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Dr. Watson's American Adventure

A new book that I've done illustrations for is now available. Here's the press release: Airship 27 Productions announces the release of their latest title and the second in their series of adventures starring Dr.Watson, the brave, stout hearted ally and companion to the World’s Greatest Detective. When Sherlock Holmes, who was presumed dead at the hands of his arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty, returned in the story Dr.Watson chronicles as “The Adventure of the Empty House,” we were told how the Great Detective had spent the intervening years abroad in disguise as a secret agent for England. For the devoted Holmes fan, that seemed sufficient to close this chapter of the duo’s life and move on to new adventure. But when a heavy locker box arrives at 221 B Baker St. from the United States addressed to Dr. Watson, it is Holmes who finds his curiosity piqued. What is in the mysterious box? Who sent it and why? Holmes summons his loyal companion who in turn sets about telling Holmes of his own unique adventure abroad during his hiatus. What follows is an amazing mystery involving Watson’s lovely wife, Mary, and her family history. The answer to the puzzle rests in the foothills of the Adirondacks of upper New York State and the couple soon set sail for America, Mary hoping the trip will pull her husband’s mood from the gloom in which it was mired since the supposed death of Holmes. Once in New York, they encounter the vibrant, colorful civil servant, Teddy Roosevelt, who provides the vital clue that triggers the Watsons' quest? From the majestic peaks of the Adirondacks to open plains of the wild west, Erwin K. Roberts spins a fantastic, rip-roaring yarn that will have Holmes and Watson fans cheering from the first page to the last. Featuring interior illustrations by artist Pedro Cruz and a colorful cover by Rob Davis & Shane Evans, “Dr.Watson’s American Adventure” is a rollicking grand adventure in the classic pulp style. This volume also features a special PULP Bonus; “Hyde and Seek” – brand new adventure starring her Majesty’s Secret Agent, Hound Dog Harker by Aaron Smith. The book is available for Digital Download Available at Airship 27's digital store , also at Amazon's Create Space and soon at Indy Planet. You can read a free excerpt here and to boot here's one of the illustrations I did for the book. Enjoy!

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Jean Giraud Moebius R.I.P.

One day, way back when I was a small child, I found my mother crying. She said she was saddened because of this singer who had been shot dead. I couldn't really understand why she would cry because of someone she had never met. She told me of the joy his songs had brought her and countless other people in the world... but my small five year old mind still could not understand her.


Forward a few years and I'm at my grandparents home. As usual my uncle is there for lunch and brings the newspapers and a new number of "Jornal da B.D.", a weekly comics anthology featuring european series and characters printed on cheap pulp paper. I pick the magazine and start reading it as he is eating and am amazed to find this new amazing science-fiction series. It is unlike the clean Disney characters or Marvel superheroes I'm used to. It stars an unlikely group of heroes - a grumpy skinny fellow with a big nose in a jumpsuit, a talking big white bird, a stoic warrior with a metal hear, a guy with a dog's head, a beautiful vixen and an angelical kid. Together they plunge into certain death on top of a rocketship into a huge acid vortex! The scope, the detail, the lines, the colors, everything - for the first time I feel I have met a comic which completely fulfills all my boyish adventure fantasies. Each following week my uncle brings a new number of this mag and with each subsequent issue comes a new chapter. The heroes survive - they discover an underground world of rats that feed on fear! The rats have a queen - a beautiful topless lady! They go to other worlds! They die! They come back to life!I notice the artist's name: Moebius. From that moment on I follow all his projects whenever I have a chance. My admiration for this man's work grows, each new work I find is a source of joy and surprise, always fresh as that first time I saw it.


Years have passed and I am in Paris. My wife is making research for her master's degree and after she returns from the libraries we explore the city, going to the museums, to the comic and book shops, eating crepe au nutella, other times just walking through the lovely urban scenery. On one such day, on a crowded street, near the Galleries Lafayettes, I spot him walking in the middle of everyone else. A slender middle aged man, partially bald with white hair and glasses on a pale wrinkled face. He has these eagle eyes displaying an acute sense of intelligence. The face of a scientist, not an artist. I recognize the man from the numerous photos and self-portraits I've seen. Our eyes cross. There is this moment of

"Is that really him?... What if I go and greet him? Mr. Moebius, I am fan of your work... Wait, maybe he prefers Mr Giraud... Then again maybe I should speak in french?... But my french isn't all that good - I'll sound like a babbling fool...the poor man will be disturbed by this foreign stranger...Ah, my chronic shyness..."

and then the moment is forever gone as we keep on walking.


Forward to last sunday night. My wife and I return home after a weekend out and I go check the email and the usual comics sites.It is with shock that I find out Jean Giraud Moebius is dead. It takes a while to digest the news and slowly I start feeling sad beyond what I expected and realise the impact this man's works has had on me is bigger than what I had ever assumed. His drawings were something out of this world. This was a force of nature, like an earthquake, his impact spreading like shockwaves far beyond the insular world of comics and well into those of film, design, fashion...

The man is gone, the work remains, the shockwaves spread and the memory shall live on for as long as there are comics, at the very least. But the man is gone. And we feel poorer for the world has lost an unparalleled imagination and no new worlds shall ever come again from that brilliant mind unto this one world. Maybe on the next one, God willing. Still, I can't help feeling sad... and for the first time, I understand what my mother felt on that day long ago, way back when I was a small child.

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Planetary Stories 24

My closest friends know I'm a science-fiction fan. Awhile ago I was fortunate enough to do a single illustration for Planetary Stories, an online fanzine (e-zine?) of science-fiction tales edited by Shelby Vick a.k.a ShelVy. The illo has now been published online in the most recent issue of Planetary Stories, number 24, alongside a short story by Mark Fewell - you can read it here. And for the more visually oriented, here's my drawing. Enjoy!

After Watchmen

In comic book circles there's been a lot of talk recently on publisher DC comics' announcement of the release of a group of prequels to WATCHMEN, entitled BEFORE WATCHMEN. Tons of paragraphs retelling the whole story of Alan Moore's diatribes with DC comics concerning the rights, legalities and ethics of this whole affair have been extensively recorded on several different sources available on the internet.

Dr. Manhattan, for instances, couldn't help but notice how the pattern of repetitive clichés usually depicted in popular fiction is mimicked in real life, predicting this whole story will end as usual and perpetuate a cycle that began long ago:
- powerful corporation goes against one of their hired craftsmen demand to stop production unless his rights are met and hires other craftsmen in order to create more of the same old corporate product;
- in order to make more money, retailers will make space on their shelves to receive the same old corporate product by putting aside other independent products which, while less known, depict more creativity and personal vision;
- consumers will pass new fresh products by independent craftsmen and opt to buy the same old corporate products to fulfill their psychological addiction;
- powerful corporation will maximize their profits;
- the status quo will be reinforced;
- in the future, this pattern will be repeated once again, either with this very same basic elements or other analogs with slight differences.

To this, Rorschach has responded that what many fail to grasp is that Moore's complaint isn't about the money. That's the thing that the people who condemn him and applaud DC comics' decision to create these sequels against Moore's wishes fail to understand - like the hands-for-hire behind these prequels, they're trapped in the influence of corruption and cannot see beyond profit, greed and gratification at all costs. Why does one's will matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of these prequels, Moore shall not compromise in this.

On the other hand, Ozymandias has replied to Alan Moore's plea for wanting this not to happen by simply answering "They already did it thirty-five minutes ago."

Silk Spectre and Nite Owl could not be reached at the moment.

As for The Comedian, he's dead.

The Secret World of Arrietty

I just found out about this new Studio Ghibli film. Looks fun!

Favorite comics of 2011

I know, it's been over a month since 2012 started, but I've always found a bit silly how "the best of..." lists for a given year always show before the year is actually over. So here are my personal favorite comics of 2011:


Beauté, tome 1 - Désirs Exaucés by Hubert and Kerascöet. Sometimes less is more and in this case the deceptively simple drawings by Kerascöet and flat colors by Hubert create an aesthetic that is completely in-synch with the cautionary (fairy)tale of Morue.







Quai D'Orsay Chroniques Diplomatiques - tome 2 by Lanzac and Blain. Best praise I can give: I found myself laughing out loud alone as I read this second volume chronicling the day-to-day behind the scenes of the french foreign affairs ministry staff. Christophe Blain proves once again his immense talent as a cartoonist.






Major by Moebius. Okay, technically this is a facsimile of a sketchbook Jean Giraud Moebius worked on over several years but I believe it was oficially released in 2011. I was amazed to see how much detail and accuracy the master was able to give the artwork at the small A6 size. Amazing!







Donald Duck - Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks. The first volume of Fantagraphics reprint of Carl Barks duck comics collected in an affordable format with beautiful restored flat colors proves that more than sixty years after they were originally drawn and published, these are still some of the best-ever all-ages comics.






John Byrne's Next Men: Scattered, part 1 and 2 by John Byrne. Total fanboy moment here: after this comic series was put on hiatus back in 1995 by its author, I (and everybody else) had to wait fifteen years before he finally resumed and finished the story with this couple of volumes first serialized as a monthly nine-issue comic series between December 2010 and August 2011. Unforgettable characters, classic artwork and a great time-travel science-fiction plot showed that maybe John Byrne should have never paused this in the first place... and apparently this was not the definitive ending as the first issue of a five-issue epilogue - Next Men: Aftermath - hits the comic book specialty stores next wednesday.

Now, let's see if 2012 tops this!

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The blast from the past trailers return for the forseeable future... but be warned, later, this year, there'll be new comix!
Now, we proceed with our regular transmission...

Cap commission

This week I decided to share a commission drawing I did for a friend of mine this past Christmas. His request was for a Captain America piece of artwork and out of the few possible scenarios he suggested, this was the one I ended up picking - a crying Cap at the gates of Auschwitz. It was done with faber-castell PITT pens, copic markers, ecolines and acrylic inks on clairefontaine paper.
Enjoy!

New Year Resolutions

Taking advantage of the new year to let you all know that 2012 will be the year that, barring unexpected catastrophe, I'll be returning to post new comics here on the blog. My personal life has kept me extremely busy and I've had to let this blog on auto-pilot with the "Retro Video" series, but hope to be back on posting new original personal stuff as soon as possible. In fact, next week, you'll be seeing new artwork by me, right here!

Happy 2012!

Merry Chistmas!

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All-Star Pulp Comics

It is with great joy that I announce the release of Airship 27 Productions' All Star Pulp, a new comics anthology featuring stories and art by an all-star cast of todays new pulp writers and artists, including yours truly. This amazing 58 page comic book features the following characters and creative teams:

The Green Lama by Adam Garcia & Mike Fyles
Jim Anthony Super Detective by Erwin K. Roberts & Pedro Cruz
Black Bat by C. William Russette & Wayne Beeman
The Blue Lady by Sean Taylor & James Ritchey III
The Rook by Barry Reese & Craig Wilson
Secret Agent X by Bobby Nash & Jeremy McHugh
Domino Lady by Percival Constantine, Rock Baker & Jeff Austin
Cover by Jeff Butler featuring the Green Lama & the Domino Lady

You can get it here. Hope you give it a try!

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Leaving music behind and moving on to movies, here's some oldies I found terrific way back in the bygone 1980s.

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Starting a new feature with old music videoclips whose songs I fondly remember from my early childhood :-)

SUGAR BABY LOVE by The Rubettes

So close, so far ...

So I went and saw two of this season’s so-called summer blockbusters : Super 8 and Captain America: The First Avenger and thought of throwing here a brief personal review of this couple of movies.



I’d sum up Super 8 as a sort of Bizarro-Spielberg movie – those who know their Superman lore will understand right away my opinion. I knew J.J. Abrams work from Lost, certainly one of the finest tv fiction series of recent years. I've never seen his Star Trek – utter blasphemy to me as Shatner, Nemoy and company will always be Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise crew from the old 60s original series. Still, the trailers for Super 8 had me intrigued enough to see if Abrahms was indeed capable of capturing lightining in a bottle – because that’s precisely what he tries to do with this movie, recapturing the magic of Steven Spielberg’s late 70s/early 80s movies. The result, I’m sorry to say is a resounding negative. The feeling I had as I walked away from the cinema by the end of the movie was that Abrams tried so hard to achieve this impossible task, it was almost sad to see his attempt. Super 8 is a mess, all effect and too little soul, as if Abrams is trying to mix E.T., Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies and a bit of the first Jurassic Park too – at least those were the bits I recognized, there could be some other lost in there – but somehow fails to inject that secret ingredient that Spielberg used to have. The result is a sort of good-looking Frankenstein monster – it’s pretty to look at, but it’s loud, not subtle and a dimwit. Sad thing is, one can see that Abrams is quite talented and obviously sincere about his love for Spielberg’s early achievements. Frankly, I think it would have made for a much better film if he just had put aside the whole evil E.T. plot aside and stuck to the main kid’s story about dealing with his mom’s horrible death, finding his first innocent love, making the zombie film with his friends and just dealing with growing up in a small American town back in the early 80s. At least those are the parts that had some emotional resonance with me, much more than the stupid teary eyes bye-bye to a cannibal E.T. who just happened to eat the sheriff and a few other regular citizens, for crying out loud! Weirdest thing of all is Steven Spielberg himself produced this movie...



Captain America: The First Avenger, while also being simultaneously close and far to its source, reached much closer to its target, I think. Director Joe Johnston has yet to completely disappoint me in any of his movies, Jumanji and Jurassic Park III being two personal favorites of mine. The man does know how to direct adventure movies and does a good job at adapting Captain America to the silver screen, creating a great rollercoaster adventure that is loyal to the spirit of the marvel comics character, without a dull moment, just about the right doses of humor and seriousness, great special effects and, best of all, a great cast where Chris Evans shines as a totally believable Steve Rogers. Too good to sound true, right? Unfortunately, for this fan of the original comic book, yes. Poking fun at the character creator’s Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s wonderful classic costume design and prefering to glorify the recent re-interpretations of the character's costume and history from the comic books did not score high points in my book. Under the Hollywood mentality of being more realistic than real, I can understand the whole modernization of the costume, even while not agreeing with it, but was it really needed to ridicule the original Cap costume by making him wear a version of it as a sort of chorus line dancer? Worse yet was the obvious whitewashing of the Nazi threat. In the original comic book, Cap fought the Nazis back in WWII and the Red Skull used to be one Hitler’s more loyal fanatics, not a betrayer. Just as Hollywood seems to have found a interest in the gratuitous idea of changing the ethnicity of well-established comic book characters (Heimdall, Perry White) I don’t understand this recent urge to turn Nazis into something else. They’re perfect villains even more so because, yes Virginia, they’re real, killed millions of innocents and once threatened to take over the world. They're an integral part of who Captain America is. Who were the producers thinking it would offend by mostly getting nazis off from the film and having the Red Skull wear that hydra insignia instead of a swastika? Germans? Lars Von Trier? Anders Breivick?
Still, what can one expect from Hollywood?

So, two summer blockbusters, one far better than the other in my opinon, still both of them, so close, yet so far to their original sources of inspiration…

Star Wars 1947

What if STAR WARS had been made 30 years earlier?

Godzilla

I'm not necessarily a fan of Godzilla but I do find old 1950s monster movies fun. This little sequence from japanese film "Always 2" makes me wish they'd make a new Godzilla film but instead of updating it to current days keep it back in the 50s.

The Simpsons by Banksy

UK graffiti artist Banksy designed this title sequence for The Simpsons.
Oh, the irony...

Adventure time too

busy, busy week, so here's another short clip/song from Adventure Time. Enjoy!

Adventure Time

As I've gotten older, it has become harder to come across something that sparks in me the same enthusiasm I had back when I was a kid first discovering all sorts of pop culture artifacts and creations. Whenever I find any such oasis in the current desert, it is a time of much joy and celebration. For me, "Adventure Time", a cartoon network animated series created by Pendleton Ward is just such a thing.

Here's a very small clip from the series ...

Logorama

This is an oldie, but great oscar-winner animation. Copyright its respective owners.

Le Chat du Rabbin

Here's the trailer for Joann Sfar's film adaptation of his B.D. - looks nice!

moebius sketch 3 of 3

Final part of the video.

moebius sketch 2 of 3

The second part of the video started last week.