Okay thought i'd join the gang, here's what's for issue 9

Hot off the... uh... Photoshop!


Click here for a larger view

Tried something new here. I did Heath on a separate sheet of paper and then overlayed him in photoshop. Pretty happy with the results, even though i have no idea what possessed me to use some of those crazy colors.

-T

Here are a couple of pages from the upcoming BATTLE HYMN trade that didn't make the final cut.

So this is the only place you'll see them.

So this weekend I went to my local comic store in Manhattan Beach called The Comic Bug and they had a live band playing that killed it. It's a really great local store, and they get involved with their community and there's also such a great network of local artists that come to hang out. They've got couches there and I could hang out all day and work on my latest scripts if I wanted to and bring my laptop. I really like the idea of comic book stores becoming culture stores and hangout spots like Salons of old where ideas were discussed, I like the idea of comic shops being a place where like minded individuals can gather and hang out and artists can jam on stuff there. It really made my day, in LA we're really spoiled by so many great and wonderful comic book stores, and these are quickly becoming centers of culture where you can go and see an art gallery exhibit, drink beer, or grab coffee. I think ultimately it would be awesome if there was a comic shop that was half coffee bar with a wall of books, bristol board, electric laptop plug ins, and it shut down and became a bar at night, where you could hang out watch bootlegs, of '60s batman, or Deathrace 2000 and just relax and hang out, or watch live bands. The joy almost makes my head want to explode and I think there's going to be a great shift towards this, as the internet separates and isolates people, that they'll find comic book stores and get excited about them. What better sales tactic to make people get into comic books than to make the place be something that rocks so hard and draws people in towards it alone and then they discover comics.

Trigger pointed this out on the Drawing Board forum, it's an article about how Manga strips are invading the funnies and are reaching out towards more of a youth audience but I think there are more than a few things wrong with this and I don't think that the majority of people really understand what Manga is. I think given the pacing it's impossible to do manga in 5 panels, and what there will be is a fake manga full of big eyes, and it's going to be really stupid. The newspaper people just don't get it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051107/ap_on_re_as/japan_sunday_comics

Here's a great interview with Paul Pope where he talks about working in Manga and about what it is:

http://www.pulp-mag.com/archives/5.08/interview_pope_01.shtml

I really don't like the comic strip as a format at all and I think it's so hard to get anything across in four panels and that it really limits what you can do, on a comedy format you usually have just enough room to make one or two jokes. When I was a kid I loved the newspaper strips we had back then, but I think the quality has gone down considerably. I think the newspaper strip format is really a dead one, and so limited, if you think of the newspaper and that large amount of space, it could be such a virtual playground for comics. I don't like what's going on in the newspaper strips these days and I long and yearn back to the days of Winsors McCay's Little Nemo. I think Kazu is doing something great with his Copper strips and they really should be published in a newspaper, Kurtz is doing a good job too because the story continues from the next strip into a full feature length story printed in PVP. I really like that big oversized page format, and it is a shame that newspapers aren't pushing the boundries of comics as an artform, and there's such a canvas there, in the wide double page spreads. They could publish full issues of Image Comic books if they wanted to at 22 pages and tell an entire story on a single newspaper page, hell I'd give them a few issues of Amazing Joy Buzzards at no cost, or we could send our great illustrators and characters of the medium to go play in the large and oversized pages for a much larger and wider audience, could you imagine if Paul Pope had the freedom of the funny pages, or Mahfood, Allred, Cooke, Thompson, Miller, Mignola, Larsen, Grist, Jeff Smith, Powell, Morse, or Crosland, newspaper comics could be so awesome and such a distinct and new art form.

One of my all time top ten favorite artists is Spanish artist Daniel Torres. I first discovered Torres' work a few years back when I picked up "The Adventures of Rocco Vargas" hardcover, and was instantly blown away by the quality of his work. "Rocco Vargas" is brilliantly designed and colored in beautiful flat monocromes and upon reading you can tell instantly that Torres is a master of his craft. After reading Rocco Vargas I knew I had to get everything I could find by Daniel Torres and track down all of his work.

There are three Rocco Vargas books available over here in English, "Rocco Vargas", "The Dark Forest" & "A Game of Gods". If you're lucky you can track down his book "Opium" that was translated into English in 1986 along with "The Art of Daniel Torres". "Opium" is so over the top and so great. Still unpublished and untranslated into English that I know of are:

1) Textura humana = 64 pages
2) Octavo Dia 1 = 62 pages
3) Octavo Dia 2 = 76 pages
4) Sabotaje = 30 pages
5) Angel de Notre-Dame 1 = 52 pages
6) Angel de Notre-Dame 2 = 43 pages
7) Claudio Cueco = 78 pages
8) TOM, VOL. 1. LAS AVENTURAS DE TOM (TOM, VOL. 1. THE ADVENTURES OF TOM)
9) TOM, VOL. 2. TOM EN NUEVA YORK (TOM, VOL. 2. TOM IN NEW YORK)
10) TOM, VOL. 3. TOM EN LOS ANGELES (TOM, VOL. 3. TOM IN LOS ANGELES)
11) El bosque oscuro = 46 pages

Norma Editorial represents and publishes Daniel Torres'work in Spain, and he's got 11 untranslated books that I know of and I hope make their way over here. So there are 11 Graphic Albums that I know of, all gorgeous and beautiful, that haven't been translated or published for an English speaking audience, and this breaks my heart. These volumes are just beautiful and wonderous treasures for the eyes and I want to find out more about what's going on in the pages of these books as I look at the art. It would be great if all of Daniel Torres'unpublished work was collected/translated together into a single affordable hardcover.

I know that Norma Editorial has a deal with Dark Horse Comics just for "Rocco Vargas", and I think they'd be really eager and easy to work with in getting Daniel Torres' untranslated work printed in English and made available to a wider audience. If anyone would be interested in getting these books over here, I've got all of Norma's contact information, with the exact person you need to talk to to make this happen and I'd be more than willing to share with anyone who wants to listen and is as passionate about Daniel Torres' work as I am. Just be sure to keep me in the loop so I know when I can pick them up.