Without getting too much into it, I think that the Starfire controversy last year was partly due to a failure in the writer and artist to properly convey the nature of the character and not so much in the skimpiness of it all. Koriand’r shouldn’t be covered up like a nun, she’s an alien princess and she should be more Dejah Thoris than Lilandra, which is what I tried to capture in my redesign.

I tried to elevate the “princess” aspect of the character, making her a bit more regal looking and I braided her hair because I thought it looked ridiculous otherwise. Hopefully, this version of the character can convey a sense of strength, presence and confidence in spite of the skin that’s showing which, in my eyes, keeps the Tamaranean true to the character that George Perez and Marv Wolfman created.

PS: Is the background too tacky?

The announcement of the oft-rumored Watchmen prequels, officially titled “Before Watchmen,” has taken the comic book world by storm in an understandably polarizing fashion. Alan Moore, unsurprisingly, has been quick to make a stand against the prequels saying that it’s “completely shameless” and “I want this not to happen.”

I’ve been sitting back, taking all this information in, reading some of the interviews and I think I’m ready to make an educated view on where I stand here.

The first point I’d like to get out of the way is that Straczynski’s Superman analogy is flawed. The comic book creation process and “agenda” in the 30′s (when Superman was created) was much different than it was in the 80′s (when Watchmen was released). Superhero comics were initially written as unending periodicals with an unchanging status quo and stories that would run for as long as they were lucrative. Watchmen was written with a clear beginning, middle and end in mind and it’s a story that feels absolutely complete. It’s an apples to oranges comparison.

So where do I stand? Well, I understand the financial motives behind this and with such an amazing array of truly top tier talent (Adam Hughes on interiors!) there is no question in my mind that these will be great reads and great comics. In that sense, DC was smart to announce the creators of these books right out of the gate because, ideally, the prequels won’t float on the brand recognition alone and they’ll be strengthened from a creative standpoint by all this talent. The main issue I have is one that, incidentally, comes from a creative standpoint. It’s a simple, monosyllabic question: why?

Watchmen was finite and, as far as I know, nobody was clamoring for a follow-up. I’d love to be proven wrong here, but I just don’t see any conceivable way in which these prequels will add to or embellish the original series. I suppose it’s enough that they’re readable and that they respect its source material but, again, what’s the point? Alan Moore’s analogy (which is much more sound than Straczynski’s) is that nobody is trying to make a prequel to Moby Dick and I agree with that sentiment. There’s no need for a Moby Dick prequel, there’s no need for a Citizen Kane prequel, there’s no need for a Maus prequel and there’s no need for a Watchmen prequel. Even with Alan Moore at the helm, I don’t think I’d be completely behind the idea of a Watchmen prequel. There’s a purity in certain works of fiction, a lightning in a bottle-quality to them that doesn’t need to be expanded upon.

Brian Azzarello is writing a couple of these prequels. He’s one of my favorite comic writers bar none and, though it may sound hypocritical, let’s be honest here, as with most of his work I am interested in his “Before Watchmen” titles (as well Darwyn Cooke’s) and if the buzz around his books is strong then yeah, I’ll read it. But my question to Azzarello is: what if 25 years from now somebody wanted to make a 100 Bullets prequel? What if somebody wanted to make a book expanding on what happened in Atlantic City before the (coincidentally enough) Minutemen were deactivated by Agent Graves? Would it add to 100 Bullets? Would it be necessary? What would be the point? Why?

I trust in the talent behind these prequels but I just can’t seem to get that stench of fan fiction away from these titles.

Expensive, high quality fan fiction.

This was done for the newly started Drink and Draw NYC weekly challenges. It’s amusing to me that I’m doing these from Barcelona but I loved going to the Drink and Draw gatherings back in the lovely city of New York so these online challenges are a great way to keep in touch with that group of people.

The challenge was to mix Gundam with a superhero and after, a fair amount of deliberation, I went with Cyclops from the X-Men because his power seemed one that would translate well to a robot.

And, once again, I love drawing mechs because you can pretty much throw subtlety out the window. You just have to make it bigger, badder and crazier.

Also, Gundams are awesome.

For the Project: Rooftop redesign challenge.

It was hard to figure out what I needed to keep to make him recognizable as Invincible. I tried to change the headpiece but, no matter how I did it, it stopped looking like Mark so I kept that pretty much intact. I also like the large “I” on his torso and I always thought it’s the most inspired design element in Invincible so I kept it but moved them to shoulders which keeps the torso a little simpler. No capes because it doesn’t fit Mark and no boots because, well, I don’t really like them. Also, since he’s a “I’ll punch you to death” character, I left his fists bare.

And, of course, the piece is inspired by Cory Walker’s Invincible #1 cover where the original costume debuted and Ryan Ottley’s Invincible #51 cover where the blue costume debuted. It just seemed appropriate to use that cover for a costume redesign.

Who doesn’t love Power Girl?

I’ve been keeping busy (thankfully) so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on my own stuff but I’ve been wanting to draw Power Girl for a while so I gave myself a break and knocked this out. I like how it turned out but it’s just so hard to be satisfied with a Power Girl piece when you have that iconic Adam Hughes cover staring down at you.

Oh well, back to work.

I was beside myself with excitement when I learned that the entirety of the 100 Bullets team would be working on a sci-fi book, even if I had no idea what to expect from it. As a genre, science fiction is as far removed from crime as you can get and I was curious as to what the scale, subject and tone of Azzarello’s story would be.

As it turns out, Azzarello plays to his strengths with Spaceman and the first issue of the title presents a promising start to the series.

The story’s eponymous Spaceman is called Orson, a large person created in a lab for the purpose of space exploration. He’s our main character and the inherent wonder behind this gentle giant’s raison d’etre sits in sharp contrast to his current, mundane lifestyle where he collects scrap metal from the ocean for a living. Things have clearly gone wrong and Orson’s past is explored briefly via flashbacks and appears to be one of the story’s biggest hooks. The abduction of a celebrity child, who could potentially have ties to Orson, rounds off the plot and leaves you with enough questions and intrigue to make you want to keep on reading.

Azzarello does some world building here as well and we’re shown glimpses of where the sex and drug industry have moved to in this future. Needless to say, this is more Blade Runner than Star Trek and it’s a story that’s very much in the vein of Azzarello’s previous works. Even the dialogue gets a facelift with a slightly compressed and simplified dialect that brings 1984′s newspeak to mind.  ”Haha” is replaced by “lol” for example and it’s definitely a book where you have to read and mentally enunciate the words to understand it instead of just translating symbols into meanings as I usually do. I admit I was a little confused by the dialogue at first but a second read brought the whole thing together and it’s really adds a lot to the story.

Eduardo Risso does the art and, well, what can I say about him that hasn’t been said a million times before? He has absolutely flawless storytelling and his use of blacks and shadows is arguably second to none. His lines, along with Trish Mulhivill’s perfectly tempered colors, result in a truly beautiful looking book that perfectly enhances the story.

I always maintain that good science fiction uses robots and the extraterrestrial as metaphors to explore morality and the human condition. Azzarello has been known to do pretty much the exact same thing in his comic work so, in hindsight, it isn’t really that surprising that he would tackle a science fiction story. It’s a great beginning and, after reading 100 issues of 100 Bullets for nearly 10 years, the fact that in only 9 issues you can get a clear beginning, middle and end is almost a relief to me. My only question at this point is whether Azzarello will truly explore the science fiction aspect of this book or it’ll simply become a different dressing for another crime story.

Either way, with a price of $1, how could you not give it a try?

And, on a side note, is it wrong that I first bought this comic on comiXology but I still downloaded it off the torrents because it was such a hassle to read the version I paid for? An open format would be so much more convenient and a right step in the fight against piracy.

I’ve had the line art for this done for over 3 months and I tried to color it once or twice during that time but today, finally, I woke up and said “this is the day that I finish this” so here it is.

First things first: I based this piece on the cover to Blackest Night #6 by the amazing team of Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Alex Sinclair. A huge chunk of the credit for this should go to them because, even though I did everything from scratch, I took a lot from that piece.

I guess a brief recap is in order. This is a sequel of sorts to my Lantern Draft, a take on which fictional characters would best represent the main seven Corps from the Green Lantern books (I explain my choices here). I thought my original piece to be a little boring and I always intended to revisit the concept so I went for it. Instead of deciding on a composition of my own, I grabbed on to the above mentioned cover to ground the piece a little better at the cost of the cool little things like the specific constructs and energy signatures from the original. I tried to reverse engineer Sinclair’s colors and had moderate success but I ultimately went with my tried and true cel-shading.

As for the piece itself, I don’t know. I need to distance myself from it to see it a little more objectively. I feel it looks like a mess at times, even more so when I compare it to the original and Sinclair’s perfect coloring that clearly defines every character without being the least confusing.

Argh! I overwrote my PSD file with a low res version again! I should kill myself.

But anyway, this is a fairly conservative redesign of Batman. I gave him a bit or armor and, in an effort to give the character more “bat” qualities, I removed the eye slits and, though it may not be noticeable, the cape is sewn into his arms. Just like a bat! I was gonna do the same for the legs but it just turned into a really impractical design.

I worked on this loose and quickly and got it done in a manner of hours. Once again, it’s extremely liberating to work this way and not have to obsess about getting the perfect line.

My first SKRATCHJAMS entry in quite a while. The challenge was to, you guessed it, redesign Superman.

I’ve been in a serious funk in the last few days, mostly because of the quality of my art. I started at least 4 different pieces and dropped them halfway through (or earlier) because I didn’t feel they were going anywhere. When this challenge came up, I forced myself to knock it out regardless of how I felt about it. The resulting piece is not my favorite but still solid work that should get me back into the swing of things. Sometimes you just gotta complete that one piece the let the juices flow again, you know?

I toyed with many ideas on how to tackle this and tried a bunch of different designs before I settled on this one. I didn’t have a particular desire or agenda in mind when redesigning Supes, I mostly went with something that I liked enough and would fit, if not the real Superman, then maybe one in some alternate universe.

At midnight tonight, the entirety of the DC Universe will begin its relaunch of 52 titles starting at #1 along with day and date digital releases. It’s a bold initiative from DC that, while not completely bulletproof, deserves to be applauded.

Living in New York has spoiled me a little but, now that I’m residing elsewhere, the issues that comics and the direct market face are a little closer to home: if there are no comic stores nearby, I’ll just get them elsewhere and the closest place to do that are torrent sites. It’s an issue of availability as much as it is of piracy and offering comics digitally with fresh jumping on points should help assist in getting more product into more people’s hands. With comic stores out of my reach, the biggest issue I have with getting this stuff digitally (because I refuse to pirate what I hope will someday be my livelihood) is one of ownership. When I buy a song from iTunes, I have an mp3 with which I can do whatever I want. With comiXology, I basically get a permanent rental of an online comic. I don’t want to get into it too much but yeah, there are certainly issues to be worked out.

Still, if I had the resources, I’d buy each and every one of those 52 issues and give them all a fair shot.

In the meantime, I’ll be wetting my feet with tonight’s Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.

(And pardon that terrible music in the above trailer.)