Unsold/Unpublished

The Hypothetical Avengers

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Many years ago, during my time at Marvel Comics, assistant editors (of which I was one) attended semi-weekly “Assistant Editors’ Classes”, something that happened throughout Marvel’s history from time to time. This round of classes were taught alternately by Chris Claremont and Mark Waid, both of whom were (and are) renowned for their work as … Read more

From the Reject Pile: DEADPOOL/SPICE GIRLS “World Tour”

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Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth, Marvel Comics’ resident maniac gun-for-hire is all the rage these days. But this wasn’t always the case. 11 years ago last month, Marvel had a big Deadpool push with “Deadpool Month”, October 1998, when Marvel put out a series of Deadpool related one-shots and such in addition to his … Read more

Process

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In the event you haven’t been paying attention (and shame on you for that), G-MAN: CAPE CRISIS #2 came out on September 9th, featuring Part 2 of the 5-part Pix: Teenage American Fairy story, “The Most Dangerous Donut”. Did you miss it? Well, go to a comic shop and get a copy. Come on, people!

Now that that’s out of the way…

A lot of people ask me what my process is for creating comics. And by “a lot of people” I mean hardly anyone if anyone at all, and by “ask what my process is” I mean people, when they ask, like to ask things like do I use a computer for everything now, do I also put the words in the “little bubbles”…things like that.

But regardless, I thought I’d take the time to give you a tour of how page 5 of “The Most Dangerous Donut” came to be.

WRITING/LAYOUT

It all starts with the writing. When I’m drawing my own story, the writing happens in three basic stages. First is all in my head, where I think about the story, picture pages in my mind’s eye, and figure out the basic beats and some of the dialogue and how it’ll all fit together once drawn.

Stage two is the layouts, and this is maybe the meatiest part of it. Here’s where I lay out the pages, panel-by panel, including a rough sense of dialogue and where it’ll go. Here are my initial layouts for page 5:

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From the Reject Pile: STARFOX’S SWINGIN’ SPRING BREAK SUPER SPECIAL

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And now, to make up for a nearly month of absence, here’s a nice long one for ya:

In 1999, as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics, I had, aside from my duties as an assistant editor, drawn a few comics, pitched a few ideas that went nowhere (i.e. – Deadpool/Spice Girls – and yes, that’s for real; I’ll talk about that another day), and had written letters pages and a few things that never saw print.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I suggested an idea to editor Mark Powers and he responded with, and this isn’t an exact quote despite my using quotes, “That’s hilarious; let’s do it…if you write up the new project memo, I’ll sign it”. [By way of explanation: a new project memo was just that, a form you submitted to decision makers when proposing a new series, mini-series, one-shot, etc. On this form you indicate the creative team, title, concept, page count, etc.]

starfox_storytelling

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From the Reject Pile: The NEW Marvel Tails

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A couple of years back I submitted a proposal to Marvel Comics for a 4-issues series starring Spider-Ham and the rest of Marvel Comics’ “Funny Animal” characters. Working with me as the artist was the very skilled-in-his-own-right Jacob Chabot. For those who understood about 8% of that sentence: Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, is a … Read more