Commisson: The Rocketeer

I have more commissions to post; I've just been swamped with deadlines!

Today's offering of inked adventure is one of my favorite comics characters, The Rocketeer. By my count I've done more commissions of than another character, other than my own.

Another piece for a friend, this time out it's for Chris Neseman of Around Comics and 11 O'Clock Comics. If you like comics, give both shows a listen.

Commission: Golden Age Flash & Green Lantern

This one was a lot of fun! I needed something to tie it all together and felt that the Justice Society eagle would make a good graphic element.

I enjoy doing pencil commissions, but always feel that they would look better as finished ink drawings. I may end up printing this commission out as a blueline and inking it anyway.

Commission: Daredevil

Today's entry is a commission piece for my pal Brian Salazar from the excellent comics podcast Around Comics. Sal is also one of the geniuses behind the terrific Windy City Comicon. You should follow the links—your life will be forever enriched.

Athena Voltaire pencils

I realized that I haven't posted this piece before. I drew it in my sketchbook as an exercise and decided to use it as the title page for The Complete Webcomics. I really enjoy working in tone and would like to use the title pages for my trade paperbacks to indulge that interest.

Go get 'em, kid

One year ago today, we lost Dave Stevens to cancer. I had planned to write a lengthy essay about how much the man's work meant to me, but words fail me.

IDW announces The Complete Rocketeer

...taking a break from my artwork today, for some great news...

It's no secret that Dave Stevens is one of my all-time favorite artists (in fact, I'll be talking about him more later this month). I was thrilled to hear the announcement yesterday that IDW will be publishing The Complete Rocketeer in October.

The entire book will be digitally recolored by Dave's hand-picked colorist, Laura Martin (whose spectacular work has graced such titles as The Authority and Planetary). The first piece of artwork from Stevens and Martin is shown at left.

My favorite part?

“Sure, the regular hard cover will be great, but the Deluxe Edition will be incredible,” Editor Scott Dunbier said. “Oversized, about 8 x 12 inches, and loaded with unpublished Dave Stevens Rocketeer art. There will be tons of drawings, sketches, cover roughs—100 pages of them! How’s that for the ultimate Rocketeer collection?”

Between this and their forthcoming reprints of Alex Raymond's Rip Kirby, IDW will be getting a whole lot of my money in the latter half of this year.