A milestone for MALICENT BLACK, DOCTOR STRANGE #450, a little bit of DREAD, some DROME, and Mark Gruenwald…

Another one of these things??? Why won’t he stop..? Because he loves you…

Or likes the sound of his own voice. Pick one.

Alright, so this past week I finished the interior inks for our second issue of MALICENT BLACK! I’m pretty excited to hit this point, because it feels like I’ve been working on this book forever. I think maybe I have? I know I started penciling it last fall, before getting too far into DREAD THE HALLS … then had to work around not only DREAD, but FLASH GORDON QUARTERLY #3, DOCTOR STRANGE #450, RUNAWAYS #4 … and some other stuff that I can’t talk much about yet.

So yeah, I kinda HAVE been working on this forever, but not because I’m slow or lazy (he said, super defensively.)

But now I have to ink this second cover … yeah, second cover. Did I mention this already? See, I did one way back, inked it, colored it … and I like it. It fits the book really nicely in some ways. But I’m not sure it’s the ‘right’ cover for a Kickstarter campaign, y’know? That cover has to do a lot of heavy lifting. With luck, it will be everywhere. So … I have to ink this new cover. We’ll have two covers for this thing, and you can pick one or the other or … best of all … both! THEN I get to start coloring this book. I’m not a fast colorist, but I don’t expect it to take too long on this … I feel like I’ve had enough time to think about it all, obviously 🙂

It’s pretty exciting to hit this stage, though. NOW is when this second book finally feels “real” to me. You’d think – since I’ve penciled and inked 22 pages, penciled, inked and colored one cover, penciled another, and also wrote a short prose story, that it would have felt real long before this, eh? I don’t know what to tell you. Artists, man. AI doesn’t have to deal with this stuff, it just craps out garbage that a few people pretend matters in some sad way and the world burns.

Meanwhile … this week, DOCTOR STRANGE #450 is in comic shops everywhere! I know I’ve discussed the good doctor previously, so I won’t ramble too much this time … but I gotta say again, I really enjoyed this one. It’s probably my favorite bit of Marvel work. It’s definitely the most “me” I’ve ever gotten into one of these. I loved the script by JMS, and Carlos Lopez KILLED it on the colors. Doctor Strange is a character I’d love to get back to … someday.

Beyond working, I’ve read a few cool new things lately … first off is DREAD THE HALL H, by my pal Chris Ryall, along with a whole host of other talented creators like Jordan Hart, Chris Anderson, Nelson Daniel, Piotr Kowalski, and Jimmy Kucaj. It’s a TON of fun. Seriously. I don’t know what possessed them to do this, but I want more.

Drome by Jesse Lonergan came out recently, too, and I blasted through this thing (all 300+ pages) in one night. I kept thinking that I’d take a break at the NEXT chapter … well, maybe the NEXT one … before finally giving up and just going for it. It’s so good. Jesse is doing a ton of stuff that I find really interesting right now, and this might be my favorite so far.

And finally, the other comic-related thing I’ve been reading lately … is this big beast of a book.

I remember really loving Gruenwald’s Cap back in the day. I’m pretty sure my grandparents meant to get me a subscription to either Amazing Spider-Man or GI Joe, but somehow I ended up with Captain America. And I started with the last couple of Mike Carlin-written issues, with Cap across the pond, teaming up with Captain Britain against Mordred. Mark Gruenwald took over soon after, and man … I was hooked.

*A side note … the OTHER Mark Gruenwald-written series that completely blew my fuses back in my formative years was SQUADRON SUPREME. I say this with no exaggeration … I don’t know if you’ll ever find somebody who loves that SQUADRON SUPREME series more than I do.

Anyway…

I didn’t always get Cap once my subscription ran out. I actually missed a lot of the issues between #317-#349, though I was lucky enough to find the big Scourge issue and of course the one where John Walker is handed the shield. But I had some stretches as a kid there where getting comics could be tough. However, once my brothers and I discovered our first comic shop (shout out to The Book Nook, a place I dearly loved and miss) I found myself picking up Cap again. I was there for The Bloodstone Hunt and Streets of Poison, though I sadly missed the Cap-wolf stuff…

So yesterday this giant omnibus arrived. I had read or re-read almost everything up through #350, so I was ready. But man, these comics are just a blast. Sure, some of the dialogue … eh, it doesn’t hold up. Fair. But Cap, John Walker, Battlestar, Diamondback, the Serpent Society … these are just some really fun superhero comics. I’m amazed at how Gruenwald juggled so many storylines, and I honestly want to know what happens next in these comics from … ugh, far too many years ago. I read the first 250 pages or so last night, getting past The Bloodstone Hunt, and something really hit me while reading that…

Kieron Dwyer and Danny Bulanadi kicked royal ass on this stuff. I remembered LIKING their work, but coming back to this … they were awesome. Handling such a big cast of characters, so many various settings, so much action … this was not an easy series to draw, and this is really great work. I’m up to issue #363 now, and honestly just wanna wrap this newsletter up so I can go read some more…

*But hey, since you made it this far … here’s a peek at that new cover. Between writing this on Sunday morning and hitting ‘publish’ I had time to get this thing inked 😉

Bye!

-LF