I am a Comicbook Geek

Well this last weekend was Wizard World Chicago (which is a multimedia event centered around comicbooks). I'm at the point now where I take three of my nephews with me so they can check it out too, meet some creators, buy some stuff and goof off. I've been going to this convention since I was in middle school. My brothers Walter and Steve used to take me to shows before I could drive and once I was driving I'd go with my buddies Rich and Shane. Years later with my buddy Jason and now with the nephews. I only missed one year and that's when I was coming home from my honeymoon.

Now the comicbook industry is getting more accepted these days because of all the movies they're making from comicbooks. Sure there's Spiderman, Batman Begins, Superman, X-Men and the like, but there's also movies like History of Violence, Road to Perdition, 300, Sin City, V for Vendetta being made also. Hollywood has clearly run out of ideas and is now mining the comicbook market for all it's worth. To many who are fans and creators of comicbooks this has brought validation to our medium to see the material accepted by a wide audience. To me it never needed validation. To the ignorant comicbooks are kids stuff and spandex. And yes, the majority of them are superhero fare (of which there are many excellent titles now Daredevil, Captian America, Invincible). Some are certainly for kids and are very well done and even venture into kid's books as well like Herobear and the Kid, Owly, The Shy Creatures, The Land of Sokmunster. But there's a lot more to it... there's the horror of The Walking Dead, the fantasy of Bone, the political trappings of Ex Machina, the trials of a war torn family in Fax From Sarajevo, or war torn zoo's in Pride of Bahgdad, the difficulties of growing up and facing relationships in Blankets, and even Biblical stories of Testament. It is a medium to be proud of and enjoy just as much as movies, novels, fine art (except for that Jackson Pollock 'I sneezed on the canvas and it represents the duality of man' pretentious rubbish). For some reason there are people ashamed of the medium of comicbooks. It is not a lesser medium by any means and if current trends are any indication it seems that all the good ideas are coming from comicbooks these days. Not that this is news to us who've read Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns or Maus.

I love this medium, even moreso I love the art! I'm an artist, I illustrate a kid's magazine that features children's book type stories and I still dabble in the comicbook illustration as well. One of my favorite things is getting original art. It's expensive and nerve wracking and I therefore do not own much. And half of what I do own was either done for free or given to me by the artists.

Some of what I own and think rocks!

This was given to me by Joe Quesada who is now Marvel's Editor in Chief. (I'll post more from him later) This was a sheet of thumbnail drawings he did that eventually turned into a cover for this book and was also used on a shirt and poster.





Several sketches from Mike Kunkel done for me at conventions 2 of Herobear and the Kid and one of Sokmunster.







Mike is a super cool guy who has done work for some cartoons like Juniper Lee and My Gym Partner's A Monkey. He's starting work on a Shazam series for DC. It'll be the only DC proper book I'm buying. He's that good.

I have some pictures of Zach I need to upload and I'll have some more art stuff later.

Oh and here's the cover for the first kid's mag I did. Second one should be out in a week or so. I reworked this cover image for the next printing BTW... I'm almost ashamed to post it but here it is.