TMNT: BLACK WHITE & GREEN #1 is out tomorrow! I still can’t believe I got to write/draw a TMNT story… total bucket-list stuff. More pages were shown online yesterday, so here they are unlettered.

Pages from my TMNT story "Green Screen"

Here’s more into on the issue, I hope ye all do check it out.

Thrill to all-new adventures by the likes of Paulina Ganucheau (Wonder Woman: The Adventures of Young Diana), Declan Shalvey (Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan, Moon Knight), Gigi Dutreix (Sonic the Hedgehog), Lorenzo Hall, Dave Baker (Mary Tyler MooreHawk), Jesse Lonergan (Man’s Best), and more. With covers by Shalvey, Ganucheau, and superstar James Stokoe (Orc Stain; Godzilla: The Half-Century War)!

-The outline for PROJECT TATTOO has been submitted to Marvel. Waiting to hear back from editorial on that, but I’m plenty busy in the meantime. I had do do some design work on that last week, but happy with the end result.

-Also handed in an overall pitch for a work for hire project that I previously mentioned. I can say IS going ahead now. Have a cover rough done for it, but need to do a cover for it this mont— Oh …that’s FOUR covers I need to have done by the end of the month, I’m now realising. This one gets a codename now: PROJECT NETWORK. I had a hard time coming up with this codename, anything else I thought of was just way too obvious a clue, but I think this is ambiguous enough.

-Did a couple of podcast interviews in the last week, will share here when they go live. Have to prep for my next TAPE DEC soon.

-Marvel have released my cover for INCREDIBLE HULK #14 [a DEADPOOL KILLS MARVEL UNIVERSE variant]

As well as my variant for MIDNIGHT SONS #3

And lastly, my ‘Lightning Bolt’ for AVENGERS TWILIGHT #6 [in the printed version, Hulk will have pants, by the way]

THUNDERCATS

Plenty of THUNDERCATS news, as usual. Issue Four is out May 22nd which will wrap up our first story arc ahead of Stephen Mooney’s guest issue. I handed in my lettering notes just before the weekend, so it’s all wrapped up. Feels great to have hit that first milestone. Here’s a page from this issue that I love, Drew Moss nailed it, AS USUAL.

Special notice to this amazing Ben Oliver cover I just discovered for the issue ...holy moley!

The word is out that this first arc [as well as Mooney’s issue] will be collected as VOLUME ONE: OMENS out in comic shops in July, a full three months ahead of the book market, which is pretty nuts.

Not only that, but there will also be a hardcover of the volume. I don’t know the particulars of how that’s coming out, but I am very excited about it.

Myself and artist Drew Moss are back in the saddle […or cockpit?] with Issue Six as we kick off the next THUNDERCATS arc. This arc will focus more on the rest of the team from their point of view, as opposed to the larger team dynamic through Lion-O’s eyes we had in OMENS. Issue Six is essentially Panthro going all Mad Max which was tremendous fun to write.

I’m currently in the middle of writing Issue Seven and about to colour the cover for Issue Eight that I inked over the weekend.

What’s this, another Issue Six cover…? More on this soon…

A heads up! Dynamite are selling signed copies of my Calica variant cover for #2. I signed these while in the Dynamite offices a few weeks ago.

More pretty big news! The THUNDERCATS world is expanding with a new CHEETARA series by Soo Lee and Domenico Carbone! It’ll be kicking off at the same time as our second arc.

While I’m not writing this series, I had some input when Soo came on board, talking with her and editor Nate Cosby. I just had a read of the final outline as well as the script for Issue One and it’s great stuff. Exciting to see this world myself and Drew have rebuilt now expand out a little more. Soo will be providing covers for the series too, personally I think it’s really cool that she’s getting to have the same kind of authorship of the book like I’ve gotten on THUNDERCATS along with a fantastic artist in Domenico.

Anyway, I’m excited to see our book seed more story potential with new books and build out the universe more. There’s only so much I can fit into the main book, so seeing spinoffs like this happen is so cool.

PROCESS

I was flattered to be asked to contribute a variant cover for ICE CREAM MAN by writer W Maxwell Prince. ICM is a fantastic anthology series illustrated by Martin Morazzo and coloured by TIME BEFORE TIME crewmate Chris O’Halloran. I love the series, I even have the 2 beautiful hardcover collections. In fact, I contributed a story for their QUARANTINE COMIX project, that you can get here.

Anyway, it was great to be asked, here’s the final cover.

I was going for something a bit direct, but also creepy. A couple of people have reached out to let me know how unsettling they found this image so …mission accomplished!

Here’s the roughs for the cover, along with the inks.

ICE CREAM MAN #44 [rough, inks]

Usually I use Kyle's Inkbox - Brush Pen 2017 Grit B for my rendering, with the flow turned waaaaaay down. That’s what I did on the cone, along with a gradient. For the ice cream itself, I used Kyle's Paintbox - Creamy for the actual ice cream to get a different texture. Than I went in with the first brush but with the flow turned back up to so some more polished rendering on the cherry. The background is a mix of a texture layer, with a gradient on ‘dissolve’. Here’s the image without the line art, so you can see the rendering better.

I would say this is an example of a more conceptually successful cover than technically proficient one. Though, that can often be the case. By that I mean, it wasn’t the most complex cover to produce, it was more of a basic idea told in an efficient way. Nevertheless, I think this is one of my favourite pieces of late. The simplicity makes it striking and it gave me the room to play around a bit. I don’t really experiment with brushes too much as I’m generally stuck for time, but I liked playing with the creamy brush, I think I’ll try find an excuse to use it more.

ART DECO

Since we have opened the ART DECO webstore, many of you have been clamoring for the chance to get Thundercats original art... and we're happy to say the wait is over!

Available tomorrow, [May 8th at 1PM EST] we will be making the covers to issues 5 and 6 available for the very first time. The demand on these is VERY high as all of my covers from the series up to this point have already been claimed by a private collector. We wanted to give everyone a fair shot and drop the next two on the site with advance notice. If you have not bought before, ART DECO is a cart based site and the first to get these through the checkout will claim the pieces. While that may sound daunting, newsletter subscribers will have a huge advantage with a 24 hour presale. To enter the store tomorrow, use the password CALICA.

And for those without the budget to spring on a cover- don't worry, we got you covered as well. I will have signed and remarqued prints along with a super rare foil variant of issue #1, limited to just 200 total copies, from my partner on the book artist Drew Moss. These will come signed by both of us and I should be able to sort CGC grading for any customer who is into that. Just email me after your purchase and we'll get you taken care of with the applicable fees and process.  Be warned though, the signed and sketched merch we're dropping will be extremely scarce. We have just 25 total prints available and even less comics. So take advantage of that Wednesday presale and best of luck in the process!

OLD DOG

Final notes on the DOSSIER are with the designer. I’m sooo busy right now that it took me a few days to look over the edited PDF but I’m pretty sure the final will be with the printer by the end of the week.

The OPERATIONS project continues with new ‘assets’ having been acquired [above]. I’m still only in the middle of writing my contribution but need to finish it by this weekend to then find the time to illustrate it alongside PROJECT RAVEN. There are a couple of ‘agents’ who still need to report in but overall the project is running smoothly and it’s all starting to come together.

While this section of the newsletter has been the most brief for the past month or so, between OPERATIONS and the DOSSIER, OLD DOG stuff still always ends up taking up a significant part of my days. I’m always chipping away at it in some capacity. And while RAVEN is the project that is taking up most of my energies at the moment my hope is that it will ultimately help OLD DOG. We shall see if that pans out.

The solicits for the OPERATIONS project were handed in yesterday, I guess I need to figure out when/how I’m actually going to announce this…

OUT SOON

May 08th

TMNT: BLACK WHITE & GREEN #1 [W/A/C]

BLOOD HUNTERS #1 [VC]

May 15th

THUNDERCATS #4 [W,VC]

WEAPON X-MEN #4 [VC]

THE DISPLACED #4 [VC]

May 22nd

THE RIBBON QUEEN TP VOL 01 (C)

May 29th

AVENGERS TWILIGHT #6 [VC]

MIDNIGHT SONS BLOOD HUNT #1 [VC]

June 05th

BLOOD HUNTERS #2 [VC]

June 12th

THUNDERCATS #5 [W,C]

June 26th

MIDNIGHT SONS BLOOD HUNT #2 [VC]