Tuesday, December 6

Wonder Woman Experiment

 I had a Wonder Woman sketch pop up as a Facebook memory, and I wanted to try the same pose now.





Wednesday, November 23

Miles Morales

I'm testing an account on Hive at @GregoryDickens, the first time I've been able to use my name as a social media handle. I asked for a character suggestion to draw, and Miles was first.



Friday, November 4

Marvelman

A good pal (hi, Jim) leaned on me to try the Gaiman/Buckingham Marvel/MiracleMan comics. I had stopped with the Moore issues. I figured the story was over. It was a fine stopping place, and I was satisfied with it. 

 But I tried their GoldenAge sequel stories and really enjoyed them. Now I'm catching up with the Silver Age comics Marvel is publishing. I liked the Gaiman/Buckingham stuff so much I had to draw the hero.




Wednesday, October 19

Gravity Falls

 Despite my friends loving and talking up Gravity Falls for years, I didn't try it until this month. It was suggested as Halloween viewing on Hulu and Disney+, and I fell for it hard. Growing up as a kid who loved the paranormal and crushed on redheads and now living in a national forest, I had an affinity for it from the get-go. The first season is fun mystery stuff, and the second season is an emotional epic. Tremendous stuff. And I don't need anything more from it. I am fully sated by it. That's a neat trick to pull off. I had to draw something for it.




Monday, October 3

New Sketches!

Finally finally finally made myself sit down and sketch again, for the first time in literal months. I'm hoping to play with body modeling, approaching the under-structure freshly after so much time away.

 






Monday, August 15

Oh Yeah, I Went to HeroesCon 2022

I haven't drawn anything since HeroesCon, because things have been hectic.The moment I put my hand truck of convention supplies behind my table, and I mean the exact second I parked it, I got a call saying my mom had a heart attack. She was conscious and stable, and she said I should stay at the show. So I did. And it was a great weekend, for art and sales.But it was also constant phone calls to check her progress.

Here's a look at my show.

This is my table for the weekend. My right-side neighbor had to leave early, and my left-side neighbor never showed. I had a whole table facade to myself.

I did these for Drink N Draw.



And these were among the commissions.








I am extremely proud of Mister Sinister as Manet's Olympia. That was the weekend's triumph.

But immediately after the show, I had to start being a Dutiful Son and helping my mom. New medications. Rehab. Fixing up a house for someone with newly limited movement. It was a month of travel and phone calls and scheduling and repairs and bills. I also had to prepare for my day-job work convention. From late June to early August, all was chaos. But she is now home and stable and doing well so long as she doesn't push it (and she does).

So now we prepare for DragonCon with cosplays. Costume pics to come.

Sunday, June 19

HeroesCon is Next Week!


I feel like I got a good spot, but, honestly, I get a good reception every year regardless of where I am. That's how good the HeroesCon crowd is.

This will be the HeroesCon debut of NAMELESS, and I have almost a half dozen new prints for sale (also available at my online store). It's been three years since the last Charlotte show, and I expect a big turnout.

 Look for the NAMELESS banner!


 

Monday, June 6

She-Hulk and Thor print


 

Had a last-second notion for a HeroesCon print and worked this up in less than a week. You can get the letter and tabloid sizes of it at the show, and the letter version is available to buy through my online store.


Wednesday, June 1

HeroesCon Commissions

If you're coming to HeroesCon, you can order a commission now and pick it up at the show. This is the 40th anniversary show, and if it's anything like April's SC Comicon, it will be packed each day.

Order your con commissions here.


 
 




 

Monday, April 25

Me, Immortalized

 

At SCComicon (which was bonkers and very successful for your hero), I finally pulled the trigger on something I'd considered for a long time: a 3D scan figure. I've seen these vendors at DragonCon and other shows for years and always talked myself out of it. But SCCC was such a roaring fun time that I had no reason to deprive myself.

I walked by the Shrunk3D Upstate trailer before the show opened on Sunday, and they cranked up the scan-o-tron for me.You walk inside to a spacious cage of lights and cameras. The scan takes one second, and you review the images on a large monitor. You then pick the figure size and price, and they mail you the figure with 6 weeks. I got mine within four. I love it. The detail is amazing.

SCComicon in general felt like many people had waited for COVID to be more manageable, and this was, for them and me, their first show in three years. They came to buy, and boy did they. I think everyone had a solid day behind the table. But SCCC is always a good show for consumers and table folk. It's reliable also for good costumes and family interaction. It's grown within ten years to be a significant con for South Carolina and a nice precursor for HeroesCon in Charlotte a few months later. I hope to get a table in their October one-day show.

Friday, April 8

SC Comicon 2022

 


For the first time since 2019, I'll have a table at the Greenville, SC, show this weekend. Since then, I made a graphic novel, NAMELESS, and a small stack of prints, including Velma, Hela, three Spider-Men, and The Adventure Zone. Copies of all these and more are also available at my store, Robot Wonderboy.

I also made changes to the original art I'm offering at cons. I'm going with one size (9 x 12) at a higher price, $25 for b/w. There's a constant mantra online about artists setting prices and undercutting themselves, but I'm not at the recognition level where I can get $50 for a quick head sketch or hundreds for a half-figure. I'm just not there yet, but my art has improved to the point where I think the price increase is worth it. I work slower to get a better line quality. This is a test as my first show in three years. I can adjust any of this business equation before HeroesCon in June.

It feels like I have no muscle memory for preparing for cons. I had to start from scratch to pack my boxes and cart and constantly remind myself I have done this before when I start to get anxious. I know that once the doors open, though, the con vibes will see us all through.

 


 






Thursday, March 24

Wonder Woman is All Elite


I made my original Wonder Woman print some years back, and I gave her the WWE belt. But now, we are an AEW house, and so I had to do a version with that company's top belt. You can get the 8.5 x 11 print via the Robot Wonderboy store.


This version is also available through my store at 8.5 x 11 inches.

Wednesday, March 9

They Found The Endurance!

 


A year after I sent my graphic novel about the doomed expedition to the printer, the wreckage of Shackleton's Endurance was found in the Weddell Sea. (BBC News)

I am delighted. I look forward to the TV documentary about the efforts to find it and the new spate of books about the 1914 effort to cross Antarctica. 

My book NAMELESS: AN OUTSKIRTS TALE, as you may know, is a very fictionalized account of the ship's final days, throwing in Lovecraft monsters inspired by At the Mountains of Madness and my own Ladies of the Lake mythology and South Pacific mythology. If that sounds like your cuppa, you can get print copies from my store and digital copies from Amazon. Here are some pages.




They found her. After 100 years. Amazing.

Saturday, February 26

Wonder Woman and She-Hulk

 

Do you even lift, all man everywhere?

One was in Sensation Comics. The other was a Sensational She-Hulk. I liked the connection.

Sunday, February 20

Comixology Update

As we small-press folks were informed last year, Amazon decided Comixology worked too well for too many people, and they had enough of that nonsense. Submit (the upload and catalog portal for small-press guys) was going away. The good news: Everyone, including us, could upload through the Kindle Create software because, bad news, Comixology was moving to the Kindle. That shift went live this week, and it is a bag of rotten apples. 

My previous uploads are gone. All my sales records are gone. My publishing umbrella is gone. I had to recreate my digital files and upload them to the Kindle system, and each trade took, no lie, a half hour to process on their end. That was only part of the new submission process. The previous Comixology was much easier to deal with on our end.

Luckily, and maybe not for long, there doesn't seem to be any of the previous quality control Comixology used. Someone on their end would give your files a look-see and approve your upload. That might take two weeks after the OK, and the OK might take a few days. That was a wonderful improvement over the earlier days where it might take a month for upload approval. There was also the occasional editor note from an anonymous Comixology button-pusher who writes to say your art doesn't look finished. That was a lovely day for your (newly) humble host.

But the new user interface is junk. Finding comics, and finding new comics by small publishers like us, is near impossible. This is the first week of the rollout, and one hopes the massive, unhappy feedback will nudge Amazonology to make updates. Or not. This is the default comics app and universal comic store for anyone with an good online signal. Where else do you and I go? Might we see improvements? Only if they consider it worth it, and we've already seen what they considered unnecessary. Things like clarity and instinctive navigation.

Look to the right, if you would. There's the link for my books on Comixology. No trade is more than $4. You can, as of this posting, buy my four trades (300 pages) for less than $20. You can also buy physical copies for a little more on my online store. I appreciate your business either way.

Thursday, February 17

Tom Strong family

 More America's Best Comics fan art! Even if I didn't enjoy a pulp science hero with Han Solo pants and a gorilla butler, I'd buy it for the Chris Sprouse art. Man, he's good.



Friday, February 11

Johnni Future and Jermaal

 More America's Best Comics! Steve Moore and Arthur Adams's Johnni Future and Jermaal.



Saturday, February 5

Jack B. Quick

After I posted the Promethea art, two very smart people suggested a string of America's Best Comics characters. I always liked Kevin Nowlan's art, and he co-created Jack B. Quick with Alan Moore. He's a Kansas farmboy who knows his science. Here I gave him a lawn chair with a propane tank and a Saturn V nozzle.



Sunday, January 30

Promethea

Quickly read the run of Alan Moore and John Williams III's Promethea from the America's Best Comics run for Wildstorm. I bought the ABC Artist Edition collection last year with full-size page reproductions like the spread below.



 

I had to try my hand at drawing and coloring her.


 

I forgot that DC brought her into their hero comics a few years back. That doesn't seem quite right.