How many people are we, anyway?

That's not really a question that I would answer here, but brings some points I've noticed at this year's Comicon and the different way people are receiving our work. At least, different from what we're used to her in Brazil.

You see, we've been doing this for almost ten years, climbing our way into this hard world of comics (independent comics, I might add). The public (should I say small public ) who reads comics here have already the notion of who we are and the work we do, even if they have never seen it. So I could say we have some success telling our stories around here, for a lot of people have at least heard of them.

But my point is on another end of our long journey and is about our partnership and how we deal with this sharing of roles. I'm talking about our being twins and working together and the fact that almost nobody really knows who does what around here. It gets worse because we really do everything ourselves and sometimes the division of the work is not drawn by a very sharp line.

So, we had the same "problem" at the Comicon, mainly because of our new book, URSULA, that we wrote and drew. On the original version, we had separated the credits for the art by pages, so a careful reader would know which page had been done by which one of us. In the beautiful AIT version, there's no such thing. But that's not really a problem, right? Just ask and we'll tell you who did what.

The real issue, the new spin on that, refers on F‡bio doing Smoke and Guns and that it has been spread all over the place and people new that and asked for Smoke and Guns sketches. Not the problem also, by all means, all the interest in our work, even separate, is great. But we left the convention under the impression that people did not really know that I also can draw. Once it is not said on URSULA that we did both things AND F‡bio is the one who has another project on the way, the public would address him in a different manner, with that look of wonder and enchantment on their eyes. For me, well, people look at me just because I am that hot.

Well, soon enough everyone will see the things we did and have been doing in separate and will focus on our stories, which is the most important thing and the only one that really matters.

Back to them, shall we?

Back in the game

Due to the crazy trip back home, with broken planes and accumulated work, there won't be a lot of writing time until we can get a lot of stuff out of our way. Lucky for us, we're buried in a lot of very interest, fun work, mostly, if not entirely, comic related.

But I'll just leave this week with a word of advise:

Believe in yourself. Work hard. Aim high.

It can happen.

next week: lessons from Eduardo Risso, the joy of working for other people and the dreams that came true.

The San Diego Comicon was a blast and we will tell you all about it in due time.

For now, all I can say is that our new comic, ROCK'N'ROLL, a big success at the Convention, is going to be avaible from Khepri.com, thanks to our good friend Brian. The down side is, there are only 35 copies of it. So hurry Up

Monday, monday.

Today, we leave to San Diego in a plane that will take us to Washington instead. Being as it is, we'll have to get on another plane, and that won't get us to San Diego either. I believe we'll land in L.A. What can we do?
Know the trip you're making so you can make the best of it. Make plans and think of the places you'll go, the people you'll meet. Prepare yourself to discover new ground and expect the unexpected. Maybe you're traveling to the Alps, and maybe you're only going to a comic book convention, it doesn't really matter. Every time you leave the house, your life can change. Just keep your eyes open o see it through and enjoy the ride.

...

And check out this link for more images of the next AiT projects, including Smoke and Guns.

Care for a smoke?
As some people have already noticed, Larry Young started spreading the word about the new books AiT is publishing, planning and doing in the next year and a half. Among various titles, one name can sound somewhat familiar.



Click here for the full list.

While you're on it, check Chris Arrant's nice words about Ursula.

Ursula

Follow your dreams. No matter how hard, no matter how far, we are but dreamers and there's no poing living a life without dreams. It's like never falling in love and, for us, that just won't do.

We're here for the long run, loving every step of the way.

meetings.

It seems July has already begun, comic book wise, even before we reach San Diego. We ran into a lot of artists who are currently doing big super-hero comics and we got to know somethings first hand about the super-hero business.

A good one is the return of Roger Cruz to super heroes. Look for an announcement of the book (from one of the big two) he will be penciling soon (I know but can't tell). He's a great guy, incredible artist, and has been able to improve in each new work he does. And he has an amazing talent to super people. Given enough time, he can deliver some of the best super-hero pages you'll find.

Ivan Reis, currently doing the best super-hero pages you can find today, will be in San Diego signing books and looking good alongside his friend and inker extraordinaire Marcelo Campos. He's a nice guy and his success is well deserved.

We met Greg Tochinni this week as well, but his schedule with his "THOR: Son of Asgard" artwork didn't allow him to make the journey to San Diego this time.

To finish this one, a word about Joe Prado. He's not a familiar name to most of the readers, but he's getting there. Expect some super pages from him anytime now. And expect him to be in San Diego with all the crazy brazilians (count the brazilian twins in), making this year's convention the brazilian convention.

Next step: change the official language in San Diego to portuguese.

Throw the last Bone.

Today, I read the last issue of Bone. I've been reading Bone since 1996 (it took a while for the wonders of Bone to reach the brazilian shores) and I have completely changed the way I understood comics after I discovered those three cousins, all lost in that strange valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. Bone was the first comic in a very long while that was made because it's author simply couldn't live doing anything else. He had a job, a life, everything one could want, but he wanted something else. In a way, he wanted more than the rest of us. He wanted to make a difference.

He succeeded in more ways than I can hardly begin to describe.

We should all be thankful we lived in the age of Bone, where we could follow, every two months, the adventures of Fone Bone and his friends. I am still amazed how Bone is the most coherent-looking saga of today, where you can look at the first page and the last and barely see which was done first.

Thanks, Jeff.

what did you already know and what did you learn today?

Tonight is the HQ Mix, the brazilian equivalent to the Eisner awards. Here things happen a little different, so, for starters, we already know who won what.

Why?

Simply because Brazil is a very big country, where is just not easy or cheat to travel around, so everybody from outside S‹o Paulo, the city where the awards are delivered, have to make plans to come, and they really can't afford to come if they didn't win.

This is the background to which we face the music down here. It's not easy, we don't make any money (well, maybe I can buy a couple of beer every other month with the money I make doing comics) but we LOVE COMICS. If we are still making them after ten years, it's just because we just could not live not doing it. And to be awarded for keep doing comics just for the love of it is always a good thing. Hence the importance of the HQ Mix. It's an award for people who love comics to be remembered, to be celebrated and to be respected.

Tonight, I'm selling my new comic book at the ceremony, I'm also selling the other comic book I did last year, and I'm also going already knowing that I won an award. I don't mind knowing. Would you?

Another week begins.

Sometimes, we have to stop and look around. We do not know what awaits us ahead, and we're not sure how we got where we are. We are scared. Then, we remember all that we have done, all that we have said, and how we became who we are.

The future is right ahead.

Let's go.

. . .

ROCK'n'ROLL is ready! We already sold copies during the weekend. Today, we'll sell more at a comic book related party which, if you ask me, is a great event to have when you just released a new comic book and need as many events as you can find to sell your book.

a blue note on the hot stuff


James Sime, owner of the Isotope in San Francisco, invites everyones in the area to check out the full-length blue-line preview of Ursula. And they are also proudly displaying the color guides to the cover of Ursula in a place of great honor on the Isotope wall.

This week I saw the blue line previews of the new comic book, ROCK'n'ROll, and they look beautiful. I just love blue lines. In fact, I love the entire process behind doing a comic book, from deciding you want to draw for the rest of your life, going through the story, the artwork, the designing of everything, the printing and the selling up until the pride you feel after all is said and done.

Face the music!
I'm putting this up so you can speak your mind about what you think of it. I'm really proud of this's cover, and know you all can see why.

introducing the major players - part two.

As a music that keeps playing, so should we. Keep playing, that is. Well, you undestood it, right? Anyway, here's the second "band member" of our ROCK'n'ROLL comic book, the oldest one:

THE CRAZY GENIUS.


At one point of another, we all wanted to be like him. He was so good, his ideas so fresh and his style so passionate that, by the time we met Kako, we wanted to be him.

He's Bruno's older brother, so you can imagine that Bruno wanted to be Kako long before we even met any of them. But it's refreshing to know that all of you haven't met him, or haven't seen his work, so we're ahead of you on this. Believe me when I tell you, he's just that good.

He's doing this comic book with us because we simply want him with us. He makes us look good. He makes the comic book different, and in a good way instead of a "I'm a mutant feared and hated from the world" way. He's almost a character in the story, but then, aren't we all?

introducing the major players - part one.

The internet can be a wonderful window to places far away. If you like what you see, you can try to go there someday. That's what I think when I talk about comics, creators, artists and writers: if you like what they do, the worlds they create, you can try to "go there" and find out more about it. With that in mind, I'll be taking some posts to talk a little bit about the artists involved in the new comic book I just did, called ROCK'n'ROLL. Each one has a unique style, and adds something different to the project, so I'm really proud to work with them on tis book. Without any further ado, lets get this thing started:

THE SMART MOUTH


He can talk himself out of any predicament. He can convince you that you need his services, that you should pay him highly sums of money for it - nothing fairer - and that he can do miracles in broad daylight. He just knows what you want to hear, and his job is to make you believe what he makes is what you wanted to see all along.

He's very good at it, by the way.

It's not easy being Bruno D'Angelo, to say the least. He have this really talented older brother, also an artist, which have consisted for a long time a barrier for Bruno's work to improve. So, before he actually improved, he developed the capacity to make people believe he was improving. In fact, he got so good at it that he also begun believing in himself, which caused him to actually start improving. That, and really hard work - for I have never seen someone draw so much as Bruno have in the last couple of year - made him an artist to admire and to hope to work with in the future.

That's why we asked him to do this new comic book with us. Luck for us, he said yes. We're in this boat together, and the sea awaits. Let's hunt the white whale before Bruno starts telling us how he already caught it, because if he does, we might believe him.

I might even be true.

(and, as I realized I could spend days thinking of things to say about Bruno, I remember I haven't said a important thing: Bruno has a really cool just opened website called Yello Jello where you can find tons of his work and so you can see for yourself more than I could possibly say about him.)

How do you learn? And how do you know if you HAVE learned?

I spent the last month making a new comic book. I came up with the story with my brother and we called two friends to divide the artwork. In a three chapter tale of adventure, mystery and horror, one artist would draw each chapter, leaving the remaining artist the cover job to divide the chapters. We all agreed to give it our best and to do something we haven't done before. It remains to be seen if we succeeded.

After I was done with each page, I would look at it with my brother and we would decide which one was the best panel of that page. When the next page was finished, we would do that again, only to discover that every new page was better than the previous, something that one should expect of himself when producing his work but that I was pleasantly surprised for actually seeing it happening. I have never been so satisfied about my own work before, nor have I been so dazzled by the magic of being impressed by my own work, so I can't help but wonder: when did I get so much better? How could I have learned so much from one work to the next?

This I know: The best way to learn how to make comics is by making them. In doing so, you'll make the mistakes you need to make to get it right, you'll see how you deal with the reality of creating worlds, how you manage to remain the same during the entire story in order to give your story a consistent voice, your own. I can say that every story I've made was the result of all my effort, and that, if I improved over the years, it was because my world got bigger, my reach went further and I could try to always do more.

The new comic book is done. We did our part. We must now set our baby loose so he can fly.

Here it comes...

So, we have finished another story. It is all done. As we always do, we put all the pages spread over the table to have a big picture of the whole thing, to see it all working together, harmoniously as instruments in an orchestra.

When I was looking at our Philharmonic that I realised that we had finished another story, another project was accomplished. Then I wondered if I would feel this way every time I would finish a story in the future. If this is the profession I have chosen and yet I always feel this joy when a can get the work done. Will I one day face the whole thing just as plain work, another job done, or will I always feel this happy when I create another story, have another idea, have another child?

There's only one way to know. So lets procreate!

Campos


Marcelo Campos (known in the american market as Marc Campos) is a great brazilian artist,with a very distinguish stile and outstanding notion of balance in black and white. Even-though nowadays he's not penciling anything anybody could see, his uncanny inking skills complete Ivan Reis's dynamic pencils at Action Comics every month.
Now he put up a website so more people can find out about his work. Go check it out! Now!

One look.



Isn't she lovely? I sure could not take my eyes off her, even when somebody else was talking. What could they possibly say that would be more interesting than her, there, standing in front of me, smiling with her silent eyes?

I smiled back.

It was the least I could do.

On a variety of subjects.

We got a very nice review of URSULA at the VARIETY's Bags and Boards. It may tell a little bit about the story, and it shows one of the best pages, but I found particularly gratifying to be given an A+. It's always nice to hear (or read, for that matter) good things about your work, but it can get a little awkward when there's so much of it. I don't know if I put on my proud face or if I just run and hide on a cave. Artists can get really shy sometimes, you know?

KNOCKED OUT BY THE COMPETITION.



He is just great. Every page is a explosion of action, every face is an emotion, every gesture tells the story. He is the artist we follow in whichever book he works on, and we love and hate him at the same time. We love him because he brings to life, like nobody else, the characters we love so much. We hate him because, after we see his work, how can we thing our own work is any good?

Can that great artist make us give up on becoming comic book artists ourselves?

Not if we're smart. The first thing we need to learn is a good example to follow. A bad example will do - and you see more aspiring artists from this category than you'd want to -, but a good example will make more than impress your eyes with nice pictures: it will impress your mind with new ideas. The good art is the one that makes us think, remember and makes such an impression on you that you will be forever changed.

If there's one thing I learned from having worked with my brother, it's that competition is good. Even if your competitor is miles ahead of you, it gives you a point of reference with your own work, and it makes you always remember that your work can be different, and that it can be better. I might not have started to draw if it weren't for my brother, and I might have stopped a long time ago if we weren't always competing to see who was the best. The best at what, you might ask? The best at being ourselves, for competitions are not about being equal, it's about being different. The work is the only one which wins.

Working with comic books makes me very critical of the medium, but I still fall flat on my face with a lot of artists, for they are just that good, and getting better. We should all be so lucky to have such incredible people making your profession look good. Strive for greatness, in your own time. Don't ever forget that the artists we admire, who still amaze us with every page they do, who better themselves work after work, they just remind us that comics are just great and infinite in it's array of possibilities. The poetry of a good comic book you will carry forever, even if it wasn't one of your making, and sometimes even if it was one of our own.