Rex Morgan -- Week Four in Black and White

As I did last week, I'm posting the week's worth of B&W dailies. Enjoy.

A week's worth of Rex.

I promised I would, so here I am posting this entire week's worth of black and white Rex Morgan daily strips. This week includes the notorious Tuesday strip in which Rex is wearing his wedding ring on the wrong finger! I think I'd noticed it missing, and added it at the last minute before sending the file off to the syndicate. In a rush, I didn't notice the error I'd made. Well, it gave people something legitimate to complain about for once!

By mid-week, I think I'm starting to get a handle on drawing June. She remains the most difficult of the bunch to capture. Still working on it. My re-designed Sarah is still evolving. Almost there.

Folks who find this strange are encouraged to go look up the earliest appearances of Dick Tracy, Popeye, Charlie Brown, etc., and see how different they look from the eventual standard designs we all know. This happens with nearly all cartoonists and comic strip characters. New artists on established strips usually have an adjustment period in which they struggle with finding their versions of the characters -- it's all part of the process.

Sunday Sunday!

Today is a first for me -- not only my first Rex Morgan Sunday page -- but the first time I've had two Sunday strips in the paper! So here are today's Rex and Phantom strips. I have to wonder if there is any newspaper out there that runs both...? 

As I've noted previously, now that the Comics Kingdom site is showing the full "half page" strips, I don't feel the need to post all my strips here anymore -- but I will from time to time -- especially if I've saved some work in progress shots to share, or have a story to tell that relates to the strip. Today's strips certainly show the contrast between the features -- Rex is a pretty low key conversation in the office-- while The Phantom is an action packed fight scene on a pirate ship! 

I'm still working on Jungle Tales of Tarzan pages today -- Martin Powell and I are adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs' story, The Lion, for a graphic novel to be published by Dark Horse. Back to drawing the strips tomorrow. 

Rex Week Two: Saturday

My last of the color/B&W comparison posts. Next week I'll hold off until Saturday or Sunday and post the week's worth of B&W strips. In the meantime, you can follow the strip at Comics Kingdom. And do feel free to post something there to balance out the griping and the trolling....

Tomorrow -- my first Sunday page -- which I will post here. And though it's my birthday (thank you, very much), I'll not be taking the day off, but rather working on pages for my Jungle Tales of Tarzan story -- which is due very shortly. I'll throw some favorite movies in the DVD/Blu-ray player and knock back a couple LaMars donuts to celebrate my advancing age....

Rex Week Two: Breakfast of Champions

Another color/B&W comparison -- and a tip of the hat to the guy who was here before me....

Rex Week Two: Thursday -- and a Tarzan preview

Color/B&W comparisons continue (for a few more days). It's a big day for the strip, as I introduce my version of Sarah. While I'm still refining June's look here, I purposely reworked Sarah a bit. Having youngsters in the home, I used what I see in my own kids (and their friends at preschool) to redefine her look. Lots of photo reference for the dog!

Comics Kingdom commenters seem split on liking the new Sarah and still crabbing about my art in general. Geez, folks, no points for the dog? Yeesh....

I have a tight deadline looming (day's end, Sunday) for my entry in the upcoming Jungle Tales of Tarzan graphic novel anthology from Dark Horse. Had to skip drawing both Rex and Phantom this week to stay on track, and will be doubling my workload on both strips to get back on schedule with them come next week (yikes!) -- but that's the life of a freelancer.

Here's an itty bitty teaser of four of the twelve pages of The Lion, adapted by Martin Powell from the Edgar Rice Burroughs story. Shown small here so you can get a hint of it, but not read it. C'mon -- we want you to buy the book, y'know! Color palette sampled from vintage comics to evoke a certain nostalgic response. Copyright, trademark and all rights reserved by ERB, Inc. and all that jazz.

Time to hit the drawing board -- I probably need to ink three Tarzan pages today to keep up. Kreegah!!!

Rex Week Two: Wednesday!

Today's strip may be my favorite Rex daily so far. I shot a screen cap of the digital pencils in progress, so have included that here. Quite a bit of drawing with the gray tone in the B&W version. The color strip as published has an unfortunate error in the last panel -- June's pink bathrobe from panel one is suddenly green -- causing some confusion, I'm sure, for readers. I fixed it here, so at least my blog followers will see it as it should be. Posting this in the wee hours, as I've been up working on Tarzan comic book (excuse me -- graphic novel) pages. 4 of 12 done -- the rest in various stages....