HERESY alternate cover 2B

As I said, chicks and chains. That's what sells comic books.

Alright, alright, I'm not quite that cynical. Chicks and chains could probably sell anything.

Anyone who read Heresy would know that this character isn't a main character in the book. But she is arguably the most visually arresting character. Second would be the huge Russian vampire.

So it seemed like a no-brainer that it should be the two of them waltzing around this cover.

Then I needed a contentious subject matter that would stop people in the aisles of San Diego and get them to look at this piece. Chains. Bondage. There we go! See? I can be naughty without showing any nudity! Huzzah! My range of sketchiness has just been extended.

I did have several of the people at work express some concern about my sexual appetities at a drinks function once. I told them that's the least of what they should be concerned about.

BLACK AND WHITE LINEWORK

I really like the piece at this stage. I love the balance between noise (her bra and jeans) and then the open skin areas. It's got a nice feel. Graphically speaking I mean, cos you can't really go feeling up an imaginary character. Although, if someone cosplayed her, I'm sure you could ask really nicely. Or better yet, if you have a significant female other, you could ask them to dress up as her and find out exactly how she feels. Or, if you're a girl, you could do this for your significant other. I'd love to hear any feedback on how she feels exactly. Photos would be appreciated too.

But I'm not dodgy or anything...


TONE & RENDERING

"Don't hate me... I'm just drawn this way." I'm sure Jessica Rabbit said something to that effect. This chick would say, "Don't hate me, I'm just rendered this way." This has happened to me before. I draw a relatively curvy chick and then at the rendering stage her breasts just magnify to incredible proportions. It's in the way it's rendered! I think it's the overhead lighting that makes her fun bags look like a bouncing castle. But if you were to read the inside of the book you could see that I've probably understated her assets.

On a totally technical level, I think the rendering of her is some of the most realistic I've done. The shadows just seem so convincing to me, and the anatomy incredibly believable. Perhaps that's what makes the piece sexier?

COLOURS

This is a fairly monochromatic piece. I slapped a dna chain behind them and made it red. See? That's genius folks, you should be taking notes. The vampires are genetically engineered, so let's make a dna chain... red. Ta daaa!!! God damn it! With groundbreaking design ideas like that they should rename MENSA after me!

Of course I'm kidding. MENSA totally understates my brilliance. They should name NASA after me.

Those of you paying attention will notice that there's a tiny picture of her on her belt buckle. It's a portrait of her stolen from the other pinup that I did. I kinda wanted to allude that she's been alive for a while.


FINAL

Here's the piece with some additional texture on the background of some city silhouettes and blood spatters. Ok, LOTS of blood spatters. I don't think we can really deny Ben Templesmith's effect on the design of vampires with 30 Days of Night. Especially cos these vampires don't have fangs either.

The overall effect I hope is sexy without being submissive. Sure she's chained, but I don't really think you should go near her. Especially her mouth. I mean, don't be alarmed or anything but I think she bit something or someone that bled alot. And she still looks hungry, so I'd keep anything containing a vein well away from her.

The big guy looks more like he's going to rescue her than attack her, and I think the synergy between them is interesting in that it is unusual. So if one partner dresses up as her, the other can dress up as him.

Don't forget to send in photos.

I'm also way behind on posting those 25 trivial things about me. Here's the next three as catch up:

2. <3 the Rock (which doesn't help my first point).

3. Had a life changing experience in 1999 when I met Grant Morrison - that just because you're getting older, doesn't mean you have to slow down and lose your energy and passion.

4. Eats about twice what any other normal human being eats. My record is 18 pieces of large pizzas, a serve of pasta, 2 salads and then 3 deserts. Another time I ate 29 prawns/shrimp and stopped because I got sick of the taste of prawn rather than I got full. Recently measured, I have the metabolism of a 9 year old. I could be younger but the device didn't go any lower.

NEXT: Uhhhh.... Zero G I guess. I'm just gonna leap in. This isn't getting any easier anytime soon.

HERESY alternate cover 2

I will get to Zero G, I promise. It's just a big project and I'm getting my thoughts in order before I attack it. There's a great deal to think about and recall. In the meantime I have way too much work on my plate to blog about Zero G right now.

So I will first show you guys these two covers I did for a Spacedog book called HERESY.

My brief was that the book was about vampires but that they don't have fangs. Ok, no problem. I read the book, and tried to pick out the most interesting visual elements: the detective, the huge old Russian vampire, the vampire chick. Ok. Mix em all up in a pot, add a pinch of salt and play around with the elements. Bake at 400degrees and glaze with Photoshop.

I got the layout approved and got to the drawings.

Unfortunately, Annette was off rescuing captured troops in Iraq so I was on my own on a really tight deadline and had to colour it myself.

I did so and I was reasonably pleased with what was a rather generic cover. It just looks like your classic movie poster crap. Lots of floating dramatic heads and people looking insert [mean/cool/angry/intense].

Now, at no stage did anyone ever think to show me the original cover. It's over on the left here.

Notice anything?

Yeah, good work.. They're basically the same god damn cover! Now if there's anything I ever learned about alternate covers, is that if you want them to sell they have to look radically different to the original cover. That way the punter might be tempted to go for both if they both look cool. But they have to be different. If they're the same, then the prospective buyer is just going to pick the version that they like the best.

Not good enough. I begged my editor for more time and she said I had a day. I went back to the drawing board to produce something visually exciting and arresting.

Something that would catch people's eyes...

NEXT: HERESY version 2: Bondage, chains and chicks.

OUT OF TOWN - page 6

Bah! I write these and leave them to settle so I can come back later with a fresh mind and redraft these. But my own cunning plan backfired on me. Who woulda thunk it? But yes, a plan that I laid did not come to fruition. One would consider it a rare and momentous occasion. But later turned late and late turned to bed time. I shut my browser down with barely a thought concerning my blog and now it's the next day.

So let's get on with the retrospective, shall we?

It's no secret that I love working on the HEROES comics. I have such a great relationship with a bunch of the writers that the process is not only fun, but also really invigorating. I like to think that our creative relationship is born of trust, mutual respect and a respect for the HEROES itself. But I think what really drives it, is that it's more fun than a sack of lubed up ferrets down your pants.

But every now and then someone makes a mistake. Usually me. Such is with the case of exhibit A above... can you spot this mistake?


No? Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.

Still no? You probably just wanna know the answer and are probably prepared to beat me like a red headed step child to get it out of me by now. Just warning you... I like it rough. But there's no need to resort to violence, no matter how much either party likes it.

Here it is:

The brain is still there.

For those of you as versed in HEROES lore as I was... Sylar has removed and taken the brain of everyone he killed except for Claire Bennet. Joe Macon, our erstwhile and cranially challenged hero would be no exception. It took the brilliant Chuck Kim, editor of the HEROES comics to point this out.

So while Jim exclaimed I'd drawn the best, most gruesome brain he'd ever seen... I had to embrace Sylar's genetic destiny and using the last two and half seasons of HEROES as my only reference, endeavoured to remove Joe Macon's brain myself. It was an interesting process and I have to say I almost crushed it trying to separate it from the spinal cord. I had to get a little butter knife to scrape the cerebellum and brainstem off the spinal cord. I'm fastidious about these sorts of things. But here, for your viewing pleasure is my mistake in all its mis-continuity glory.

As an aside, ladies and gentlemen, could you please return your trays to their upright position as I'd like you to witness genius in flight. I'd like you to sit back, grab a cup of your favourite beverage and enjoy Annette's masterful control of the horror of this situation. The meticulously blended blood on the papers on the floor. The spatters of gore on the desk. The yawning, wet empty cavity of his brain. It's a brilliantly horrific moment... all captured during the day no less!

NEXT: Hmmm... Well, that's HEROES done for now. I think I should get onto the four issue epic that is ZERO G. I won't be printing it page by page, just excerpts that I think you will find interesting. Consider it a "director's commentary".

OUT OF TOWN page 5

I'm keeping it super-brief today. And I don't mean a pair of red underpants. Although, I do own a pair of those and I am keeping them.

I have waaa-aaaay too much to do to waffle on for hours and waxing lyrical about the war. "Waffle" for you Americans means to "go on about". Just a handy little Aussie Babel fish translation there.

I've also cut the side of my thumb and I think it's infected. And now it hurts every time I hit the spacebar. So every space between every word is a little spike of pain. I really wanna typelikethis.

So before I go get a bandaid and get this looked at. Some...

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT PAGE 5

Sandra Bennet: Damn, I think my rendition of Ashley Crow is only second to my likenesses of Mr Muggles. Pretty damn happy with how she turned out.

panel 4: Early drafts had the lift door COVERED in some sort of bukkake of blood. If you don't know what a bukkake is... go hit google and take your safe filter off. I'm sure not gonna tell you. Either way we decided that it was too much.

Geography: I just couldn't figure out where Noah's office was in the house so I just put it next to the kitchen. I have a bad feeling that's the door to the living room. Yes, I've actually been in the set. No, I can't remember. It's not like I was free to roam around with a little tourist map.

NEXT: Monday: Page 6! Have a great weekend and wish me luck drawing. If you have someone to share Valentine's Day with that's fantastic. If not... go find someone. Anyone. You know how it is... Any hole's a goal.

OUT OF TOWN page 4

Urgh, I've just come off the back of just losing a page of work. It's so tough to go back in there and redo stuff. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. I don't know anyone who likes going back and redoing stuff. So... My files are about 1gb in size while I'm working (28.3cmx43cm at 600dpi in CMYK with all my layouts, reference and perspective layers pasted in). The file gets smaller and smaller because as I work as I delete my reference layers. But at the start I don't tend to save much as it can take several minutes to do so. I find this tedious as it disrupts my delicate train of thought. But I've decided that I'd rather only ever lose two hours of work. So... saving every two hours is now the thing to do.

I had some facetious people comment on my Facebook that you don't get this problem if you work with pencil and paper. No, you don't. Instead you get spilt water, tea and coffee and ink (the last of which I don't recommend consuming).

Avi mentioned I should get a bigger computer and he's right. That just made it onto the list. I need to work fast and my laptop (god bless it's digital soul) is finding that its bones are starting to ache in the morning, its eyesight ain't what it used to be and it's started lamenting about the good old days where operating systems didn't require dual core CPU's and you could walk home safely from school.

But enough of my whining. Let's get onto some HEROES.

This is one of my better pages. I think it's designed well, solid and has some good likenesses.

Panel one was a fun piece of design. It was a piece that I'd conceived at the layout stage. What? Can't you tell? God, it's like I have to draw you a picture or something. I had a great time figuring out the tiles, then the shadow on the tiles. Annette did a stunning job nurturing the design and smoothing it out so it looks cinematic and seamless.

The other design feature is a tribute to Jim's scripting. I don't know if Jim meant to do this, but I was able to halve the page with Claire's scenes on the left and Noah's on the right. It's neat, it's tight and it works. Whether Jim knows it or not, there's a nice visual balance to his writing. Annette and I had discussions about really differing the palettes of the Claire scene and the Noah scene to make sure that the reader wouldn't get confused that we're jumping between two scenes. Even on panels like panel 3 where we don't even see Noah's face.

I've been watching season one again with a friend and I'm just stunned at the change that's come over Hayden. She looks SO different. I personally prefer her original look. She looked more natural and fresh. It's such a different beauty. I think that's what threw me originally. I had a tactic for drawing her and it just wasn't working cos she does look so different. She's so much darker and wears so much more makeup. It really threw me for a loop.

Anyway...

There's this Facebook thing where you write 25 things about yourself. I'm going to include mine here - with the grammar corrected. For some reason I wrote half of it in the first person and half of it in the third. Weird.

1. I constantly get confused for being gay, or (when hanging out with a buddy) a gay couple. I'm possibly the gayest hetero man any of his friends know. My mother found some women's clothes (I was mailing as a present) and even accused me of cross dressing!

NEXT: FRIDAY: Page 5. Peace out. I'm tired and I'm done. Stick a fork in me.

OUT OF TOWN page 3

See that there, people? That there is a bunch of good likenesses! Finally! Three pages in and I manage to get my first good likeness of Claire. Nice work, Badower-Power. Any crapper and we're gonna need a plunger.

But she is harder to draw than a conclusion at a philosophy convention. Sometimes I draw a really nice likeness in the line work, but then I screw up the tones. That's what happened with panel 1. I remember redoing the tones over and over and over again! I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except there was no Andie MacDowell and it all looked crap and there was a deadline looming over my head nastier than a squatter's crack on a hot day. It's one thing to have all year to draw these, it's another thing to do it to a tight deadline. I wander around conventions and see all these dudes with these amazing likenesses of the HEROES characters. And I'm like, "Damn, I bet you took all year to do that."

I had a week to do all six pages... So given that my parents spent about $100,000 on my high school education, that should mean I don't need a calculator to tell you that's about a day for each page. That means I either gotta get it right pretty damn fast or move on like Elizabeth Taylor to a new husband. Regardless of style, trying to hammer out a likeness is difficult. It's why my hat has been totally off to the other artists on the HEROES team. i know the pressure they're under, and they're doing fantastic jobs.

But I love drawing HRG. I think I've drawn him more than any other HEROES character. He was in Road Kill, the Death of Hana, Root and Branch and now Out of Town. I know when I see him, I'm good. I know that if I have to draw him my likeness is gonna range from good to impressive. I think I've got Jack Coleman sorted. I think the panel of him swiping the door is one of my favourites of him.

Ok, I'm gonna talk about panel 5 now, but in the most round about way possible.

A while back I toured around the Getty art museum here in LA with my good buddy David Blumenstein. Neither of us ressemble traditional artists except in our scruffy demeanors, darkened pouches under our eyes and looks of dreamy desperation. The great thing about wandering around an art gallery with a fellow artist is looking at the paintings and getting inside the artist's head. For example, seeing where they got tired or bored. You can tell by larger, sloppier brush strokes and inconsistent attention to attention to detail. Generally, the main figure is beautifully rendered and by the time they have to draw the chest of drawers behind them, they've gotten a little tired and it starts looking as scrappy as Scooby Doo's sidekick.

But it's a different case when you confront an artist like John Singer-Sargent. I was talking to my friend about him and we were putting forward our favourite pieces. She put forward Lady Agnew. Initially my reaction was that he was so captivated by her face that he just phoned the rest in. Looking closer I noticed the technical brilliance of the transparency of her sleeves. She also pointed out that his brush strokes are relatively consistent around the rest of the piece. I still argued that while his execution is beyond reproach the conceptual idea is born of laziness: to paint a portait and then only focus on what you want to focus on. She then unveiled Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Here, his attention and capacity for detail are almost unbelievable.

So one can only say that his execution of Lady Agnew was a considered, deliberate piece of portraiture in a style where economy became design. While I would never consider comparing myself to Mr Singer Sargent, I'm pleading the same headspace for panel 6. Having a tight deadline and general laziness had nothing to do with my stylistic choice... which ended up turning out pretty damn well.

NEXT: Wednesday. Page 4. Less art theory, more ranting and laziness.

OUT OF TOWN - PAGE 2

It's Friday, but as we've established, the concept of Friday is meaningless to me. The only difference Friday makes is that it initiates a series of days in which I miss out on stuff. Back in Australia, at one stage, "To Pull A Jason" doesn't mean anything sordid (get your filthy mind out of the gutter) but to not turn up to stuff. Oh, I'd let people know. It's not like I just don't turn up. My mum raised me better than that. But it's a vague indicator that my social life is in more trouble than Steven Seagal's action hero career. Maybe it too should take up jazz. But I don't even think the sultry wrongness of Songs From The Crystal Cave could save the bleeding, whimpering mess that is my social life. It sits in the corner, chained to a wall on a stained mattress that is more iron springs than material. One of the springs has dug into its thigh and after weeks of inactivity the flesh has grown around it in a blistering flower of pus and putrid flesh. It gurgles weakly on a mixture of blood and bile through a collapsed trachea. A tiny pin hole of air squeezing its way through lips swollen with ulcers and weeping sores.

And that's a toned down metaphor for my social life.

Let's not even talk about how I'm feeling this morning. Normally my coffee is like a shining light piercing the heavens and parting the clouds. It bathes me in a warm, divine glow and empowers me with its holy caffeinating powers for the trials ahead. Sometimes I hear a choir of thousands holding a single, fragile, ethereal note as I take each sip.

But today it feels like its been chained next to my social life. I feel like the only thing that might help would be a couple rounds with a defibrilator.

Ooh... yeah. It's gonna be a tough one today.

But enough about me... let's move onto something better.

Me.

Kidding.

How about Out Of Town? That's a good compromise, isn't it? A bit about Heroes and a lot about me. Sounds fair to me. And since all these arguments are simply rhetorical or the product of a fractured psyche... that's what we're going with.

INTERLUDE: With an attention span shorter than the life expectancy of a vodka tonic in my hand, Jas forgets he was blogging. Works. And goes to sleep.

Alright, it's now no longer Friday. I wrote all the above, meant to finish it and then forgot about it. Around 4am last night I sat bolt upright in bed remembering that I'd forgotten to post this. But then I realised I cared about sleep more than I did about this blog. Yeah, you heard me. Sleep. You wanna see me on less than six hours sleep, just watch Dawn of the Dead and watch the world being taken over by Jasons on less than six hours sleep.

But let's talk about this Heroes comic. I find that my likenesses get better and better over time. In fact, by the time that I have to finish the comic, I'm about warmed up. If you look at all the likenesses on this page you can see that they're... not so good. In fact, I would argue that the only likeness that truly kicks artistic butt here is Mr Muggles. I'm pretty happy with how this canine rodent is looking. Alright, alright, I'm sorry I called him (and all Pommeranians) a canine rodent.

No! No, I'm not! Get a real dog! That thing is about as dog-like as viagra spam.

Ok, one of the funniest things about this page is Jim's script. I hope he doesn't mind, but I have to reproduce a couple of excerpts that made me laugh so hard. Alright, so it's no secret that Sprint and Nissan are sponsors of Heroes. So here are some choice moments of Jim acknowledging his unique appreciation of that sponsorship:

PANEL 4 From the passenger side of the car, we look at him profile. HRG’s sitting in a rented (but awesome) NISSAN SPORTS CAR outside of an office building.

I laughed so hard I forgot to draw a Nissan. Ooops. Sshhh! My bad! I'm sorry. As you can see, I decided to ignore Jim's awesome directions too. God forbid he actually tries to make my job easier by actually visualising a scene as he writes it!


PANEL FIVE

A closer shot of HRG, he’s holding his SPRINT INSTINCT PHONE to his ear, and his reception is awesome. His glasses glint a bit in the sunlight.

I did remember to draw the Sprint phone. On my layouts where I indicate the speech balloons I remember writing, "My reception is awesome!" inside HRG's. I must have erased it.

Ahhhh Jim... He knows how to keep his artists entertained.

NEXT: Yep, page 3. More shennanigans and hijinks ensue on Monday.

And finally comics have made it into the LOUVRE! Another step forward to legitimizing comics as an artform.

Now, I have a new goal.

OUT OF TOWN - page 1

As usual I was against the wall. Not in some, shady, "trying to make some quick cash in a festy toilet block" sort of way... But against my deadlines. Oh, deadlines. How I love thee. In fact they've become more my way of remembering things than the sun and moon. If I want to remember when I was seeing a certain ex-girlfriend or when I saw a particular show, I just try and recall what I was drawing at the time... then look up the print date (or this blog). It's a bit of a tough way of remembering stuff, but along time ago my mind became as skewed as a Republican sponsored gun rally.

Frank Mastromauro (my editor at Aspen MLT) emailed me asking if I was available for this story. My deadlines were so tight you could've shoved coal in them, heated it up and made a diamond. I just didn't think I could do this. But I asked him to send me the script anyway. I knew I shouldn't have. I knew once I read it that I'd be like a girl on roofies... I just couldn't say no... To more drinks that is. What the hell were you thinking?

As soon as I saw Jim Martin's name on the cover I knew I was in. When I saw Sylar, Claire, Noah, Sandra... and of course... Mr Muggles I knew I was further in than John Holmes. But somehow I had to fit this in to my schedule like some sort of Tetris feng shui master. But it was going to be just so much fun.

And it was.

Jim Martin and Chuck Kim (the editor on the comics) were pretty hands off until the last page. I didn't hear anything about the layouts (the greyish smudge of an image down the bottom). I think they just took one look at the scratched scrawlings of a mind more disturbed than glassware factory in an earthquake and just backed off. In my defence, I don't have a scanner and... I really hate doing finished layouts. I'm lazy ok? Minimum effort necessary at that stage. I know what's going on, and hell, I know best! Well... that's what I tell myself til my art director comes back and beats me like I owe him money.

The employee in the first panel is a friend of mine, Heather whom I work with. She was also conscripted later to play all of Claire's parts too. She's currently undergoing intensive psychiatric therapy to help her through the traumatic modeling experience I put her through. Apparently they have to resort back to electroshock therapy on her, but the doctors say her outlook is good. They reckon they can stop her uncontrollable drooling in a month or two. But then again, it might have been the hard partying for her birthday that caused all this. Happy Bday Heather.

Annette also stepped up further than Neil Armstrong. Panel one has four layers on it: figures, immediate background, far background and my tones. Talk about making your creative partner's job tough! It was my bright idea to have a glass wall there as Jim had gone into extensive detail in the script describing what was outside Joe Macon's office. I have no idea why. Maybe Jim's a character writer and started Joe's day by writing down what he had for breakfast and worked his way up until he got to his designer couch and coffee table and then to his head Sylar'd off? Given that was a possibility I didn't want to risk Jim coming round to my house and beating me to death with his laptop. He knows where I live.

Annette and I went back and forth more than Wimbledon trying to get the visual of Joe's powers right. Eventually we decided that more is more and that we'd try and make them look like they're beaming in like Star Trek. I hate sound effects, but this one didn't hurt.

There were a couple of dialogue changes in the script for the last panel, and I dig what we eventually came up with. It also ties into episode 14 much better. There was even talk of having me go back and draw in Sylar on the last panel here. My vote was that while I would have loved to have drawn Sylar, the story reads better when we get the twist at the end when we see Joes's head Sylar'd off. Then we know who this mysterious figure was.

NEXT: You guessed it... page 2. Sorry to be a bit predictable. You know, with two coming after one and all that. But sometimes I have to keep things somewhat orderly for those knuckle draggers in the cheap seats.

Yes... I'm talking about myself again.

Anyway. Hit me up on Facebook if you want more minutae of what I'm doing. Just remember to tell me how you know me or know of me or I won't friend you. Thanks!

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE PAGE 5

There will be OUT OF TOWN (my latest HEROES graphic novel that you can find HERE) action tomorrow. I know I said Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but rules are for crossing guards and physics professors. On the outer edge of blogdom we cut it sideways, do dessert before main meals and open presents before we read birthday cards. Basically, I figured that not only am I crazy proud about OUT OF TOWN, but STUCK is now dead to me. I've been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. OUT OF TOWN is my new baby and STUCK has been dumped like yesterday's pinched loaf.

God forbid, I ever have kids. The headline would read, "Man's boredom leads to negligence and child manslaughter."

But, you know, I'm a child of the MTV generation and my attention span resides somewhere between a bee's dick and my sense of propriety.

So if this was a child, I would have left it on Jim Martin's doorstep in an old monitor box lined with packing material from comic books I bought on Amazon.


Let's wrap this up like Mills in a towel and move onto Claire, Noah, Mr Muggles, Sandra and Sylar.

As you can see, I actually stuck to my layouts for once. If you decide you care enough to wear out the scroll button on your mouse you can flick back and forwards to see I speak the truth. But the simple fact that I'm even trying to pose anything to you as "the truth" should be cause for concern, worry and in some cases paranoia. See your doctor if symptoms persist.


By about page 5 I'm usually pretty pleased with the likenesses I'm drawing. I take a bit of warming up (like an old car on a cold day), but you know, like a good pornstar, I get there eventually. I just find it hilarious that the story is usually over by the time I get my act together on the likenesses. Ok, maybe hilarious is a stretch. Mildly ironic is better, but in the Alanis Morisette sense.

NEXT: I'm planning on starting OUT OF TOWN tomorrow, and then going back to my regular schedule of Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays cos the outer edge of blogdom is just too hardcore for me. I prefer my blog regularity more softcore like a men's magazine. Any more of this crazy schedule and I'd have to shrink wrap this blog in plastic.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE PAGE 4

Hey! It's Monday (well only by another two hours) and here's Monday's posting! Just like I said it would be here. There's a god damn schedule here and I'm sticking to it! Two hours has to count, right? I mean, if you were standing by a bomb, would you rather have an two extra hours on it or not? What about sex? Would you rather have no sex or two hours of sex?

See? You can do a lot in two hours. But I'm neither defusing bombs, nor having sex. I'm writing a blog post. But the time I'm defusing a bomb, having sex and writing a blog post, you know I'm cooler than James Bond... And I mean any of them, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig. And this blog would be a whole lot more interesting - but perhaps less about comics then. I think there's a bit in The Game (which is actually a wonderful self-help book for shy guys and like any tool can be used or abused) where he writes a bit while having sex and includes all the typos. My sex-bomb-defusing blog is gonna be like that. But more awesome.

Anyway, I had a great weekend. Superbowl came and went while I sat in my room drawing. I had parties and things to do (no really, I did. Actual real life human beings invited me to stuff), but such was not to be. Once again, it was Jas locked in his little "Harry Potter" cupboard under the stairs drawing away. In some sort of misguided attempt at self help, I tried to convince myself that *I'm* the "Lucky One" and I get to draw and create stories and have these amazing opportunities while everyone else has to be content with watching football. And when I can't hear the drunken, effusive cheers outside, I almost believe it.

Almost.

Then I go back to crying.

Which is tough while you're drawing. I mean, it was tough when you did it by hand. You'd smear your ink or ruin the paper. But on a computer it's downright dangerous. Not quite as dangerous as defusing a bomb while having sex and blogging... but pretty damn dangerous. I mean, you could electrocute yourself! See? Drawing on the edge here people! Risking my life to bring you my art.

I guess someone should suffer for my art. Normally it's my models. Believe me, if you've ever been one you know what suffering is. Hell's gonna look like the day your internet went down after my attempts to immortalize you in digital ink.

For example, the model for this page had to get her kit off and pose in my shower for lots of photos. And I mean, LOTS... if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* Say no more... say no more... if you know what I'm saying.

Ok, ok, I lie. That was the fantasy I had while drawing... pretending I had a model to work from. So apparently if I'm not crying while drawing, I'm hallucinating. But surely hallucinating about naked women in the shower is sort of normal...?

Yep, the rantings of a very sane man here. Feel free to back away slowly, and do remember to avoid eye contact. And no, you can't call 911 on someone just for reading their blog. Mental health services... maybe.

Warning... actual technical and semi-sound reasoning may follow...

The reason why the final picture differs from the layout is because there was no balance to the piece. I needed the two women (Tracy and Mills) to occupy the same amount of space and be similar proportions to suitably frame Ryan and really sell that "Stuck in the Middle" title.

I mean, god forbid that a story is actually aptly named!

NEXT: Stuck in the middle: Page 5. Also, my new HEROES story might go up tomorrow. So fingers crossed! But we have to finish Stuck in the Middle first. I'm sorry, but you can't have your dessert until you eat all your vegetables.