essrose

Yep...

2008-05-16T00:10:43Z

It feels kind of good to be a Californian today.

Let's hope it sticks in November.

"Speed Racer Has Completely Changed the Equation!"

2008-05-14T10:16:53Z

SO...

I kind of liked this Speed Racer movie (and yeah, I guess I only blog about movies now).

It's not the greatest thing in the world or anything, but man... Crazy gleaming psychedelic candy visuals, jumpy-kicky Kung Fu cars, enough wipes to kill a thousand George Luci, one Christopher Hitchens lookalike, one ninja de-pantsing, Walter Sobczak dressed as Mario, RAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNN, muttonchops, and the triumphant drinking of milk all merged to form one colossal Voltron of ridiculous, and frankly, I giggled like stupid through the whole thing. Well, maybe not during the Spritle parts, but still. (Did that kid really do the "sneaky walk" at one point? I think the last time I saw the sneaky walk was when I was forced to animate it at CalArts...) The experience of seeing Speed Racer is sort of like being strapped to a Tilt-A-Whirl clamped to a runaway roller coaster in the center of a Skittles explosion while having a stroke,* which, let's be honest here, is not your typical movie-going experience. And that's probably why I wanted to go in the first place: The thing looked WEIRD. SILLY weird. I've never seen the TV show and the last two Matrices were kinda iffy, so "silly weird" is about all that could've drawn me in.

Unfortunately, it seems very few people felt that same compulsion to indulge in silliness last weekend, because Planet Earth has pretty soundly rejected Speed Racer. I mean, OUCH. That's sort of breathtaking. But I'm not exactly sure why it was such a failure... I mean, it's not as if the world public has any particular aversion to big-budget Hollywood silliness. Maybe it just looked too strange, you know? Speed Racer definitely isn't the safe, comfortable, warm-blanket kind of silly that gets people lined up for National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. It's some new, unfamiliar strain of silly. Possibly dangerous silly.

Or maybe it just came out too close to Iron Man. And Narnia. And Indy. It could be that people looked at the multiplex menu for May and figured Speed Racer was the one they could skip. And maybe it is the most skippable, I dunno... I personally liked Iron Man a lot more (it's Robert Downey Jr. in a robot suit!), but I do sort of feel like Speed Racer might be more... important, somehow. Like twenty years from now, Iron Man will be remembered as one of the better mid-aught superhero movies, but Speed Racer will be seen as a bleeding-edge, one-of-a-kind, pop art freakout way ahead of its time.

Y'know, like Sharkboy and Lava Girl.

What do you guys think? Did anyone besides me, my wife, and Heidi MacDonald enjoy this movie? And what's with all the sneery grave-dancing over the Wachowskis' failure here? Is it just standard-issue "my suffocating personal insecurities can only be momentarily alleviated by posting snarky comments about others' misfortune, preferably the same snarky comment five or six times because it didn't appear immediately after I clicked the button the first time and god forbid the earth be denied my precious, indispensible brainfarts for even one single second" internet stuff? Or are people still angry about those Matrix sequels and love that these guys have finally imploded? Or- ah, I'll shut up now.

If you have an especially high tolerance for silliness, don't suffer from motion sickness and want to see something genuinely unique on the big screen, go see Speed Racer soon, before it's dead and gone forever.

*We all know what this feels like.

GOODBYE CRESTFALLEN (PAGE 21)

2008-05-14T07:27:06Z

...LIVES HERE!

NEXT INSTALLMENT: TUESDAY, MAY 20th.

Click here to own this page. (Or a different one, maybe. Lots of stuff in there.)

Leave all your filthy comments over there (or in the FORUM, why not).

GOODBYE CRESTFALLEN (PAGE 020)

2008-05-07T21:46:11Z

It just occurred to me that I should probably be posting links to the new Serenity pages here in the ol' LJ.

So here's PAGE 20!

NEXT INSTALLMENT: WEDNESDAY, MAY 14th.

Click here to own this page. (Or a different one, maybe. Lots of stuff in there.)

Leave all your filthy comments over there (or in the FORUM, why not).

VEN-GEANCE FROM THE GRAVE...

2008-05-05T09:18:51Z

...KILLS THE PEE-PULL HE ONCE SAVED.

Iron Man was great! Pretty much every human being with a blog has already told you exactly why it was great, though, so I won't belabor the whole thing TOO much. I'll just say the designs were beautiful, Robert Downey Jr. is America's greatest living genius (take THAT, Nobel-Prize-winning quantum physicist Murray Gell-Mann! ), the action/humor balance was just right, and The Dude had a beard to end all beards. And that final moment before the credits was just brilliant, too... I've always wanted to see a scene like that.

BUT. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier, and he had a serious problem with the movie. He just couldn't get past the weakness of the villain. And, you know, it's true, the villain isn't quite as compelling as everything else in the movie. It didn't bother me as much as it bothered him, but I could see where he was coming from. The actor (Is it a spoiler to say who it is? It's kind of obvious...) does a great job with what he was given, but honestly, he wasn't given a whole lot. And maybe that was unavoidable; In this new batch of superhero movies, there's so much time spent setting up just who these heroes are, their origins, their powers, their inner conflicts, relation to the supporting cast, etc., that the bad guys and their plots often get sidelined a bit. Spider-Man Number One and Batman Begins both had that problem, I think. Maybe the issue is just that great villains and "origin stories" have trouble fitting in the same movie... You have to get past all that before you'll have time to develop a really strong, memorable movie bastard.

Then again, as my friend pointed out, tell that to Clarence Boddicker.

Anyway, the discussion did bring up the question, "Who are your favorite movie villains of the past few years (say, 10)?" So here's the list of bad guys I've seriously enjoyed hating over the past decade (not really in any order, except maybe the first two):

1. Anton Chigurgh (No Country for Old Men)
2. Captain Vidal (Pan's Labyrinth)
3. Stuntman Mike (Death Proof)
4. O-Ren Ishii... and Elle Driver and Budd and GoGo (the Kill Billses)
5. Agent Smith (The Matrix)
6. Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
7. Mrs. Carmody (The Mist)
8. Kroenen (Hellboy)
9. Dr. Octopus (Spider-Man 2)
10. Sadako (Ringu)

I guess I felt sorry for Dr. Octopus more than I hated him, really, but still, a solid character. And, yeah, Kroenen is more of a cool visual than a cool character ("A slight case of the bobafetts," as his physician would say). But he's got an interesting backstory, so he stays. Davy Jones is pretty much in the same boat as Kroenen in that sense, but it's important to cut lists like this off at 10, lest we risk angering the Great Gods of Arbitrarium.

Who's on your list? (Just the past 10 years, I mean. Apologies to Mr. Boddicker.)

Commissions: ROUND THREE.

2008-05-01T09:51:31Z

I can't believe I've never drawn Death before. I drew Delirium for the SDCC souvenir book a few years ago, but never Death. Or any of the other Endless, actually. It might be fun to do a whole lineup someday...

HORDES of commissions this time around, folks. I can't thank you enough for all the requests. (But here's one at least: THANK YOU!) I posted a couple of my favorites below, but you can see a few more in the commissions gallery (including, oddly enough, a drawing of noted action transvestite Eddie Izzard).

Black Canary came out best, I think. Surprised the hell out of me!

If you'd like to commission your own famous DC comic character sketch (or, y'know, something NOT owned by the Time/Warner corporation), send your requests to serenity@heartshapedskull.com. The base price is $50, and $30 for each additional character on the same page.

And since I'm shilling my wares...

Did you know nearly every page of Serenity Rose Vol. 2 is currently available in the Heart Shaped Shop? SR Vol. 2 pages are $50, the dwindling supply of SR Vol. 1 pages are $30 each, and all the Kimmie66 pages are $20 (they're kinda small). There's some other stuff in there, too, every stitch of it perfect for gift-giving. I'm sure some sort of holiday is coming up... In fact, it's the Gofflin's birthday on Friday. Why not buy my wife the gift of her husband's artwork, to hang on the wall of the home we share? It's gotta be better than the crap I bought!

BTW, we're probably going to go watch Iron Man and have tapas. Consider that a sort of advance "twitter" in blog form.

Thanks again for all the great commission requests! I've already got some cool stuff lined up for next time, but don't be afraid to send some more:

serenity@heartshapedskull.com

Thanks For Happy #2: Guillermo Del Toro.

2008-04-29T10:58:56Z

Guillermo, why did you sign up for The Hobbit?

Well, okay, I know why he wants to direct The Hobbit. He thinks it'll be fun. And "it'll be fun" is pretty much the best reason for any artist to do anything. ("I have something to say" is up there, too, of course... but honestly, if you don't start with the fun it's pretty much all over before frame one.) So good for him, really. All those dwarves and furry feets will probably make it easier for Guillermo to get big money for his personal projects down the line, too, so that's cool.

But man... Hobbits, huh?

Two movies worth, even. Four years PLUS before we'll see At the Mountains of Madness. Or that crazy-ass clockwork Monte Cristo thing. Or the "kid witnessing the apocalypse on his way to pick up milk" one. Or The Left Hand of Darkness, or Hellboy 3, or... anything, really. And all for hobbits.

I have to admit, I'm slightly depressed.

But this is "Thanks for HAPPY," not "Dude, harshin' my buzz," so I shouldn't dwell on my slight depression. Guillermo Del Toro without a doubt my favorite of all the directors to come flopping up out of the vast primordial director stew in the past decade, and that fact completely snuck up on me. (Wordpress tells me "snuck" isn't a word, but I'll be damned if I write "sneaked" instead. We write like we talk on THIS blog, Wordpress!) Let me explain...

Mimic (1997): I knew nothing of Guillermo Del Toro when I dragged my dad to see this one with me. I wanted to see Mimic on the basis that (A) it was a theatrically-released giant killer insect movie (a true rarity in those days), and (B) I had an enormous crush on Mira Sorvino. My dad took issue with the notion of an insect colony evolving so quickly over such a short amount of time (a solid, if not a little needlessly crabby, criticism), but I, for one, had great buckets of fun watching great buckets of insect guts go splattering all over the place. I was absolutely enthralled with the creature designs, the creepy dark atmosphere, the attention to detail in the locations, the weird kid with the spoons, all of it, really. But the thing that really grabbed me (and pretty much the only thing anyone remembers about that movie anymore) is when those two standard-issue plucky street urchin kids -exactly the sort of lovable moppets that live to save the day in the end- get horribly mauled to death by the monsters. "This Del Toro," I thought, nodding sagely to my 19-year-old self, "is a fellow to watch."

I haven't seen the movie in years, though. Most people kind of hate it, it seems (including, well, Guillermo Del Toro), so maybe I should just let it sit there all cozy in my memory and never watch it again.

Cronos (1993): I rented this right after seeing Mimic. I'm pretty sure I got it at Blockbuster, but don't quote me on that because I don't quite believe it myself (A foreign film at Blockbuster? With subtitles? And it's 4 years old? Didn't they need that shelf space for While You Were Sleeping overstock?). It has Ron Perlman and a clockwork scarab that turns people into vampires, which sounds like a can't-miss combination, but I remember being slightly disappointed by it. The premise just seemed to promise more craziness than the movie ended up giving me. That's right: 10 years ago I was the guy who liked Mimic more than Cronos. This opinion is clearly psychotic and must be altered by new screenings of one or both films A.S.A.P.

I kind of forgot about Guillermo for a while.

The Devil's Backbone (2001): In 2001, my friends and I went to see practically every art-house/foreign film available (usually at the Pasadena Playhouse 7, but if we happened to be in the mood for dilapidation and sadness, the Rialto). I distinctly remember seeing a movie about gay assassins in Colombia, and another one about Eskimos that run really, really fast. I'm pretty sure I knew The Devil's Backbone was by the Mimic guy, but I probably wouldn't have seen it theater-style if not for the arty binge we were on. I liked it quite a bit, but... oddly enough, the ghost was the thing I liked least. I loved the characters (especially the villain, all drippy with skeevy machismo), and the setting was fantastic. I didn't know much about Civil War-era Spain, so seeing one little corner of that world so beautifully recreated was... well, one of the best reasons to go to the movies, really. (Maybe that's why I was so drawn to the gay Colombian assassin scene, come to think of it.) But the ghost didn't quite work for me. He certainly looked cool, what with his veiny skin and floaty blood-trail, but I never really felt scared of him. Visually, I mean; the staging, editing, backstory, etc., were all spot-on. Maybe he was just too "designed" looking or something. Too CG. I guess ghosts are scarier to me when they're just sort of "people out of context." Like in the Sixth Sense, you know, where all of a sudden there's just someone walking around the house that should not be there. And they kind of fade out. Or just stare at you.

-Jesus, for some reason just typing that here in this dark room made me look over my shoulder. What a humongous weenie.... But the point is, typing that stuff about the Backbone ghost made me think "cool effect!" instead of "what was that behind my humongous weenie shoulder?"*

The movie definitely reminded me how cool Guillermo could be, though.

Blade 2 (2002): Being kind of iffy on the first Blade movie (Sunscreen? Seriously?), it was a little odd that I even went to see the sequel theatrically. But the same friend who dragged me to the Colombian assassin and young footballers in Irish prison pictures had this inexplicable soft spot for Blade, and had no one else to go with, so there I was. Enjoying it. I don't even remember the story, but the thing was just bulging with amazing design work, crazy action scenes, and Ron Perlman galore, so I got what I paid for. I mean, those weird jaws on the super-vampires were worth the price of admission alone. I distinctly remember thinking "This isn't all that great, but it sure is well-directed. Somebody CARED about this thing." It seemed like Guillermo Del Toro was one movie away from being the best guy ever.

And then Hellboy came along.

Hellboy (2004): Hellboy is my favorite superhero movie. Nothing else is even close. It's a big, roiling mass of gorgeous pulp silliness, and I love it all to pieces. I felt like Guillermo Del Toro had a schematic showing all the happy buttons in my brain and decided to carefully press all of them. A lot of it comes from the comics, yeah, but he brought it to life so vividly... The movie was like a humongous, Hollywood recreation of the kind of crazy, elaborate stories I'd make up for my action figures when I was a kid.

El Labertino del Fauno, or "Pan's Labyrinth" for those of us in America who insist on having the names of Greek dieties wedged into film titles for no discernable reason, apparently (2006): Better than Hellboy. The best fantasy film since... well, let me think about that one. And my favorite kind of fantasy, too, full of strange worlds with strange rules intruding on our own. Genuinely scary worlds, too. The ghost in The Devil's Backbone didn't really work for me, but the Pale Man sure did. Maybe it's the sheer "wrongness" of it all. I mean, who is this skeleton with the floppy skin sitting in this room waiting for somebody to eat his grapes? And why is that ceiling in the hallway so low? Why is a low ceiling so unsettling? There's less "BOO!" to it than the Backbone ghost, I think, and much creepier for it. Amazing stuff, and good throughout. And heartbreaking. Not just at the end, but consistently, and with enough hope cut through to make it all the harder and more beautiful.

I would say Captain Vidal is the best villain of the past decade, but then Anton Chigurgh showed up the next year and take it away from him. Still amazing, though. Sort of the living embodiment of the total madness of crisp, pretty little uniforms.

So yeah, at this point, after several years of sort of half-assedly stumbling into every Guillermo Del Toro movie ever made, with the last two movies he's become one of my very favorite directors. I was super excited to hear about all the stuff he had planned for the future. Hellboy 2 looked good, ridiculous fun, and everything beyond sounded even more amazing...

...

Then hobbits happened.

I didn't really like The Lord of the Rings movies that much.

I mean, I have HUGE respect for them technically, and the actors are all great to watch, for sure. Gollum is an absolute landmark in the effects world. Peter Jackson will probably show up in his own "Thanks For Happy" one day, but man... all that wizard and sword and pointy hat faux-medievalism stuff, it just leaves me cold. The whole genre, I mean, not just LotR. The whole "High Fantasy" thing. The Middle Earth movies are actually my favorite of all that stuff... but I'd still sort of prefer they keep their distance.

It wasn't always that way. When I was a kid, I liked The Hobbit so much I drew sketches of every single character in the book on construction paper. I had a whole stack if"Art of DragonLance" books, despite having no idea what "DragonLance" was (then or now, actually). At some point I just went sour on the whole Sword 'N' Sorcery thing, though. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that the whole genre feels like a gussied-up, whimsified version of, frankly, the most horrendous era in all of human history. It's like, when I'm looking into a fantasy world, I want to feel as though I could live there for a while, y'know? Wizardy worlds don't do that for me. You can keep your dwarves and chain-mail. Give me airships and the scientific method.

And now one of my favorite guys is making one of these elf pictures.

Oh, come ON, Guillermo! At Comic-Con a few years back I heard you say Pan's Labyrinth was the cinematic equivalent of your balls dropping. GUYS WITH DROPPED BALLS DO NOT PLAY IN MIDDLE EARTH, GUILLERMO. Guys with dropped balls do not go play in Peter Jackson's sandbox, they make their own goddamn sandboxes and fill them with awesome clockwork demon pulp sand! Anyone could make a decent Hobbit movie with Peter Jackson and co. looking over their shoulder. It's all there already. The style is set, the tone is set, Weta is ready to go and the two key actors have long since established their roles... God, Brett Ratner could make a passable Hobbit movie under those conditions!

...Okay, maybe not him, but, y'know, some up-and-coming kid itching to make a name for himself under Weta tutelage probably could. Give little Timmy a chance, Guillermo! Step aside and make us some Antarctican Elder Things!

BAAAAAAAHHHRG!

...

Aaaaaaand... scene.

Thank you, folks, for attending my one and only fanboy entitlement flailabout of the year. In all honesty, I'm sure this Hobbit movie will end up being really cool (how could it not be, with Misters Del Toro and Jackson all teamed up and stuff)? Will it be cool enough to make me like faux-medievalist wizard swordy dungeons, though? Cool enough to get me to play WoW, even?

No, probably not on that second one.

But I am looking forward to a GDT Smaug.

*"Humongous Weenie Shoulder" will be my first album.

(cross-posted from the site.)

Thanks For Happy #1: JUNO

2008-04-22T09:49:05Z

(Cross-posted from the site.)

BLAWWWWGGGG! Enough of this crap, time to get down to some bloggin'! Blog it out, folks! BLAWG!

One of the very few and - as far as I can tell - totally unique creative downsides to being a comic book writer/artist is that the ratios are all wrong. On average, it takes about ten times as long to pencil, ink and tone a page as it takes to write it, which means only 10% of my time goes to develop my skills with the ol' "written word." This is frankly unacceptable. I could write some stream-of-consciousness short stories or compose haiku beneath the sakuranbo tree, but instead I'm going to blog. (BLAAAWWWWG!)

Unfortunately, it is a matter of public record that I often have trouble getting blog entries started. I just don't know what to write about most of the time. (It feels oddly like trying to strike up a conversation with a total stranger.)

So I'm just going to go ahead and start listing the things that make me happy.

Thanks For Happy #1: JUNO (the movie)

I just saw this thing a couple days ago. I meant to go out and see it at the theater, but uh... didn't! I did read lots of glowing reviews, though, which really got my hopes up, and then a lot of horrible backlash reviews, which really got my hopes down, so by the time that little red DVD envelope arrived, my hopes were just all out of whack. All I could be sure of was that the movie won two Oscars and the writer has a bikini girl tattoo. A bikini girl in bondage, even.

Now, I have to be honest, the first 10 minutes or so of this movie kinda worried me a little. "Honest to blog?" Really? All the forced quirk and made-up slangtalk in the dialogue just made my blood run... well, not cold. But tepid. Definitely tepid. ("Could that Something Awful spoof be right on the nose?" I tepidly wondered.) And look, I love Rainn Wilson. I love him like candy. But his whole character just seemed like it came staggering in from the darkest recesses of Napoleon Dynamite.

It was tough going, friends. "FUCK YOU, MOVIE!" shouted my couch-buddy over her math homework.

But then... it got better. It got LOTS better. I'm not sure if I just got used to the peculiar rhythms of the dialogue or if that first little chunk was an aberration (I'll have to watch it again), but by the end I really loved this little movie. It really is one of the best bits of 2007.

A tremendous lot of the movie's charm has to do with the way Diablo Cody's script consistently turns left when you expect it to turn right. Very few things play out the way you expect them to, but that's not just some stupid gimmick; it's all completely believable, totally real, and very, very... human. I read a lot of websnark that said Juno was a ridiculous screenwriter's fantasy version of a teenager, way too smart, way too cool, way too mature for someone so young, but I didn't feel that way at all. She seemed totally real to me. I've MET teenage girls like Juno. I've gotten MAIL from teenage girls like Juno. Teenage girls like Juno have left COMMENTS ON MY BLOG POSTS. They definitely exist, Mr. Smartypants Internet Movie Reviewer Guy. In fact, I bet you could find at least two or three Junos in the little clique of artsy honor students behind that group of cheerleaders you've been ogling.

What I found most interesting about the character of Juno, though, was that she most definitely was not "mature beyond her years." Far from it. Just look at the scene where she first meets Mark and Vanessa. She keeps up this running patter of sarcastic little jokes and comments throughout the whole meeting, and yeah, it's meant to be funny (the "t-shirt gun" is maybe the best line in the movie), but there's much more to it than that. Juno is nervous. She's out of her element. She's flailing around blasting witticisms shotgun-style every whichaway to make the Lorings think she's cool and to cope with her own nerves. She's not really even thinking about what she's saying. At one point Juno tells the slightly desperate, infertile but "born to be a mom" Vanessa she ought to be "glad it isn't you" who has to deal with being pregnant. It's just a throwaway comment, not intended to hurt, just part of the patter, and the screenplay is smart enough not to dwell on the moment... but it speaks loads about Juno. No one "mature beyond her years" would've said something like that. It was brilliant.

But as great as the script is, I'm not sure the movie would be half as good without Ellen Page as Juno. It's funny, when I first saw her in Hard Candy a couple years ago, I thought, "That girl would be a great Serenity... if, y'know, someone were mean enough to do Serenity Rose live action instead of with Balinese shadow puppets like I want." I have to say, seeing Juno paired up with a loud, obnoxious red-haired best pal was... sort of surreal...

I really liked this Michael Cera guy as the boyfriend, too. I haven't seen Superbad or Arrested Development, so this was pretty much my introduction to the future Scott Pilgrim. He's not exactly how I pictured Scott Pilgrim in live action, but then... I'm not exactly sure what I was picturing anyway (BALINESE SHADOWN PUPPETS). He's a funny actor, though, and about the right age, so it'll work. And with Edgar Wright directing it should be... um...

Yeah, I should probably save all that for another post.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Juno yet, you should. Just please don't flee in terror when you hear the phrase "Honest to BLOG!"

BLAWWWWGGGG!

Commissions: ROUND TWO.

2008-04-01T20:12:33Z

"It is to laff, huh Mistah J?"

This month's batch of art commissions was especially fun, so I figured I'd share a bit. Multiple requests for characters in the "lady super-people" genre this time, which sort of surprised me but really shouldn't have. It's kind of what I do, I you think about it.

Harley Quinn is my favorite, I think (hence the extra-massive image, donchaknow). There were a lot of beyond-brilliant things about the old Batman animated series, but that character was without question the beyond-brilliantest. A really slick design, an instantly appealing personality, and a note-perfect "40's gangster ditz" voice... man, just all around good stuff. I especially liked the way her presence managed to significantly lighten up the Joker character without making him feel any less, y'know, psychotically dangerous. Still not quite sure how they did that...

I think Harley Quinn might be the only Batman TV character to ever jump from television apocrypha to full-fledged printed-on-paper in-continuity comic book "canon." Which is kind of neat. I mean, Louie the Lilac himself couldn't even pull that one off.

Anyway, the cheerleader drawing up there is from that "Heroes" TV show, which I still haven't seen because Netflix won't send me whole box sets at once. (I can't be tying up my whole queue for a month to see this stuff, you STINGIES! Southland Tales waits for no man!) The other drawing is obviously good ol' Wonder Woman (well, hopefully obviously). Now, it always kind of bugs me when people draw Wonder Woman like she's wearing some sort of shiny metal one-piece, so I made sure to break the outfit up a bit. I also didn't put high heels on her, because I'm not an idiot.

If you would like to commission your very own commission, click rightabouts HERE. The price is $50 for one character and $30 for each additional character on the same page. No backgrounds for now, sadly... There's Serenity en-paging to do!

And now I sleep and dream of flaming pom poms...

Thanks Again, Dreamhost.

2008-03-26T10:56:48Z

UPDATE: Fixed. But why's it allllll soooooooo slooooooowwwwwwww, Dreamhost?

Well, I WANTED to show you guys Page 011 today, but I guess my web host is having some weird problems again. The site and mail and everything seem okay (if not a bit slower than usual), but I can't ftp anything to the server.

Eh, you get what you pay for, I guess. Sorry for the delay.

Anyway, if Dreamhost doesn't have things worked out by this evening, I'll figure something else out. I think I can still tack images to my Wordpress (and Livejournal) posts, so I'll probably just stick pages in my blogs until this gets sorted. It just means you'll have to scroll a bit, is all.

But we'll see what happens.

We now return you to Arnold in Rio, already in progress.

Green Hell!

2008-03-23T09:03:29Z

What do you see, lil' Serenity...

Wow, so how about those first ten pages? Pretty green, eh? I just thought it'd be nice to start things off with a big explosion of green ectoplasmic hell. (What story wouldn't benefit from that, I ask you? Annie Hall would've been classic!)

I still haven't decided if I want to burn through this book at two pages a week or play it safe (for now) and roll them out just once a week. It'll probably vary as we go on, but I think I can safely say there'll be at least one new Serenity page every seven days. Neat! Page 011, featuring whatever the hell long-haired teenage Sera is looking at, will appear this coming Wednesday.

In other developments, the big freelance project I've been working on for the past couple weeks is coming to an end pretty soon, which should free up some time for commissions. Hurray! Sorry to everyone who's been waiting so patiently for those; you should have them by the end of the month. People have thrown some really fun stuff at me this time... can't wait to dig in and start some arts.

And did you know the first printing of Serenity Rose Vol. 1 has officially sold out? Yeah, it kind of snuck (sneaked?) up on me, too... The second printing should show up sometime this summer, though, hopefully in time for Comic Con. If not, look for me signing autographs behind a big stack of discarded panel schedules. In the parking lot. Behind my house.

I will keep you updated!

Server Down! (UPDATED)

2008-03-22T07:06:38Z

I just got home from tofu-eating to discover my server seems to be down. I guess they're transporting it or somesuch (link). Sorry about that! Page 009 will be a little later than usual, but it should still come out by the end of the day.

So how's YOUR day been?

UPDATE! Everything's back to normal and the new page is up. GO LOOK AT IT NOW!

SERENITY ROSE VOL. 2

2008-03-14T19:10:16Z

IS ALIVE.

Now, if you've been keeping up with the ol' journal for the past few months, you've probably already seen Page 001 here. Big letdown, eh? But wait, what's that you are hearing...

TEN PAGES. TEN DAYS.

That's right, fellows: 10 Serenity Rose pages, 10 Serenity Rose days. We're going daily for the next week and a half (then probably a page or two every week thereafter... still mulling over the schedule here).

Thanks for sticking in there, everybody. You've waited long enough.

IT BEGINS!

EXTREME FATAL WRASSLIN.

2008-03-08T00:14:16Z

Uh oh, looks like our gal Sera's got herself a little competition. I'm pretty sure Sera could take her (y'know, magic and all), but I have to admit this "leg feed enzuigiri" has me a little worried. I bet the Frankensteiner isn't as cool as it sounds, though.

Speaking of Serenity Roses... I know Sera could take these guys. It seems kind of mean to pick a fight, though...

Nah, we'll leave the fight pickin' to these guys.

"With the ability to drop the jaws of any innocent bystander within ears range, this rock-driven foursome from St. Louis will kick you in the ass and keep you coming back for more."

RAWWWWWKKK!

ONE MORE WEEK.

Calvin & Hobbes.

2008-03-01T10:58:37Z

And there they are!

Now, for whatever reason, when I started this "commissions" thing it never occurred to me someone might ask for a Calvin & Hobbes sketch. Which is really odd because, y'know, Bill Watterson is maybe my #1 biggest art hero ever (it sort of cycles between Bill Watterson, Tim Burton, and Hayao Miyazaki). I guess maybe it always just felt vaguely heretical to even consider drawing these characters... Like the very notion of it was simply not fit for respectable people like me. You don't re-write Hamlet, you don't re-paint the Sistine Chapel, and you don't re-draw Calvin & Hobbes.

But I did it anyway, and it was a lot of fun.

It was cool, too, when I was flipping through my big stack of C&H books for reference, I was struck yet again by the incredible looseness of the drawings. It's all so wonderfully scribbley and gestural, little bits and wiggles of detritus flying all over the place. So much energy... It reminds me -weirdly- of some of the old EC artists who've had such a big influence on me. Especially Jack Davis. That guy was an especially filthy little scribbler. And I love him for it, the creepy old cuss.

God, people's obsession with "clean" drawings is a total mystery to me.

A couple more commissions that turned out pretty good, if I don't say so myself but I guess I just did:

The first one is Starla-Faye Jovansensan from Jimmy Misanthrope's "Agents of the Endtimes" webcomic, and the smaller floating girl in the second one is Faith from Thomas Szewc's "Alone In A Crowd." Thank you so much, Jimmy and Thomas!

If you want to be as cool as those guys, click HERE to commission your own... commission. And help keep Serenity Rose Vol. 2 going in the process. Seriously, it takes way less time and is far more enjoyable than taking on freelance jobs. Art directors always want "clean" artwork, y'know.

TWO MORE WEEKS.

Commissions: ROUND ONE.

2008-02-25T23:41:35Z

Hey all. Just a quick note to let you know I'll be working on the first round of commissions later this week, so if you'd like something sooner rather than later, let me know right quick. I probably won't get to the next batch until roundabout the end of next month.

ALL THE DETAILS LIVE HERE.

I've gotten some interesting requests so far... Hopefully I'll be able to post some of them when they're done.

In other news: Hooray for No Country for Old Men! Hooray for Anton Chigurgh! Hooray for Sweeney Todd's production design! Hooray for Ratatouille but sorry, Persepolis! (You should've gotten the Foreign Language one.) Boo for no King of Kong nomination! And hooray for that really pretty song from Once, a movie I didn't see but immediately added to Netflix! Such is the dazzling power of Oscar. Or, at least, the part of the Oscars that wriggled into my consciousness while I was coloring pages.

(By the way, if anyone knows where I can find nicer versions of all the animated short nominees, I'd love to see them. From the clips I saw last night, each one of them looked like asome pretty little hand-made-low-tech bit of happy.)

My Stereotype Weekend!

2008-02-20T11:55:57Z

(Originally posted at THE NEW SITE, reposted here just to screw with Ross.)

SO!

If you were to guess at what a guy who draws "dark" comics does on his weekends... it would probably look very similar to what I did this last weekend. Usually I spend my Saturdays and Sundays glaring at passersby and cursing the cats for not preparing my meals, but this time I (holy shit!) actually went out and lived the "horror person" stereotype.

SATURDAY! On Saturday the Gofflin and I ventured deep into the filthy heart of Hollywood to see two of my favorite goth ladies bring smiles to the faces of the terminally spooky. Which actually isn't as difficult as it seems, but still, Melora Creager (of Rasputina renown) and Siouxsie Sioux (of "That woman cannot possibly be 50 years old" renown) rocked the ever-lovin' socks off the Henry Ford theater, its assorted black clad protomass, and me this past weekend. Just an amazing, amazing show. But what really struck me was how different the two performances were, while still both coming under the heading of "goth." Rasputina with their intensely cool "19th-century American prairie punk" look and snarky-but-swooping cello recital could not have been more different than Siouxsie's slinky "goths in space" look and charging synth-spook-RAWK. Totally distinct, but both absolutely beautiful. I couldn't help but think of the "all goth shit is the same" people and how painfully, embarrassingly wrong they are. To be totally fair, though, (and apologies if I've said this before) I guess when you're on the outside looking in, things do tend to blur a little bit. Like, for instance, if I really took the time to examine the romantic comedy genre, over time I'd probably be able to pick out all the subtle variations of plot and tone among the movies. Instead of seeing it all as one big undifferentiated pudding of McConaughey.

(Anyway, if you're a Siouxsie fan, her new album is as big, HI-GAWF, and ridiculously catchy as her glory days with the Banshees, so buy it! And if you're a Rasputina fan, well, YOU BETTER BE. And buy their exquisite new offering, as well.)

SUNDAY! On Sunday I went and saw George Romero's new zombie movie, Diary of the Dead. Yeah, he's got another one already! And... well, it isn't his best by a long shot, but it was fun. Zombies are my bestest favorite, and no one knows zombies like Uncle George, so I couldn't help but be entertained. I do love my zombies... And I know exactly why, too. "Barricaded in your house while mindless hordes of slobbering, violent bastards claw at the door trying to either destroy you or make you one of them" is... pretty much how any given introvert sees the real world at any given moment. It speaks to me. Similarly, I'm really strongly drawn to any scenario in which a person wanders around big, empty spaces that are normally filled to the rafters with humans. So of course, Dawn of the Dead is one of my all-time top-favorite films. Diary isn't really up to Dawn standards, though, unfortunately. If I had to complain - and I don't but here I go anyway, because it's the internet - I'd say this time he had his patented "social observations and zombie mayhem" recipe mixed a bit too heavy on the former and too light on the latter. Every minor observation was explicitly spelled out, underlined 80 times, doused in 40 gallons of fluorescent marker and lit up with a flamethrower, every time. Sometimes that can be part of the fun, but, well, not this time...

Still, nobody destroys ghouls like George Romero, so even if you think you've seen every possible way to bloody up some shamblers, I guarantee you'll find something fresh, new and intensely cool in this one. (Acid, kiddies, is a woefully underused item in the zombie genre.) And even if the commentary gets a little "Yeah, WE GET IT, George" at times, the points are still valid and fun to roll around the brain. So go put some money in the man's pocket and see Diary of the Dead - if you, y'know, can find it. (The Nuart has it until the 21st.)

Cool poster, too.

SOME BUSINESS:

Little bit of business to attend to... If you tried signing up for the FORUM within the past 6 months or so and were never able to log in... um, try again. If you want. The problem was that I never really had the time to sift through all the thousands upon thousands of spambots in the user list (it was getting really, really bad in there), dig out all the real live humans and activate them. But hey, it had to be done, so I finally do-ed it. Sorry about the horrible delay. I actually recognized a few of the names from my LJ and Myspace accounts, which is sort of embarrassing...

Speaking of the forum, we recently put out the call for moderators, so if you're interested (or just want to vote for someone else all democratic-like), swing right on over HERE.

AND FINALLY: "Good Guys Wear Black" is now en-YouTubed, for all your sharing and commenting needs. You know how it works:

Not sure why I did that... just thought it should be there, I guess.

Now back to cursing at cats!

-a

AT LAST...

2008-02-14T11:34:58Z

"...MY ARM IS COMPLETE AGAIN."

Super-bowl Madness!

2008-02-04T20:53:52Z

In honor of Super-bowl Sunday, the gofflin and I went out to our neighborhood art theater to see a French cartoon about Iranians. Of course, we only watched it for the commercials.

Then we had dinner at a Brazilian restaurant, which I guess that doesn't really fit the theme. Maybe if it'd been a Venezuelan restaurant...

Back in 10 days with an announcement!

Too Late For Posting...

2008-01-31T11:21:25Z

Almost done... aaaaaalllllmoooooost done...

January was one big, blurry lump of misshapen work-y sameness, but at long last this stinking lump of SOMEthing lying before me is so... very... close... to jolting back to some gibbering, lurching approxiimation of life. So... very... close... You'll see. Then I can get back to regular postings.

God, my brain is so deadened right now I can't tell if this is really, really funny or if I'm just punchy.

DON'T DO IT, MAN!

This one's definitely funny, though.

Be back soon, with a new pet.

Exactly the sort of journal post that people delete out of embarrassment the very next day.

2008-01-07T21:30:20Z

Hey-o.

So I just got back from two solid weeks of holiday away-ness and stumbled directly into one of those big, horrible "moods" I stumble directly into sometimes. It has nothing to do with the holiday season itself, though... Christmas was wonderful (Ami came with me to Chicago for the first time, met all 6 billion members of her new extended Catholic family, and took many a hi-res photo of salt-encrusted vehicles). No, the "mood" I'm talking about is more of a "What now?" type of thing. Career-wise, I mean.

Essentially, it bubbles down to this: for the past two years or so, the phrase "We'll see what happens after Kimmie66 comes out." has been right dead in the center of my brain, and now that that book's release date has come and gone, I guess I'm feeling slightly... lost, y'know?

Not lost in the artistic sense, of course. I already told you guys I'm moving right along with Serenity 2, and so far so good with that. I mean lost in the "Where is this career going?" sense. You know, that awful, sick-y, tumbling-in-space sensation that no one particularly cares about what you do and that it's absolutely beyond absurd to think you'll ever make a living from it. Maybe you know the feeling.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen after Kimmie came out, exactly... Some sort of coronation, possibly? With long lines of publishers and agents and Hollywood media-types all genuflecting in the light of my holy cartoon achievement, offering the entirety of the earth for my filthy pleasures. Or a medal, maybe. A medal would be pretty good. Or even just a slight increase in website traffic, frankly. But oddly enough, none of that has happened. The truth is that I made one respectable little book, it was purchased by a respectable number of people, it received a series of respectable reviews, and now everyone's moved on to the next thing. Which is just fine, really. Great, even. I mean, an artist can't act as though his/her entire career hinges on any one project striking BIG. You've got to keep moving, keep churning out work, keep pitching, pitching, pitching. Keep improving. Eventually, if you're very, very, very lucky, something in your big churny churn-pile of work will "click" and put you on the road to a steady, livable income.

That's how success usually comes to people, I think.

SO: Serenity Rose Vol. 2 then. It's not exactly a steady, livable income, but screw it - making Serenity comics makes me happy. It's What I Want To Do. And it seems to make a small number of other people happy, too, so it's more than worth the tumbling-in-space.

(Expect a largish announcement soon...)

WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGE.

Speaking of small numbers of people my work en-happies, three more interviews have come in, with Jimmy Misanthrope (wherein I describe "horror flavor"), Exit (wherein I discuss construction-paper-based Star Trek spoofs), and Laura Howell (which contains no "lures" for female readers). Thanks to all three of you guys for sending such great questions, and for taking the time to put them up for all to see.

Also: Thanks to R.C. Baker at the Village Voice for mentioning Kimmie in his big year-end comic wrap-up. And for calling it "Neuromancer for the Hello Kitty crowd," which is about as perfect a description I could ever want.

ALSO also: Still more thanks to Taxy and "Rob of UnSpace" for posting reviews on Kimmie's Amazon page. It's always cool to see those. More!

And now that I've posted links to 6 different units of praise after a long "Does anyone care?" tirade, I think I've reached my "hypocritical miserablist" quotient for the day. To be honest, just writing all this has helped "the mood" pretty significantly. I should probably just not post this, but... eh, whatever. NOT posting it would be the lame thing, really.

Sweeney Todd was fantastic, by the way.

Back to work!

Ancient-ness.

2007-12-14T08:36:47Z

"I grew up with your work :)"

That was the most recent comment left on my MySpace page. I'm just going to pretend it was posted by some strange visitor from the far-off future so that I don't have to freak out about my ancient-ness just yet. But thanks anyway, "Xenster!" I hope in your time my influence has finally reached the Hubbardian levels I've always dreamed of.

Speaking of ancient things, googled "Serenity Rose #1" the other day (someone was looking for a place to buy the original SR floppies*), and this weird little site showed up in the results. Imagine Casting seems to be a place where you can "cast" a theoretical movie version of your favorite books or whatever, and waaay back in 2005 someone did just that with Serenity Rose. It's sort of amusing to look at, especially since I've honestly never given this kind of thing much thought (the Serenity movie is always stop motion in my mind). Drew Carey seems about right for the mayor, I guess, but Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Stiletta? The crazy superhuman girl from Serenity as Sera? Joss Whedon as Valentine? (Okay, I made that last one up. In reality, they've cast a small child as Valentine.)

Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny. But it brings up an important question: Who would you cast in a Serenity Rose live action movie? Paul Reubens in every role, I say.

In other developments...

Mr. John E. Mitchell recently posted a long-ish Kimmie-centric interview with me at his fabulous Shuffleboil site, so go check that out if you want to hear what I sound like in transcripted phone conversation form (hint: hoo boy). Thanks, John! It was a lot of fun to do. (And for anybody still waiting for Q&A answers, I'll finally be getting around to them this Sunday. Sorry for the hold-up!)

AND FINALLY: Don't forget the GREAT HOLIDAY ART SALE still going on in the heartshapedskull store. 100's of pages from Serenity Rose, Kimmie66, and Confessions of a Blabbermouth are still available for $35 a pop, although the Serenity reserves are rapidly dwindling... Issue one is almost completely gone, as a matter of fact, which is kind of weird to think about...

Be seeing ya.

*Note: There does not appear to be any such place. Except eBay.

The Great Holiday Art Sale.

2007-12-06T23:46:03Z

Ho ho ho!

Christmastime is upon us, and 'tis the season of compensated giving at the heartshapedskull.com web store. Yes indeed, the GREAT HOLIDAY ART SALE is go!

Over 50 original pages from Serenity Rose Vol. 1: $35 each.

Over 100 original pages from Kimmie66: $35 each.

Over 100 original pages from Confessions of a Blabbermouth: $35 each.

I am not unlike Santa Claus, eh? Except Santa doesn't, y'know, charge anything for his presents, I guess... But I bet he would if he had indie comics projects to finance, though. And how awesome would that be!

It would be gauche to point out how cool it is to get original artwork as a Christmas present, so I won't. I will, however, point out how stupid low my prices are ($35), and strongly encourage you to take advantage of my stupidity. Here's the thing: I want you to have my drawings, I want to sell them all, and I think selling original art is a far better way to fund SR Vol. 2 (and get it out before we're all old and dead) than taking on buckets of freelance work. Better for sanity, too!

THE FINE PRINT: All pages are first come first served, shipping is free within the U.S. (generally about $5 or so for international, unless you want something fancy), and Paypal is my payment option of choice. I should also point out that the pages might not be $35 forever, so get in while the gittin's good.

Send your requests to serenity@heartshapedskull.com.

Good luck, everybody... and thank you so much for helping me bring Serenity Rose Vol. 2 to life at long, long last.

Indeed she has, mysterious off screen voice... Indeed she has.

South Pasadena

2007-11-29T21:46:23Z

Well, that was kinda tedious...

Sorry to be out of contact extra-long there. Ami's "gig" up in Portland came to an end recently, so we boxed up all our books, cats, and drawing implements and u-hauled it back to California (less than 5 miles from where we were a year ago, oddly enough). I'm happy to be back here with, y'know, all my friends and familiar stuffs and whatnot, but it was definitely sad to leave the Pacific Northwest.

Here are the top 5 things I will miss about Portland:

1) Powell's Books. A full city block stacked 4-stories high with used and new books. Powell's is the best reason to visit the city, as far as I'm concerned. Massive selection, indie atmosphere. I don't think I've ever gotten out of that place without spending at least $50; closer to $150 most of the time. Actually, come to think of it, I'm probably better off not having Powell's in my life at the moment.

2) Beauty. By which I mean "beautiful surroundings," both natural and not. I happen to like trees. Big trees. Evergreen, preferably, and lots of them, everywhere, downtown most especially. Portland has these things for me. And beautiful 19th and early 20th century buildings, as well (the old-fashioned drawbridges are particularly awesome). In comparison, Los Angeles looks like someone staggered into a patch of dying scrub-brush and started hurling cracked cinder blocks around.

3) My Palatial Estate. I had a huge apartment in Portland. It had a loft, a fireplace, two full bathrooms and ceilings so high they mocked the Creator himself. And all for less than $1000 a month. I need to go sit down for a while.

4) Chef Tucker's. Just a neat little French breakfasty-type place Ami and I used to like in the hipster/hippie (together at last!) Hawthorne district.

5) Genuine Friendliness. I think I heard a car horn maybe twice the whole time I was in Portland. In my first day back here in L.A., I heard approximately 400,000. It's understandable, though... When you're pissing away 90% of your life in traffic, it's bound to make you a little "edgy."

Oh, but I kid my homeland. We actually live in a very nice, tree-filled part of the L.A. megalopolis, and ,like I said, it's nice to be back in the Old Familiar. I just needed to do a little bitter venting with a tip of the non-existent hat to my former-fellow Portlanders. Thanks for a great year.

BEFORE I FORGET! A couple more reviews for Kimmie66 popped up while I was gone: A really great one from Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading, and a 3/5 from Exit at The Escape Complex. The book also got its first Amazon review (courtesy of Michael McGrath) right here. Thanks so much, Michael! Perhaps others will follow the trail you've so bravely blazed.

Also: Before I left I did a couple of pretty involved interviews for some comic booky websites, so stay en-reading-ed for links to those before too terribly long.

Now let me unpack that drawing table and see what Sera's up to...

Hooray!

2007-11-19T09:11:52Z

GREAT HEAPING THANKS to everyone who bought Kimmie66 last week! I really appreciate it... The day it came out, you guys helped it crack Amazon's TOP 100 MANGA list, which is pretty good for a book I"m pretty sure was mis-filed there. The comic seems to be doing really well so far, better than any book I've done to date (y'know, out of three), which is a big relief. If I'm lucky, it'll draw a little attention to Serenity, too.

A scattering of things:

1) I was killing some time at Borders before Beowulf* on Saturday and figured I'd check to see if Kimmie was there yet. No such luck, though. They had all the other Minx books (including Blabbermouth), but not that one. At first I was sad, but then I noticed I couldn't find any of the other comics I wanted to buy this week (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 3, Scott Pilgrim 4, and Zombies Calling), either. Conclusion: the Italian Mafia has been intercepting every Borders truck in the country, relieving them of their precious graphic novel cargo, and selling "hot funnies" on the black market. In a sense, copies of Kimmie66 are basically the Tijuana bibles of our time.

2) MORE REVIEWS! A fantastic one that require scrolling (and contains the phrase "photic reflex")! A fantastic one that does not require scrolling! Another one that mentions my basic storytelling competence! A good one from a page with Fletcher Hanks art at the top! And one from a fellow who already reviewed it before! Nice of him... Anyway, if you've written a review of Kimmie66, good or bad, send it to me and I'll link you up nice and pretty.

3) Serenity's publisher, SLG, has Kimmie66 available in their webstore right HERE. There's something sort of beautiful about the notion of supporting indie publishers by purchasing Big Two books from them. If you haven't picked up the book because, say, you can't bear to support the ongoing tyranny of evil corporate overlords like DC, then why not strike a blow for humanity and put your moneys here.

4) And finally, before I forget, a Mr. Erik Amill recently posted an interview with me at his DeviantArt page here, and under his webcomic right about here. Warning: It may contain a slightly embarrassing detail of my childhood. Slightly.

Thanks again to everyone who's bought the book so far! (But of course, what I really need now are some evangelists...)

*"Borders Before Beowulf" rocking Coachella this April 27!