Tyr's Day

After a few days exploring the 31st century and stranger places, we're back to Marvel Comics Thor for Tyr's day, or Tuesday as we call it in English. Here's Marvel's version of the Norse god of War, Tyr, recreating the fateful moment where he lost his hand binding the dread wolf Fenrir. Marvel's never really done all that much with Tyr, which is surprising as he's pretty kick-butt, in my opinion.

Monday Moon Boy! With bonus extra Devil Dinosaur

Yeah, that's right! Celebrating Monday with Moon Boy! One of my favorite Jack Kirby creations. And to insure that readers won't think this is a naked teen Wolverine on a bad hair day I included Devil, his pet dinosaur.

 I just recently purchased the nine issues of the original Devil Dinosaur, and it starts off as the greatest concept for a kids comic ever (a young ape boy and his pet intelligent dinosaur) but quickly devolves into a hot mess. Particularly the multi-issue sequence where Moon Boy has been kidnapped by Kirbyesque superaliens who intend to vivisect him, and Devil is left outside to save him. Kirby obviously just drew this story as he went along, not planning anything out in advance, and the sheer amount of dei ex machini he has to employ to let a kinda sorta T-Rex defeat super-advanced aliens from another world is nothing short of stunning.  And this goes on for like 3 issues. But man, amazing artwork!

Frigga's Day

Building off of yesterday's 'marvel'ous post of Thorsday, I'm celebrating friday with the Marvel comics version of Thor's mom, Frigga. I went with the frumpy Simonson-era version as opposed to the smokin' hot Rene Russo movie version.

Thorsday

nuff said.

Dr. Strange!

Today's Drawbridge topic was Marvel's master of the mystic arts, Dr Strange.

Pretty sure I've never drawn Dr Strange before. He's pretty fun, what with all those squiggles and whatnot.I decided to go all 60's on him, and was sure to Ditko up his hands for good measure.

Spider-Woman-- To Know Her is to Fear Her

Tuesday's Drawbridge topic was "Spider-Woman". Owing to a truly manic Tuesday, I'm a day late in getting up this drawing of one of my all-time favorite characters, Jessica Drew, the original Spider-Woman.

I know that she's been restored to her former prominence in Marvel Comics through the work of Brian Michael Bendis, but, man, I was digging on her way back before it was all cool to do so, as evidenced by these circa 1995 Spider-Woman samples I did. What was I thinking drawing Spider-Woman in 1995? I should have been drawing Youngblood or Bloodspot or Bloodblood or some sort of crap.

Anyway, here's to Spider-Woman, an odd duck of a character with an amazing design,  whose odd duck of a series has many, many cool and weird happenings in it, as well as some great artwork by Carmine Infantino and Steve Leialoha, among others. Check it out!

warm up- Strange Tales

Today issue #3 of Marvels "indie" anthology Strange Tales hits comic stands, this time featuring stories by frequent Drawbridger Tim Hamilton and some guy who I sit next to at the studio, Dean Haspiel. Tim's story features Machine Man and Morbius the Living Vampire, showcasing his love for both artificial life and the undead ; Dean's features Woodgod and the Thing, in a testament to his ongoing passion for both brawny shirtless guys and ungulates. I drew all 4 characters going at at it, Brooklyn style. Check it out now, at comic shops everywhere.

warm up: The Mighty Arm of DOOM!

Today at Drawbridge we're drawing what Nate would like to see, the Nate in question being Nate Cosby, former editor at Marvel Comics who had a hand in editing nearly every worthwhile thing to come out of the House of Ideas in recent years. And what Nate wanted to see was... an arm.

I decided to draw the mighty iron-clad gauntlet of that despot of Latveria, the diabolical Dr. Doom, at the exact moment he gets his fondest wish, wrapping his steely fingers around the neck of his accursed rival and making ready to go all Martian Popper Thing on Richard's accursed head. RICHARDS!!!

warm up: Roller Derby Disco Dazzler

Today at Drawbridge, Simon Fraser, who was apparently personally offended by the character's most recent costume design, asked that we redesign the outfit of that errant X-Men, the dynamic Disco Dazzler!

I have little of the affinity for the character that Simon seems to evince for her, but I always kind of dug her 70's design. I took what worked best from that get up (a general sparkliness and roller skates) and took off with it. Around where I live in Brooklyn there are a lot of advertisements for roller derby games, and they contain superheroic illustrations of hot roller derby girls. I liked the intense implied physicality of those illustrations, and roller derby get-up sin general, and brought some of that to my redesign of the former Disco Dazzler. Now, she plays hard, she rolls hard, and she glows hard.

Sharpie sketch, as I'm still on the road. When I return home, I may do a more detailed piece for my own amusement.

Warm up: Tigra

Tim, in his weirdly wonderful way just whipped off his Manga Tiger masterpiece before anyone had officially named a DrawBridge topic for the day. His mini-strip was so nice that I had to post-nominate "Tyger Tyger burning Bright" as our theme to accommodate Sr. Hamilton.

In a shameless bit of cheesecakery, I went with Marvel Comics character Tigra for my piece (inspired by a post on the excellent Scansdaily  all about her I read yesterday). In my drawing, she initially had her tongue out, but I decided to pull it back in the interests of decency everywhere. Besides, if you're getting off on ladies licking their furry forearms, you should really be frequenting other sites.

The Spectacular Spider-Woman

Way, way, way back before she became all cool again, I was an enormous fan of the original Spider-Woman, and secretly harbored plans to one day make it big at Marvel Comics and restore her to prominence. Obviously, that's no longer needed (thanks to Mr. Brian Michael Bendis) but I thought folks might get a kick out of seeing these circa 1995-or-so tryout pages I did.








My own personal critique? Some of the storytelling is a little wonky, and I'm not digging the 90's panel layouts, but the figure work hold up surprisingly well.

More old Marvel stuff

People seemed to like seeing my old superhero stuff, so here's some more. The X-men versus Arcade, from the second Marvel tryout book (I missed the first one). Really not much of a script, if I may say so, in terms of being able to do some storytelling, just a lot of rapid scene shifts withthe opportunity to draw a lot of cool stuff. Heck, it was the 90's, what do you expect?

No love from Marvel Comics, part 2

Part 2 of that Namor versus the whale story I drew way back in the mid 90's. I don't normally like to post spoilers, but I'll tell you this-- Namor beats the honking big whale monster up.






I'm getting some nice feedback from this, so I'll be posting up some more old school superhero stuff from the 90's. Hold on to your hats.

No love from Marvel Comics

Recently, while working on Athena, I had the occasion to draw a honking big whale monster. I half-remembered way, way back in the mid 90's drawing a Sub-Mariner sample for Marvel Comics that featured Namor fighting a honking big whale monster that I seemed to recall I had come up with a pretty nifty design for. I dug the pages out of my studio closet and was pleasantly surprised to see how nice they actually were (didn't get me any Marvel work though). Inspired by my buddy Michel Fiffe's recent brave example I decided to post the whale/Namor story online. Enjoy the first four pages below, the second half will go up tomorry.









Namor is trademarked Marvel Comics. The honking big whale monster is all me, baybee.