Day 1135 of 365 Again. The main reason I did this shot was that I wanted to do some practicing with the pen tools in photoshop and drawing and stuff. Like the photo says, when you run out of creativity, resort to parlour effects. At least its kinda a nifty one, right? Ok, maybe not.…
Day 1090 of 365 Again. Haven’t talked about my webcomic lately. But yeah, it’s still going strong. In fact, I’m pretty happy with the current storyline. Do you like ninjas? This comic is for you. Do you like pirates? This comic is for you. Do you like shipwrecks? The comic is especially for you. Some…
Day 953 of 365 Again. So, if you’ve been reading my comic strip, Cosmic Hellcats lately, you might have noticed a slight change in the art style. It hasn’t been TOTALLY obvious because we introduced all new characters since we did it, but we’re going back to the main characters for Monday’s strip. And Monday’s…
Day 938 of 365 Again. I’m going to try very hard not to leave spoilers here. So today should be a happy day. I’ve been waiting for a Watchmen movie for the better part of my life. Today that dream came true. Sometimes dreams should just be dreams. It certainly wasn’t the worst movie ever.…
Day 786 of 365 Again. You know, writing a comic strip is hard. Sometimes I have good ideas for Cosmic Hellcats and sometimes not. Tonight was one of the nots. I knew what had to happen in tonights episode. Max did a great hob of drawing it. And I thought the sight gag was mildly…
When Mickey was travelling across country last week for her big move, she and her boyfriend, Jeff, stopped by to do a little photoshoot for the old Tarot deck.
I’ve been looking forward to getting some of the Seven cards done. My theme with the sevens is to use multiple people. I really loved shooting the Lovers and Judgement cards and I was really looking forward to shooting a card with another couple. The interplay you get between two models is always so much more expressive than what you get with one individual alone.
While the other two multiple person cards I did so far were very loving, it was nice to be able to do something antagonistic and moody like this one.
I think they both did a great job.
Working on the last several tarot cards that I’ve shot that I hadn’t had a chance to post. This should take me up to 51. Only 17 more to go.
Day 705 of 365 More.
Usually on Wednesday nights I plug Cosmic Hellcats, because new ones come out every Monday and Thursday. But today something else important happened that made me want to talk about it and not even mention the killer new episode of Cosmic Hellcats that I just posted at midnight.
Today, after 17 long years of waiting, Zot! came out in compiled trade paperback form.
In a lot of ways Zot! is probably responsible for Cosmic Hellcats. Zot! was written by Scott McCloud who some of you might remember I met a couple years ago when I saw him speak.
Anyway, Scott wrote the well received, but relatively unknown indy comic, Zot! After Zot was cancelled, he went on to write a well known book called Understanding Comics, which is one of the most influential books in the medium (and one every artist, comic book or no, should read). He also wrote two sequels and ended up becoming something of an authority on the changing nature of the industry and an advocate of webcomics. Understanding Comics renewed my childhood desire to one day publish a comic of my own. That desire grew and eventally became Cosmic Hellcats.
At the talk I saw Scott speak at, everyone asked him tons of questions about his well known texts. But I was the crazy guy in the back who raised his hand to ask when the 4th volume of Zot! would be collected into a trade paperback volume. You see, the first three volumes had been collected soon after Zot! ceased publication, but the company who published those books went out of business before the final volume ever came out.
Scott, seemed amused and answered me something like "I swear, before I die." Well, I sincerely hope Scott isn’t planning on dying tomorrow. Because that would be a tragedy. But if he did, I will be happy to know that he did manage to keep his promise to me.
So for that, I thank you, Scott. And I thank you for writing Understanding, and Reinventing Comics and Making Comics and inspiring the seven year old boy inside of me to follow his dream.
Of course Scott doesn’t read this, but maybe one day he will. After all he did eventually get to see my initial pic about him. So, If you ever do read this Scott, thank you. Without you there would be no Cosmic Hellcats, and I wouldn’t even have something to not pimp here.
Day 696 of 365 More.
My name is Chris Maverick. I am the Fastest Man Alive.
Ok maybe not, but I had been meaning to do this shot since I bought this shirt. Oh well.
Actually, I’m not feeling particularly fast today. I’m actually kinda sore from all the time in the car, and I’ve been developing a headache over the last few hours. Hopefully sleeping it off will help.
Still catching up on Tarot cards. I shot this one with Starr weeks ago and just got around to processing it now.
Wow… I only have one tarot card left shot but not edited. Well, and maybe a couple others I want to redo.
Day 643 of 365 More.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. At least I hope.
This is Omaha the Cat Dancer. Maybe the single biggest influence on me for Cosmic Hellcats. My friend Jenn had bought me all the trade paperbacks except for one years ago. They’ve all been out of print for a while. One of them, volume 5, Jenn was never able to get me. I have the individual comics, but the collected volume was amazingly rare, not because of the story (which is a briiliant exploration of human sexuality and modern feminism through the metaphor of anthromorphic animals by Reed Waller and Kate Worley), but because it happens to have a two page foreword by Neil Gaiman and fanboys are idiots.
But it came back into print this week. And now at long last I have it. What’s more, soon I will have previously unpublished volumes 7 and 8, thus completing the Omaha story, after all these years (it originally started in 1986, and it ceased publication mid story in 1992). But now I will finally know the end.
I can’t wait.
Probably, even among you that are comic book fans, what I am talking about is way too obscure for anyone to care about. I don’t care. Just trust me, this is awesome.
Day 598 of 365 More. You know, producing a comic book is more work that I ever dreamed. After spending all day yesterday on a shoot, I spent all day today coloring the artwork inside. Since I hadn’t really done anything else, I thought I’d give everyone a sneakpeak at one of the pages. Hopefully…
Day 586 of 365 More. The comic is well underway. I’m more than a third done with the finished artwork. Max is more than halfway through the pencil work. It’s going well. The problem is that I’m staying up so late doing it every night that I’m starting lose track of what’s real and what’s…
Day 577 of 365 More. This can’t be healthy. I just have too many things going on in my life. Obviously I have my job. Then you add on the pro-wrestling career, a photography career, co-hosting a photography podcast(iTunes), and being the inspiring spiritual guide to 7,967 people worldwide I barely have time to breathe,…
This is mostly posted for Max, but we’d love other people’s opinions too. This is the basic look of one of the characters in our new comic book "Science Ninja Action Team: Cosmic Hellcats IX" I was thinking it might add something to Chastes character (she’s our rough and tumble killer demolitions expert) to give her tiger stripe tattoos.
Wonder what people think.