I still haven't gotten Halloween out of my system.

And now a special Election Day announcement from the Village!

A couple days late for Halloween

This was a proof of concept design I worked up quickly for a friend of mine who is a film maker in NYC. He worked on this film and pitched this idea for the movie poster. The idea was his. I just executed it and did the logo design. I was aiming for a 1970's Italian horror movie poster look with the colors. It's a pretty horrific concept for the poster.

Evolution of a double page spread

Neat. I discovered a picture I took of my two page spread from Colonial Comics when it was still in the pencil stage. The xxxx's represent where the entire area was to be completely covered in India ink. This spread was a rarity for me in that I already had the image firmly cemented in my mind and so I didn't really do preliminary sketches beforehand as I usually do. I pretty much got Eliot's pose down on the first take. You can see an inked page from the story in the upper right hand corner of the photo. And in the upper left hand corner is my copy of Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole which I was referring to for another project to emulate Burns' inking style. I'll post some pictures of those pages when I am finished with that project.

 

And then the inks were laid down

Then the colors

 

And then the text is added.

And finally it is printed in the book. Viola! A finished double page spread! I've heard from the book's editor, Jason Rodriguez that people really love the smell of this two page spread. All that ink!

Scary Perry Halloween 2014

Every Halloween the street Perry Ave in Kensington MD closes and people from all around the area come to go trick or treating at the houses on the street. These people go all out. It's like the Halloween version of Baltimore's 34th street when they do Christmastown.  And the costumes of the people walking down Perry Ave are quite clever. This little girl was actually trick or treating- walking up to everyone's doorsteps like this. At first I thought she might have lived on the street but she was there to get candy. I hope she got a lot. That is a great costume but must have been tough to maneuver around in. This girl rocks!

 There was even a clown there to entertain the children.

The health department should know about this.

  There was a huge chicken coop in the front of one yard.

There were even things in the sewer. Like scary clowns and giant spiders.

 Each house had its own spooky ambiance. 
 

Get your picture taken in the chair of death if you dare!

There were people everywhere!

The Empty Child. Are you my mummy?

More of the Lovecraft Produce.

I love Halloween!

Tricks or treats!

My Halloween strip from last years Halloween themed issue of Magic Bullet.  Enjoy. You just never know who, or what, will show up at your door. Happy Halloween!

Color me impressed

I love seeing old black and white photos colorized when done well. And this photo of a magazine rack circa 1942 was done exceptionally well. The amount of research Avi Katz put into this to match the colors for each of the magazine covers in this photograph is staggering.  His process is detailed on his blog and can be viewed here. Simply impressive work. I, of course, thoroughly enjoyed seeing the old comic book covers most of all. I miss seeing magazine racks this diverse in pharmacies and department stores. Magazine racks have even largely disappeared from 7-11's as well and that's a shame.

Sometimes I just write.

My friend Chris Piers, who writes for the website the Robot's Pajamas, asked me to write about my favorite horror film for his series of horror movie reviews leading up to Halloween.  Unable to decide which film to write about,  I wrote up TWO of them; Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead! Check 'em both out.

And in the blink of an eye, times goes by just like that!

Two years passed by between my last two blog posts. I know I probably shouldn't call attention to how neglectful I've been in posting on here, but would it help if I told you all how incredibly busy I have been with work and that I'll have a lot of really nice artwork to post? 

So let me catch you up a little bit as to what I've been up to. My latest graphic novel work just came out yesterday. It's a great little book called Colonial Comics: New England 1620-1750 from Fulcrum Publishing.

The artwork on the masthead of this blog comes from the story I illustrated, This Indian Work in this book. I'm very proud of the work. I feel it's my best comics work yet! My pal Jason Rodriguez edited the book and Tara Alexander wrote the story. Lots of great comics creators were involved in this anthology and being asked to be a part of it was a nice honor.  Look for it in bookstores, comic shops, and Amazon. It's been getting some lovely reviews and I think it will continue to get some really good press. Fulcrum has really jumped into the graphic novel market since District Comics. In fact, Publishers Weekly recently wrote about it.

It was a little over year ago we lost Lou Reed...

Monday marked the one year anniversary of Lou Reed's death. To mark the occasion, I'm posting the strip I did for Magic Bullet #8 recounting the time I was fortunate enough to meet him.