Page 1 inks as promised...

Hey all, well it was a day yesterday, a long day it seemed. And it was early to rise around Lightning Legion HQ this morning, as I churned out the inks for page 1 from the Number 13 story to be adapted by Martin Powell and myself.

I will try to color this thing, but the more I think about it all I may try to find someone to do the 'flats' at least for me. The reason for this is going to be TIME, as always. Also I truly don't do well with color. My color theory, in my eyes, is the worst thing I do....well other than write, pencil, ink, and everything else...ha. Just a thought anyway. As I would like to find a good colorist to work with for most things I am trying to do....anyway more on that at a later date.

I did have a blast inking this, altho it took a bit of time. Has been awhile since I inked much and with my hands and all I have to get used to it all over again it seems. Getting old isn't fun, so don't try it at home - unsupervised...ha.

I have been trying to cut back on buying stuff, since my try for an early retirement is coming up in a couple of years. I will probably starve to death, but at least I will starve happy, working on my own stuff or doing freelance comics. But sometimes you just can't pass something up. These Artist Editions are truly amazing!!!! Especially this one. I missed out on the Rocketeer one as I didn't really know what they were going to look like. I say my friend Scott's copy of the Rocketeer, and kind of wished I had gotten it. But now it is too high.

For those that don't know of these books, you need to see them. They are full color scans of the original art boards and printed in color at full size. Amazing. You might ask about the 'color' of black and white art, but if you think about it they need to be in color. As many artists used blue line pencils, or litho markers or crayons, and white out and tons of other stuff to make the art. With these scans you get to see it all! So if someone spilled grape juice on the art, then it would be purple. ha.

And of course being printed at full size is amazing. You get to see all the detail, the mistakes, the corrections and all. This Wally Wood book is an amazing 15 x 22 inches....holy moley it is huge!!! As older comic art was on bigger boards, and believe me this shows it all.

And of course these are some of the great EC stories that Wally Wood illustrated. Even one of the Ray Bradbury stories is there. Again Amazing stuff....these pages are a true inspiration to any artist, or comic fan for sure. The price is high, but worth every penny.

the beginning of #13 and stuff

Well here are the long awaited pencils to page 1 of Number 13. Number 13 is the adaption of ERB's Monster Men written by Martin Powell with art scribbles by me, coming in the future from Sequential Pulp imprint of Dark Horse comics.

While doing the pencils, and now while doing the inks this weekend, I can't seem to get that old 'monster mash' song out of my mind. ha.

Also, it has been a very long time since I updated the Legion blog here.  I won't go into details since it is the old standard things and I hate even using an excuse. Really there is no excuse other than the medical and all. My mother used to have a saying, 'just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get going'. That keeps running thru my mind too. Needless to say sometimes it doesn't work really well remembering that. And since I hate to post if I don't have anything solid to show. Oh sure there are sketches, mostly bad ones lately, and there are writing ideas and all, but again nothing solid. So I will try and post the inks to this page later this weekend. I should finish it up tomorrow, if all goes well, so look for it later tomorrow.

I always think of tons of stuff I should post about, but then when I start posting it all seems to go away. Ha, one of the worst things of getting old.

I am kind of pumped because of the newer footage of the John Carter movie. It does look like a good adventure film.  And if you can believe the leaking reviews, it is trending as an adventure film with heart and a story. I sure hope so as more people need to know of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his works. Most modern readers or first timers will probably think his writing is stilted and old fashioned, and well it might be in places for the modern mind.  But people need to realize where all the stuff they have been watching for decades comes from.

I was always a bigger fan of the Tarzan novels than the Mars. I enjoy them both a lot, just always could really get into the Tarzan and some of the other series more. I don't remember ever playing John Carter as a kid, but I do remember trying to be like Tarzan. ha.

Also, as a bit of news, I started a page on Facebook for Action Science Adventures magazine. This, if you don't know, was the fictional pulp mag that I created when I started Captain Spectre years ago. His adventures, sequential and prose, would have appeared in this magazine.  But lately with the growing new pulp comics and prose items, I have noticed people from time to time will stumble on the term 'action science' for a description of some adventures here and there. So since I came up with the term when Cap started I thought I had better put out some stuff to anchor my claim to it.  The future Captain Spectre stuff will be under this banner or publishing house.
I would hope in the future to achieve to actually put out issues of this, with sequential and prose stories in it. I really like the combo of comics and prose together in one magazine. I have seen a couple of later day pulps that did this and thought it was something I would like to do.  All in the future, but the mind likes to have something to shoot for. ha.

Also the other day I was churning thru old archive discs looking for a couple of files, haven't found them yet but did find some of my discs are losing date.  But in the process found some older stuff. This maybe be a piece not many of you have seen. I did this cover for a game supplement book for a pulp game company a few years ago. Ha a blast doing it.....I sure need to get back on the painting wagon some day soon.....but time is my enemy.