the last page of 2016

My sketchbook holds the last drawings of 2016. Before the end of the year arrived, before the fireworks, before the champagne bursting and the bubbling in everyone's glasses in the merry toast of the new cycle, before the jumping of the waves and throwing flowers to Iemanjá, before the candles lit in a circle in the sand and the wishes each candle held, before all that I doodled in my sketchbook a few lines.

Who would have thought I would write and draw a Wonder Woman story? Not me, not before this year, not even when I was reading all those old Wonder Woman comics that now live in my childhood's memory. And yet, I'm happy that when I was invited, an idea struck me before I could say no, and I said yes, and my homage to Wonder Woman now lives inside an anniversary issue celebrating her 75th birthday.
Another incredible experience was being asked to adapt a Neil Gaiman short story, and that's why I drew Wonder Woman reading our How to Talk to Girls at Parties.

I was happy with this drawing, but I wanted to finish 2016 with a couple more images, so I kept going on the bottom part of the page.

Casanova, our crazy spy comic with writer Matt Fraction, turned 10 in 2016, and survived to keep going until his story is complete. We released three new issues this passing year, filled with guest pinups by our friends, with one variant cover reproducing the line art of the first cover of the first issue from 2006 (we felt like we were doing our own Artist's Edition, if only for the cover), and with more of the amazing back-stories Michael Chabon wrote and Bá drew. Here's to the next 10 years.

And then there's the bunny, my fertility animal, wishing for fertile grounds in the coming year. We'll need to be strong, and be fierce, and be patient. Be true to your heart's desire, and let it lead your path and direct your sword.

It has begun.

Rose City Comic Con 2016

We’re going to Portland for the Rose City Comic Con. We’ll have a table in the Artists Alley so all of you can find us really easy, and we’ll have signings and panels.

Our tables in the Artists Alley are Q13-14. We’re really close to Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue and most of the Milkfed crew.
Here’s our schedule:

Saturday, September 10th

- CASANOVA -- The First 10 Years!
Room: Panel Room 3
Time: 1:00PM - 1:50PM

Take a backward glance at the future of comics with this panel celebrating the ten-year anniversary of CASANOVA ⎯ the most genre-bending, dimension-jumping, time-traveling, postmodern-head-spinning comic book of the 21st century! With writer Matt Fraction and artists Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Moderated by Professor Ben Saunders.

- Signing at the Dark Horse booth #1011, from 3PM to 4PM

- MILKFED LOUNGE PARTY
Room: Panel Room 9
Time: 7:30PM - 10:00PM

After the crowds disperse, join Team Milkfed for a mixer of music, nosh and art demos! Bonus points for Milkfed cosplay! In addition to Milkfed mainstays Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction, get your nerd on with Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, Christian Ward, Valentine De Landro, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and more!

Sunday, September 11th

- Artists Who Write: On the Craft and Creation of Comics
Room: Panel Room 4
Time: 12:30PM - 1:20PM

Whether it’s an underwater murder mystery or a retelling of past histories, there’s a lot of thought put into the sequential art that drives stories told in comics. Join the industry’s best artists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (Two Brothers), Matt Kindt (Dept H, Ether), Patric Reynolds (Joe Golem), Kel McDonald (Buffy: The High School Years), Jonathan Case (Dear Creature) and Mike Oeming (Aleister & Adolf) as they discuss turning an idea into a full-fledged story—and how they continue to keep their writing fresh.

- A Spotlight on Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
Room: Panel Room 8
Time: 2:30PM - 3:20PM

We’ve seen siblings in comics before, but these artist twins have taken their success and art to another level. With titles such as Casanova, Daytripper, Umbrella Academy, and more under their belt, a lot can be learned here about collaboration and technique.

The rest of the time, find us at our table, or occasionally walking around the convention. We’re shy, so we’ll be looking at the world in a suspicious way, but we don’t bite, so don’t be afraid get closer.

SDCC 2016, here we go again.

Ten years ago, our career in comics started to really happen. By that time, we had just published the first issue of Casanova and released our Eisner nominated anthology, De:TALES. In 2006, we were very excited about all the wonderful possibilities awaiting us, and we made the video below to celebrate it. (the audio is in Portuguese).




Ten years have passed and here we go again, crossing the ocean to attend San Diego Comic Con International, the 5-days-long-pop-culture-craziness that celebrates comics, at least for those who really care and keep going back for it. If you’re going to SDCC for the first time, you may be overwhelmed by the whole Hollywood circus and all the bullshit that takes over the entire Gaslamp District, but if you cross the herds of movie fans standing in endless lines all day and get inside the convention floor, the comics are still in there, and the creators are still in there, just waiting for their fans. We certainly go just to see our friends and meet the fans.

We don’t have a table anywhere, but we’ll have signings and will be on panels, so if you want to find us, here’s our week-long schedule:

THURSDAY, JULY 21th

4pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

FRIDAY, JULY 22nd

2pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (ticket event)

3pm - Dark Horse Originals panel (room 7AB) - Dave McKean, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Peter Hogan, Cullen Bunn and Jonathan Case. How cool is it to be on a panel with Dave McKean?

8pm - Eisner Awards (Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront)

SATURDAY, JUY 23rd

12pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

3pm - Signing at CBLDF booth (#1918) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

SUNDAY, JULY 24th

11am - “CHANGING THE READER, ONE WORLD AT A TIME” panel (room 28DE). Let’s celebrate the power of comics and talk about how the use of images and words together to tell stories leave a unique and incredibly powerful effect on the readers. Find out which stories changed our lives and how we plan to keep changing the world with Comics.

3pm - Signing at CBLDF booth (#1918) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

Stay tuned in our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc...), for updates on our schedule and activities.

We hope to see you all in San Diego, sign your comics and talk about our love for stories.

Heroes Con is up ahead.

We’re at the airport in Newark, waiting for our flight to Charlotte. Our first flight from São Paulo was long, and I haven’t slept enough, and we’re about to board another flight for a little while. Still, I couldn’t be more excited for what the rest of the week and next week hold in store for us: a chance to celebrate a long project, and a chance to celebrate a brand new one, and how both of them are just part of this incredible career that we chose and that keeps sending us across the globe.

There’s a convention happening in São Paulo this weekend, and we would probably be going there if we weren’t going to our first Heroes Con, in Charlotte. We have been hearing a lot of good things, and a lot of great things, about Heroes Con, and finally we’re making it to the show. It’s strange to discover this convention exists for years, for there was a long time that for us, who come from Brazil, the only convention in the U.S. was the San Diego Comic Con. Maybe there were others, we thought, but surely they’re very small and unimportant. We discovered that there are much more conventions in the U.S., there’s really a “convention season” when you have at least one convention every weekend, and most of them are not “unimportant”, with a few being even more exciting than San Diego in some aspects.

Casanova celebrates 10 years, and we’ll have a exhibition of artists we admire taking a shot at our characters in the kick-off party of Heroes Con, on June 16th.

We’ll have exclusive copies of our new book, adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES, at our table (artists alley #1815-1816).

We’ll have original artwork at the table as well, from a selection of the stories we have drawn over the years.

And then there will be all the people, and the places, and the foods, and the stories that we expect to discover this week in Charlotte as we catch up with old friends and make new ones.

Casanova is back!

Casanova is back. As 2016 marks our tenth anniversary working on our crazy super interdimentional spy adventures, we decided to put a little extra effort in this year's issues. The storyline continues as dense and unpredictable as always, but we decided to go back on memory lane and dig some hidden treasures.

Our newest issue has a special variant cover the reproduces the original drawing used as the cover of the very first Casanova comic. It's our mix of "artist's edition" with "coloring book", which I hope gives a chance for the reader to see what our originals look like.

Inside the comic, past the regular or special variant cover, past the main storyline and before Bá and Chabon Metanauts back-up, you'll also find two pin-ups by artists we admire who helped us celebrate that the first issue of Casanova also came out in June, 10 years ago: Rafael Albuquerque and Eduardo Medeiros. I hope you like their version of some of our characters.

In two weeks, we'll go to Charlotte to be guests at our first convention of the year, Heroes Con, and we'll continue the Casanova Celebration there. I'll post more details as we get closer.

Let us know what you thought of the newest issue, and get ready for more.

Back to the drawing board for me.

Casanova celebrates 10 years

CASANOVA returns in June, celebrating 10 years since its first publication.
CASANOVA: ACEDIA #5 Cover A (Diamond Code APR160677) and Cover B (Diamond Code MAR168905) hit stores on Wednesday, June 1.

The Final Order Cutoff deadline for retailers is Monday, May 9.

(See more at: https://imagecomics.com/content/view/casanova-acedia-celebrates-ten-years)

Start spreading the news...

We're leaving for New York, where we'll release our new book, TWO BROTHERS, and be at NYCC throughout the week.

Here’s our schedule:

WEDNESDAY - October 7
7PM - TWO BROTHERS release, discussion and signing at Barnes and Noble Tribeca
Here it is. The best way to kick off this incredible week. We’ll answer questions, talk about the production of the book and continue to spread our love for comics, and we’ll sign your books.

THURSDAY - October 8
1PM-1:45PM - Casanova signing at the Image booth

FRIDAY - October 9
8PM - Image Comics NYCC Afterparty at Bowlmor Lanes. You can buy tix here.

SATURDAY - October 10
11AM - Spotlight on Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá - Different is Cool
Room 1A18
Eisner Award winners, Brazilian Wonder Twins Gabriel Bá (Daytripper, Umbrella Academy) and Fábio Moon (Daytripper, Casanova) have returned for a new collaborative original graphic novel with Two Brothers from Dark Horse Comics. Join them as they share their experiences, both inside and outside the US comics market and invite young creators and readers to a discussion about career choices, foreign languages, exotic places and how the best way to make it big might not be by doing what everyone wants, but by doing what only you can do.
1PM-1:50PM - Signing at the Dark Horse booth.

--

We’ll be at the show every day. If we’re not on one of the above events, we’re probably at our table (Y1) at the Artist’s Alley, selling exclusive copies of TWO BROTHERS, prints and original art. 

See you there.

San Diego was a blast!

I was drinking a Caipirinha at the outside patio of one of the hotel bars, talking with Skottie Young, Chris Roberson and Allison Baker about comics. I was actually enjoying the sun, and my drink was delicious. Topics ranged from the influence of “the Maxx” in our comics to how special it is to work inside the Hellboy universe, with stories about smuggling things from one country to another and who has more original Chris Bachalo pages thrown into the mix.
The girl working at the bar is brazilian, so her Caipirinhas can be trusted.
The guy working at the bar of the Scholastic party was also brazilian. I was impressed when José Villarubia recognised the bartender’s strong accent and said to me “he’s brazilian”. I didn’t get a caipirinha there, but I can’t complain of what I did get: an advance copy of Craig Thompson’s Space Dumplins.
There are no brazilians in space in that book. Not yet, at least. I just read the first few chapters.
Back to San Diego, which is what I can’t stop thinking about. Maybe it is really because I’m from Brazil and I only see these people once a year, maybe twice, but when I can spend five days talking with so many of my friends and they’re all doing such great comics, I can’t complain about where my life has led me.
San Diego was a blast this year.

Bá and I had a wonderful time in San Diego Comic Con this year. I don’t care what people say, it’s still my favourite convention. It’s the only place where you’ll find all the publishers, from the smallest to the big mainstream ones, where independent or alternative artists interact and share their passion in the same space as international super stars of books you grew up reading, and it’s where we can still celebrate the Eisner Awards (where everybody who attends is bound to discover at least one cool book that catches your attention).
It is getting harder and harder to attend SDCC, getting a 4 day pass is hard, getting a hotel room is hard, and there are more and more people going for the entertainment part of the convention rather than the comics part, but still I think SDCC is pretty special and the energy from the authors and the readers was just unbelievable. If you can see past the sea of people, the comics-section  is still the most inspiring place you’ll find on those five days of summer. And, since we didn’t have a table this year, we could also walk around and discover so much more stuff, and see and talk to so much more people, and leave with the even stronger feeling that we’re living in these very special creative moment in Comics, where the audience is really diverse, the production is diverse, and the doors are wide open for Comics to go everywhere.
We even did a presentation about that during the convention.

One of the panels we were part of this year was called “Different is cool”.
We created that panel.
We made that name up.
It was basically me and my brother talking to the audience about how incredible it is to go your own way, find your own style, and how your work stands out when you stop trying to do what everybody else is doing and try to focus on doing what only you can do. Our presentation was a love-letter to the convention and to the Comics’ World, to this place where we can discover such a wide variety of artists and styles and possibilities, and how refreshing that is, and how inspiring, and how many of the authors we admire have had that same moment when that voice in their heads said it was okay to do something you love even if nobody else is doing it.
The room was big, full of readers, of fans and friends, and it was great having that opportunity to talk about our love for comics, and to reflect on how nowadays is a great time to go after your dreams. It was the best way to start the last day of the Con, and it gave us this buzz that we carried to the interviews we made, and to the signing session that followed. We love comics so much and, with the response from the audience at our panel, we felt loved back. It was an incredible feeling.
We first came to SDCC in 1997 dreaming of drawing super-heroes for Marvel and DC, but our journey took us to a completely different path. A more personal path.
We haven’t looked back ever since.

We always come back from San Diego inspired to make more comics. Bá spent a couple of days in L.A to share that enthusiasm with Gerard and talk about the new Umbrella Academy series. It’s going to be great. Knowing there are more Umbrella comics coming is more exciting to me than the news of an Umbrella Academy TV series. Bá and Gerard have so much fun stuff planned.
As I write this, I got my copies of Casanova Acedia #3 in from the printer. It should be in comics stores on July 29th. We’re really making an effort to go back on schedule, since releasing Two Brothers in Brazil and France and touring took us so much always from the drawing board and resulted in this very big (unprofessional) gap between issues 2 and 3. Issue 4 will come out next month.
This year I finally stopped at some point and managed to be interviewed by my friend Jimmy Aquino for his Comic News Insider podcast and I talked about the books I did, the new book coming out (Two Brothers) and about what I love about comics. When he finally asked me the geeky questions, about which characters or books I would like to work on, I think I let him down with my answers, but I forgot to tell him one thing:
Despite focusing on creating new stories and trying to do different things, my brother and I will draw on a mainstream DC book for the first time this year, and it will be published next month.
Back to the drawing board.

Wonder Twins SDCC 2015 Schedule

We'll try to keep this schedule updated in case something new comes up.

THURSDAY, July 9th

1PM - DeConnick & Fraction: Milkfed Criminal Masterminds @ Work
- Room 2
Lauren Sankovitch (Milkfed managing editor, former Marvel editor) pulls back the curtain on life at Milkfed, what a comic book editor does exactly, and which are truly the best donuts in Portland. Expect utter nonsense, a Q&A, and a parade of special guests who may drop in. Or not. Guess you'll have to be there to find out!

3PM - Dark Horse Originals - the new mainstream - Room 23ABC
Comics literature is the new mainstream, and Dark Horse Originals covers it all, from post-Depression-era America in The New Deal to the return of Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon withTwo Brothers. Bá and Moon are joined by Matt Kindt (MIND MGMT) and Colleen Coover (Bandette) to discuss pushing the boundaries of what comics can accomplish in literature.

FRIDAY, July 10th
2:30PM-3:45PM - Fábio Moon signing at the CBLDF booth (#1918)
4PM-5:15PM - Gabriel Bá signing at the CBLDF booth (#1918)

SUNDAY, July 12th
11:15PM - " Different is Cool" - Room 6DE
Eisner Award-winning Brazilian Wonder Twins Gabriel Bá (Daytripper, Umbrella Academy) and Fábio Moon (Daytripper, Casanova) share their experiences, both inside and outside the U.S. comics market. They invite young creators and readers to a discussion about how the best way to break into comics and build a career may not be by doing what everyone wants, but by doing what only you can do. An eye-opening Q&A will follow the presentation.

1:30Pm - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá signing at the Dark Horse booth (#2615)

Going places

We've been to San Diego Comic Con International 17 times, once to NYCC, and one time to TCAF (ok, it's in Canada, but it's awesome). Although we've been to conventions all around the world, in the United States we've been to only two. So we're really happy to be going to Denver and Phoenix the next two weekends.

At the Denver Comic Con, we'll have tables G2 and G4 on the Artists' Alley, where we'll be most of the time. We'll sign books, make free sketches. We'll have comics and prints to sell. Stop by.
On Saturday, May 24,  from 12:55pm to 1:45pm, we'll be on Room 304 on the panel Festival de Brazil, with our friend Rafael Albuquerque.


Then on the next weekend we'll head to Phoenix Comicon, where we'll set up our stuff on tables 13140 and 13142 on the Artits' Alley. If we still have comics and prints, we'll be selling them. If not, signing, sketching and talking comics.
On Friday, May 29th, we'll be on room North 121 for a Spotlight panel about our work, from 1:30pm to 2:30pm.
And we have two signings at the Dark Horse booth. On Friday at 3pm, and on Saturday at 11am.

We're really excited to go to these two different places and meet new readers and creators.
See you all there.

Choices on Paper

I could already see, with the first new issue of Casanova going to the printer last week, how much more hands-on we’ll be on the production side of our comics once more, just like the way we used to do on the comics we did independently, like 5, Rock’n’Roll and Atelier. I like knowing all aspects of comic making, and I think people can see a different side of your book when every inch of it reflects a decision you made. You’re the author, and it’s your story, your art, but you’re also helping to tell the story by choosing the paper, and thinking about the design that will fit the world you’re trying to create, and carefully deciding the order of the ads you’re putting on the eventual free extra pages inside your book.

On a similar manner, Bá and I are overlooking and, in some parts, working on the design of the brazilian edition of our next book, Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers, in english). Later this week, on thursday, we’ll have a meeting with our editor and with the art department at the publisher to try to make the final decisions regarding the book. Sometimes it’s easier to make books trying to make them look like the books you know, and then it can be more difficult when you want to make your book a little more special. I don’t think overworking the design helps the book, because “too much” will distract the reader from the story, so it’s a matter of finding the right balance.

And sometimes finding the right balance is a simple matter of choosing the right paper.

San Diego Comic Con 2014 Schedule

 Another year, another San Diego Comic Con. The convention keeps taking over the town, so there's stuff going on everywhere around the Gaslamp quarter. If you want to catch up with me and get somes books signed, this is my schedule for this year.

Wednesday July 23 is Preview Night! Show Hours 5:00pm-9:00pm
Before preview night actually starts, I think the action happens at the Hilton Bayfront, where there'll be an Image Expo presentation starting at 2pm. Image has been releasing so many great new books by some awesome creators, that I'm really looking forward to what they might announce this time.
After that, I'll probably hit the Con floor for preview night and, as I leave the original art we made for the CBLDF at the CBLDF booth, I'll get the Casanova and Spaceboy prints and leave them, along with the original art we have, at the Beguiling booth (#1629)

Thursday July 24 Show Hours 9:00am-7:00pm
- Signing 2:30-3:30pm – DCE Booth #1915
I'll be signing all the books you can bring at the Vertigo signing table, so don't be shy.
- Art Demo 3:30-4:00pm – DCE Booth #1915
You know those art demonstrations they have at the DC booth, where they interview an artist while he/she's drawing, right then and there, and they shoot the drawing being made and project it live on a big screen? So, those. With me.
At night, probably around 8pm, there's the traditional CBLDF party at the terrace of the Westgate hotel. Many artists will attend and it's a great chance to meet and talk to them, and to look at a lot of the great original art  that will be available at the CBLDF auction over the weekend.

Friday July 25 Show Hours 9:00am-7:00pm
I don't have any signings or panels, so I'll be free to actually see some stuff at the convention. I plan on catching up with some friends and seeing some panels.
At night, I'll go to the Eisner Awards ceremony, which starts at 8pm at the Hilton Bayfront. I have a bunch of friends nominated and I'll be rooting for them while we all join in the celebration of our medium.
Whatever happens, afterwards we'll party!

Saturday July 26 Show Hours 9:00am-7:00pm
- Signing 10:30-11:30am – DCE Booth #1915
Hangover signing! I'll be signing all the books you can bring at the Vertigo signing table, so don't be shy. I'll be shy for the both of us, okay? Also, this is my last signing this year, so don't leave anything for Sunday.
Sunday July 27 Show Hours 9:00am-5:00pm

Another day without signings or panels for me, so I hope you enjoy the last day of the convention. I know I will. And I'll definitely do an "art hunt" on Sunday for those who stick until the end.

At the end of today I looked at my desk

Bá and I work on many projects at the same time. Part as a result of being a freelancer and thinking we have to accept every offer we get ( dreading not having any after we finish the current book), and part just because there are projects, invitations and people who want to collaborate with us that we can't simply say no – they're too good to pass –, we end up working on many things, some big, some small, some writing for ourselves to draw, and some drawing what others have written.
So, from time to time, when we finish something and have a little time to step back and look at what we're doing... well, to look at our drawing board, then we get so see some of these many facets of the delicate crystal we work on.
Tonight, I finished the first draft of a new script and sent it over to the editor.  That's the high point of my week – the awful game on tuesday being the low – so I stepped back and tried to look at my drawing board.

My sketchbook has a figure drawing of a woman from last year's class I gave (I have something I can't show yet on another page, so I flipped it to that page to take this picture).
On the top left, I have some bookplates left for the BPRD: Vampire TPB that we did for Gosh.
I started to sort out original art to take with me to San Diego for Comic Con, and that's why the Killjoys variant cover I did is there, looking right at us.
The bottom left is what's left of color studies and preparation for coloring my story for the Magenta issue of the CMYK Vertigo Quarterly anthology.
On the right, the script and the layouts of Casanova 4.2, which I'm working on and am afraid I'm a little late.

Boom!
Pa-Zow!
Back to work. It doesn't really matter if you work on one project, or on many. If you believe in what you're doing, it's all worth it, and you should give it everything you have.

Casanova step-by-step

This week, both Bá and I did new original drawings for the annual CBLDF auction that takes place in San Diego during Comic Con. We took some time from our crazy-busy schedules (made even crazier by the fact that World Cup is going on just outside our studio window) and created two new images with characters we have created. TFAW, who always helps coordinate this, will make prints of the images that the artists will be able to keep and sell, so I decided to make a full color image that would make a great 10 x 17 print.

My first idea was to do a Sugarshock image. Everybody seems to really love those characters, and you could say that right now Joss Whedon, writer of Sugarshock and nowadays writer and director of the Avengers movies, has never been as popular. I sketched the characters on my notebook and started working on the final image, but something wasn't clicking and I wasn't happy with where I was going with the drawing. I decided to call it a day and get back to it the next morning, and I'm glad I did.
Next morning, I went looking for inspiration at one of my sources: Pinterest. I used to keep thousands of images in folders on my computer, but nowadays it's much easier to keep everything I think might inspire an illustration or a story on my Pinterest page. If you go check it out, you'll find elements of my recent CMKY stories for Vertigo, as well as research for the short Hellboy story, and many other images from across the internet that I keep in handy to mix up in my head when I'm at the drawing board.
The new wave of inspirational images made me decide to change characters, and the drawing became a Casanova image. It's easier to imagine Casanova in any situation, anywhere, with anyone. Much more pleased with this second sketch, I showed it to Bá:
"It's great", he said, "but lose the cheetah and the boat". I agreed and started working on the final piece.

I took pictures of the process to post on twitter, and it's a great way to see the way I was thinking visually, how I left many decisions for the inking stage, how I helped to make the characters pop by using cool darker colors on the background, how the red elements united the characters, how dripping and large expressive brushstrokes help give it a "drawing" look, a "hand-made" look.

After it was done, dry and ready, I scanned it, adjusted the colors on photoshop and sent it over by email. The original will be going with me to San Diego, where I shall say farewell to this painting, hoping it will find a great new home on the collection of some lucky fan.

2014 after a long day and a bottle of wine.

I will be done with the artwork of the Hellboy story I’m drawing this week. Today was a long day in order to finish inking two pages from it. I planned on finishing this pages much earlier, but life got in the way – in a good way, at least – and I had to pull a late night shift in order to keep up with my self-imposed schedule.
After I finished inking the first page, I made myself dinner. I opened a bottle of wine to relax a bit, and the fact that the bottle had “Aragonez” written in it struck me as a good sign. Not quite Aragonés, but close enough. I wondered if drinking would help or ruin the inking of the second page. It didn’t do any of the above, I guess, but I did relax as I worked well after midnight.

I’ve been working, on and off, at this Hellboy story since the beginning of the year, but the very first page of art I made this year was for something completely different. If you follow the news or attended the Image Expo convention that happened in San Francisco on January 9th, or if you follow this blog, you already know.



I got the following email from Matt on December 28th, already at the beach house:

“With the Image Expo coming up, Image is wondering if we (you) can generate a promo image they can reveal. Even if we just end up showing the logo and everyone’s name and a date that works but, y’know, art is always preferred.”

The page above was the result of the email exchange that followed, talking about the plot and the visual influences Matt wanted for the new arc. Even in the middle of my vacation, I decided to put in the extra effort and make this page. It was worth it, and it was a good reflex of one of my new year’s resolution:

-This year, I want to produce more.

If I focus, I know I can do more than what I’ve been doing. I know answering emails is part of the job, and making decisions and signing contracts and going to festivals around the world where I meet wonderful people and have incredible experiences, but I know I can produce more if I put my heart into it. An I plan to do it this year. The Hellboy story is part of it, as is the new Casanova arc. As is a short story for a Vertigo anthology, a one page Little Nemo homage piece, and some other secret projects we can’t talk about it yet.
We can do more stuff outside the “comics” realm: an music album cover, more live drawings, a tour poster, and whatever feeds our muse.

A recent email I received fed my muse in ways it haven’t been fed in a very long time, and it helped everything make sense.

As I finished the last inking page I set to myself for today (tonight), I went back to the bottle of wine and started thinking about my upcoming trip to India. I’m sure many stories are waiting to be discovered there, and Bá and I are counting the days.

We’re counting the days, and we’re making plans, and we’re dreaming of stores yet untold.

New Casanova back at Image

Casanova volume 4, called ACEDIA, was announced today at ImageEXPO. Matt and I will work on the main story, with backup stories by Michael Chabon and Bá.
It feels good to be back at Image with this book.
Well, back to work.
Happy new year.

Casanova: GULA in France

This is Bá's brand new cover for the french edition of Casanova: GULA, the second album published in France by Urban Comics.
Pa-ZOW!

Casanova v.4 is coming with a bonus

Casanova has a great deal of history with April. I always remember 2009 with fondness. But now the time has come to yet again share the wonders of the Casanova universe with our universe.

Matt says it best:

"When CASANOVA returns at the end of the year, the main story by Moon and me will be backed up by shorts created by Michael Chabon and Bá.
He keeps saying “Like TALES OF ASGARD” and I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not.
CASANOVA IV
Fraction • Moon • Chabon • Bá • Peter • And, siiiigh, Dharbin.
Marvel/Icon 2013."

Tour de France 2013 - the video

The final chapter of our great adventure in France, now with images, sounds and a lot of traveling around.



Thanks to everyone who came to our signings. Thanks for the stores who opened their doors to us: La Bulle, Expérience, La Parenthèse, Bulles en Tête and Apo(k)Lyps.
And thanks for Urban Comics for everything they did for us. It was amazing.

CASANOVA in France

Here's the brand new cover I did for the French edition of CASANOVA - Luxuria.




Casanova is gonna be published in France by Urban Comics, to be release in January, 2013.

I'm prepared to sign a lot of Casanovas in Angoulême and on the other cities of our little French tour, as well of Daytripper (and every other book someone might bring) and do a lot of "dédicaces".