One of the fun things about doing this visual blog is fishing around in the back of the flat files and pulling out stuff I’ve completely forgotten about. This illustration is from one of my first commercial jobs after graduating Kubert School in 1978. All I have is the tear sheets and I don’t remember the title of the book it was done for. Some sort of intergalactic handbook of some kind if memory serves. Pen and ink on Craftint paper, 1978.

DC has just released the finished cover to the second issue of the upcoming ARMY@LOVE miniseries, THE ART OF WAR. As I’m sure you recognize, that’s Hopper’s NIGHTHAWKS I’m parodying, with the help of incredible inks by Gary Erskine and spot on color from Brian Miller.

We’re hoping you can all jump on board the mini-series by ordering the first issue, with the MONA LISA cover, which is solicited in the current PREVIEWS.

A small shopping plaza in Wilmington, Vermont. Marker in sketchbook, 1998.

Proglo Edizioni has just released an Italian edition of Alan Moore’s updated essay, “Writing For Comics”. As a design element they’ve embedded a wash drawing of Alan, taken from the famous photo on the back of WATCHMEN, behind the text on every page. And since I wrote the introduction there’s this illustration behind my text which might be me. And might not.

Let me explain: comics creator and journalist, Stefano Priarone, is the guy who contacted me about writing the introduction. And he has long been told by people who know us both that, except for the twenty year difference in age, we could be twins! And since I don’t recognize the source photo that Massimiliano Padelli used to create his wash illustration, I’m wondering if Stefano just gave him a photo of himself to work from?

Here’s a page from what might be the most obscure Bissette/Veitch comic of all time. It’s from “WAR WIND”, a five pager written by Steve and illustrated and lettered by me that appeared under the ARCHIE Adventure Series imprint, of all places. If I remember correctly, even though the editor loved the job, there was some unpleasentness with the publisher concerning a panel where we showed a guy hanging by a noose. It took a while, but we finally got paid and the story rattled around in inventory up there until it appeared in the back of THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS #10, December 1984.

Full review: Guttergeek

Marker in sketchbook, 1997.

Mindless doodle or clouds? You Decide! Marker in sketchbook, 1997.

Don’t remember much about this time-traveling hero Alan Moore and I came up with for the Awesome Universe except that it brought a phone call from Jean-Marc Lofficier at Starwatcher, pointing out that he looked a bit too much like Moebius’ MAJOR GRUBERT. I think we agreed to remove the spike on his helmet and white out the infinity symbol on his chest, but not sure if we ever did anything more with him.

Another Collectors Item Classic from Sun Comics! Pencil on typing paper. March, 1964.