Notorious Crackpot

Apparently, DC has made the first issue of several of the all-ages books available to read online for free. This includes Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. If you haven't read the book yet, check it out.

I'm a bit behind on posting this. My current work schedule is crazy. Anyway, this photo was very kindly forwarded to me by Gene, a Supergirl fan. Gene works at a library and this Supergirl came by to read to the kids. How awesome is that? And here's another picture that was sent to me. This one was taken at Comic Relief in Berkeley: Freaking adorable! Anyway, there have been some great mentions of Supergirl online recently: Amazon.com: "It's a funny, fast-paced, stylishly illustrated lampoon of the Superman/Supergirl mythos" Comicsgirl: "This is absolutely wonderful." Comics ought To Be Fun: "I'm giving Supergirl the Most Fun Of The Year Award for its beautifully distinctive art, surprisingly touching story, and frantically funny escapades." Over at Comic Box Commentary, our Supergirl included a scene that was declared the number one Supergirl moment of 2009, Blake Petit over at Comixtreme called Cosmic Adventures the best all ages boo...

Well, our first issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold has been on shelves for a few days, and we now have some reviews. It's a bit of an exercise in anxiety, waiting to see if people like or hate your work. I mean, I wrote this book back in April. Eric finished drawing it in... May? I don't know. I don't really pay attention to what Eric does. Anyway... this issue seems like a relic of the distant past to me. I'm currently working on my issue for next April and May concurrently. This thing? Ancient. That said, I think it may be one of our more fun issues of Batman. And by fun, it probably has our most bizarre moment. A moment that almost everybody who reads it comments on. I'm talking specifically about this: People seem to like the Penguin getting hit in the face with a seal. Anyway, here's the reviews: Too Dangerous For A Girl "it's a fast, fun ride by Eric Jones and Landry Q Walker" Every Day Is Like Wednesday "Landry Walker’s set-up is ...

So... let me frame things a bit. Eric and I had been working on comics for over 15 years. Many of those years were spent working on Disney Adventures. Once Little Gloomy and Kid Gravity had been picked up by the magazine, we had quit our day jobs and dedicated all our energy to comics creation. Then, at the end of 2007, Disney Adventures folded. We were still very busy working with 1492 Pictures on Little Gloomy for the small screen, and there was some comfort in knowing that this work would keep us afloat... for a little bit. Flash forward to February of 2008. WonderCon. We have no jobs. No money and no immediate prospects. So we turn to long time aquaitence Bob Shreck. It really was a whim. We had nothing prepared and though we had known Bob for many years, asking for work from someone I think of as a friend is not a thing I like to do. It feels... I dunno. Not something I like. But we asked. Because we were desperate. So he recommended the Johnny DC line. There was (at the time) a b...

I promised Supergirl next. And that's what you're going to get. Kind of. Supergirl isn't just Supergirl, of course. Unlike Superman she didn't arrive to Earth as a baby. Unlike Superman her Kryptonian name isn't simply a part of his heritage he discovered late in life. Supergirl's name is Kara Zor-El. But when she first arrived in her rocket back in the 50's, Superman tells her she needs an Earth name. Of course, I know a few Kara's. But I suppose times have changed just a bit. So Linda Lee was born. That's Linda Lee on the left.  I think we debated between a ponytail and the final hair design. The images on the right were a bit of an experiment. How to properly portray Kara Zor-El in her native Kryptonian guise. Anyway, I felt I needed a bit more of a rationale for her not using Kara as her name while on Earth. So when she crashes in the middle of Metropolis, she's swarmed by reporters. Why wouldn't she be? And they want to know who she is, ...

Today I will post images of Belinda Zee. See. Told you. Belinda is notable as she is really the only original character we introduced to the Supergirl mythos. Admittedly, our version of Lena Thorul seems to have very little in common with the original version. But still... Obviously, Belinda Zee's name is also a take off of Supergirl's secret identity, Linda Lee. Not quite as obvious is the fact that her name was also inspired by my fiance's name: Belinda Lee. I've also seen it mentioned that she seems to have some common elements to Grant Morrison's Zibarro. What with the non-Bizarro like speech patterns and the color scheme and the prominent "Z" in the name... Coinicedence. I won't lie. I think All-Star Superman is one of the best books out there. But I didn't read it until a few months ago. In fact, I rarely read comics anymore. That's changing a bit... out of necessity more than anything else. The design of Belinda was partially inspired b...

Again I bring you artwork from the depths of time. Almost a year and a half ago, to be precise. First up is Streaky the Supercat. I just happened to have inherited a young cat about the time I began working on this. Her name is JoJo and she is made of razors and barbed wire. She's tamed a bit now. With me, anyway. Everyone else she still wants to see bleed. Anyway, she was the inspiration for this version of Streaky, and Eric designed Streaky accordingly. I mean really. If a cat were to gain super powers, we would all be in serious trouble. Next up: Brainiac 5. Brainy was never seen in the series. Originally he was planned to have a major role, but the only limitation given to us by DC was to not use Brainiac 5. At the time, he was a major player in the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st century book so I can understand why. The sketches below were done before Eric and I found this out, and truthfully, he wasn't quite done cooking. But unlike most of the other characters, we...

I promised that sketches of the students would be posted today. And here I am, posting said images. Okay... so there are less student images than I thought. Thing is, we had three female lead characters from the onset. There were also going to be male characters of more prominence. Here's a look at what they might have been like. The characters were cut because it turns out that 6 issues at 22 pages long each isn't as much room as I might have liked. The relationships between the three girls would have been horribly muddied by these nonsensical subplots. So they were cut. But just to go a step further and show you what you were denied... There was an entire story behind this that involved duplicity and betrayal. The heart was to be made of gold kryptonite (heart of gold) that only had a short term effect. We had already explored the effects of green, red and blue. So gold was the next logical choice. As mentioned above, this was cut due to lack of space. It was also cut after I...

I promised there would be more art. And more art there is. Unfortunately, I'm still searching for those original Supergirl illustrations. All of Eric's original art is at my house for some reason, which means boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of paper. 17 years of comics work in boxes (minus that one back cover illustration we left in a copy machine at SDCC about 13 years ago). To make matter worse, each panel of each page of Supergirl was pencilled at full size on a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Think about that. Each panel of each page of each issue. This all adds up to alot of paper. Anyway, here's the next installment of Supergirl production art. A feature on this blog that I like to call: "Eric probably doesn't want you to see this but then he shouldn't have left it in my safe keeping because I'm not particularly trustworthy." The teachers! The gym teacher is named Mister Mongo. I don't remember if we ever mentioned his name in the comic. He...

I've been putting off posting this stuff for awhile. The fact is, I am lazy. The other fact is that Eric keeps hiding this art. I intended to lead off with one of the three original illustrations he produced for our initial meeting with DC. I'll have to search a bit deeper to figure out where those images are hidden. Anyway, instead I'm going to lead off with some Lena Thorul. This first one might be the actual first attempt on the character. Truth is, Eric and I had a pretty solid idea of what she would look like from the onset. The only issue with the initial designs was the question of hair. That was resolved fairly quickly. Yeah I know. Exciting. Woo. So we knew she would eventually end up in armor. I guess the armor was the real issue. If you've read the series, you know the armor exists in 3 states. The first is the backpack, which appears two issues before it is revealed to be armor. The second form is the transformed backpack, and the third is the full upgraded...

Well, it's in the new Previews catalog, so I guess I can finally announce what Eric and I have been working on since we wrapped up Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures... We'll be doing some issues of Batman: The Brave and the Bold . A comic series based off of the current animated series. A funny thing about this book for Eric and myself: We had actually spent a bit of time before San Diego ComicCon last year formulating a pitch for an all-ages reinterpretation of Batman based off a combination of the 1940's Dick Sprang art style and the 1960's television series. We then arrived at ComicCon to see images everywhere of this cartoon series and immediately scrapped the proposal. And now we're doing a comic that is fundamentally the same as the series we spent the summer quietly creating. Strange world. Our intention with this series is to capture the feel of the cartoon rather than literally interpret the style of the animated series onto a comic book page. Comics and animat...