Ages of the X-Men Book

I wrote and article for The Ages of the X-Men, a book of essays that correlate X-Men comics to the time periods in which they were published (or represent).

On pages 128 - 144 you'll find the final version of my essay on Generation X:

Kevin Cannon visit to SCAD

During the Winter 2014 quarter, I was able to invite cartoonist Kevin Cannon of Big Time Attic down as part of the Mini-Comics Expo. Athena was a able to convince him to come down. We do an expo once a year. It's my big event for the year.

As part of his visit Kevin gave a lecture at the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation (my favorite place to host a lecture--it has a little chapel for speakers). So I got to introduce his talk.

Silas the Alien: In the Briny Deep

This is a little mini-comics that I made for my Mini-Comics class. We are doing an inter-campus exchange. The SCAD sequential art department at the following campuses: Savannah, Atlanta, and Lacoste are all exchanging minis (just a quarter-size letter/a4 page, which gives you 6 pages of comic plus a front and back cover). Each student makes around 60 copies of their comic (easy to print on campus since it's only a single sheet front a back--cost is nil) and in turn each will receive 60 comics from the other students. I think I will try and organize this exchange each Winter Quarter.

Admittedly I crapped this one out pretty fast. Here's the pencils:

Usagi for the Sakai family

Here's a painting of Usagi Yojimbo for an auction to benefit Sharon and Stan Sakai. In 2009 the SCAD sequential art department took Stan Sakai to Tokyo for a little over a week. He worked with students, led daily workshops, traveled the city with us, and even got us into Ghibli studios. You can see my posts about the trip here: a Tokyo post with Stan.

On that trip,Stan led a watercolor workshop in which he produced a beautiful 11x17 painting of Usagi, which he gave to me before the paint was even dry. It was exactly four years ago (to the day). The painting now hangs in my home:

On that trip I became friends with both Sharon and Stan. Since every trip to San Diego Comic-Con included a chat, a hug, and a photo. I met up with Stan for lunch in France during the Angouleme BD festival a couple years ago. I made an appearance on his blog here. Stan carried his SCAD back everywhere and often wears his SCAD shirt. We consider him a close friend of the department. He and his lovely wife are undoubtedly one of the nicest couples I’ve ever met.

CAPS has set up a series of art auctions for benefit. It is important that Stan and Sharon know how much they mean to all of us. Please consider helping the two of them however you can: http://garageartstudio.blogspot.com/2013/11/help-stan-sakai.html

I’ve been fortunate to share several meals with Stan. Easily more than a dozen--spanning several years and several continents. He is sort of a foodie and has taken a photo of every one of those meals. It is also not lost on me that food and dining are significant elements in Usagi stories--often as narrative bookends or turning points in the adventures. I decided to paint Usagi enjoying a bowl of noodles. Here are a few sketches:

Pre-MIX 2013!

Last year our graduate students competed in a 24-hour comics challenge as part of CCAD's MIX 2013 conference in Ohio.

This year I am honored to do a workshop in Columbus, OH for MIX 2013.

http://www.ccad.edu/events-2013/mix

Mix 2013 CCAD's Celebration of Comics

Sept. 27–28

David Allan Duncan

Mini-Comics: Pre-production and Reproduction

1:30-3:30 p.m.

Crane Center room 217

(must be pre-registered)

New Card, yo!

I got some new business cards printed up. The older ones were too old and I didn't like them. I have SCAD business cards too, but they aren't fun at all. I admit to stealing the line-art from my profile, but I at least changed the shape of the glasses to match my new ones.

I used Moo instead of Overnight Prints. The colors look better on these, and I can write on the paper (which is recycled). I like the idea of adding a word-balloon with a note above my name. I do miss the ability to add a spot-gloss, though.

HeroesCon 2013, Charlotte, NC

If I only go to one convention a year, it would have to be Heroes.

As usual, I was able to do a workshop. I missed doing it last year. Little Oliver was brand new in the world, so we just drove up to the con for a one-day visit (no work duties). It is always a blast doing a workshop at a convention:

I was also invited to be a part of panel of comic scholars on teaching comics in the classroom. The Panel was called Teaching Comics--The Canon--Second Volley. It was a great panel with a few people I knew already, and several new friends. Craig Fisher (from Appalachian State, who I was on a panel with at ICAF a few years ago), Mike Kobre (from Queens U.), Sterg Botzakis (University of TN), and Andrew Kunka (University of South-Carolina-Sumter) all joined me on the panel. The whole thing was moderated by Steve Saffel (Titan Books editor). Andy Menzel was all over this one, too. He’s the glue that holds all of HeroesCon together. Kristie was with Ollie (who was taking a nap) so I didn’t get any pictures of the Panel.

I think Ollie had fun this year. He dressed up as Superman (costume from his Nannie).

 Here he is with the always adorable McHargue triplets (ABC):

And here he is with a Jawa:

Hawaiian Blues

Dove McHargue did a nine-page story for Matt Dembick's comics anthology WILD OCEAN.

He asked me to do the lettering and title. This one was really fun. Completely different than the NEMO book. The story involves a pool, a whale, some peril, and a bit of fantasy.

Dove used a sort of bubble transition for the fantasy sequence, so I decided to do circle balloons as a sort of motif. The whole anthology is square, so circles seemed fair game.

It’s not something that I see very often. One of my favorite letterers John Workman did it for Paul Pope’s 100%:

BARTKIRA Volume 5, Pages 276-280

I was delighted to be a part of a very odd project put together by James Harvey. It is called Bartkira. It overlays the world of The Simpsons over the entire epic manga series AKIRA (over 2000 pages) by Katsuhiro Otomo. Pages from all 6 volumes were divvied out, and key characters were replaced with Simpsons characters.

Strangely, my assigned pages had a bit of nudity and some potty-language. So that meant I had to draw a naked Simpson. For me, certainly a first; hopefully a last.

Color wasn't a requirement, but I felt that color is a major element in the Simpsons. I really only colored the characters, leaving the background as monochromatic.

Here's my set compared to the original pages. You'll probably need to click to get a better look:

 Harvey is still compiling all of the pages. Not a job that envy. Thanks James!

NEMO Lettering

The actual lettering on the NEMO pages for Dove was much more fun. I did a previous test that was all by hand and I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to fit all of the dialog and text into the art using my own hand-lettering (even after blowing up the work). So I decided to just hand-draw the balloons and use a digital typeface for the actual text. I’m adamant about drawing the balloons by hand (I’m actually using a cintiq).

Since Mark is writing I thought that it might be appropriate to mimic the scalloped ballooning of Xenozoic Tales:

Mark’s whole aesthetic is usually based in 1930-50s adventure comics/illustration, so that’s the lineage I’m referencing here (Al Williams' I, Rocket):

Art-wise Dove is taking a really interesting approach. He’s doing a sort of 20s/30s film look with the tones (post lineart airbrush).

Drawing balloons is my single favorite part of making comics, so this was pretty fun.

Dove and I had talked about using faint textures in the balloons that mimic the airbrushing he’s doing for the artwork. It seemed necessary to tie the balloons and art together. I much prefer this to making the balloons slightly transparent (a trend that is distracting I think). Dove scanned a few pages of airbrush tests and I used those to make the textures.

I don’t know that I love it, though... The textures printed way too dark when Dove printed a few samplers.