I spent all weekend at the drawing board. When I have to work for such long periods, I like to have something on the TV in the background to kind of ‘keep me company’ while I’m working. Usually, I’ll have some sort of game on– baseball or football or basketball… whatever happens to be in season. Sometimes I’ll have a movie on I’ve seen so many times I almost know it by heart if one happens to be playing. Saturday, I came across the movie A KNIGHT’S TALE playing on TBS. I absolutely love that movie. Here’s the description of the movie from IMDB.com:

“Inspired by “The Canterbury Tales,” this is the story of William, a young squire with a gift for jousting. After his master dies suddenly, the squire hits the road with his cohorts Roland and Wat. On the journey, they stumble across an unknown writer, Chaucer. William, lacking a proper pedigree, convinces Chaucer to forge genealogy documents that will pass him off as a knight. With his newly-minted history in hand, the young man sets out to prove himself a worthy knight at the country’s jousting competition, and finds romance along the way.”

That sounds a bit dry — but A KNIGHT’S TALE is anything but. It’s full of humor and passion and it has a bizarre and yet wonderful mix of 14th century trappings and surroundings that get effectively interwoven with modern music and references. The cast is just wonderful, with Heath Ledger as the headliner. There’s no huge marqee name attached, but I think that makes the film better for that. TALE is the kind of movie that I just can’t change the channel from when I see it on cable. It just hits on everything that I enjoy in a movie– great acting, a wonderful script, a historical setting– and a villain (played by Rufus Sewell) that I just love to hate. I’ve seen it available on DVD– but it’s never been released (as far as I know) on a Special Edition version with all the ‘making of’ extras. I’m not much for those behind the scenes kind of extras usually, but I’d love to see them for this film.

In honor of this past Saturday being the first day of Fall, I thought I’d post this piece I did a while back for the blog. It’s funny that here in North Carolina, the first two days of Fall were pretty hot. We had temperatures in the upper 80’s on both Saturday and Sunday. It’s cooled off for today– but over the weekend, I had to turn on my air conditioning because of the heat.

OK– that’s it for today.

This is Entry 281.

Mike

I’m going to keep it pretty brief today. I’ve had a bunch of unfinished sketches and ideas laying around for some time. Some of them are ideas for projects I’d like to do someday (yeah… right– like that’s going to happen…)– yet others are sketches for things that didn’t work out the way I’d have liked and I went in another direction. For instance, the THING/SPIDER-MAN sketch is a part of a first-draft for the cover to the MODERN MASTERS that is coming out soon. So I just scanned a sampling of these unfinished sketches and put them together for today’s post.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

This is Entry 280.

Mike

Over on DRAWINGBOARD.ORG, there’s a character jam thread featuring THE SPIRIT. I’ve posted the piece that I did for the WILL EISNER TRIBUTE book published by TWOMORROWS a while back in the thread (and here as well). But this morning, I felt like doing another piece while warming up. I have always loved Will Eisner’s work– especially his SPIRIT character. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was a kid and first saw the WARREN MAGAZINE reprints of THE SPIRIT comics back in the 70’s. Everything about Eisner’s work and the character itself instantly attracted and fascinated me. I read the magazines my father brought home over and over again until they were practically ragged out. One of the things I loved about THE SPIRIT was that although he would frequently get beaten to a pulp during his adventures, he’d always come back strong in the end. Eisner would really put him through the ringer. THE SPIRIT’S antagonists would bludgeon him, stab him, shoot him and throw him off of piers and buildings. He would often disappear for long periods of time after these beatings– but he’d always show back up at the end and save the day. That was part of the charm of the character for me. He was given up for dead in so many of his stories. Eisner brought such a feeling of danger and menace to his SPIRIT stories. They were such engaging reads.

There’s some fun stuff being posted in the thread…. go check it out.

That’s it for today.

This is Entry 279.

Mike

One of my favorite titles these days is ROCKETO from IMAGE COMICS. The book follows the adventures of ROCKETO GARRISON, who is the latest in a family of Mappers, who venture across the New World, charting the unexplored territories that were created in the wake of a cataclysmic event some 2000 years earlier known as the Great Shattering of planet Earth. ROCKETO is an amazing book– it combines so many things that I love the most about comics and imaginative storytelling. It’s very pulp inspired– and it combines science fiction and fantasy with huge action and thrills. It’s got anthropomorphic characters (and anyone who knows me, knows how much I love THAT) mixed in with a great array of colorful players. But to me, the books biggest asset, and the thing that really makes it unique, is its creator Frank Espinosa. Frank comes from the animation business (and so many great comics seem to be done these days by people with an animation background)– and his work is unlike anything I’ve seen in comics. It’s hard for me to describe…. it’s got a looseness and energy that just vibrates off the page– and Frank’s use of color just enhances that look. ROCKETO is published in a landscape format– and while I usually don’t like that format (I don’t know why… it just doesn’t feel natural for comics to me– but what do I know…?), I couldn’t see this book published in any other way. It just fits perfectly for the look of Franks work and this title. This book has so much to love– the characters, the scope and breadth of the world and adventures— as well as Frank Espinosa’s art and storytelling ability…. it’s really one you should check out. It certainly deserves to be wider read than it is. It’s just amazing.

I’ll leave you with another head sketch I did at BALTIMORE COMICON– which is actually two-in-one in this case– that I snagged off of COMICARTFANS.COM.

That’s it for today.

This is Entry 278.

Mike

As I’ve written in recent posts about Todd’s and my time on SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN, our flow was frequently interrupted by stunts and crossovers. These mandatory events (often dictated by the marketing folks, I think) always seemed like a real pain in the creative keester– but Todd always found a way to make it lots of fun for me to draw. When I initially heard about the company-wide FLASHBACK event that Marvel was initiating, I was very put off. I didn’t want to do it. But after talking with Todd and hearing the ideas he had for it I got excited. The idea behind FLASHBACK was to tell stories that took place before the heroes that star in Marvel comics became the costumed do-gooders they become. Todd’s idea was to create a story that took place back in Peter Parker’s childhood. He falls asleep reading his favorite monster comics (Marvel monsters, natch)– and NIGHTMARE invades his dreaming mind. In Peter’s dream, he and Uncle Ben go on a fishing trip, and while there, they are attacked by many of the very monsters from Peter’s comics. Realizing this, he is able to defeat most of the behemoths until at the very end….. well– if you haven’t read the book, I don’t want to spoil the WHOLE thing for you. I really enjoyed this book at the end of the day– it was kind of an artist’s dream. It had almost everything one could want to draw in it… bizarre creatures, kids, lots of action and some really great and touching quiet scenes. One of those quiet scenes in particular still hits me right in the heart. As Peter and Uncle Ben leave home for their trip, Ben muses that it’s too bad that none of Peter’s friends could accompany them on the trip. Peter just give him a weak ‘Yeah…”. But Ben knows that Peter doesn’t have many– if any– real friends. He’s a painfully introverted kid sorely in need of an ego boost, and this was Ben’s attempt to draw him into a discussion that would hopefully provide a breakthrough to allow Peter to grow in confidence. Not wanting to push it and perhaps ruin the trip, though, Ben lets it drop. It was a very touching and poignant scene– but that’s Todd for you. I didn’t do the description of the scene justice… but if you’ve read it in the comic, you know.

I’ll leave you to the whims of the weekend with a couple of the head sketches I did for folks at the show in Baltimore. I found them on COMICARTFANS. Hopefully the owners won’t mind that I ‘nabbed’ them from the site.

OK– have a great weekend and I’ll see you here on Monday.

This is Entry 277.

Mike