Mandolin

A panel from an old Maddy Kettle minicomic.

Ink Slinging

Here's a panel from the first few pages of Maddy Kettle. Today I'm working on revisions to a book cover. Everything's on schedule and coming along really well.

Nursery Rhyme Comics Makes A Very Short List

"Nursery Rhyme Comics is the kind of kids’ book grown-ups will want to keep reading long after their children have gone to bed."   A very nice little review of Nursery Rhyme Comics in the very influential Vey Short List, The Observers look at culture and great things in general.


Above is a panel from my Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater. 


Buy it here or at your favorite book store. 

Chugging Along

Here's the first page of Maddy Kettle. I've posted this before but I thought I'd put it up for any new people out there who are just learning about the all ages book I'm working on with Top Shelf. It's a series of comics about a brave girl confronting a scary world and her parents.  I expect the first book to be done by Summer.

I'm hoping to start selling prints from my website soon in order to afford to finish doing it. If there's any pieces by me you think will make a nice print please let me know! I'll start posting about a print sale soon and show some ideas I have.

right now I'm just finishing up penciling the next lot pages. My current method is pencil 5 pages ink them and repeat. I was initially doing 10 pages at a time but my pencils were getting too loose by the tenth page so I thought I'd try this way instead. I'm getting faster and working harder as I go, which is great. Everything feels on schedule. 

A Comic For Everyone!

I thought I'd begin this weekly highlighting of excellent all ages comics with the book that I found most inspiring and the one that I feel did the most to show people how amazing all ages comics could be: Jeff Smith's Bone. 


Bone was one of the first comics in a very long time to tell a story using comics that had a truly vast appeal. Anyone could potentially enjoy Bone, unlike many books that have an appeal limited to other comic book fans. And it showed that kids still love comics despite there being little for them in the market at that time. And I think Jeff Smith did this almost by accident. Reading interviews with Smith he insists that Bone was not created to target kids. Rather it was his love letter to comics and animation. He just took everything he loved about comics (and other places, of course) and put them in a book. If anything it was written for other people who love Comics.Bone is not only a great comic itself it also highlights the best in comic books through it's influences: Carl Barks, Moebius, Pogo. His influences are a diverse history of comic books and comic strips. For me, it showed that you could have your work display a love of comics without limiting its appeal to just comic book fans. You could find something universal there. 


The story is a perfect combination of light slapstick humour and a sprawling dark fantasy story. The contrast makes for a kind of story telling magic.

It follows the adventures of three cousins who come to a medieval valley after being run out if their home town and they find themselves drawn into a conflict in the valley. It's a pretty long series and the story is quite complex so I won't go into too much detail. To give you an idea of the story elements it combines classic cartoon slapstick, Australian indigenous mythology and folklore, European mythology and folklore and a Tolkien influence. It is a nuanced tale of good and evil. The characters are well rounded and compelling. You care about everyone, no matter how silly they are. While Fone Bone is the main character, all the characters, even background characters, come to life. This is a richly populated world with a lot of depth. It's some of the best world building done in comics. This certainly makes for a book that you can return to again and again and always find something new. The same goes for the art. 


The art in Bone is beautiful. At once energetic and refined, every panel is appealing and interesting. It's drawn with a brush and the line work is stunning. Smith has wonderful control and an amazing lyricism with his brush stroke. It isn't detailed but has a strongly graphic balance of blacks and whites that pop off the page. 
It's hard to compare it to other comic books and is more like Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit, although we are seeing more comics like Bone, fantasy on a grander scale. If you're starting an all ages comic book collection, I can't think of a better place to begin. But it certainly has joined the ranks of other classic all ages comics like Tintin, Donald Duck and Asterix. 


There are a number of different ways to own and read bone. I own Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume which is a brick sized collection of the main series in it's original black and white. I prefer to read it in black and white because I feel it shows off Smith's art the best. However it's also available in colour, which some people find more appealing. Scholastic has put them all out as a series of beautifully coloured editions. The first one is here. There is also a 20th anniversary hardcover edition out, which looks beautiful.  It is also available digitally to through ComiXology. 


If you want a great start to build an all ages comic collection Bone is a great first book. 

What I'm Reading

Stuff And Nonsense by A.B. Frost  One of my favorite illustrators and a very early cartoonist. This book is a must for any fan of illustration or comics. It's amazing. 

Saturday Review

It's been an unusually bumpy week! It started off fine, being very productive but all of the sudden Henry got sick. So I found myself juggling a 3 year old and a new project. But that's just the way it goes. So, this weekend I'm playing catch up. 

Thimble Witch Over Head

This about half a panel pulled from Maddy Kettle. Playing with colour again. This is actually a pretty tiny part of the page but is pretty focal compositionally and I just like it. This is from a photo rather than a scan so it really took on the yellow hues of my lamp. The colouring is done in Photoshop, very quickly.

Henry is still sick. In fact he's even sicker. So, he's all bundled up on the couch near my while I work. It's really hard to work with a sick kid here, he's not especially demanding but you want to make sure he's doing alright. The temptation is to curl up next to him and read a book. I have a pretty big stack I'd like to get to. Especially an enormous collection of American folklore. But I also have a stack of work to do. He's not in a playing mood so hopefully all the Wallace and Gromit videos will keep him happy. 

A Sort Of Sick Day

Henry's home for the second day in a row. He has a bit of a fever and a worrisome cough. But still finds the energy to jump all over me when I'm working. I'm currently switching between projects so my mind is all twisted up. I find there's an adjustment every time I put down one project and pick up another. I get so focused on one thing.

A couple of links:

Great NPR interview with Maurice Sendak!

And a wonderful article by Ward Jenkins on the joys of collecting. 

When Art Supplies Turn On You

I spent most of yesterday covered in white ink up to my elbows wondering why an ink I've used for years is suddenly not working. How does ink stop working? I think it's because I used some new pens in my inking and the white ink refused to cover it. Anyway, I would classify yesterday as a bad drawing day.

I'm also switching projects, which always throws me into a free-fall of confusion. It takes me a bit to adjust to a new project. I'm spending some time doing a book cover. It should be easy but I just need to get passed that weird psychological speedbump that happens every time I switch gears.

To complicate matters Henry is home sick with me. And yesterday he coughed in my face. Three times. Waiting to see what I've caught......

"What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is" Maurice Sendak

Here, I've just lifted a part of a Maddy Kettle panel to once again play with colour in Photoshop. This time using layers. This is probably one of the scarier scenes.

In my post yesterday I put a call out for your favorite kids comics, new or old (I'm still looking for titles if you'd like to comment on yesterdays post!) and the question of what's too scary for kids came up. It's the sort of natural question that bubbles up from this type of conversation as is a completely valid one. I always initially respond to the question in a knee jerk way, kids are tough! They can handle scary stuff!

In fact, when I was a kid, I often found books for kids a lot scarier than stuff made for adults. Maybe I would just miss the nuances in the grown up stories. I probably still do. But kids books speak of a children's world, and the things that are frightening and difficult in that world. Of which there are many things.

In any case, I relented. Of course stories that comfort or teach simple lessons are valid. And if a parent finds something too scary for their kids they are doing nothing wrong by not buying that book for them.

But I still think many of the best kids books have a wildness and an uncertainty that reflects the experiences not just of childhood but of life.

On Twitter yesterday I came across this excellent New York Times interview with Maurice Sendak, who says it far better than I ever could.


"If you look at the work of Tomi Ungerer, it’s passionate, it’s personal, it’s marvelous and it’s cuckoo, and it’s that’s kind of veracity that’s always made for good children’s literature" Maurice Sendak

A Comic For Everyone!

I think it's time to put more emphasis on all ages comics. In fact, I think the time has never been better for all ages comics. We just need to make sure people know about them.


I grew up in a family that was half English speaking and half French speaking. The French side brought us all these great kids comics like Tintin and Asterix. And the English brought us Carl Bark's Donald Duck and superhero comics. So I was fortunate to grow up with loads of fun comics to read at a time when comics for kids were being produced less and less. In the eighties there was great excitement about exploring adult themes in comics. Many comics that had once been made for all ages were now being made for adults. Which is great. This has lead to an increasingly sophisticated type of story telling in comics and has brought in whole new audiences. But having high quality Tintin and donald Duck as a kid gave me a hunger for great stories and art. It made me fall in love with comics.

But I think we have to shift some of comic book culture back to stuff made for all ages. I realized this on my recent trip to Little Island Comics, seeing the crowds of kids come in excited to see comics they could actually relate to. It was an amazing sight, a real eye opener. And my book shelves are crammed with comics. My son Henry is always pulling down colourful comics to read. Well, look at. But he loves them. And my comic Maddy Kettle isn't even out yet and I already get fan mail from young readers excited about a new book made for people like them. I draw my comics for my own tastes but my tastes tend to be all ages.

So, now I'm kicking off a new Monday tradition where I'll feature a great all ages comic book.

Let's start with suggestions, either here or on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, wherever. You can even email me. What do you think are the best all ages comics? Either being published today or something you or your kids grew up with.Or a comic you heard about and would like to know more about. Let's all support this important part of the industry.

What I'm Reading

I'm so glad to have discovered the work of Drazen Kozjan through Mike Mignola. He's the exact kind of cartoonist and illustrator I'm always looking for, only better. The Happy Undertaker is a brilliant, ongoing creepy comic that has been available online and is now available in compact, easy to hold minicomic form. It is brilliant. Easily one of the best comics out there.

The Happy Undertaker is a wordless, episodic comic. More like different stories set in the same world of Victorian ghost stories, Italian horror films, Little Golden Books and everything else that's cool.

You can buy it here. Also, I own a print, buy a print! they're brillant too!

Saturday Review

A trip to the fair with the family. Henry meets a toad. 

For some reason, a group of singers in the reptile room. This was pretty amazing. 

We went to an art opening in the west end. This Toronto at sunset. 

And of course, our trip to Little Island Comics. 

Speaking of comics for kids, I'm thinking of starting a Monday kids comic book review. Let me know what you think! I'll be asking for suggestions on Monday. 

Piling Up

The pages are starting to look like a proper pile of work! Finally. It's nice to have a visual reminder of all the work I've done.

Some links:

A lovely book drawn by Arnold Lobel.

Great article on writing for kids, and how one shouldn't write down to them.

And finally, my favorite: Worlds tallest boxer goes on expedition to find the Yeti.

Empanadas

A page from the last Maddy Kettle minicomic. I keep these pages around and try to do even better. 


So, about a week into doing Maddy Kettle full time and things have taken on a mad scientist feel. With me as the mad scientist. The experiment being on family life.Very long days. Forgetting to eat. Curious lack of money.  However, progress is being made and im always two steps ahead of exhaustion. And I'm not exhibiting too much erratic behavior.

To give you an idea of how full my days are I'm literally writing this post as I walk along the Toronto streets to rescue Henry from daycare. And buy salad. And empinadas.


Henry did an awesome dance to Cyprus Hill at the empana shop. 


Some links of interest: 


Amazon launching Netflix like book rental service......

A great Cracked article on why movies are so bad. 

Spandexless, a great new blog about comic books. 

Interesting Comic Alliance article on comparing minimum wage to the price of comic books. 

And finally, some lovely art by illustrator Joey Chou

March Of The Spider Goblins

A panel from Maddy Kettle. It won't be coloured like this in print but I'm really enjoying taking panels here and there for posts and experimenting with colour. This is giving me an idea of what works and what doesn't. I think the final colouring will be less flat and graphic and more gouache like.

I love the Spider Goblins. I've been drawing them for years. I'm so familiar with them I sometimes expect to see one spying on my from a bush or the shadows of an old house.

Work is going really well, if I continue at this pace I'll be halfway done by Christmas.

Some links of interest, first an analysis of what DC's very health sales numbers on it's recent relaunch means for the comic book industry. 

Bleeding Cool selects some of the best buys in Top shelf's current sale. 

An article on Germany's policy of expensive books and how it helps the publishing industry. 

An interesting argument for Marvel and DC to act more like TV producers. 

The Beat looks at recent comic book sales numbers and considers what they mean. 

And finally, an excellent look at British comics and why kids might not be reading them. 

Underwire Colours

So glad I can finally share this! This is a cover I hand coloured for Jennifer Hayden's wonderful book Underwire. I love her art. And any time I get to work with Top Shelf it's always a pleasure. You can read about it here.

And something that made my week a lot brighter, Henry made it into Publisher Weekly's comic book blog, The Comics Beat. Well, a picture did! Very cool. They also quoted from my blog post yesterday. 

Little Island Comics

On Saturday we made a family trip out of going to Toronto's newest comic book store; Little Island Comics. What an amazing place! Little Island Comics is North America's only comic shop for kids and it is so perfect I have to wonder why there isn't one in every city. It is packed with the best kids comics, from manga to superheroes to European. And there was a constant stream of families coming in in the short time we were there with some very excited kids. It's a fantastic atmosphere.And the kind of books that are just magic and just aren't available everywhere. I think less than 10 percent of what I saw is available digitally. And these are beautifully made books for all ages, well worth having on your shelf. 

The staff is amazing. Henry had a whole book read to him! Their knowledge and helpfulness was at the level you only get at really dedicated indy stores.

And if you're a teacher (like my wife) the resources are extensive. Even if you live a few hours out of town it's worth the trip for teachers. (Well, for anyone, really) 

Some of the books I picked up. It's not only comics. There is a great selection of picture books as well. Like Golden books and Sasek's This Is books. 


Please come check it out as soon as you can.


Here's the website. 

What I'm Reading

I have been looking forward to this book for a very long time and it turned out to be even better than I had hoped. Man in the Moon is the first book in a series by one of my very favorite illustrators of al time William Joyce. The series is called Guardians of Childhood. Check out this link for ore information on the series. I definitely think tis is Joyce's best book and he's done a lot of brilliant books. Every painting and drawing is gorgeous, and it's crammed with art. And the story is great. Just the right mix of charming, magical and kind of strange. But strange in a really wonderful way. The way I wish more things were strange. I can't recommend it enough.

At Amazon. 

And apparently it's going to be a film! 

Saturday Review

I'm thinking of posting photos from the week on Saturdays. On Sundays I post what I'm reading and I find I really like a certain post on the weekends to look forward to. It's also harder to post on the weekends because my family's here and things are more confusing. So, this really works for me.

On top, Henry pulled a Tin Tin book off the shelf and was going through it and describing it out loud He was by himself so I walked in on him doing this. I thought it was pretty great.

The bottom two pictures are from Thursday night when we went to an art opening at PM Gallery, in the west end. After a while we went for a stroll to see all the little shops.

I read some great articles yesterdays and I wanted to share the links with you. First is a really interesting comparison of the 80's movie Labyrinth and Burton's Alice in Wonderland. The idea that spectacle is cheap really resonated with me. It's cheap and it's forgettable.

Second is a Scientific American post on why illustrators need to proactively remain relevant online.

And finally is a link to a cover I coloured for Top Shelf called Underwire, by Jennifer Hayden. I'll post the cover soon but you can see a small version of it here. I love her art.

When The Little Things Slow You Down

I thought I'd post the finished toad drawing today so you could see what I do with the Micron pens after I've outlined it with the G Pen nib. For me it's the combination of different marks that makes it soar. 


Yesterday was a much less productive day (it seems my blogging these days is becoming more about my progress on Maddy Kettle than anything else) , still I drew some pretty cool panels.

It started with a horrible daycare drop-off. H cried and wrestled and pleaded. After I left I was sure he was having the worst day of his life. Which wasn't true, if course. He learned about bones. It seems to be his favorite subject right now. I kind of enjoy him lecturing me about the importance of bones. And how they belong to a skeleton.

So after working for a bit I realized I had to go to the bank to set stuff up for a money transfer.

And then Julie called to tell me she would be late from work and would I pick up H.

So, little stuff made my work day seem pretty dismal. Makes me wonder how I accomplished anything holding down a part time job and juggling two or three illustration contracts. Baffling.


And this morning I slept in. Not a great start.Can someone reprimand me? 


A couple of links of interest today. First off is an amazing blog post by an incredible cartoonist Stephen Bissette about the difficulties inherent in collaborations. This post literally lifted years of crappy feelings for me. It's a very true and fair assessment of what a collaboration entails. 


And second is a very brief post from The comics Beat about how digital comic sales are on the rise. Good news, I think. 


Both are well worth reading. 

Switching Inks, A Post About Tools

The way I draw now is that I will draw an outline with a dip pen and do the hatching with Microns. I've switched to working this way after years of trying to just use one tool. It's never worked for me. I guess I just need a handful of tools to do work i'm really happy with. I love a variety of line. I also love work like Moebius and Robert Crumb who seem to use just one tool but I just can't make it work for me. For years I've been inking with Speedball India ink and it's a really good ink but I've recently switched to Kuretake Manga Pen ink which I find superior. It doesn't gum up at all and it's black, black, black. Amazing richness. More and more I've been getting my tools from Jetpens.

Silvio In The Garden

A pretty silly little sculpted figure I made of Silvio last Summer to help with shading in the comic. It actually helps quite a bit! I was talking to the amazing new kids comic store Little Island Comics yesterday and I'd really love to do a launch of the first Maddy Kettle book there. I'm taking Henry there on Saturday. I've never seen a comic book store generate this kind of buzz before. It's amazing.

So, with reading time in short supply I've switched mainly to audiobooks. Right now it's the first Redwall book, which I've actually never read before! I'm really enjoying it. much darker than I would have thought and the tone really suits the story. And my iPod is full of more books: Lord of The Rings, Neil Gaiman, Narnia, Harry Potter, Dickens, Dumas etc. etc. Audiobooks are a cartoonists friend.

I've also switched inks. I need to remember to blog about that tomorrow.

also, I'm starting to set deadlines for myself. Right now I want to have at least half the inking on Maddy done by Christmas. Hopefully more!

Some Flying Boat Sketches

Some (older) sketches of Maddy's flying boat. Which is a sort of sentient steam powered thing of mysterious origin. With Henry finally in daycare and Julie back at work I'm having normal working days. I'm able to plan ahead now and set deadlines for myself, which I found hard to do with Henry at home and with so many odd projects going on. I'm also cutting back on stuff: less reading, games, TV, internet time etc. But more audiobooks and music.

It's all of the sudden Fall! Which is my favorite time of year. Best food, more energy, Halloween, sweaters. I look better in a sweater. 

Full Steam Ahead

A Maddy Kettle panel partially inked. 

I finally finished up all my small commission projects Sunday morning and immediately after I jumped right into working on Maddy Kettle full time. Julie has finally started teaching full time this week so her income gives me some leeway to just jump right into this comic. And hopefully book one can be finished by next Summer. The books aren't very long, less than 90 pages, but they are a lot of work. 

Also, in the first really exciting comic book news I've heard in ages a new comic book store is opening in Toronto. And it's just for kid's comics! I am so excited bout this. It's called Little Island Comics. 

What I'm Reading

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies by 

                                   Guillermo del Toro, Christopher Golden and Troy Nixey

                                                   The Plucker: An Illustrated Novel by Brom

I Didn't Know It got This Early

I'm sitting in a dark room with Julie sleeping nearby and typing by the light of the computer. Trying to push through and have all of my commissions completed this weekend so I can finally work full time on Maddy Kettle until it's complete. I think I'll be there Monday or Tuesday. 

Spider Goblin Sketch

For a warm up this morning I coloured a spider goblin sketch. Almost a repost but not really.

Just uploading final edits on a project right now, a huge weight off. I really hope it's what they want. After a quick lunch break with a friend I'm going to try and get on top of the last commissions and then in a day or two back to working on Maddy Kettle.

These last few days of having Henry while Julie starts work and trying to get projects finished has been exhausting. It really makes me appreciate my long, uninterrupted work days which will resume soon. I love daycare. Of course, I miss Henry while he's there so I can't really win. 

Tatterbones

The Tatterbones are probably the meanest monsters in the Maddy Kettle comic. They go way, way back. I think I was drawing them as a teenager. I've been playing with some redesigns, this one's not quite nasty enough but the idea is there. They don't show up until book 2 but they affect things a lot in book 1.