Rise Of The Silver Surfer

Just saw the new F4 movie today, thought I'd post a few brief thoughts:

• Johnny taking on everyone's powers ala Super Skrull was awesome.
• I loved the little details, like the shadow of Galactus's helmet as he passed Saturn.
• I don't know if it's more the writing or the acting, but Doom was kinda lame.
• Doom on the Surfboard was awesome though!
• Getting to see Doug Jones in his actual rubber suit when depowered was great. Can we all just do away with the "Doug was there solely for motion capture" claims Fox keep spouting?
• Fishburne was totally the wrong choice to voice the Surfer. It really threw me when he first opened his mouth. Got better as the movie went on, but still didn't quite feel right. And that's not to say Doug Jones would've sounded better, though I am firmly in the camp that believes he should've had the chance.
• Kindof a bummer Alicia had her role taken over by Sue.
• I'm not entirely sold on the idea of the Surfer's powers all relying on his board. Obviously they needed a way to depower him in the story, and a simple way for Doom to gain his powers, but I'm sure there were other ways.
• It doesn't really bother me that much though. The movie was fun, and I walked out wanting to see it again.
• There was a member of the film crew called Silver Butler! That rules (see, there's a reason to stick around and read the credits)
• I hope Warren Ellis got some nice kickbacks, because they totally stole one of his scenes from Ultimate Extinction, namely:

• Now that Galactus is dead, does that mean that reality should collapse, since he's one of the 3 cosmic entities required for the universe to exist?
• Galactus is a god, and it's been established long ago that he can manifest himself in different ways. The storm cloud was cool, get over it already.
• You can't fit 40 years of character development into a movie, and I'm glad they didn't try.

The REAL Red Arrow

While busy ripping covers off old magazines at work, I stumbled across this clip in a copy of Ralph (one of those men's magazines with models in skimpy clothing, specially aimed at guys that are too chicken to buy actual porn.)

The art files

I've been bitten by the art bug lately, doing a lot of sketches and generally just trying to get better. I thought I'd post a couple of recent things that I think turned out cool.

First up is that cover to Countdown. I made a tracing/impression to start with, but once I got painting it took on it's own shape a little.

I must be a bit dense. It suddenly occured to me that, while my drawing is lacking, I have logged hundreds of hours painting thousands of wargame miniatures (and am pretty good at it in my not so humble opinion :p), so I do actually know how to handle a paint brush. This was done purely as an experiment, hence my copying it and not doing something from scratch, but I think it came out great.

As is probably evident from my growing art collection, I visit eBay regularly (daily) to see what new stuff has been listed. Lately I've noticed some sketches coloured in greys with a splash of colour somewhere. Not a new idea, but I thought it might be fun to try, so I went to the art store and got a bunch of pens. The result:

I think it's pretty decent for a first attempt. It requires the exact opposite approach from painting models. With paint I go from dark to light, whereas with this you need to work backwards from the highlights. My faces need a lot of work, but I knew that already. I cheated on the detail on the hands (read: fingers, which I suck at still), but it actually looks alright.

And lest this post be entirely devoted to showing off, a cool minimalist sketch of Firestorm that just arrived, by Jamal Igle:

Man it's frustrating as a novice trying to get better, to see something like that, haha. Total economy of detail, but it clearly looks like Jason. $10US, can't go wrong with that.

How not to treat girls, featuring Firestorm

Today's lesson:

Even if the the most annoying guy at your school crashes your date,

and even if he totally provokes you,


talking smack infront of your girl will not score you any points.

Art in close-up: Firestorm #30

Firestorm Vol.2 #30
Page 8
Pencills: Rafael Kayanan
Inks: Romeo Tanghal
Letters: John Costanza
Colours: Nansi
Writer: Joey Cavalieri

Quick summary: Firestorm has been left dazed by an encounter with a telepath. Being induced to hallucinate, he had inadvertantly caused a lot of damage by fighting imaginary bad guys, which caused him to be arrested. He's being transferred to a secure facility, when his van is hijacked by the shape-shifting Incognito.

The full pages:



A simple page design, that manages to cover a lot of ground in a small space of time. I got this particular page because it was by Rafael Kayanan, and cheap. There's Firestorm pages available by him that are asking hundreds of dollars, I got this for I think $27US. No action shots of Firestorm + me not caring = cheap page. Win. It's fair to cite Rafael as the definative 80's Firestorm artist, so I really wanted a page of his with a costume shot.

Panel 1:


Great storytelling, you know instantly what has happened leading up to it. Nice use of perspective to keep things interesting. We even get a design on one cop's sock. Simple but effective city backdrop. The lettering is all done directly on the page, the pencil guidelines are still there. Love the dust clouds.

Panel 2:


Creepy face-melting transition shot of the villain. These day's the printed page would probably have some digital blurring to give it extra movement, but I prefer things done old school.

Panel 3:


I'm not entirely sold on the perspective on Firestorm, a bit too much of either his chest or back may be visible. The Professor is a paste-on. I really like the approach to the glass pane where you can see Incognito. Some simple lines on the glass between him and FS, and more lines on the windshield infront of him. The panel has an effective background without needing lots of detail or anything fancy.

Captain Consumer Man

Yeah, the new Transformers movie line of toys got released here yesterday. I've had this statue of Bumblebee on my desk at work for the last week, though I've been unable to actually buy it since they were embargoed until June 2 (I work in a department store, with a large toy section. I even used to run the toy department, oh those were cool times. I always had the comic toys in prominent places).


I pretty much despise the section of the collector market that insists on leaving figures mint in packaging, but this one will be staying in the box, for the simple reason that the box is almost as cool-looking as the figure. I took it out of the box and removed the extra packaging holding it in place though. I hope they make more statues like this, so far it's the only one.

Got a couple more art pages from eBay, this time from Vigilante.



The second page has one of comics great lines:

What guy hasn't said that to themselves at some point?

Judge Dredd vs Stan Lee, round 2

They made the world wait 56 issues, but finally 2000AD deemed us ready for the follow-up to one of the greatest fights ever, with Prog 541.

We begin coverage with everyone's favourite 'kick to the face', through a billboard no less.

->+A <- A+B = right/left combo

"Is that a lead pipe in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?"

Like the last fight, Dredd mocks him again, this time with racial slurs.



That had to hurt.

So did that.

Dredd out-crunks his ass, and the fight is over.

As with the last one, there is so much I left out. If you like powerfully drawn fight scenes, track down a copy, it rules.