Comic Art

Received an email in March from Steve Rude (his wife actually) offering big discounts on some older pages.  Looking through this one caught my eye: lots of ink and some action on the page.

Finally got around to scanning this year’s art additions.  In January (February perhaps, losing track) there was a one day show in Toronto with Kevin Maguire as the only guest.  I arrived early and waited in line so I could at least get something from him.

Once at his table he had a bunch of headshots done the night before at his hotel: he wasn’t doing any sketches that day.  There was quite a selection but it came down to the best facial expression: it was the Hulk below or a Blue Beetle.   I think I made the right choice.

My final item from the 2008 Toronto Fan Expo: a second Ramon Perez JSA Classified page.

I should start off by saying I’m not an Ed McGuinness fan.  While at Fan Expo in Toronto I ran across Dexter Vines: he’s an excellent inker and had some nice pages for sale.  This Watcher page jumped out at me, mostly because of that Kirby-esque outstretched hand.

Another find from the Fan Expo: picked this up from the inker Drew Geraci.  As always I’m drawn to the black heavily inked pages.

My highlight piece from Fan Expo 2008: a glorious Wonder Woman sketch from Darwyn Cooke.  I had spotted him around the show on Friday and I found out he would be selling some of his sketch books from artist’s alley on Saturday morning.  Saturday I paced until I spotted him and was the first in line: he had done headshots of 50’s style women in each so I picked out my favourite.  Then he pulled out a portfolio of stuff for sale: I was blown away by the material but managed to pick out the item below.

First pieces online from the recent Toronto Fan Expo.  Tim Sale was one of the big names I wanted to get a piece from and he employs a unique system, or rather the two or three associates he had with him employed.  Tim does about ten sketches a day and hands out cards to the first people in his line giving a time that day when he’ll draw your sketch.  This is a great system: you don’t need to waste hours in line waiting for no real reason.  The one caveat is that he only spends 10-15 minutes on each piece, but his style fits the limited time frame.  I was in line the second day and brought a friend to wait with me since he didn’t want a Sale piece and I really wanted two.

For the Doctor Strange I provided reference material.  I really wanted a Dr. Fate but Tim didn’t want to do one: I asked for Hawkman but didn’t have reference material so I went with the Hulk.

Two items from the Art Symposium.  Ramon had pages from his JSA Classified run with him: I couldn’t afford the flashback splash pages that I really wanted but did get this beautiful page with Wildcat and Catwoman.  I didn’t want to squander an opportunity so I requested an Alan Scott Green Lantern sketch.

At the Toronto Symposium I picked up a commission piece from Michael Cho.  I had emailed him last spring about it and he told me it would take awhile but I didn’t mind.  He’s a great artist and love his single colour work; in fact he was finishing up one at the show of Superman and Lois Lane that was stunning.

To the left is the finished piece: to the right are his pencils from the back of the piece: he lightboxes the pencils to do the ink and marker work.

I attended the Sequential Art Symposium in Toronto this past Saturday. It was held prior to the 2008 Joe Shuster Awards in Toronto. It sounded like an exciting event that would have a large community of Canadian creators, in theory at least. I was there for three hours and there were eight local artists and one from elsewhere in Canada; during my time there I saw about twenty attendees. It was poorly advertised and while they had a nice poster I only heard about it through some artist contacts: Michael Cho and Ramon Perez.

One happy note from the Shuster Awards: my local comic shop Big B Comics won retailer of the year. Congratulations guys!