AW, CRAP!

It was 1994. Comics had yet to succumb to the inevitable speculator crash that was just around the corner. And at the comic shop in my small town in Nova Scotia, I came across all four "Wake The Devil" Hellboy comics. I bought the first one and thought, if I like it, I'll buy the rest.

I bought the rest the next day.

That was my introduction to Hellboy. I was a fan of weird stuff, the paranormal, The X-Files, Unsolved Mysteries, etc etc, and Hellboy was right in my wheelhouse. When I was teaching myself to write screenplays, I adapted "Wake the Devil" as an exercise. I even included a funeral scene for Professor Broom, which wasn't in the comic but did make its way into the film. I think I even mailed a copy on 3 1/2" disk to Mike. (Remember those?)

When I stopped buying comics regularly, I still bought Hellboy. There was a period where I just didn't have the money and was not living near a comic store anymore so I missed a bunch of issues. But I later bought every trade and got caught up. Although Mignola handed over the art duties to Duncan Fegredo, the story Mignola had woven for "Wild Hunt" and "Storm and the Fury" were some of the best comics I had read in a while.

Meeting Mike at a con a few years ago was probably one of the few times I was starstruck by a comic creator, which I'm sure Mike would think is incredibly dumb. (I remember having a nice chat with Christine though!) I happily had my copy of Hellboy #1 signed by Mike and also picked up 20th anniversary print and a "From The Vault". He did seem a little grumpy, but apparently that's not
out of character.

When I was teaching myself digital painting a couple years ago... yup, Hellboy but mixed with Frazetta. Which I thought was funny because it's more of a satire of Hellboy than anything since the book is so quiet, dark and brooding, and the painting isn't.

Mike Mignola stepping away from Hellboy seemed inevitable to me. Especially after 20+ years. Hellboy will always be with us, and there will probably be more Hellboy comics, like the "Hellboy and the B.P.R.D." series. Just not drawn by Mignola.

Mike's decision to "go off and paint" seems pretty Mignola-esque to me from the various podcasts and interviews I've listened to over the years. He seems funny like that. And I think we're all waiting with baited breath to see what worlds he comes up with one painting at a time.

Nexus Newspaper Strip

www.rudedudeproductions.com

I hope everyone gives this a shot, its a really terrific idea and something unique for comics today!
You might have seen the Kickstarter last summer and now the papers are starting to roll out! So if you didn't get on board during the Kickstarter, be sure to visit the site now and support something cool! Also available on comixology, but the real deal is huge, and the subscription boxes are like Steve Rude/Nexus lootcrates!

I made the above graphic for fun and it's not approved by Rude Dude Productions. I'm just trying to help out! Also, I am colouring some of this project, so believe me, it's great stuff and you don't want to miss it!


*UPDATE

Looks like my name starts up on page 5, although Les, the previous colourist did most of the heavy lifting on 5 by the time I came on board, same with page 6, but in order to make the changes wanted, I re-flatted and re-coloured a lot of that page, using what was done to work from.

Damn Butterflies!

A little Chrononauts fun. And a whole lot of tiny little lines. 100% digital.

Plodding along

Still colouring book 2. Up to page 18, if anyone has tips on how to colour faster, I'm all for it.
At least book two is only 30-something pages. But book three is BIG.

It's been tough to get people to read the first book. I've been doing what I can on twitter mostly, to drive people to the site to read the book, (Which is now available to read on the site without going through the shop to download the PDF.) but it's slow going unless you get someone with clout to retweet you. Otherwise unless your name is Mark Millar or John Cassaday or something people just aren't interested in reading comic book even if its free! Since April 9th, we had 470 visitors and had 36 books downloaded. There have been no downloads for weeks, which I hope has more to do with the fact that people don't have to anymore.

Its not perfect, but people do seem to really like the book, which is nice. But when you're essentially nobody in a market flooded with other nobodies working hard and trying to get the same traction you are, it's just all white noise to the rest of the world. At the East Coast Comicon, we printed up a bunch of 22 page copies of (half of) book one, and we could have given twice as many away! But online is a different story. People aren't being channelled towards your table where you can talk to them and get them to come over. Online, you basically have to repeatedly shout out overtop the vast majority of other comics and creators, a lot of whom are pros. And then you just become annoying.

But this is the nature of the beast. You can't complain about the way things are, you just have to do more research on the matter... and try to get a little lucky here and there.


Hey, if you haven't already, please read the book at www.alexandraforever.com ! And leave feedback!

ECCC Cover

This is the new cover for the special edition of book 1 that will appear at the East Coast Comic Con next week!

Whether it looks like this on the print version I don't know. But this is how it looked when it left my Surface Pro3.

The background is an homage to the rocketship interiors by Wallace Wood, as we will be doing interviews at the ECCC for an upcoming documentary about Wallace Wood for Sequart.org!

Cameos

I have a bad habit of filling in crowd scenes or secondary characters with comic book people, and Red Goddess is no exception. In the final book, only Alexandra (in red) is at full colour, everyone else is desaturated. Also, there are word balloons that cover some people up.

From left to right (in the background)
Michael Golden, Mike and Laura Allred, Gail Simone, Frank Miller, Lee Van Cleefe (not a comic person, but cool and in context with the western-y aspect of the planet) and John Byrne. Also, Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame, and a huge comic bok fan) makes an appearance on the same page.

There'll be more crowd scenes later so expect to see some other comic book luminaries.

The road continueth...

A week or so ago, I finally finished colouring "Book 1" of The Red Goddess. Book 1 is in quotation makes as the three book script I've been given is apparently going to be split into four comics.
Initially, the release will be printed in greyscale from my full colours (which is also cheaper to print)
and later when the whole thing is done it will be collected into one full colour TPB. We're getting Diamond distribution through some fine folks in the US at Robot Paper, who publish Henchmen.

Layouts for "Book 2" are done-ish (revisions pending) and "Book 3" has started. Our esteemed author is furiously re-writing and adjusting things as we speak.

A few weeks ago, Mark Millar, author of Starlight (among others) offered a little contest for a variant cover to the last issue of said title, but took some flack by other creators for all the "free work" he would be getting from unpublished creators creating covers, all but one being paid or somesuch. The contest was shut down, but not before I had made my cover. 100% digital using Photoshop and the newly purchased Manga Studio, which for some reason has a completely different name when you buy the digital version. Clip Paint Something something. Works great though. Especially for inking.

And it got a little love from the creative team on the old twitter-bot, which was nice. Thanks, guys!