It’s still (barely) Monday morning…. and I just got up. I was up until 3 a.m. working on a page for FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN. And I spent the entirety of the weekend at the drawing table working on the book. This morning, I’m sleepy, tired and my back and neck both hurt like mad. I’m starting to realize the even though I’m only on the first issue of this book (only 5 pages left…!) I’m already weary of the grind. I’ve heard it said by others in the comics biz before– and now I’m starting to believe it: monthly comics is a young man’s game. It’s such a physical (yes, sitting at a drawing table all day CAN be physically taxing) and mental drain, I’m not sure I can keep it up anymore. We’ll see.

Today’s sketch is just a hodge-podge of images I threw on the page as a warm up this weekend. I’ve really been loving the work that Stuart Immonen has been doing for Marvel lately– and I wanted to play with that thing he does of having a thick, bold line around the images he draws. He’s a brilliant artist, and it was fun to try to emulate his technique, if at least for a sketch or two.

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And over the weekend, Marvel released a second cover image I did for the first issue of FN SPIDER-MAN. They decided they wanted to run some trade dress down one side of all the covers for the crossover event that our book kicks off– so they had me work up another cover. They say they might use the first cover I did as a variant– we’ll have to see what they decide. But here’s the image in case you haven’t seen it yet….

OK…. that’s it for today.

This is Entry 130.

Mike