Creating a Graphic Novel : Art – Food – Photography

Angels and Demons is the second movie from Dan Brown (famous of Da Vinci Code). It’s an exciting thriller that has learnt a lot of lessons from the first movie. It’s actually better scripted than the books and removes a lot of inconsistencies. The direction is much improved and keeps you on the edge of your seats. Amazing cinematography and a great cast makes it worth the ticket price.

Showcasing Isaac Mardis‘s artwork on more popular comic characters. Love his work on the head shots.

Batman :

Wolverine :

Isaac Mardis from Houston, TX is showcasing his work on a reimage of the Peter Pan mythology. Check out the samples for some incredible sequential story telling.

Neverland page 8 :

What type of story are you trying to create?

I wanted to tell a story more like the never ending story meets the biblical story of Moses. It’s about the world of Neverland dying due to Capt. Hook and his crew making it a place children would never want to dream about.

What’s Pan’s role in the story?

Pan’s the guy who can bring balance back, but he is a pirate albeit still a youth. I’ll spend most of the time answering the questions that I couldn’t about the mythology when I was young and trying to teach teenagers that it’s alright to enjoy your youth-so don’t try to grow up so fast! I redesigned a lot of the characters, most notably Hook, because I think he needs to be menacing and scary and aged pan to make him a believable fighter, like Robin. I based him on the pirate Bloth from the old cartoon ‘The Pirates of Darkwater’. He always scared me as a kid.

Neverland page 9 :

What do you consider the most important component of sequentials?

As far as angles, moving the camera is the biggest thing you learn at the Kubert School. You look at Andy and Adam, and they never give you the same shot twice, unless it’s for story-telling purposes. I move it whenever I can and focus on frameouts. Using lighting and object placement is a huge compositional and storytelling component. That’s the biggest difference between Andy and Jim Lee, I think. Always try to put something in the foreground to add depth, that was Joe’s biggest thing.

Neverland page 10 :

I thought I’d ask you a little more about you.
What got you into comics?

I’ve loved comic books since junior high, when I got my first two for my 12th birthday. They were X-Men #22 and Uncanny X-Men #302. Not surprisingly, with the 90’s cartoon in full force, the X-Men have been my favorite comic characters ever since. Along with the characters, I was lucky enough to have my first encounter with comic art be from the two first families of comics, the Kuberts and the Romitas, with Andy and John Jr. handling the respective duties. Andy’s art in particular fascinated me, probably because his chicks were hotter, so I spent most of my youth trying to ape what he was doing.

Did you try and turn it into a profession?

When I graduated from high school in 2000, I thought it would help to attend the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, NJ to learn what I needed to know about the fundamentals of sequential cartooning. I was lucky enough to have Andy as my instructor when he started teaching in 2001. I don’t think many people get to learn their craft from the people who inspired them, so I soaked in as much as I could. He was also, along with his dad and brother, truly a nice person who took the time to play some basketball with us in the old gym (which I’ve since heard has been torn down). My peers were also some incredibly talented artists that I learned just as much from. I sat next to Alex Sanchez, who just did a Batman one-shot along with some Buffy stuff and X-Men Unlimited work, bumped gums with superstar letterer Jared K. Fletcher, and chatted with David Nakyama (Big Hero Six) who was a year behind me. I also heard of some guy a year ahead of me named Shane Davis who was breaking in- I heard he’s doing alright these days. It was definitely intimidating, to say the least. To add insult to injury, there was a heavy work load to deal with. Joe worked hard, so we did too.

After all that hard work, what was your next step?

By the third and final year, I realized it is pretty frickin’ hard to maintain a career in comics even if you break in, and I didn’t want a charity auction in my name when my lack of benefits caught up to me, so I went to get my teaching degree at the University of Houston. I’m still in school plugging away, working on my own stuff, which will hopefully get published some day. My best friend, Nick Pitarra, caught the comic bug and is working with Jonathan Hickman on Astonishing Tales for Marvel, so I keep up with industry pretty close. As far as processes go, I’m not the fasted dude in the world, so whatever gets the job done is what I do. If that’s using the light box for some buildings, sketch up for quick perspective work, or posing my girlfriend for photo reference, than I’ll do it. I like to ink myself these days (never thought that would happen) and I’m trying to learn how to color my stuff right now.

Thank you so much for your time and also for allowing me to showcase your incredible work on Pan Neverland. Good luck in the future with all your endeavours.

To contact Isaac in regards to commissions ikedog34 [at] hotmail.com.

To see more of his work :

• Comic Art Fans
• Comic Art Commissions

Love this one! Interesting way to incorporate the famous scene from the first Spiderman movie!

My original description to Kirk was :
Sketch of Mary Jane wearing the top half of Spiderman costume (no gloves) with matching bikini briefs. Please include her saying “Face it, Tiger… you just hit the jackpot!”.

Kirk mentioned he was not a great letterer and preferred to leave the speech bubble out. The final product was an extremely voluptuous Mary Jane staring into the reader’s eye. It’s a very cheesecake pose but it’s nice to see the progression from sketch to the final product. Kirk can definitely draw very beautiful women. Be sure to check out his website for more of his samples!

More of Kirk’s work at his website :
Kirk Lindo Art

Kirk Lindo draws very beautiful women. Or as he states in his sketch books he has the “ability to draw hot, sexy, comic book babes”. I purchased an original art commission and a couple of prints from him earlier. He included the below 3 sketch books with my order which was really fantastic of him. (BTW The below images are links which will take you directly to lulu marketplace site in case you want to pick up a copy for yourself!)

Some of his work in the sketch books are very imaginative including taking established characters such as Captain America or Gambit and re-imaging in a hot female form. Along with pin-up work or cheesecake shots, he is probably best known for the character he created Luxura of the Vamperotica series.

The next post will showcase the original commission he completed for me! However, more of Kirk’s work can be seen in his website:
Kirk Lindo Art

This week is a triple strip! Interesting sequence of Peter’s quest for self improvement. The gag on the last strip is hilarious.

For Older Strips :
Click for more Puny Parker!

The reboot to the Star Trek movie franchise by J J Abrams certainly exceeded my expectation. It’s a well written story coupled with amazing direction. With fantastic action sequences and great tempo, it’s really a trekkie film for non-trekkies. For me, I loved all the injokes and references to the original series. Looks like this series is being setup for many movies to come.

This movie is worth checking out!

A couple more Babe sketches by featured artist Michael Munshaw. Even a special Supergirl sketch just for this site!

Powergirl :

Supergirl :

Mike Munshaw is a fantastic artist (with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Design with a minor in Illustration) who’s also an avid sports fan. Baseball being his game of choice. He’s done some incredible work and today I’m showcasing a Wasp commission he completed.

Wasp :

Have you always wanted to be a comic artist?

I always wanted to be a comic book artist since I was a kid. Once I graduated from college, I had to make a decision, move to NYC and live in poverty while trying to make a go at it as an artist, or get a real job and pay some tuition bills. At first I said I would get a real job and then after a couple of years, try the art thing. Well life happens, and before I know it, I’m married, have two amazing sons, and fifteen years pass by. Once the boys were old enough to find out I’m really not that cool to hang out with, and that they had friends to spend their time with, I started to get the itch to get back to drawing. I somehow found an art group called APA-5 that was doing a monthly collection of their work. That got me back into the swing of things and since then I have been back drawing. I ended up doing two self-publishing projects with APA-5, along with various work that appeared in the other members self-publishing comics.

A lot of comic artists’ dream is to “break” into the industry. How have you gone in that respect?

I had a couple of close calls, but soon found out, it’s really hard to get a paying job in comics! Go figure. So here I am, doing commissions and dabbling in other people’s projects. I’m currently inking a book for Visionary Comics called The Offspring, that may or may not ever see the light of day. But we are all hopeful that it finds it’s way into reader’s hands.

The internet is an amazing tool to show your work and meet other creators. But it’s also an amazing pain in the ass to get requests to do work for free. And hear the same sales pitch that this particular concept will get picked by Image, or Marvel, or insert publishing company here. All I have to do is draw and ink 20 pages in a month for free! And all the while, I still sit by the phone waiting for Marvel or DC to never call me.

If Marvel or DC one day makes the call . . what would your dream assignment be?

I still hold close to my heart, to one day be the artist on Superman.

What do you do for fun?

Well between working and supporting my family, taking the boys to their different athletic activities, and doing some freelance Graphic Design work, I have very little time for fun. Or drawing for that matter. I keep holding unto this dream of having this extra time and energy to draw much more than I currently am doing.

How would you describe your artwork?

I always have such a tough time figuring this one out. When I first start a conversation with someone about my art, they ask who do I draw like. I never know how to answer that. One time I answered a guy that I was similar to Terry Dodson. Where that came from I have no idea. But when he saw my work the next time we met, he said “dude, you do not draw anything like Terry Dodson. You’re more detailed than that.” So it just shows I have no clue on how to handle this question. I would like to think, I’m the traditional, middle of the road, comic book artist. Not a realist, but not a cartoonist. Does this make any sense?

What comic piece really inspired you? (Please don’t say Rob Liefield)

I am really going to show my age with my answers to this one. I will forever be influenced by Superboy and the Legion of Super-heroes issue #239. It is drawn by Jim Starlin and inked by Joe Rubinstein. I was just blown away by it. The figures were so strong and powerful.

As a kid first figuring out this art stuff, I wanted to be the next Neal Adams (who at that time didn’t want to be?) Then there was Mike Grell and Gill Kane. I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, so when Marvel came out with John Carter, Warlord of Mars drawn by Gill Kane, I was in comic heaven. His figure work got me to look at the human muscle and how the human body was put together. Which this then lead me to Burne Hogarth and his wonderful Dynamic Figure Drawing books. It wasn’t too long after that, that some guy named John Byrne started to draw this comic called Uncanny X-Men. And then Frank Miller took over Daredevil. It was with those issues that I started to pay attention to panel layout and how backgrounds affected a scene.

Today I love the work of Adam Hughes, Frank Cho, Terry Dodson, and Ed Benes. The Benes JLA stuff is just amazing to me. But can you see a common theme here? Hot chicks. And it just so happens that most of my current commission work is women. Could there be a connection?

Thanks for your time and I hope the dream of breaking in comes soon! All it needs is for you to convince one editor to take a chance on you. Good luck!

For more information check out :

• Art of Michael
• Michael’s Twitter
• Michael’s Comicspace

Email mmunshaw [at] artofm2.com if interested in any commissions.