10/01/2007
"The 40 "
Okay so I don't turn the big FOUR-OH until Wed., but here's some pics from my b-day bash from Saturday night! We rented the swank private room at Lucky Strike and invited 50 or so of our best friends and family!
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to my life over 40 year on this planet. As I've told my wife numerous times, if I were to die today, my life exceed my wildest dreams with family and friends that have lifted me to heights I never imagined! And to the good Lord who has blessed all of it!
rob
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8/01/2007
"San Diego Comic COn 2007 "
So Comic Con International 2007 has officially wrapped and I'm still in a daze. Every year the show seems toget bigger and more intimidating. There's just only so much you can see and do in 4 days with hundreds of panels and signings to choose from.
This year I decided not to set up a booth and display at San Diego, the show is just so large and I feel that smaller publishers/producers such as my own outfit are not best equipped to grab the attention of crowds that are now accustomed to Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean displays that take up a city block in length. My kids love the show for all the pop and grandeur that it has become known for, they ask about it all year long. Where else can they interact with real life replicas of Stormtroopers, Pirates and super heroes from Spider Man to Iron Man. We spent all day Thursday just enjoying the show and traveling from display to display. The kids favorite booth is the Lego booth which is chock full of rare and upcoming lego toys as well as life size lego sculptures of Batman, Star Wars and Spongebob Squarepants. The kids did a half day on Friday before heading home where their sister stayed with relatives instead of attending a show that was seriously light on Princesses and tea parties.
Once the family left I attended to my commitments at the show which included the 15 year anniversary panel re-uniting the original Image Founders. The panel was moved a couple times in anticipation of ever growing buzz and larger than expected crowds. It was the first time we were all assembled in public and the panel filled the 1500 person hall, with standing room only capacity. The interest was high and the enthusiasm was great my only regret is that we weren't scheduled for more time as there were so many stories and not much time. It was good to hang with Todd, Jim, Valentino, Whilce, Marc and Erik after all these years. The crowd seemed to enjoy the chemistry and at least we left 'em wanting more.
I signed twice at the Image booth promoting the upcoming Youngblood Hardcover as well as the new Youngblood series launching in January 2008 from Ben 10 creator Joe Casey and upcoming superstar artist Derek Dononvan. I signed at Marvel a few times along with Jeph Loeb. Onslaught Reborn #4 was released in time for the show and it was selling out all over the convention. I signed tons of Onslaught's all weekend long. Jeph delivered the first part of the last issue on Sunday, so I'm currently working on wrapping the saga up for a fall release.
The highlights of the show floor was definitely the Marvel booth with their Iron Man display which was finally unveiled from the giant crate on Saturday afternoon with Robert Downey Jr. and John Favreau on hand for the reveal. The Golden Compass display promoting the upcoming film of the same name from New Line was also very impressive. My kids loved the giant polar bears with armor.
Jeph Loeb hooked me up for backstage passes for the big Heroes panel on Saturday. The entire cast was in attendance and the crowd was whipped into an absolute frenzy as they were introduced one by one. This was the biggest panel of the entire show and the panel delivered. Jeph Loeb an executive producer on the show presided over the panel which revealed Dogma and Clerks director Kevin Smith as the first writer/director of the upcoming Heroes spin-off Heroes: Origins and showed a trailer with clips from season 2. Cool stuff, if you're a fan of the show as we are in my house season 2 looks bigger than season 1.
Comic Con is always a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make new memories and I was fortunate to be able to get some quality hang time with Loeb, Joe Quesada, Tim Sale, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Robert Kirkman, Valentino, Simone Bianchi, Lenil Yu, Art Adams, Joe Casey, Derek Donovan, Tom Scioli, Eric Stephenson, Mike Malve, Brandon Peterson,Jimmy Jay, Marat, Dan Fraga, Matt Yackey and many others. All in all it was a great time and being freed up from attending to a booth all week long made a huge difference in enjoying the show and all its spectacle.
Chicago Comic Con is in 10 days, gotta run and get ready.....
rob
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6/13/2007
"Yo, Rob....Where you been?"
So, I've been laying low for awhile, waiting for several projects to
come together, but by no means have I been slacking. I've finished
Onslaught #4 some time ago and am anxiously awaiting the final ship
date. I'll resist my desire to sneak a peek at any more pages from
issue #4, but I'm very pleased and it's a big, big issue packed with
Marvel's greatesat icons. I know what Jeph has planned for the final
issue and I can't wait to get going on the final chapter.
In between finishing Onslaught 4 and working on my upcoming Apocalyptic
Graphic Novel Armegeddon Now! World War 3, I pencilled the entire first
issue of my new Marvel project but that stuff is absolutely, strictly
confidential and I'm currently drawing the 2nd issue's cover before
jumping into the second issue. I'm very fortunate Marvel opened the
door to allow me to work on this in between Onslaught issues. Onslaught
#5 should arrive next week and I'll jump back into that. This new
project is really exciting though, very fresh and certain to throw a
twist or two at Marvel fans.
As for Armegeddon Now! WW3, I thought that this would be a great
opportunity to share some pages from that project scheduled for Fall
2007. These pages feature the character of CORBIN, a key character in
our saga as he battles Russian troops in Israel. The art is illustrated
by myself over layouts by Marat Mychaels and the painted color is
provided by Matt Swift. Marat and I share the layout duties throughout
the book which totals 100 pages to date. I then provide full
illustration over the pages, illustrating every panel as if it were it's
own page. Matt has provided great colors to date creating a great combo
of all our efforts and talent.
I'll continue to post art from this series as we get closer to the
release date. And look for several Behind-The -Scenes, making of
documentary video's on YouTube any day now.
Okay, with everything on my plate, it's back to the drawing board!
rob
click here
3/19/2007
WIZARD WORLD LA CON REPORT
The truth is that the show was at best just okay, at worst, pretty empty. None of this can be hung at Wizard's door step, it's not their fault, it's a byproduct of the L. A. area. Since I was a young twelve year old kid, L.A. shows and signings pale in comparison to shows in other regions. Even at the most popular point in my own career in the 90's, the turn out was always the smallest in L.A.
The Midwest and East coast are where the devoted fan bases are.
I even passed on a local store signing featuring Art Adams, Mike Zeck and George Perez when I was sixteen years old because it was a nice beautiful spring day outside and I chose to hang with my buddies instead. These were my 3 favorite artists of X-Men, Secret Wars and Teen Titans and I.........found something else to do instead.
In the past fifteen years, L.A. has a near monthly comic show with prominent guests located at the Shrine Auditorium as well as a TWICE WEEKLY convention in Pomona featuring hundreds of dealers as well as regular celebrity guests.
And then there's the grand daddy of them all 2 hours down the road, the Uber-show of shows, San Diego Comic Con. Most people I talk to choose to wait and do SD every year, because everything big occurs there and they don't see the point of other shows here in So Cal or otherwise.
To it's credit, Wizard does the best they can do at booking a ton of talent. From the cast and staff from television's big buzz hit HEROES to the man who killed Captain America, Ed Brubaker, the show had noteworthy, popular, relevant guests all around. And yet, the show had a smallish turn out on the usually busiest of all days, Saturday. Wizard is discovering what a difficult venue So Cal is and if I were them, I'd pull out and not return. This is the fourth year of steady decline. The first year was bustling, busy, busy, busy, it exceeded expectations, but every year since has seen diminishing returns.
I was fortunate to pull out of the responsibility/commitment of a full fledged booth a few weeks back. I went with my gut that the show would struggle to find attendees and I was correct. The previous year, Arcade had good product, good placement, good talent and a good staff and we struggled to connect with the crowd that was otherwise indifferent too much of the show's offerings. I'm very pleased that I withdrew from the show and that Wizard was cool with me downgrading to an artist alley booth. Had I stuck with the booth, it would have been a disaster. Going small was the right choice.
I was buried pretty deep in artist alley, and it was pretty comfortable and me and Marat and Matt Swift chilled throughout the show casually observing the severe lack of action on the floor. I left early on Friday and arrived at 3pm Saturday, I skipped Sunday completely. I was fortunate to book my usual quota of commissions and sold a surprising amount of Onslaught Reborn books. (Apparently Onslaught Reborn #1 is a book that is harder to find then I anticipated ) Those free head sketches I did in Chicago and Texas now book for 100.00 and full figures remain in the 300.00-500.00 range depending on what you want. I booked about 8 bust shots, mostly of Captain America, some of various manga characters, sorry I forgot the camera. But my best sketches of the show were a full figure Luke and Leia circa Star Wars IV and a massive New Mutants double pager in an amazing sketchbook that I've owed since San Diego. There's a nice, long overdue Black Canary as well. I'll post the New Mutants and Star Wars sketches on my website later today. Unfortunately, I talked to plenty of fellow creators who felt the show was notsomuch.
The show MVP of the artist alley and the entire show would have to be J. Scott Campbell who showed up and promptly produced dozens of AMAZING sketches on the very cheap. $40-$60 sketches that were 3/4 figures, of a $300.00 value and above variety. Seriously, they were sharp, detailed and in color. He made his mark in a big way. Fans were thrilled with his incredible work. He completely owned the floor as far as artist's go. Bravo to him as he performed at the highest level. He came in with the eye of the freaking tiger and took over.
Other artists of note in the alley were Tim Sale, Humbero Ramos, Ale Garza, Whilce Portacio, Bill Sienkewicz, Josh Middleton, Phil Noto, Dan Panosian, Jeff Johnson, Dave Johnson, Mark Beachum, Sean Chen, Philip Tan, Bernard Chang, John Paul Leon and Amanda Connor.
Guys like Mike Turner and the Aspen and Top Cow crew were in the publishers area in the front of the room and I didn't see much of them but I heard they did okay.
Marvel had the biggest lines of the show, hosting Ed Brubaker, Jeph Loeb, Mike Perkins and Paul Jenkins. They had their usual diet of steady, winding lines with eager fans. DC skipped the show leaving Marvel to dominate the room.
I know Jimmy and his Jay Co. comics booths did very well at the retail level, selling tons of new books in high demand. They had 2 prominent booths at the show filled with thousands of comics. Other retailers......notsomuch. To his credit Jimmy runs the best retail booths at any shows, they have whatever is in demand at good prices as well as an increasingly impressive library of back issues. Plenty of other retailers show up with a fortress of old long boxes and sit there with a scowl expecting you to dive through their personal assorted, ridiculously priced mess.
Gene Simmons and KISS had a ton of hype leading up to the show.....they did okay, frankly, I think they were expecting a bigger frenzy. Long lines at this show were of the 10 or more people variety.
DC comics very own Dan Didio was trolling the artist alley all weekend long seeking new cheap talent in order to to keep the trains running on time. Marvel so dominates DC, I can't imagine the pendulum swinging back for at least 4-5 more years. Marvel has their act so totally together from a commercial stand point that it's more impressive that DC even manages to stay only 10% behind Marvel at this juncture. Having Geoff Johns write everything for your company is definitely NOT the solution.
I love the DCU, but presently I find it unbearable to endure. Watch for diminishing returns barring them killing Batman in the next few months.
Marvel continues to pile on the talent, it seems like they have EVERYONE at this point, considering the artist of their last hit, Infinite Crisis is now drawing Spider Man.
I was able to hang out with Marvel top editorial staff, Andy Schmidt, Tom Breevort, Mark Panniccia and my own crack editor, Jon Barber. Bill Sienkewicz dropped by my table in the freakin' cafeteria to introduce himself, Marat was my witness as was his buddy Dave, and my jaw dropped, he's a great guy and an amazing artist. It was a pleasure meeting him. I hung out with Jeph Loeb for about an hour and caught up with old Extreme alums Dan Fraga, Todd Nauck, Dan Panosian and Jeff Johnson very briefly. Chatted with Eric Basaldua aka Ebas from Top Cow who confirmed all the beautiful pages he's drawn as a Silvestri ghost, I told him I'm very much looking forward to his upcoming Quasar one-shot for Marvel.
All in all it was a pleasant, soft show. Wizard should move it to Anaheim and host it near Disneyland where Creation Conventions hosted tons of successful shows in the 80's. Orange County would produce 2 very good years, drawing a more diverse crowd than L.A. The O.C. is untapped. Otherwise, Wizard should focus on their successful trio of shows in Texas, Philly and Chicago and wave good bye to an indifferent L.A. market.
Rob
new mutants click here !
star wars click here !
1/05/2007
Thank you to everyone who is out there buying up all those copies of
Onslaught Reborn! We're sold out of both #1 and #2 and you are directly
responsible! I hope you are enjoying it as much as we are producing it.
Here are some exclusive preview pages from issue #3 to wet your
appetite for the next issue.
Rob
click here !
closing in on the action as much as possible, but I think this shot
might work better than the previous shot, given that it's pulled back
further and at a tilted angle allowing for more impact. Whaddya think?
Oh well, I still have time to figure this out.....maybe a third version
is the answer.
rob
click here !
