IT'S A CHRISTMAS (MISTER) MIRACLE....

ROM EXHIBITION

NON-PROFIT FUNDRAISER FOR BILL MANTLO FEATURING OVER 100 ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF ROM SPACEKNIGHT BY ARTISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.

(illustration by Renee French)

Thursday, Dec. 6th, 6-10pm. Show runs through Jan. 1st.

This December our First Thursday show is a tribute to my favorite comic character of all time, ROM Spaceknight, and the man who brought his adventures to life, Bill Mantlo. There will be over 100 contributors including: Jeffrey Brown, Sal Buscema, Guy Davis, Renee French, Simon Gane, Ken Garduno, Brandon Graham, Maureen Gubia, Kevin Hooyman, Corey Lewis, Al Milgrom, Jeff Parker, Ron Rege Jr, Zack Soto, Peter Thompson, Gordon Wiebe, Danijel Zezelj and more! A silent auction will be held for original art, and 11×17” poster prints of every contribution will be available for a suggested donation of $5 or more.

(l to r: Jeffrey Brown, Jonathan Case, Jim Rugg, Pete Toms, Jeff Lemire, Ricardo Venancio, Hyeondo Park, Simon Gane)

NOW LEAVING ESSEX COUNTY...

I've been AWOL from the blog lately, it has been an incredibly busy time of year for me as I've been working to finish Essex County Vol.3 before the holidays. And, I'm happy to say that I have indeed done just that, Essex 3: The County Nurse is completely finished, scanned, lettered! (a never before previewed scene above and below...)


After 3 years working on the Essex County books, it feel REALLY GOOD to be done with the project. Moreover, I am really excited to move on to news ideas and new projects. I have started writing and designing my next book, which will be published by Top Shelf. I'm not ready to let the cat out of the bag yet, but in the new year I'll have much more news about the book. But, I will say it is something I'm really excited about, it will be very different from the Essex books, but I think it will still appeal to those fans too.

On other news, my wife is currently exhibiting her work at The One of a Kind Show in Toronto, and I've traded in my brush and pen in for a couple of weeks to help her out.

And, I also thought I'd throw in my picks for the Best Comics of 2007, in no particular order...

1)Notes For A War Story-Gipi (First Second)



















2) Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Mortality- Brian Azerrello and Cliff Chiang (DC)

3) SuperSpy-Matt Kindt (Top Shelf)

4) Scalped-Jason Aaron (DC/Vertigo)


5) Shazam and The Monster Society of Evil-Jeff Smith (DC):



6) Garage Band-Gipi(First Second)

My publisher Top Shelf has a great sale on right now at their website, including a great deal on my books, so check it out!

RECENT COMMISSIONS

Here are a couple of recent commissioned pieces I did...The first is a portrait of Arthur C. Clark, by way of 2001: A Space Oddessy. More great literary portraits can be seen at Steven Gettis' site. The second is of course 70's Marvel character ROM SPACEKNIGHT, for an upcoming tribute benefit for bronze-age comic writer Bill Mantlo.

My #1 Fan

My book is so good it made my niece Lillianne drool, then pass out.

LAUNCH PARTY TONIGHT

for anyone in the Toronto area... there will be a launch party for GHOST STORIES tonight at the Victory Cafe on Markham Street. The event will run as a part of the Beguiling's monthly "industry night", and I will be previewing and reading from Essex County Volume 3: The Country Nurse! It's from 7-9, so still plenty of time to stop by and still make it out to your Halloween parties. Hope to see you there.

ELEMENTARY MY DEAR WATSON...

A recent commissioned piece I did...

GHOST STORIES LAUNCH PARTY!

TALES FROM THE FARM TRAILER!

This cool trailer for Tales From The farm was made by Top Shelf's brilliant tech-man, Marcel Sawicki.

SPX 2007 ROUND UP

Just got back from SPX 2007, and I gotta say it was my favorite show of the year! I had a blast hanging out with Brett Warnock, Chris Staros (pictured above with myself), Matt "Superspy" Kindt, Jeffrey Brown and Andy Hartzel. We debuted GHOST STORIES , and it went over really well, we sold a tonne of copies and the reception was quite positive.

I did a bunch of sketches for people, including this David Bowie for Wizard writer Sean T. Collins, and this "Little Head" from Dick Tracey for Richard Marcej.

And, of course, I also scored a lot of great comics. Here are some of the gems:

Burning Building Comics by Jeff Zwirek

A great short story, Dads by Rob "Surrogates" Venditti


The Infinite League vs Misc. by Ashley Holt

And the amazing Old-Timey Hockey Tales by Rob Ullman, who coincidentally was seated right across from me.

WORK IN PROGRESS: ANATOMY OF A WINDOW DISPLAY

Well, my window at The Beguiling display is up and as you can see it is completely different than my original sketch. Once I checked out the space at The Beguiling, I realized my initial idea just wouldn't work, so I revised it. I'm quite happy with the results.


Also, as some of you may have realized, GHOST STORIES in fact comes out today, not yesterday due to the Canadian holiday on Monday.

And finally, I will be signing, sketching and selling paintings at SPX this weekend in Bethesda, MD, so if you are in the area be sure to stop by!

NEWS: GHOST STORIES OUT NOW!

As mentioned, my newest graphic novel, and the 2nd volume in my Essex County Trilogy from Top Shelf, Ghost Stories is available now at finer comic book stores everywhere! You can check out a new interview with me about the book at The Occasional Superheroine.

NEWS: GHOST STORIES OUT NOW

ESSEX COUNTY 2: GHOST STORIES-SHIPS ON WEDNESDAY!!!

My next graphic novel Essex County Vol.2: Ghost Stories ships to comic shops Wednesday, October 10! I just received my comps via Fed Ex, and they look great.


So, I'd thought I'd spend the days leading up to the books' release posting some "DVD bonus features" for the book, concept work, deleted scenes etc...

Also, I will be putting my window display up at the Beguiling on Tuesday, Oct. 9, and I'll be sure to post pics of that, then it's off to Bethesda, MA for SPX 2007, and Ghost Stories' official launch.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: LESLEY-ANNE GREEN

Just wanted to take a minute to talk about one of my favorite artists, sculptor Lesley-Anne Green. Check out this amazing Wonder Girl she made!


More great work on her site lesleyannegreen.com. Oh yeah, she is also my wife...so there.

WORK IN PROGRESS: ANATOMY OF A WINDOW DISPLAY

I've been asked to create a window display for Canada's finest comic book store THE BEGUILING, to promote my upcoming graphic novel, Ghost Stories. I thought I'd upload pics of the project from it's inception to the final window. So, to start, here is my rough sketch for the window.

It will be a winter scene, with my main character Lou Lebeuf standing in a snowbank watching childhood versions of himself and his brother playing pond hockey, with a nice forest behind. The kids will look like cut-out "table hockey players". I want it to have a real 3-D feel like the set from a stage play. There are also a number of irregular sized smaller windows surrounding the main window, which I will fill with character shots and the three cover images from my Essex County books.

NEWS: WORD ON THE STREET

The Word On The Street is a FREE literary festival held on September 30th from 11am-6pm in five cities across Canada*. I’m really happy to announce that Toronto’s Word On The Street event (held on Queen’s Park Circle) will feature an extensive comics and graphic novels presence in The Comics and Graphic Novels Tent, presented in partnership with The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Featuring a full day of author readings, book presentations, and panels on comics creation and publishing, this is going to be a pretty outstanding part of an already massive event. I’m also very proud to say that I’ll be co-hosting in the tent alongside my good friend Mark Askwith, the producer of SPACE television and an excellent comics writer in his own right.

The line-up of panels and participating creators has been announced, and you can find an overview of the programming at the website. Participating creators include Chester Brown, Scott Chantler, Willow Dawson, Ray Fawkes, Stuart Immonen, Karl Kerschl, Jeff Lemire, Nadine Lessio, Brad Mackay, John Martz, Kagan McLeod, Jim Munroe, Ryan North, Ty Templeton, Noel Tuazon, Zack Worton, Chip Zdarsky, Jim Zubkavich, and many more in a host of panels. The Beguiling will also be selling books from all of the attending authors at the venue.

Also! The IdeaSpace Young Adult Marquee will feature graphic novel programming as well! Make sure to check out Eric Kim, and Svetlana Chmakova on the panel MANGA! MANGA! MANGA! THE HOWS AND WHYS OF THESE HOT NEW COMICS! at 12:30pm, and COMICS: DOIN’ IT YOUR WAY with Tyrone McCarthy and Arthur Dela Cruz at 4:30pm.

The Word On The Street is a huge literary event in Toronto which draws more people in than the San Diego Comic Con. It was a huge, huge thrill to be a part of putting together the comics and graphic novel programming for this year’s event, as I think it will continue the trend of putting comics and graphic novels out into the public eye in a way that can’t be ignored. Getting our own major venue to do so–alongside the integration of comics and graphic novels into other venues–is spectacular, and the fulfillment of a personal dream of mine. I remember going to WOTS for the first time nearly a decade ago, and coming home energized about the potential for comics in that sort of environment. I even wrote a column about it at the time that might be around online somewhere… I’m glad to see that potential becoming a reality, seeing that all of the crazy ideas I had as a 20 year old weren’t so crazy, and in fact, would be hotly in demand as I turned 30.

I sincerely hope that any of you reading this will come out for this (completely free!) event, and bring friends… The better it does, the better the next event will be, and so on.

SKETCHBLOG: Ladies and Gentelmen, Mr. Elliot Gould...

Excerpts from my new mini-sketchbook containing only images of Elliot Gould from the 70's.

SKETCHBLOG: EARLY TALES FROM THE FARM

I dug up this really early sketch of the lead characters from Tales From The Farm, it's funny to see how much Jimmy changed by the time I got around to actually drawing the book. Incidentally, I was originally going to title the Essex County series "Tales From The Farm" and the title of Tales was going to be " The Adventures of Chicken Boy"....no seriously.

PRESS: WORD ON THE STREET '07

I will be taking part in a panel entitled "Creating The Great Canadian Graphic Novel" at this years Word On The Street festival in Toronto, September 30. Scott Chantler (Northwest Passage) and Zach Worton (The Greatest) will also be appearing on the panel.

I will also be doing a window display for The Beguiling in October to coincide with the release of Essex County Vol.2: Ghost Stories. in addition, the Beguiling will be sponsoring a release party for the book the last week of October, stay tuned for more details.

Finally, I will be appearing at SPX this year, and debuting Ghost Stories there as well!

PRESS: Tales From The Farm reviewed in The Globe and Mail

Globe review

NEW PAINTING FOR SALE ON EBAY

I am currently auctioning this new Iron Man painting I did on Ebay.....

Come on and give Ol' Shellhead a home!

SKETCHBLOG

A new commission of Gaiman's Sandman I just finished...