d_morris

 Hello, you've stumbled onto the journal of Dan Morris.  I'm a cartoonist based in the southeastern United States also looking to getting into teaching comics or sequential art on a college level.  Feel free to add me to your friends list or follow me on your RSS feed.    I mostly write about comics, movies, and art on here and how the three relate to each other.  Sometimes I talk about life which doesn't involve comics which usually does involve comics.  If I don't add you back, don't worry.  I probably haven't seen seen that you've added me.  I recommend adding a comment to let me know you have added me!  Tell me a little about yourself and I'll add you as soon as you have.  Anyways enjoy the writing and I hope not to be boring.  Feel free to comment and get some discussion going.  That's what this journal meant to do.

Thought I would share some stuff I've done in the past few days with folks. 




Ross Campbell's been uploading some awesome Ninja Turtle fanart on his livejournal. It inspired me to do this piece in my spare time.  Donatello has always been my favorite Turtle.  I definitely recommend that you go to his blog to check them out!  Also I'll probably post another drawing in the future that I'm working on with the Turtles.  They're a lot of fun to draw.



This is from my sketchbook.  I just thought I would share it with you guys.

Comment and I'll give you a letter, then you have to list ten people/places/things you love that begin with that letter, afterward post it on your journal and fill out letters of your own.

yawmin has challenged me with the letter G!  

( Go Go Gadget Journal entry! )

As many of the people who know me will tell you, I like size changing superheroes.  It was probably when The Atom of all people kills Darkseid in JLA #14 in a post apocolyptic future simply because he realizes that Darkseid can see him and light is the only thing that can go through his force field.  However, I have a very special place in my heart for Hank Pym, aka Ant-Man.

Hank Pym is possibly the craziest superhero ever that wasn't a member of the Doom Patrol.  He's probably most famous as the guy who did this to his ex-wife



This is one of those points where superhero comics thought they were becoming "adult".  Instead it's one of those reminders of the hidden misogyny of some superhero comics and the people writing them (though it says a lot more that I could just type in "Hank Pym slaps around Wasp" and get that image instantly).  Apparently he's trying to build a robot that only he can defeat because only he knows it's critical weakness.  Joke's on him.  His wife beats the robot,  she divorces him, and he gets kicked out of the Avengers. 

However, there was craziness before this!  Back in the 60s it was like every 6 months Hank Pym would get a new identity.  Heck one time, he even denied that he had switched identities! 



Not to mention he created Ultron, a robot that ended up killing an entire country.  Plus he had a nervous breakdown.  Now he's going around in his ex-wife's old identity.  I hope that at some point this creates gender identity issues for him so that his crazy goes up to like 11.  It's very clear no writer had any ideas what to do with the character so the natural inclination was to just make him bonkers.  I like that the character has all these crazy issues and is a complete wreck as a human being yet they keep letting him join the Avengers.  However what's really made me love the character are the covers for his 60s comics.

Apparently Ant-Man and Wasp never had to leave the comfort of home to find adventure.


Apparently though, the Human Top seemed to give Giant-Man and the Wasp a lot of trouble.  He was so much of a jerk that he made Hank Pym actually leave his house for once when he picked a fight.



Then there was that time that the Human Top accosted Giant Man and the Wasp while they were shopping at Sears.


Then again at least the Human Top wasn't such a jerk as to try and drown Hank Pym in his own kitchen.



No wonder Hank Pym went crazy.  Anytime he got home after hanging out with the Avengers, he'd get attacked in his home.  I'm pretty sure I would go crazy and build a robot that only I could defeat to impress my friends if some jerk named the Porcupine kept showing up at my house and used my own kitchen against me.

 

Apparently Bill Watterson has just done an interview.  It's about the legacy of Calvin and Hobbes.  It's interesting to me how much of a disconnect he has from his work or at least the legacy surrounding his work.  To him, everything was said and done when he finished that last strip.  I'm still curious what his fine art that he's been doing since the end of the strip looks like.  Anyways, thought I would share this.

Life is going pretty well right now.  I've more or less made myself scarce this quarter not talking to a lot of people online or posting here too much mostly so that I can focus on school.  The goal this quarter is working my ass off so I can graduate and start drawing comics for a living.  Not taking anything for granted school wise this winter which was a huge mistake I made last quarter.  Gotta learn and move on yo.

 For awhile I've been posting comics by people who are not me.  So today I will change things up a little.  Here's the four pages I did adapting the opening of the Road Warrior.  Actually, if you've seen the movie this scene isn't in there.  It comes before the opening we're all familiar with of Max getting chased by Wez and his crew setting up why Max is getting chased in the first place.  I re-watched the movie over Christmas break and man does that movie get better every time I see it.







I'm really happy with these pages.  A few things I would fix but mostly related to anatomy.  I had a friend who is a photographer write that she takes her photography very seriously and I like to think I do the same with making comics.  However lately when I've been drawing comics, I think it's really starting to show.

I've been rereading the Tintin stuff I have right now which obviously has been a big influence on me.  When I was looking for reference I came across this awesome Citroen ad



Tintin and Snowy are very excited to be driving through the Savannah as that giraffe just sort of goes "What the hell are you idiots doing?"  Or maybe the giraffe is hoping that he doesn't share the fate of the rhino

Yes Tintin obliterated a Rhino with a stick of dynamite.

Also these are the best panels in Hellboy ever


At the beginning of the quarter one of my teachers looked at work I've done in the past and mentioned that my work reminded him of the work of Matt Wagner.  I took that as a huge compliment.   Matt Wagner more than any other artist influenced a lot of the choices that I've made and continue to make as a cartoonist even today. 



This comic literally changed how I looked at comics as artform. 

Before I read Grendel, comics were more or less Jim Lee's X-Men to me.


There's nothing really wrong with being 13 and liking Jim Lee's comics.  They appeal to that 13 year old in all of us.  Heck I wouldn't even be drawing comics today if it wasn't for Jim Lee drawing X-Men.

Yet those comics sort of lack the pizazz that seeing something like this when you're 16 does.



That spread more or less was mindblowing to me as a teenager.  Suddenly comics didn't have to exist solely as panels on a page.  You could represent action in completely different and exciting ways.  It also fueled my love of great design.  There's a real art deco feel to this comic that aids immeasurably in the experience.

Yet also in this comic is some really expressive cartooning that while it may not have directly registered with me, I think in the intervening years has played a really big part on me especially now.


It's amazing that even with out the words you get a real sense for both of these characters.  Larry Stohler clearly comes across as a bored socialite while Hunter Rose is a man who has some sort of agenda.

One thing that Matt Wagner does really well is double page spreads and never repeating himself.


This one is from a Grendel story that doesn't really feature Grendel in it and centers around a cop investigating corruption in the police force.

This page on the other hand is from the first Batman/Grendel

Oh sure  the symbolism is completely obvious but this page just had a huge effect on me.  Not to mention that Matt Wagner draws one of the best versions of Batman ever.

Of course something that really gets me is how Wagner might use similar layouts to different effects.  Take these two layouts.  The first is from the previously mention Grendel story about the cop while the next page is from Batman/Grendel.


Essentially on both pages he has a strict grid format that reveals things very cinematically while he breaks up the page with panels that take place outside the action.  However, he uses them for different effects.  On the first page it becomes a way for him to ratchet up the tension that he's built up with the police officer being trapped in the restroom with the panel break up being used to convey an important piece of information.  On the Batman page, Wagner uses a similar grid system to depict the action but uses the three overlaying panels to convey the most important information which is the child falling off the high rise.  

I'm not going to go into much more but this work from Matt Wagner continues to drive me today to make comics that use the medium to create new and interesting ways to tell stories.  

Here's one last Matt Wagner page though that I think is fantastic in utilizing so many things to tell an interesting story.



The loose cartooning, the use of color, and even the lettering (the top lettering are the notes of a writer make a non-fiction version of the story going on in the panels while the lettering on the bottom is the story) all untie to create comics that seriously even today make me think outside the box.

I saw this on the front of Wikipedia.  Tsutomu Yamaguchi the only recognized survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings passed away Monday at the age of 93.  It interested me that this man lived to be 93 especially having survived both Atomic bombs.  It fascinates me that not only did this only really affect him later in life, which was spent in an effort to see nuclear disarmament, but his children apparently suffer from a number of health problems that they believe they inherited inherited from their parents.  However, Mr. Yamaguchi believed it was his destiny to survive so that he could educate people on the horrors of atomic weapons.  His life is extremely fascinating or least it appears to be from that article.

I know that lot of the people who read my blog are fascinated by Japanese culture as am I but often I think we forget or don't even think about the cost that culture came at.  Now I'm not saying that we should be sympathetic to the Japanese people for World War II, as the Japanese military committed numbers of atrocities told and untold.  I sincerely believe that something had to be done as they were not going to surrender.  I wonder what kind of country and culture would have evolved had we sent troops in to fight the Japanese instead of dropping the bombs.  The dropping of the two Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has scarred the country in ways both physical and psychological (there's a reason majority of anime starts off with an explosion or revolves around the destruction of something).  This goes without mentioning how difficult life was after the war for the country, exemplified best in Grave of the Fireflies.  Nothing occurs in a vaccum folks.

Anyways, I just thought I would share this as reading about this man fascinated me.

Hello folks I hope everyone's holiday went well. It was a very small Christmas at my parent's house this year. My brother and I got big presents about a month before Christmas (mine was seeing Christa in Florida). Regardless, I did get an Ipod nano and my brother got me that 70 Years of Marvel Comics collection which is pretty nice. It has a Kirby Monster comic which makes me very happy. I really want Marvel to release a book of nothing but Kirby Monster comics. It also makes me very happy that the Fantastic Four comic picked for the book is the very first appearance of the Red Ghost. You know the Fantastic Four villain with the 3 super powered monkeys for sidekicks


Man, I love Kirby Fantastic Four villains.  They are pretty much all this kind of level of insane.

So 2009?  It started out great.  I got engaged.  I got to take a class with one of my artistic heroes in the winter.  Then after spring, it wasn't so great.  I lost one of my teachers in a freak hiking accident and then I lost a friend who was my age to cancer.  During the fall, I was a wreck.  The less said about every thing that happened the better.  Yet I can't count 2009 the worst year of my life.  I found someone with whom I can share my life.  I met so many artistic heroes this year and made many new contacts in the comic book industry.   Also I grew as an artist and I'm starting to really find my voice and feel as if I'm competent in this medium.  I also got to be a teaching assistant with Brian Ralph, artist on Cave-In and Daybreak (which was one of my favorite comics from this past decade).  There were good experiences there that did cancel out the negative ones.  Unfortunately, I let the negative one outweigh the good experiences.

Anyways, 2010 is starting and it's going to be a good year.  Once again this quarter, I will be a teaching assistant this time to Mia Paluzzi, a fantastic artist and who was the teaching assistant for the class in which I'm helping out (comics scripting). I will graduate school in March.  I'll get out of Savannah.  Also at some point in the future, Christa and I will move in together (somewhere) and I'll get to start a new chapter of my life with her.

Here are my favorite comics for the year. Noticably absent are unfortunately Asterios Polyp, Pim and Francie, and A Drifting Life (which I'm currently reading), none of which I've been able to read (or afford). Another book that I didn't get to read this year and really wanted to was Mat Brinkman's Multiforce given that it's his comics follow up to my favorite book of the decade Teratoid Heights.  Either way it was a fantastic year for comics and says alot that there were several comics I didn't get to this year.  


5. Order of Tales by Evan Dahm (www.rice-boy.com)
A prequel of sorts to Evan Dahm's earlier work of fantasy Rice Boy, Order of Tales is the story of Korak, the last of a family of storytellers, caught up in events far greater than he is .  Order of Tales is everything I want in a fantasy story.  It's well paced and doesn't get caught up in the details of it's world.  The story is slowly unfolding and the full details of the plot haven't been revealed yet but I look forward with every new page to seeing where it goes.  Dahm's art knows when to take us to new heights and when keep us wanting more.  The creatures and characters we come across are inventively designed while Dahm's storytelling is reserved.  If you're not currently reading Order of Tales I recommend going to www.rice-boy.com and spending an afternoon catching up.


4. Batman and Robin #1-3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (DC Comics)
Batman's been missing for months and Gotham City has become overrun by increasingly bizarre criminals.  Who will save Gotham? The new Batman and Robin but only if they can stop bickering and work as a team.  Superhero comics these days are rarely this pedal to the metal.  Instead of spending six issues filled with meandering dialogue and plodding action, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely in the space of three issues created an exciting Batman story that set up a new status quo and made it interesting. Very few writers in comics know get Batman like Grant Morrison who has been writing some of the best Batman stories in recent years.  Frank Quitely's art conveys both the action and the drama of two men trying to live up to the standard set by their respective father.  


3. King City by Brandon Graham (Image Comics)
3 people are living in the monstrosity that is King City and trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives.  Brandon Graham came on to my radar in 2007 with his beautiful book Multiple Warheadz by Oni Press.  King City was originally published by Tokyopop before their OEL program went bellyup a few years ago.  Thankfully Image comics is putting out the entire story including the material that hasn't been physically published yet.  Brandon Graham's storytelling is in some ways the comic book equivalent of the Pixies song structure of LOUDquietLOUD; Scenes of massive detail and violence buffered in between by the quiet moments and inner lives of his characters.  This is comics storytelling at it's finest.


From Pluto


From 20th Century Boys

2. Pluto/20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa (Viz Media/Shogakukan)
Naoki Urasawa, artist of Monster, finally saw two of his most acclaimed comics see publication stateside this year.  Pluto is a retelling of the Astroboy story "Greatest Robot on Earth".  It concluded in Japan this year but the stateside publication allowed me to reexamine the story of someone killing the world's most famous robots.  It's a haunting story that's equal parts a mystery, political commentary, and rumination one's own past.  20th Century Boys is a slightly more daring work but just as good and just as haunting.  It's the story of young men dealing with the consequences of their past as there is the possibility that one of their former friends is committing unspeakable crimes.  What gets me about 20th Century Boys is the way that Urasawa plays with three different timelines without confusing the reader while at the same time making it come across as relevant to the story.


1. Far Arden by Kevin Cannon (Top Shelf Comics)
My book of the year is another work that's about a man haunted by his past disguised as a rollicking adventure.  Far Arden is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.  Army Shanks is the latest in a long tradition of great comic characters; the ass kicking sailor.  Shanks is a character in the mold of Captain Haddock and Popeye with the exception that Shanks is a man trying to run away from his past.  When he finally deals with it though is when it's far too late.  Kevin Cannon builds an amazing world while telling his story that I hope he revisits often.  Also it has the best sound effects in a comic this year.

There are several comics I'm looking forward to in the coming year.  Hopefully Paul Pope's Battling Boy will see the light of day.  Definitely gearing up for James Stokoe's Orc Stain series at Image.  Also anything that Faith Erin Hicks (aka smuu) has coming out in the next year has me excited.

By the way, lately I've read the Huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Omnibus vol. 1 collecting the old Mirage comics.  It's been really exciting reading these old comics.  They're not the most competently made comics ever but there's something really punk rock about the way they're made.  It's really raw comics making but there's a lot of energy in the pages (and zip-a-tone).  I like the way that New York is depicted in the comics.  It's not the most artistically accurate but at the same time it really conveys a sense of place and the feeling of how overcrowded and overwhelming New York can be which I think is just as effective.



I also really like how the Leonardo special is told.  It's a simple story of the Turtles getting ready for Christmas dinner and Leonardo getting attacked by the Foot Clan as he tries to make it home.  



I really like that the action sequences (which are entirely silent) are on top while the more everyday stuff is on the bottom.  It's one of those neat little things that you can only really do in comics.  If you've seen the very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, this is basically the sequence on the roof of April's apartment.  It's amazed me how faithful the first Turtles movie was to the comics to the point I'd actually like to see it again.  It's been years since I've seen Ninja Turtles I.  

Anyways I hope that everything is going well for everyone else.  I'll be maintaining radio silence for the next few months in an effort to be successful in my last quarter of school.  It's for the best and I need to be focused.  I might post my art in the next few weeks but that's about it.

10 Best of the decade

Coming up with this list was like pulling teeth. The problem was that this was such a great decade it was hard to do two things. One was figure out which comics came out this decade that we liked. A great thing about this decade was that there was a greater sense of archiving essential reading such as the comic strips of the past, translating manga, translating older manga, etc. Two was then sorting through the various comics that did come out this decade. It was the decade of the graphic novel and the Web Comic. This was a decade where cartoonists could choose from a variety of forms to explore narratives and worlds. This was a great decade for comics and I'm looking forward to seeing where next decade takes us. Here's for me the best graphic novels, mini-comics, webcomics, and such that I read this past decade.

Honorable Mentions - Jack Staff by Paul Grist, Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez, Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Cold Heat by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro, Gunnerkirgg Court by Tom Siddell, Sand Chronicles by Hinako Ashihara, Black Hole by Charles Burns, The Mourning Star by Kazimir Strezpek, Rice Boy by Evan Dahm

10. The Blot by Tom Neely ( I Will Destroy You Comics)

This was the debut comic of the decade. Tom Neely came out of nowhere with a comic that was both haunting and frightening. Abstract without being pretentious, personal without being navel gazing, this is the graphic novel equivalent of David Lynch's [i]Eraserhead[/i]. Heck I can hear the white noise soundtrack as I read it. It's the story of a man who is coming to terms with a break up only to constantly be assaulted by a mysterious blot. Not since Al Columbia have comics functioned like this.

9. Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (Wildstorm/DC)

If there was anyone in superhero comics that seemed to build a real honest to god cult this decade it was Warren Ellis. More than anyone else Ellis shifted the direction that superhero comics as a whole went this decade, for better or worse. For me, the comic that seemed to sum up Ellis's thoughts on the entire genre wasn't so much his Authority run from the previous decade but this comic. Watching Ellis and Cassaday ably worm their way through the entirety of the Superhero, looking at it's origins and influences while at the same time weaving a great superhero story.

8. Iron Clad by Dan Zettwoch (self-published)
I remember seeing the art for this in an interview with Dan Zettwoch and thinking it was cool. Then I got the actual comic and then [i]folded[/i] this page out.

Rarely has a comic been produced with such a sense of scale in mind to use that as a means to furthering the story. It's simply a retelling of the American Civil War battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack but it's in the telling of the story where it becomes exciting. Zettwoch's use of cutaway panels and the massive size allows him to make the story come alive when most comics about history feel like telling you why this is important. Comics are supposed to be about showing you and Zettwoch shows us history in a way that has to be seen to be believed.

7. Pluto by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka (Viz Media)

Remakes don't exist in comics. Sure there are plenty of homages but out and out remakes? None I can think of off the top of my head. Besides with rare exception remakes generally don't work. Then it's all the most surprising that this one did. Retelling Tezuka's "World's Strongest Robot" story, Urasawa took the bare bones of that story and turned into a story with many layers. It's a murder mystery, a critique on US foreign policy, and a story of men trapped in their pasts. Manga rarely gets this good.

6. Daybreak by Brian Ralph (Bodega Distribution)

This was the zombie book of the decade. Why? Because you're the main character. I'm not kidding. This comic is entirely told from the second person point of view. I remember when this book was being serialized on a blog and just being blown away by Brian Ralph's ingenious use of the comics medium. Comics are already an active reading experience but this comic brings it into even more of an active experience. You feel like you're actively exploring this world that you're being introduced to but at the same time you're getting the story of this one armed survivor who is trying to make do in a harsh world.

5. Street Angel by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca (SLG Publishing)

This is a comic I shouldn't have liked as much as I did. None of these elements should have worked nearly as well as they. Yet here is one of the best comics of the decade, a young girl who gets by with nothing more than her wits and her trusty skateboard. This was Rugg and Maruca's love letter to the comics and movies they were surrounded with growing up. This is a funny, exciting, and well drawn comic that's serious but doesn't take itself seriously. It's everything you want in a superhero comic without actually being one. Also it has the best ninjas versus pirates ever committed to anything.

4. Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison and various artists (DC Comics)

I'm not afraid of saying that Grant Morrison wrote the best superhero comics of the decade. They were generally the ones that I cared about on a regular basis. It was hard picking between this and All-Star Superman but there was something about Seven Soldiers that for me made it more interesting. It was through and through a comic that could have only been published by Marvel and DC. It was in many ways an extension of the work of Jack Kirby without being slavishly like Kirby. These books were Morrison through and through pushing the genre into the 21st century while at the same time critiquing the bloated mess the genre has been for years. These were what we want and expect superhero comics to be.

3. Achewood by Chris Onstadt (Online)

Lots of people have said newspaper comics are dead but the truth is that they all just moved to the web. Webcomics, in many ways, are the logical extension of both the daily newspaper and self-publishing and independent comics. No comic better exemplified what you could do on the web than Chris Onstadt's strip. No comic this decade made me I laugh as much as this one has. It has all the hallmarks of a classic comic strip (memorable characters and sharp humor) but in many ways recalls the kind of black and white indie comic you might have seen in a comic shop years ago. It's one of a kind and am I glad that it showed up this decade.

2. Kramer's Ergot edited by Sammy Harkham, Buenaventura Press

Kramer's Ergot was to the 00s what Raw Magazine was for the 80s and early 90s. This series was showcase for a generation of Alternative comic book artists. Sammy Harkham lovingly curated a group of talented artists into creating a series of anthologies that only better and better. There were so many artists that I and I am sure other artists were exposed to through Kramer's Ergot 4,5, and 6. There may not be an 8 after number 7 (whose giant size and high price tag caused a furor when it was released) but that's not the point. These books were meant to capture a time, a place, and an attitude that for me accurately sums up how the medium was being pushed forward in this decade.

1. Teratoid Heights by Mat Brinkman (Highwater Books)
If there was a theme that permeated this decade from the highest towers of superhero comics to the lowest basement of self-published mini-comics it was world building. The best comics this decade were concerned about creating worlds and showing them to us. No comic did this better than Mat Brinkman's Teratoid Heights.

This is a collection of Mat Brinkman's mini-comics that I think was done in reverse chronological order. It came out of the Fort Thunder comics collective in Providence, RI (it's most famous alumnus is the acid punk band Lightning Bolt). I'm not going to lie. There is no narrative. There's barely any words in the book until the end. The line work is scratchy and bizarre (the comic was apparently drawn with a bamboo pen). Yet at the same time, this is a comic I've returned to consistently throughout this entire decade.

There's a dreamlike quality about it. Things happen and will shift suddenly without warning. Images recall things but only faintly. I can see it's echoes in all the comics that I've put up on this list from it's choice of format (this book is tiny), to it's surreal qualities. There hasn't been a comic this decade that's affected me nearly as much as this one.

Normally I don't get excited about random announcements made on comic sites by Marvel and DC because mainly most of them are kind of lame. However, today I went to Newsarama and found this image on there!



I've been really pleased with Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham on Fantastic Four's run. Especially Eaglesham mimicing some of Jon Buscema's and Jack Kirby's drawing quirks into his own. The fact that they're going with Mole Man this early in the run and not someone huge like Doctor Doom or Galactus as bad guy makes me really happy. Then again I am a sucker for the Mole Man as he is my favorite Fantastic Four villain. A man who dwells underground, wears weird sunglasses, and commands a LEGION OF GIANT MONSTERS? I ask who can hate that. I was upset that Mole Man was overlooked as a villain for the Fantastic Four movies but in retrospect given how lousy those movies were, I'm kinda glad that he hasn't gotten the movie treatment yet.

Is it too much to hope that one day they make a Mole Man Mighty Mug action figure?

The other day, my friend Michael and I were talking about our favorite creations by Jack Kirby, the king of superhero comics. For those reading this journal completely unfamiliar with the name Jack Kirby, Kirby is the guy that created or co-created pretty much everyone important at Marvel (except Spider-Man though if you were to ask him about that he would say he did). He also created some of the weirder characters over at DC and it's most notable super bad guy Darkseid. Kirby is also one of the best and craziest people to ever draw comics. The guy operated on an entirely different plane of thought. This was the list that I put together for myself.

5. Ego the Living Planet
This guy is one of Kirby's weirder ideas. Basically Galactus showed up again in the pages of Thor and Kirby and Stan Lee needed someone that was a threat for Galactus. Answer? Naturally a Ppanet that thinks for itself. Many artists have drawn Ego over the years even Kirby himself like here.




But I've always found this version of Ego on the first page he appeared to be even creepier. This is one of many photo collages that Kirby often experimented with throughout his tenure at Marvel in the 1960s (they showed up a lot in Fantastic Four).



Man I just love that the ultimate foe for Galactus was a planet that could fight back.


4. Black Bolt aka Blackagar Boltagon
I've researched this and Black Bolt's name really is Blackagar Boltagon. I can't make these things up. He is a guy who does not take crap from anyone like right here.


There is a reason that he's king of the Inhumans. He will beat up anyone that tries to take on the Inhumans. Oh and he can't talk because if he did, he would level mountains with the sound of his voice. If you piss him off, he could say supercalifragilisticexpialodoucious and obliterate you, your city, your state, and anything in that vicinity. Seriously how awesome is that?



3. The Thing aka Ben Grimm
As with any of these characters, I could talk about Ben Grimm all day. Of any of Kirby's characters, Ben Grimm is really his most autobiographical. Many of the elements that make up Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew were taken directly from Kirby's own life. He's Jewish, had an older brother who died at a young age, and grew up in a relatively rough neighborhood (Ben Grimm's Yancey St. is a stand in for the Delancey Street where Kirby himself grew up). However the qualities that always stick out for me is that Ben Grimm is one of those characters that never gives up.




He'll get his ass kicked by the Hulk, clobbered by Galactus, or get his ass handed to him by any number of foes but he never gives up. Ben Grimm may not be the prettiest person in the Marvel Universe but man is he one of the bravest and toughtest.


2. Mister Miracle
My appreciation for many of my favorite characters in comics came out of reading Grant Morrison's JLA run in the mid-Nineties where superheroes were treated seriously but the stories were still fun. There were several great moments in the book and one of them came towards the end where the JLA is about to face a huge galactic level threat and someone invades the Watchtower with ease. That someone? Mister Miracle, the man who can get out of any trap, who nonchalantly tells Steel "You guys better beef up your security." It's one of that moments that just perfectly defines a character and in this case, one Scott Free. The idea of a man who can escape from any trap has always appealed to me.





Especially when those traps are as ridiculous as these.

1. The Demon aka Jason Blood
The classic Kirby character trait is that every character is a juxtaposition of two opposites. The Thing is a man trapped in a body he doesn't want. Reed Richards has to live with the fact that it was his genius that mutated his whole family. Mister Miracle lives with the fact that he was raised on a world that is in opposition to his own beliefs of freedom. The character for me that best embodies the Kirby duality is Jason Blood the Demon



A man who is possessed by a demon for his betrayal of Camelot. He's one of the great anti-heroes of comics. A monster who tries to do good but in the end wants to do evil. There is a constant struggle between Jason's human side and Etrigan who has no desire to return to the human form that was put on him.



He's also one of the great designs of characters in comics (even if he's lifted wholesale from a Hal Foster Prince Valiant comic).







One of the all time great characters in comics by one of the all time greats.

Hello world, it's been awhile since I've updated. I hope that everyone is having a pleasant December. I'm home for the break. This past quarter the less said about it the better. In regards to school, my uncle said it best, "You bozo". To sum things up, I'm at SCAD for one more quarter. I can't afford anymore screw ups. I gotta graduate. So this break I've been working on new comics, keeping up my superhero sketchbook, and other things to get me in better work habits. It's time to finish school.

In more positive news, I got to see Christa the week of Thanksgiving. She was a more than enthusiastic tour guide around Hollywood Studios and the Magic Kingdom. Disney was Disney but I had a lovely time being able to walk around the park with Christa. Pictures were taken but at the end of the day my dad accidentally dropped my camera so until I switch the card into another camera or get the camera fixed no pictures for now. Christa was able to spend Thanksgiving and a few extra days with my family (we stayed at my grandmothers) which pleased me to no end. All in all a lovely visit.

Also thanks to everyone who gave me support when dealing with my ex-landlord. I really appreciate it. The less said about the situation in public the better. Just know that my parents and I won't sit on our butts about what happened. I have a new place that looks much nicer and I'm eager to live there for my last quarter.

I've got one or two new comics projects on the back burner right now. I'd show you what I've got but unfortunately I have no access to a scanner right now and again broken camera. Some people were at the Mini-Con that was part of my self-publishing class and some people saw my huge pages that I did for Senior Project. I've gone back to working in that vein. It seems to work for me and I enjoy it. Also I think for the forseeable future I'm going to set all my stories in the same fantasy setting. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll be working on fantasy stories. It just means I like the idea of a shared universe and a setting where I can free myself to do any kind of story I want.

Anyways


I reread Domu by Katsuhiro Otomo over Thanksgiving. I haven't read this comic in years. This sequence is one of my all time favorites in comics.






That sequence gets me everytime I read it. Shame this book is out of print.

Also recently Brandon Graham (royalboiler ) posted this Masemune Shirow story that I remembered reading in high school when I was really, really into anything that Dark Horse put out.






It's really different from everything else that he's done. It's very dreamlike in the way he tells the story. There's very little details about what's going on and elements just pop in and pop out. There's something about how disjointed the storytelling is that I think adds to the telling. The other Exon Depot stories can be read here.

And for comics that aren't Japanese, my friend tehdoombunny sent me Corto Maltese books from Italy. They're in Italian but they're fantastic and Hugo Pratt's technique is jaw droppingly gorgeous which I'm sure isn't news to anyone. Here's some pages from an english translation that NBM put out years ago.



Hugo Pratt has so much confidence with his inking. It's clearly influenced by the work of Milt Caniff on Terry and the Pirates. There's also a lot of trust and confidence in his audience. So much of this is just blobs and swirls but Pratt's confidence that you can read what the figures and shapes blow my mind.

Anyways, how is everyone?

In Florida right now. I'm with my parents and we're visiting my grandmother for Thanksgiving. We've stopped in Orlando for two days to visit Christa. We went to Disney which went well since Christa was our tour guide and kept us from being bored. I wasn't wild about the enormous crowds but it was a nice day to spend with my lady and my parents. I don't know if I'll be online for awhile but I thought I would update and say hello.

I think I'm going to ditch this comics thing and go into lawncare so I can turn people's lawns into Jack Kirby panels.

Hello folks, how are you? Sorry, I've been busy with school and haven't updated in awhile. I should update more often really. I tend to feel kinda pretentious and egocentric updating

Probably going to be stuck in Savannah one more quarter. I don't operate under pressure very well and I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well that I probably shouldn't have. I should have learned awhile ago. I'm leaving the place I've been for the last few months. It's not put me in a positive mental state. Ironically though the nicest roommates I've ever had. Hopefully my friend will be able to get out of the dorms and I will move in with her to an actual apartment. If not there is a back up plan or I stay in my current place of residence. Huzzah.

Anyways, I've been busy drawing stuff. I've started a daily sketchbook where everyday I'm drawing a different superhero. I need to get into the practice of drawing people everyday, not to mention inking, and practicing placing type in conjunction with images. So I figured this would be a good way to practice. Here are the first five I've done over at my Flickr account. Trying to vary the body types and figures that I'm drawing though I don't know how successful I'm doing there.

That's about all that's been going. How are you?

 "Chicago is New York for people who hate New York" - Graham Carswell, 10/27/09

For now though, let's get me posting pictures!

The first ten people to comment give me a request for a picture to be taken of something in my life. My favorite book, my workspace, and so on and so forth.

The only catch is-- no pictures of myself. It has to be of objects in my daily life. Then I will take pictures of the requested things, and post them in a separate entry.

My rule- no pictures relating to my home.  It's kinda embarassing.

Then those 10 people who requested photos have to post this same challenge in their own journal, with 1 additional rule (of their own choosing). The 10 people who comment on that entry, have to add ANOTHER rule of their own, and so on and so forth.

And the pictures spread.

AND GO!

So I've been quiet lately because I've been working on my Senior Project here at SCAD.  It's taken me awhile (and I went through two other ideas before I got to this) but here are the pages I turned in at the end of the quarter.  It's from a sci-fi story that I'm currently working but I'm not sure if I'll even use these pages because I think I might take the story in an entirely different direction.  Or maybe I'll keep them.  I'm not sure.  Anyways, here are my pages. 
( The world needs more mundane space comics... )

1. Leave me a comment with "Sancho Hernandez" in the subject line.
2. I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions. (But only if you want!)

( Answers to questions! )

I would write something about the passing of John Hughes but this blog post by a long time pen pal says more than I could. That blog says it all, basically Hughes was a storyteller of utmost sincerity.  That's why his teenage movies have stood the test of time when so many others we've forgotten.   His films while not cinematic masterpieces or deft uses of form but they still said something about the experience of being a teenager, both ups and downs.  I haven't cared about any of the other celebrities who have passed away recently but Hughes death means far more to me than those others honestly.  I should get a copy of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and watch it.