City Pages Turkey Shoot

Hopefully everyone had a great Thanksgiving break. If you're not too sick of turkeys yet, swing by your local coffee shoppe and pick up a copy of this week's City Pages. I've got a few illustrations in there, as evidenced by these fine snapshots:



This issue of CP should be on stands until Tuesday.

Forgotten Miracle Illustrations

Forgotten Miracle Trailer from Forgotten Miracle on Vimeo.

If you haven't heard from me over the past few months, it's probably because I've been working nonstop on illustrations for a documentary film called Forgotten Miracle. The film chronicles the 1960 US Olympic hockey team -- the first of only two hockey teams to bring home the gold for the US (the second being the much-lauded 1980 "Miracle" team). But the 1960 team had its own miracles; it's a David and Goliath story but this time Goliath is played by the Canadians.

The film was produced and directed by Andrew Sherburne and Tommy Haines, who also co-produced Pond Hockey. They asked me to illustrate several scenes in the film where they're short on actual video footage (it was only the first televised Olympic Games, after all). The drawings -- around 60 total -- are blended throughout the film and serve as recreations of some of the great stories told by the Olympic players.

The illustrated scenes are animated in a motion design sort of way -- the pencil drawings were produced in layers so that Sherburne could create a 3D motion design effect in AfterEffects. It's hard to describe, but you can see some of that subtle movement in the trailer.

Anyway, the film was a ton of fun to work on, and I highly recommend getting a copy for the rink rat in your family. I'll probably have a few copies to sell at conventions this spring, but if you can't wait until then, you can purchase a copy at ForgottenMiracle.com. (The DVDs ship in early December).

Some teasers:

Early Review of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Ghosts #1

The first issue of Star Trek: TNG: Ghosts came out this Wednesday, and there's an early review up on TrekMovie.com!

TrekMovie's Ghosts Review

I'm pleased that Mark Martinez (the reviewer) feels that the story hews closer to the more detailed and serious Next Generation stories rather than the action-focused recent movie, and states that "...those of you who grew up with the Enterprise-D will feel right at home." High praise, indeed. I hope readers will feel like this comic comes close to capturing the spirit of the 24th century.

UPDATE: Another review has popped up on TrekWeb. It's less positive, but I do like that it posits that there are more words in this comic than any other Star Trek comic. Why thank you very much! It also has this comment:

...The remainder you can write yourself if you're vaguely familiar with The Next Gen: Riker is impatient (Page 2), Picard is diplomatic (Page 2), Troi feels overpowering emotion (Page 5--but not addressed until Page 16!), and Geordi solves a problem with 24th century science (Page 19). All that was missing was Data commenting on humanity and Worf jumping over his console.

Well, all I have to say is don't count us out yet! We'll make this a drinking game if it kills us.

TrekWeb's Ghosts Review

Ex Astris Scientia!

I-Con 2009 Scanboree (Literally, a Jamboree of Scans)

Today is my first day back from an intense, novelty-filled weekend in Iowa. The excuse for heading south was the Iowa Comic Convention (I-Con) put on by the Iowa Comic Book Club. The organizers put on a fun little show, with lots of freebie tables and a big buffet at the end (or least that's what I'm told -- I had to duck out a little early, unfortunately).

The best part of the show was getting to hang out with fellow conspirators Ryan Dow, Danno Klonowski, and Dan Olson. Everyone should check out Danno's latest Manly Tales, which reveals the true origin of Army Shanks. Traffic was a bit slow, which was fine because it gave me an excuse to doodle, something I feel like I haven't done for months. So here are some scans of that madness:

First, Danno's Fleming Hazmat taking a jab at Atlantis Lad. Of course, this would never happen in real life:


Here's a quick sketch of Shanks Winning the Big Game, inspired by a soon-to-be-revealed project that I've been working on night and day for the last month:


And a Shanks cartoon, created in response to Danno's new Manly Tales epic:


And here's a Klonowski original, which is not supposed to be representative of anyone we met at I-Con:


Metromix Des Moines traveled to beautiful Adventureland to record the festivities and I wound up in a few shots. Check out the whole slideshow at desmoines.metromix.com.


Credit: Dani Ausen for Metromix

Oh, also we learned that there's another comic convention coming up in Minnesota, but I can't remember when or where. If you want to know you should bug Dan Olson, because he's got it written down somewhere.

The rest of the weekend I spent at the House on the Rock, which I'm not going to attempt to summarize because it would take all day, so please just go yourself. Here's a little taste:

Tintin Sketchbook

Leigh Walton of Top Shelf fame has produced a massive Tintin sketchbook, accumulating sketches from the likes of Bryan Lee O'Malley and Kate Beaton. I drew the pic above during MoCCA this past spring.

Laura Hudson has a write-up of the sketchbook on Comics Alliance, and you can see the entire book's Flickr Set!

Some of my favorites:


Tim Sievert



JP Coovert



Will Dinski



Niklas Asker



Brian Hurtt



Alec Longstreth


... and something like 500+ more HERE.

Far Arden on Graphic Novel Reporter

I recently did an interview with John Hogan over at Graphic Novel Reporter. Check it out!



Also check out their main page -- there are some great interviews with Junot Diaz, Emmanuel Guibert, and local physics hero James Kakalios.