FREE COMIC BOOK DAY ordering time will be coming to a close soon and FUBAR Central Command wants to let you know that we are an official participant in this year’s Diamond Free Comic Book Day 2013. As per our other volumes of historical zombie pulp fiction this issue features 5 original self-contained short stories in an anthology format by our bravest and boldest writer and artist teams. For new readers this is a perfect jump-in spot for zombie fans looking to get into the larger world of FUBAR content.

And that is the official email blast that I am sending to shops to let them know that they should carry FUBAR. Got that neat graphic there too that is the front cover of our FCBD book that I colored Mike Hawthorne’s line art on and the back cover ad that I created so anybody anywhere can go shit, I want those! All the order information for anybody to order any of the books worldwide is right at their disposal but time is running out for Free Comic Book Day ordering so if you want to get yourself a copy, you better tell your shop very soon. Pre-ordering for FCBD closes before the end of this month along with pre-ordering for the 350+ pg FUBAR: American History Z which is being solicited in previews right now.

Been working diligently getting all of my FUBAR obligations out of the way for our Free Comic Book Day 2013 FUBAR offering. It’s shaping up to be a really crazy issue. Instead of going the under-the- radar and under-budget route that we did last year with a half sized 24pg single- story book with distro through our own networks, we worked up to Diamond’s official FCBD with international distribution and a full sized 32 page anthology formatted book. This time around I’ve also done a lot more of the design work on the overall look of the issue with a new FUBAR catalog ad for the back cover, new interior credits page and illustration, inked the first story that was penciled and scaled by Jeff McComsey and designed the title graphic for it as well as working on the final version of the completely recolored Mike Hawthorne cover. Anyway it should be totally ready to roll out this weekend and for the time being I figured I’d leave you with the first page and the layout for the title graphic of The Jack Of Spades.

In the past week I’ve really wanted to jump into brush inking, I thought about it for an upcoming project but more than that I really want to start using it for at least some part of all my work because I dig the character and line weight variation that it provides. It’s wild after finding and printing out some full size comic book pages from guys who’s styles I really liked, I studied them to try and figure out some pieces I was missing to my own work and it really came down to missing the heavier lines. Up until the other day I’d always been striving to find the thinnest line when in reality that line was as fine as it needed to be and to contrast it my heavier lines need more body and character. If I continue with pens exclusively that’s going to mean alot of second and third passes to make things as bold as I think they might need to be, so I went and picked up some supplies and tried brushing a piece. As it turned out it was surprisingly easier to control this time around versus when I tried it two years ago, I did, however, pick up better ink and brushes though so maybe that made the difference. I think also in the interim using the brush pens made this jump more graceful. Anyway so I inked this Max Rebo piece I had laying around almost exclusively with brush and I dig it. Hopefully I can make this upcoming story sing without having to do the pages as big as a wall.

This was a piece I did just before Christmas for a friend who commissioned me to caricature his brother who is an ex US Marine and now a Boston Police Officer. He told me he loved zombies and the Boston Bruins, send me a picture of him and his wife and it was off to the races. Kinda figured I’d wait til after the holidays were all over and done with to post this guy as to not ruin any surprises. So I’m back on the comic wagon at the moment so new posts will be slim until some of this stuff gets done and around. That is one of the bummers of stories with continuity for print purposes as I can’t really show them off until either they are done which takes a lot longer than a single piece, and sometimes even when they get done I can’t show them off until they fulfill their print obligations. But don’t worry I am working on a story that I’ll post up when it’s done might be like 9 pages in the end that has only a loosely intended purpose so I can show it off.

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of dinosaurs, I mean what kid isn’t, and well that love has only slightly waned through my current age of adult-like immaturity. There was Jurassic Park in middle school, Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles comic books through high school and Dino Crisis for Playstation in college, and all of it was awesome.. Anyway for all of you new to the paleontological fossil record outside of Jurassic Park, this is an Oviraptor (O-vih-Rap-tor). It was a small bird-like omnivorous theropod from the late Cretaceous period who’s name means “Egg Thief.” Usually depicted as having a bony head crest and its tell-tale parrot-like beak, the Oviraptor is believed to have been about 6 ft. in length and 3 ft. in height. I started this piece forever ago, and finally had an hour or so to finish it up just to get it out.

 

So here’s a few pieces as a preview for the new FUBAR: Winter Special, (front cover by Leonardo Pietro and back cover FCBD preview of Mike Hawthorne’s cover) which will drop in shops the end of January. I’ve got a couple of new pieces in there, wasn’t able to get a story together this time because the holidays had me a little too socked in but I did a FUBAR Combat Quiz and a new illustration for the inside front cover credits page. Next time there’ll be a story promise, don’t worry there is definitely  some juicy new stuff brewing for a few brand new FUBAR projects in the near future, enough to keep everyone busy.

Happy Holidays and a Merry Krampus to all of you out there in the world!

Today’s piece is a funny little personal take on Rasputin, and this is definitely a hat’s off to Tyler Crook and Philip Gelatt’s PETROGRAD. An awesome comic book slow burner about an international murder plot set amidst the backdrop of a mid-WW1 Russian Czarist home-front all on pulp paper in black white and red wash. So this is the mad monk Rasputin and at his feet is the Czarina drinking a cup of his mystic blood in ecstasy, the book is not supernatural in anyway but its about intrigue with this mystic figure head at the center of the Russian power struggle so I played up on that with the piece. It’s a very cool book and the packaging is awesome, I have it in hardcover and it’s one of my favorites of last year. I got to meet up with Tyler Crook at the New York Comic Con a couple months back and he was a cool fella, did a little sketch up in the front and signed the book up for me which I think is pretty cool. So take a look for PETROGRAD if you are a comic fan and check out Tyler Crook’s work on the newest arc of Dark Horse’s BPRD series, its awesome. Anyway got some commissions to be getting to so I’m out, might have something new posted for later tonight.

I did this little ditty over the weekend for my girlfriend just because I never draw her any pictures and that bums me out sometimes that I don’t have the time to make her anything. So this time I made a little bit of time and this goofy piece. She liked it, by the way. So you should go check out her blog AlwaysApril, she’s does baddass pencil renderings with a woman’s touch and she crafts cool little pillow guys called SlumberJacks™