Wild Dog Breaks Loose!

After the four issue Wild Dog mini-series appeared, Max Collins and I did several serialized Wild Dog stories for Action Comics Weekly. Wild Dog appeared on some of the covers -- but none of those covers were drawn by me. Below is the cover of #615, penciled by Barry Crain and inked by Rick Magyar. Recently a client approached me about recreating the cover, to see what it would have looked like had I inked it -- so, with Barry Crain's OK, I did just that.

I scanned and enlarged the printed cover, dropping out the color to get a black and white version of the logo and DC bullet, etc. But the end result needed a lot of cleanup work. I replaced much of the type in Photoshop, and dropped in a cleaner version of the Wild Dog logo from a scan of one of my covers from the original mini-series. When I had all the copy cleaned up, I printed that onto a blank sheet of bristol board.

The next step was to use a lightbox to roughly trace the artwork in pencil. I then tightened up the pencils, using the printed cover as a guide. I did make some minor changes -- but mostly stayed faithful to what had gone before. I then inked the piece -- mostly with brush -- but also some pen work on the guns, crosshatching, etc. Rick's original inks were great -- and I don't think mine are better or worse -- just a little different. Barry certainly went to town with all those different breeds of dogs -- and the extra guns for our masked vigilante! All in all, this was a fun project, and a treat to revisit the character. Despite having had a fairly short run at DC, quite some time ago, Wild Dog's fans just won't let him die.

For further evidence of this -- here's a pic of me with an attendee at the recent Free State Comicon in Lawrence, Kansas.

Green Lantern in styrene

We're fairly well settled into our new digs in the Kansas City area, and I'm back to work after finally getting my studio re-assembled. I'll eventually post some pics of the new workspace and my various collections on display there -- but for now, here's one of my latest projects.

This soon-to-be-released Green Lantern model kit from Moebius was designed by me, and I did the box illustration as well. The kit prototype was sculpted by Joe Laudati from my drawing. I'm thrilled with the end result -- as I wasn't even sure this pose was possible!

As this was intended to be the Silver Age Green Lantern, I leaned on Gil Kane's original design as much as possible -- the robot on the base is even a Kane-style 'bot. The box art was meant to invoke the Aurora kits of the '60s -- and I hope it'll fit in well on kit collectors' shelves next to Wonder Woman, Superboy and the others.

This is a kit that I've wanted since I was a kid -- so it was a special treat to be involved in ins creation. My thanks to Frank at Moebius for inviting me to contribute to the process.

Now that the craziness of the move has settled down, I hope to be back to posting regularly here. Please check back often to see new posts -- thanks!

Pencil/ink/color/print.

Today we have a series of images showing the process behind my cover illustration for A Killing in Comics, the first of the Jack and Maggie Starr comics mysteries by Max Allan Collins.  There were a few rough preliminary sketches before this pencil prelim.  The drawing style is inspired by 1940's DC Comics in general -- the Batman newspaper strip, specifically.

Image #2 shows the inked and cleaned up line art.  My favorite inking tool is the Niji "Waterbrush" (the large size) filled with Rapidograph "Ultradraw" ink bu Koh-i-noor.

  This is followed by the colored version in #3.  Melissa Kaercher did a great job (from my color notes) on the faux '40s comic book color --big dots,  bad registration and all!  And finally, there's the printed version of the book cover, incorporating a slightly cropped version of the art.

My cover illo for the second in the series, Strip for Murder, was a painting, incorporating some cartoon art.  Unfortunately, the series came to a halt before the planned third book, which would have had an EC horror comics theme.  Darn it -- I was really looking forward to illustrating that one.  Heck -- I was really looking forward to reading it!  Some day, if luck is kind, Max  and I will be able to return to this series.  In the meantime, we have other things planned....

Wild Dog Lives!

Some years (decades!?!) ago, Max Collins and I produced a super-hero comic book for DC called "Wild Dog." It was short lived, but is recalled fondly by its fans. I still can't appear at a comic book show without at least one person asking me about a potential return of the series. And this fan, photographed by my "The Batman Strikes" collaborator Chris Jones at a recent convention, is obviously still digging on the Wild Dog experience! Thanks for the photo, Chris -- but who IS the man beneath the mask? GRRRRR! Stay WILD!

The Batman Strikes: trade paperback

Hitting the bookstore shelves any day now is THE BATMAN STRIKES: DUTY CALLS, a trade paperback collection of stories from the monthly comic book (144 pages worth) drawn by Christopher Jones (pencils) and me (inks). Here's the cover (illustration by another artist). Look for it at your local bookstore, comic book shop, or on amazon.com.

Cap's Hobby Hints

More old web images rescued! These are shot from the orignal art for four "Cap's Hobby Hints" pages by Henry Boltinoff. This feature ran in DC comic books for several years in the early/mid 1960s. Henry was the brother of DC editor Murray Boltinoff. Aurora, AMT and other model kit companies were regular advertisers in DC's comics at the time. Supporting kids' interest in the modeling hobby was a smart move on DC's part. Cap often gave hints for model railroading and slot car racing as well. You can see the title and issue number of the comic book each strip ran in, at the top of each original. How many of these did you read, way back then?




Here's the published version of the original strip above.

Here's a CAP'S page that was auctioned on eBay -- from VERY early in the series, when it was called CAP'S HOBBY CENTER -- and, no, I wasn't the seller, OR the winning bidder (darn it!) -- unusual in that the kid is actually building a figure kit -- looks like Hodad from the SILLY SURFER line!