New Year's Revulsions

What about that 2009, eh? What about that?! Yeah, me neither. Actually, my 2009 has been all right, so I'm counting my blessings, really. I know it's been rough for a lot of people.

New Year's Resolutions:
(1) To try and get a collection of my old mini-comics and scattered one-off short stories together, probably as a print-on-demand affair for selling at conventions and through the ol' website.
(2) To produce a comic through entirely digital means that looks as much like my hand-drawn comics as possible, just to prove to myself it can be done. So far my attempts at digital artwork have been very digital-looking, and that's not what I want. So yeah, learn some skills.
(3) To get more sleep. Of the three, that's the least likely to happen.


Here's a picture I did as a commission - Waiting for Godot as performed by Laurel and Hardy, which I'd love to do one day - a straight adaptation, with the entire original text unaltered, just with Stan and Ollie as Vladimir and Estragon. It's a book waiting to happen.

Well, Ho Ho Ho to you too

It's actually starting to feel like the end of the year now - people are getting reflective all of a sudden. There's a short interview with me on ToughPigs right now where I talk a bit about The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson - check it out here. Also very flattered to be mentioned as part of Rich Kreiner's Best of 2009 roundup over at the all-new Comics Journal website - and especially pleased for Fin Fang Four collaborator Scott Gray, who's getting some much-deserved attention lately.

Here's a Christmas present for you all - Kevin Cross starts his new webcomic, Monkey Mod, today. Yow! Been looking forward to this for a while. If you haven't seen the trailer, go now. Now, I say! Fly like the wind!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Pet Avengers Assemble

I was recently asked to do a cover for the Marvel comic Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers. Here's a step-by-step snapshot of the various stages, because I've recently been asked about such things.

First I did a couple of roughs...



The one selected for developing into a fully-rendered cover was the second one, so I then drew it in pencil on a piece of letter-sized paper.


Finally, I scanned the pencils and blew them up to finished art size, printed them out as a blueline (light blue lines which can be inked without reproducing, so only the inked lines are visible), and inked everything with a No 2 sable brush and a Hunt 102 dip pen.


Ta-dah! Wyatt Wingfoot's your uncle.

The Googlemeister Is In

I have been just a teensy bit obsessed with Billy DeBeck's great newspaper strip, Barney Google, lately - not so much the later Snuffy Smith-centred material, more the Early Funny Ones. Here's my one attempt to do a Billy DeBeck style, at which I think I totally failed.


The problem is that DeBeck was such a good artist - his cartooning decisions were 100% conscious and deliberate, based on a rock-solid underlying drawing ability (this is a guy who started out forging Charles Dana Gibson drawings for a living!). So his fluidity is really hard to imitate if you have a more awkward, laboured relationship with the pen and brush.

Here's an example of the real deal.


More Barney Google in print - that's what I want for Christmas.

Rhapsody in Brown

Here's a Fred the Clown strip I did for Tripwire a couple of years ago - I think enough time has passed now for me to post it here without getting anybody annoyed.

Art and Story Extreme!! had a short appearance by me last week - just a fun cameo on a call-in show, and nothing there for the ages particularly, but it was a pretty funny show once I got out of the way.

Ooh, I think that's about it. Ever so slightly behind on stuff right now (that's code for AAAARGGH) so it's a short one this week. See you in the funny pages.

Happy Daddy

I'm a very proud daddy this week. My seven-year-old daughter asked if she could watch a DVD "for grownups". Once my heart had started again, I showed her Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr -- and she loved it. And my four-year-old son has been getting me to make pencil sketches for him to trace over for the past few days, essentially so he can practise inking; he calls it "tracing", but that's effectively what he's doing. So, yay kids! I've posted this picture once before, but I thought it deserved a return engagement.

And the winner for most boring post is...

Bit of Sam the Eagle for ya. These are the pencils for one of the covers for Muppet Show #4.

Just a short post this week - I'm running behind schedule due to some domestic crises that needed dealing with. All right, the cat was ill. He's a weird old fella who we recently adopted from an animal shelter, found as a stray originally, and it turns out he's got this terrible catalogue of ailments. So he's turning out to be quite high-maintenance. Behold the mighty Sylvester...


I have just posted a picture of my cat to my blog. My life is now complete and I can die happy.

Skin

I designed a tattoo! My artwork is now a permanent part of someone's body. How about that.

I believe the final issue of Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson is out this Wednesday. I think I managed to pull everything together at the end (by the skin of my teeth), but from here on in there'll be a lot more of a self-contained quality to each issue. That whole series was quite the learning experience.

Looks like I'll be drawing a Doctor Who story next year for the Who Mag! It'll be a ten-page short story with the Eleventh Doctor, written by Jonathan Morris, and without giving the concept away, let's just say it sounds like the research will be a lot of fun.

Finished the script for the first issue of the Muppet Show: Guest Stars story arc this week, featuring Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. There's also a brief appearance by Galileo which should make Mike Dawson very happy.

You Were Rubbish, Sir

In the UK we don't really have a tradition of trick-or-treating - it's an American invention that commercial forces have been trying to force down our throats over here for about a decade now. So every Halloween we get a lot of people who don't really know the procedure trying to do something we've only ever seen on television. But even with that caveat, there was no excuse for the kid (about 13) who knocked on our door without a costume of any kind. We asked him what he was dressed as; his reply, after thinking about it for way too long, was, "Um... I'm a chav." Well, I'll tell you, he only got one lolly from us! Oh my yes! And a stern admonition to try harder next year! I don't know what we need Halloween for here anyway - we've got a perfectly good Catholic-burning five days later we can celebrate.

Salons, Scripts and Stories

First, those of of you in the New York area might like to know about the ACT-I-VATE Salon this Thursday - details below, or follow the link.


This week I was asked by Marvel to write a four-issue series for their Marvel Adventures line. This is exactly the sort of thing I gave up my magazine illustration work to be able to do more of - it's just where I think the biggest challenges are for me creatively right now - so I said yes, and now I have to figure out how the hell I'm going to do it. The brief is to do a big cosmic thing starring the Avengers and Thanos, loosely based on an old story in the Marvel Universe proper which I'd never heard of. Go on, lemming, over the cliff...

Quick recommendation: Art & Story, the podcast on the craft of creating comics. Right now they're in the middle of a series called "Your Comic from the Ground Up", where the hosts, Mark and Jerzy, discuss just that - how to build a long-form comic story from scratch. Really good stuff, especially to someone like me, who's way more comfortable in the "3-minute pop-song" end of comics.

Drink the Wind

Mugwhump's back on ACT-I-VATE! Go check it out here -- as before, there'll be a one-week lag before it appears here at the Hotel Fred, but appear it shall. Most exciting.


Here's something that happened a couple of days ago between me and my son Thomas -- I had a Soppy Dad moment and had to get it down on paper. It'll probably make anybody without kids cringe. Tough, I say, tough! The boy has a way with a poetic turn of phrase, what can I tell you? He'll be four next week.

All this to look forward to

One week until Mugwhump is back on your computer screens! I'm really looking forward to doing something non-corporate for a change - the Muppets are great fun, but they'll never be mine-all-mine. Here's a teaser - pencil art for the first installment, which will essentially be a recap since I've been away from it for so long.


This morning I had my next couple of Muppet plots given the go-ahead from Boom!, though there's still Disney to hear back from - but, all things being equal, you'll soon be seeing human guest stars (at least for a few issues) and the return of some characters who haven't appeared in the comic up until now. Yes, I'm teasing you. Tee hee.

Throwing Peanuts

Back to some proper drawing this week. Feeling rusty after only occasional doodles for a few weeks, but my scripting schedule is completely back on track now and ideas for the next couple of Muppet Show story arcs are falling into place. So I'm feeling on top of things for the first time in a while.

Hey, I received my copies of the first Muppet Show collection in the mail this week - not bad! I was expecting the dimensions to be smaller, more digest-sized. This looks about perfect to me - my originals are drawn pretty close to printed size, so a small amount of reduction actually flatters the work considerably. There's a weird printing error on one page for some reason - the resolution on one of the Pigs in Space pages is all screwed up - but apart from that it's everything I could have hoped for. And I'm really, really pleased to see my old Disney Adventures strips published in the back at last.

Also received a copy of The Widow's Curse, the Doctor Who graphic novel which features a nine-pager by Jonny Morris and me, "Death to the Doctor!", plus a bunch of sketches and notes about the story. (And lots of other goodness besides, of course.) The Tenth Doctor strip really started to find its legs around this period.


And now, for no reason whatsoever, here's something I did years ago for a Schulz-themed exhibition organised by my friend Brad Brooks - not quite the last time I tried painting anything, but pretty nearly. Ah, computers, you've ruined me.

Look, Ma! I'm Writin'!

I've had a pretty decent week, productivity-wise, having nailed down the plot for the final issue of the Muppet Show: On the Road story arc, finished writing the first issue, completely scripted the second issue, started writing the third, and written the first three weeks of the re-started Mugwhump the Great strip. And I've drawn stuff-all!

I've discovered something -- I get cross and irritable when I write all day. I don't know if it's the act of writing so much as the fact of not drawing that's doing it. I know I can't take holidays without climbing the walls after a day or two unless I have something to draw, so I suspect it's related. That said, writing is such an immersive experience that it almost hurts to be interrupted, and I suspect that has something to do with it as well. I normally just write in the early mornings, when being interrupted isn't an issue, but the Muppet scripts were way behind and I needed to catch up.

Anyway. Almost caught up. Then it'll just be back to early mornings for a bit, drawing the rest of the day, and my family will like me again. As much as they usually do, anyway.



It lives! Dean Haspiel with the ACT-I-VATE PRIMER. With Mugwhump starting up again soon, it's impeccable timing.

Pyjamas are great

Oh, I've had such a lovely week. While Shelli Paroline works on drawing the upcoming Muppet Show #0, I've been writing, just writing. And working "gentleman's hours", which in my case means getting up at 7am instead of 5:30am. I could get used to this. But, alas, it's time to get back in the saddle again, before the extra time the fill-in has bought me is entirely frittered away. Still, I want to take this opportunity to thank Shelli as publicly as can for saving my health and my sanity. Really, it was getting that bad.


On to other things! I've given up my regular illustration spot in Inside Soap magazine, and will jump off that particular horse as soon as they get a replacement cartoonist. That's going to buy me an extra 4 or 5 days a month - it means a bit less money, but it'll mean I can do some other things once in a while. (I mean, I love working on the Muppets, but I like a change every now and then too.) One thing I've done over the last week is work out the next chapter of Mugwhump the Great, which I've now got no excuse for not starting up again as soon as the nice people over at ACT-I-VATE will have me back. I'm planning to pick it up one month from now - October 20th. Mark your calendars!

Speaking of Mugwhump and ACT-I-VATE, I'm reliably informed that our guy at IDW, Scott Dunbier, has held a copy of the much-ballyhooed ACT-I-VATE PRIMER in his trembling hands. He says it looks amazing. And who am I to disagree?

The Asgard Connection

By now I expect everybody's heard that Disney has acquired Marvel Comics. I don't really know that there's anything to be said about it, except that for now it seems to be business as usual as far as my work goes (working both sides of that particular fence as I do). For those who want to get a bit more info, I recommend checking out The Comics Reporter, reading Tom Spurgeon's analysis and following the links.

Having addressed that elephant in the room, I heard this past week that we've got a definite artist for the Pigs in Space one-shot (or Muppet Show Comic Book #0, as it's now officially designated) - it's Shelli Paroline, whose Muppet work can already be seen on the Muppet Robin Hood covers. Should be all kinds of fun. And a big thank you to Shelli for taking some of the pressure off my work schedule, so I can continue to bring my best work to this comic.

And now, for absolutely no reason, here's a creaky one from the vaults - the first page of a series I did for Dark Horse Presents back in the day, Doctor Spin, with scripts by Gordon Rennie. It ran for four issues, starting in DHP #115. Still quite fond of it - I really knocked myself out on the artwork, to deafening indifference. Anyway.

Congratulations It's a Book

Huzzah! According to Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter website, which keeps much tighter tabs on these things than I do, the first Muppet Show Comic Book collection, Meet the Muppets, is out this week. (Amazon link here.) And good news for readers in the UK: it appears that Amazon UK are going to have it because I found a link for it there. So now British readers can stop wondering what I've been up to for the last year or so. Added incentive: the ten-page story I did for Disney Adventures a couple of years ago, which has never before been published in its entirety, will finally see the light of day in the collection. (And there's a hardback edition for those of you with deep pockets!) This is technically my first original graphic novel since Fred the Clown, so I hope you'll forgive my excitement.

Also out this week is the second issue of The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson.


While I'm plugging books, I encourage you to check out the ACT-I-VATE PRIMER preview over at the AIV site, where I believe you can also pre-order the book directly (click on the sexy banner ad at the top of the preview page).

Mugwhump fans take note, I'm vigorously moving stuff around in my schedule so I can recommence the strip at the earliest opportunity. I'm discussing with Boom! how best to lessen my Muppet workload without interrupting the monthly schedule, and once all those ducks are in a row I'll have a bit more wiggle room. (Not to mention more sleep.) Watch this space!

Sequential Archaeology

I can't recall mentioning this before, so here it is: The Muppet Show comic book will be a proper ongoing series as of the November issue, the Pigs in Space one-shot, which will start the numbering at Issue #0 for some weird reason I'm unable to fathom*. After that, it's #1 for the first issue of the next story arc, On the Road, and we get to do all the numbers in sequence from then on until none of us are able to stand it any longer. No more of this re-starting every four issues with a new #1, no sir! It's a proper comic at last!

Mugwhump watchers may be interested to read a piece about the ACT-I-VATE Primer over at Comic Book Resources.

And finally, here are some old sketches I found in a folder with some really unhelpful file names, so I had no idea what they were until I opened them. They must predate Fred the Clown #1, because one of them is a cover idea for that comic, so I'm guessing they're from around the year 2000. Time I put some artwork up here that wasn't a plug for something.




(*I mean, I can understand Robert Crumb putting out Zap Comix #0, because he thought the artwork was gone forever when he put out #1 and inserted it in sequence after the fact when photocopies eventually showed up, but I don't understand modern #0 issues at all. It's not like the comic is non-existent. A zero-numbered issue would make sense if it was only released on the internet or something, because then a physical comic wouldn't actually exist. Am I thinking about this stuff too hard?)

Random chicken scratchings

This week I finished writing a pitch for a Marvel Adventures series (or rather, I tightened up a pitch I'd already written which was far too long) which I have a very good feeling about. Not that I'm confident it's going to be approved or anything, I'm just very pleased with it. Especially so since it would be quite a long piece of work if it goes ahead and I'm rarely happy with my attempts to write anything long-form. More news on that front if and when I have anything, always allowing for the possibility that it may sink without a trace... I'm finding increasing amounts of enjoyment from writing for other artists. It's a place I never expected to end up, but I'm kind of glad I have.

Which is just as well, because I'm on the home stretch of the script for the upcoming Pigs in Space one-shot. I'm still not 100% sure if the artist has been decided, although I met someone at San Diego who was at the top of the list who'd be a really good choice. Sorry to be so oblique, but I really don't know if that decision has been made yet or not.
But I'm writing with that artist in mind.

Finished inking the third issue of The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson last night. One more issue to go before I get to sleep in for a day or two, for the first time in eight months. Ooohhh, I'm looking forward to that. I'm hoping to be able to pick up where I left off with Mugwhump the Great at that point, ACT-I-VATE followers... and, speaking of which:

All are welcome to join the ACT-I-Vate Primer group on Facebook. Come join us, won't you?

You may be wondering why you sent for me

Okay - got a couple of announcements here. The first involves the Act-I-Vate Primer - a fine and fabulous book published by IDW, featuring brand-new print stories featuring characters from the Act-I-Vate website. My own contribution is a Mugwhump the Great story, a prequel to the web strip (which I will be picking up again as soon as I get a minute!). Now available for pre-order from Diamond Previews or through Amazon.

Next thing I want to draw your attention to is a short interview with me on the MuppetCast podcast - partly about my experiences at the San Diego Comic Con, and partly about more general Muppet comic matters. An excellent show for your inner Muppet!

Another interview I forgot to link to earlier is one I did with the Secret Identity Podcast boys - find that here.

And I need to mention the rather fabulous Awesome 2: Awesomer anthology published by Top Shelf, for which I contributed the back cover. Edited by Indie Spinner Rack's Charlito and Mr Phil, it's a veritable who's that of indie comics, and a percentage of profits will go towards a scholarship for a lucky student at the Centre for Cartoon Studies - so well worth your support.

End of Plugorama!