WOTTA CRYBABY

I did this drawing to redress my huge oversight in not including this fucking whining crybaby dipshit in From the Ashes. This drawing wraps up the bonus section to sort of ameliorate my fuck up.

Baltimore Comic-Con Cutie Caboose

A couple of weekends ago I was a guest of the Baltimore Comic-Con (thanks, Marc Nathan!). I manned my table and signed, sold and sketched for two days. One of the attendees commissioned me to draw "a big butt girl," and this was the result. I really like the way it came out.

Cover Tease for FTA Collected

In March of next year, all the WFTers (Wait For Trade) will hopefully spring for the book collecting From the Ashes. I hope everyone will buy it, actually. As a creator, I sometimes feel a tingle of guilt when something I do comes out serialized and then I want people who already bought it to buy it again. But as a fan and consumer myself, I say, "Hey, I do it all the time." So, guilt absolved. Anyway, here are a couple of rough thumbs of the cover, which will be a wraparound. I wanted to pay homage to the great "merry chase" posters that Jack Davis did in the Sixties and Seventies.


The Amazon listing has an incorrect page count (it will be longer, because of the nifty bonus section; details to come) and cover art. I guess this is a place-filler until I deliver the real cover art.

JAZZ AND CT REJECT

I did this drawing for Connective Tissue (which is still highly discounted on Amazon yet nonetheless is languishing, so BUY IT!), but it didn't fit my narrative. I like it, though.

This was done as part of a panel in an American Splendor thing I illustrated. I think it might make a nice print.

CONNECTIVE TISSUE THUMBNAIL SKETCHES

Most of the interior art in Connective Tissue (if you haven't gotten your copy yet, for crying out loud, do! It's now an insanely cheap 45% off on Amazon!) was done spontaneously on that page without advance thumbnail sketching. There were a few that required a bit of planning, though. Here are some thumbs for them.

Zombie

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my work that I am a longtime, died-in-the-wool zombie fanatic.

Recently, I sold my second novel, Pariah, to Tor. I am thrilled (and relieved) beyond belief. It's a story that I've yearned to get out there for many, many years. I first conceived of it as a graphic novel (before my ambitions led me to write the regular kind), back in the mid-'90s. Fortunately (though I didn't feel that way at the time), it didn't come to pass in that format. I finally wrote it as a novel and the end result is much better.

The interesting thing is that part of my deal with Tor is to provide the book with some original interior art (I might do the cover, too, but that is pending). My approach is not to do illustrations of any scenes or characters in the book. I prefer to let the readers picture that for themselves. Instead, one of the characters is an artist and he does studies of the undead to pass the time (no more TV or Internet, so one must pass the time doing something). The conceit of the accompanying art will be that these are his drawings. I don't want any of the art to be typical EC-tinged stuff. The approach is to do sensitive, objective drawings. The zombies didn't ask to be this way. They're not evil.

To whet your appetites, here is one of the drawings. I might post some of the rejects here as the months go on, but here's a sample:

Pariah is due out July 2010.

Darla

Another unused Darla drawing from when I was working on Connective Tissue (which you really need to go buy, now).