In 1978, Boba Fett wasn't much more than a costume and a voice. But that costume was such a slam dunk, you could have left out the voice altogether and our imaginations would have done the rest. Since we weren't going to get anything more until he showed up on movie screens in 1980, I did what my brain directed me to do: made my own Boba Fett comics.
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I wish every one of my comics had gone as well as this one. The editor agreed to it right away, I got to write and draw all of it without interference, every issue got published, and - amazingly - I got one of the best inkers I could ever ask for. It's rare, but once in a while, things line up just right. See all five issues and some extras.
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This assignment from West End Games came at the peak of my freelance comics career. Star Wars game illustrations were getting rare, but looking better as a result of all the time I'd spent honing my skills. The concept for this book was for gamers to visit several different spaceports in the Star Wars galaxy and get into all sorts of fun trouble.
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2011 was the year I made the transition from analog to digital drawing (a requirement to continue being employable), and it was like transferring from one airplane to another while both were in flight. On the other hand, 2011 was the year of some pretty great assignments. Avengers EMH and Ultimate Spider-Man on the Marvel side, and Young Justice on the DC side. I didn't do a lot for Young Justice, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
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What do Judge Dredd, Aliens, Ren & Stimpy, The Terminator, Bubblegum Crisis, The Rook, and X-Wing Rogue Squadron have in common? I didn't get to work on ANY of them! But I definitely gave it a try. Here you'll see my fruitless attempts at these and other projects from my comic book morgue.
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I adore Fist of the North Star. The manga art is exquisite. Its mythos are unique and propulsive. The characters are engaging and iconic. Its most dramatic moments are transcendent. And there's so damn MUCH of it, you can always return to the well for a fresh taste. Those are the hallmarks of a masterpiece, and it's been around long enough to achieve the mantle of a true classic.
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When I was 13 years old, I decided to make the dumbest, quickest, sloppiest superhero comic I could. ON PURPOSE. And boy, did I pull it off.
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As my comic book horizons expanded as a teenager, I realized that I had "permission" to experiment with formats and try new things. One result was this project right here, an illustrated sci-fi action novella that could have easily been made into one of those lesser-known movies of the 80s. A fighter pilot goes rogue to take down an evil empire. Does he do it? Do you even have to ask?
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In every sense that matters, Lensman: Secret of the Lens #1 was my launch pad as a professional comic book artist. Like all the most important things in life, it was a right time/right place situation. It was an unbelievable opportunity composed of lucky breaks, valuable lessons, and unexpected drama. Here's all six issues and the story behind them.
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When the "Thrawn trilogy" novels came out from '91 to '93, West End did a sourcebook for each one of them. I was lucky enough to land an assignment for the final one. It came to me in the midst of my best years as a comic book artist, when I was regularly inking my own work and feeling good about the results.
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Looking back at The Brave and the Bold nearly ten years after it ended, it was one delight after another, and the undisputed high point for me came in Episode 9. It was another luck of the draw, and I have seldom gotten luckier.
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The main purpose of ArtValt is to air out all the stuff in my archives that never got to see the light of day. This batch comes from my time working on staff at Malibu Comics (1992-94). Sometimes a special project would come from editorial that required full-up illustration work. It got really interesting when sample art was needed for a project the company wanted to license.
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Gundam is the Star Wars of Japan. Once you watch a Gundam show, it's very likely you'll pick up some merch. Once you do that, it's very likely you'll start a collection. Then one day you'll move to a new address and you'll suddenly realize what you've gotten yourself into. I'm a book hound, so that's what I lug from home to home. Once you start down this dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.
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By the end of the 1970s, I knew for sure I wanted to somehow draw comics for a living one day. It was much more satisfying than watching TV, reading a comic book, or playing with toys. In fact, I didn't even need the toys themselves. Just the sight of one would fill my head with ideas and a story would come spilling out. This was one of my first original SF action stories, a wild, corny ride using a bunch of 1979 artifacts as inspiration.
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I entered the comics industry exactly the same way I entered the animation industry. I showed up with a project to pitch and someone said, "Your thing is pretty cool. Now come over here and work on my thing." In this case, that project was the continuation of one of Dark Horse's early success stories: an anime-inspired series called MECHA.
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My sixth assignment from West End Games was a modest one, but exciting. Once in a while, they'd come out with a sourcebook tie-in to a separate Star Wars project. This one adapted and expanded material from the Han Solo novels by Brian Daley. I finally got to draw everyone's favorite piece'a junk and visualize some of the things that previously existed only as words in those baffling noves.
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When I was a kid, Scooby Doo was my Saturday morning anchor. When I grew up and discovered anime, it made everything I watched as a kid look like junk with Scooby Doo as its chief representative. When I entered the animation industry, I couldn't imagine myself ever stooping so low as to work on a Scooby Doo cartoon. Fate, of course, had other plans.
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Logos for comic books are a vital component, since they are the first thing that identifies what you're looking at on a shelf. But very little attention is given to the craft of designing comic book logos, and the unique demands of working with letters. Here's a collection of logos I created back before the digital world came along to take the handcrafted look off the table.
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I will not be at all surprised if you never heard of an independent film called Godmoney. It's a teen crime drama in which, according to the official logline, "A former New York drug dealer's past catches up with him as he tries unsuccessfully to build a new life in California." When the director hired me to create a prequel to his film, it became my first and only crime drama. It was an experiment in style and color never seen by anyone until now.
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Thirteen children, refugees of an alien invasion on an Earth colony planet, are adrift in hostile enemy space. In their struggle to survive on board the training ship Janus, they learn to pilot the powerful Round Vernian robots and fight back as they search for their missing parents. Drama, comedy, action, tragedy; this engaging anime series has it all! Even an impossibly catchy English theme song! Open this profile up and say Hello, Vifam!
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