AVENGERS vs X-MEN 80's EDITION : Shadowcat vs Ironman

Once again just having a little fun with the Marvels big summer cross over event - I just took it back to MY favorite comic age, THE 80's ! Kitty "Shadowcat" Pryde vs IRONMAN.

GI joe's Snake Eyes in : CROM RULEZ THE DEAD

 I went back to basics on a some "MARVEL" Strathmore comic stock I had lying about. good old fashion pencils on inks laid down with a Mocron .005 & a Micron brush tip which I love. Just a nice little scene with our buddy Snake Eyes using a Cobra Officer for a shield. The tag "Crom Rule the Dead" is a little fan service for a friend a mine who sent me a pic of that particular tag spray painted in the NYC subway tunnels.

The ipad is cute for doodles but Paper & Inks are my bread and butter.

My favorite Walt Simonson pages # 3

FROG OF THUNDER baby!!! Loki turns Thor into a frog, frog gets his little webs fingers on Mjolnir and the rest is comic history!

From the awesomely amazing The Mighty Thor vol. # 1 (364-366)



-ribbit.

My Favorite Walt Simonson pages #2

This one comes to us from THE MIGHTY THOR vol. 1, issue # 339. Odin invites Thor, Lady Sif and Beta Ray Bill into The furnaces of Nedavellir, the great forges of the Dwarves where Eitri the master Weapon-smith of Asgard casts a second hammer out of molten Uru metal.

Odin then pours a portion of the his life force into the molten hammer and casts an enchantment giving the bearer of this new weapon, Stormbreaker, all of the powers and abilities of Thor.

Eitri instructs Bill (Thor's new ally and equal in both strength and virtue who Odin has appointed as protector of Asgard and the realm eternal,) to pull the molten Stormbreaker out of the forge so that the enchantment can hold.

What comes next is one of my favorite comic book pages of all time:



-"By Ymir's frosty beard!"

My Favorite Walt Simonson pages #1

After having just enjoyed THOR on blu-ray with my family and since I recently received my WALT SIMONSON'S THOR ARTIST EDITION from IDW (which is a thing of beauty and a steal at $99 bucks) I thought I'd share some of my favorite pages from his now legendary Marvel comics THOR run.

Today's page comes from THE MIGHTY THOR vol. 337, a forsaken Donald Blake (Thor's alter ego) is left stranded on the wreckage of a shield helicarrier without his enchanted hammer screaming against a tempest for his father aide.



Damn that's sweet.

-Grandaiza out.

The "What If" that never was, Peter Parker getting drafted in 68' to 'Nam in "SPIDER-NAM"

The creator and artist of WONTON SOUP and ORC STAIN James Stokoe shows some love for the mainstream classics with this unpublished 5 page piece he did just for the love of the art titled "Spider-Nam"

I think the concept is brilliant and if Marvel had any sense, they'd call James up and commission this book for a trade or a mini.

Check out the pages below....

Band on the Run...from MAGNETO!

Courtesy of CBR.com

Here's a rarely seen piece from Jack "the King" Kirby that he drew for Paul and Lynda McCartney way back when.

The story goes that Paul use to read marvel comics to his kids back in the 70's and he enjoyed the "new" comics coming out at the time, wrote a little ditty on their 1975 album Mars and Venus titled "Magneto and the Titanium Man" and requested a meeting with Jack during a Wings tour date in L.A.

The two met, Jack gave Paul the drawing, Paul gave Jack tickets to their concert in LA and Paul dedicated the aforementioned song to Kirby.

Pretty sweet.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fireworks provided by the star spangled avenger and the north Korean army.

and remember kiddies, guns don't kill people.
(unless they're being wielded by the most bad ass super soldier of them all!)

Hope you enjoyed 2010, cause it's over Johnny......IT'S OVER!!!

From COMIC BOOK MOMENTS

(art by cap artist extraordinaire, Ron Garney.)

R.I.P Richard Joseph Giordano (1932-2010)

Dick Giordano was one of the most influential artist and editors in the comic industry, who most of you will know for his inks on Neal Adams work over at DC ( Batman, Green Lantern & Green Arrow, Superman vs Ali )

One of the greats has passed on and he will be missed.

Dick, we speak your name.

Bang Zoom!

Courtesy of Kevin Nowlan

Here's an interesting piece of art that probably would have never seen the light of day if not for the artist, Kevin Nowlan whos best known for his work in super hero and horror comics.

In the late 80's, Kevin was contacted by a publishing company working on a Honeymooners book and they wanted to take some unused scripts and make them into a 4 or 5 page comic for that book.

The artist, Mr. Kevin Nowlan.

The book deal fell through but Mr. Nowlan was kind enough to share this exercise sketch with the internet and now I'm sharing it with you all.


enjoy.

BATMAN IFFY DESIGN.

I'm normally a fan of Gary Franks art (especially his work on Superman) but for some reason I'm not feeling his Batman costume design.

It just "meh". It looks like he took all the elements I hate from the live action batman costumes and incorporated it into this suit.

But that's just my opinion, any thoughts?

(click to enlarge)

Comic art and literature collide

I found this site by Steven Gettis where he accumulated over the course of 10 years a impressive collection of artwork from some of the finest artists in the comic biz, Illustrating their favorite subjects from the Literary world. Below is the link to his site:

Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobbering Time!!!

here are some of my favorites:

Mike Allred : J.D Sallinger

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Dave Cockrum : War of the worlds

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Gen Ha : The Little Prince

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Tony Harris : Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde

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Jim Mafood : Hunter S. Thompson

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Steve Rude : Alice in Wonderland

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Walt Simonson : JRR Tolken

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Takeshi Miyazawa : Nausicaa

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Micheal Golden : Tom Swift

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Tony Dezuniga : Sherlock Holmes

Illustrator Joel Priddy

Some nifty golden age inspired cover sketches by Mr. Priddy

you can see more of his fine work at his blog BEESWAX 

Enjoy!

Artist Will Elder (1921-2008)

Journalista: The Comics Journal Weblog is reporting that Will Elder, the famed illustrator and one of the founders of MadMagazine, has died at 86. (This comes via boing boing.) Elder was considered a major influence on artists like Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes.

Gary Groth, an editor at Fantagraphics, which published several Elder books (including Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art and Chicken Fat) told the Media Mob, "He was such a fabulous talent in the sense that he could do almost anything." Recalling his penchant for pranks, Mr. Groth called Mr. Elder "instrumental in making Mad."

In David Hajdu's recent book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, the author described Elder as follows:

He could render anything he could see with the precision of a photograph—or mimic virtually any fine-art style, including various modes of impressionism and early abstract art—yet he had no inclination to waste his time on anything other than his overriding interest, pranksterism. The sound of his name to those who knew him well, such as his former schoolmates and fellow cartoonists, Al Jaffee (who met Elder in eighth grade, when they were both being tested for admission to the High School of Music and Art), John Severin, and David Gantz, was a cue for grin and a round of 'Crazy Willy' stories: the time, when he was a kid in the Bronx, when Elder took discarded pieces of beef carcasses from a meat-processing plant, arranged them in old clothes on the railroad tracks, and started screaming that his friend Moishe had been killed; or the time, when he was in high school, that he smeared chalk dust on his face and pretended to be hanging in the coat closet; or, when went to lunch with some friends from EC [Comics] and tried to pay the cashier with leaves of lettuce that he had in his wallet. His humor was almost aggressively madcap, startling, often dark, and silly.

"He really was one of the sweetest, most generous guys I've met in this profession," said Groth, who is currently compiling a complete reprinting of Humbug, a post-Mad project by Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffee for a new Fantagraphics book.

"He really was wonderfully helpful and incredibly sweet. Which is probably why he didn't become an enormous success in this business. He was too nice a guy."

IRONMAN artist and Designer for the movie : ADI GRANOV

I enjoyed the movie oh so much. 

While searching for design art from the movie, I stumbled across these production designs illustrated by Adi Granov, artist for marvel comics and now Production designer for Marvel Studios.

Stan Winston who fabricated the final version of the Movie suit keep it faithful to the original designs.

Enough blather from me, just enjoy...

( hi-res images, click to enlarge )