Nightwing
Took a long break because I just quit my job and am now travelling the world with my wife! (True Story)
I had a lot of fun with the rain effect. It’s the second time I am attempting this after a try on Daredevil:
Used a lot of brushes/layers and spent A LOT of time on them, but it was a great learning experience.
This is still one of my first works.. Still trying to find my “style”
C&C most welcome
Thanks for viewing
This was the one that started it all… I just thought that Superman’s new design, with the jeans looked pretty… “grunge”… like he should belong in a rock band. So I did this piece and I kinda got carried away and did a band jam piece for the whole Justice League…
I am a big sucker for combination panorama comic covers, so I wanted this to be the concept for this series.
Batman:
Flash and Wonder Woman
What if Joker became the Batman? inspired to do this piece by the Flashpoint version of Batman.
One of the critiques to one of my previous piece was that the background was not exciting enough, so decided to try my hand at doing some background work… a shambled down Gotham with a Bat/Joke signal in the background…
Going through a bit of a dry spell..
I thrashed the last three pieces that I did because they are too horrible to show. Hours down the drain there…
This is the only halfway decent piece that I did recently… it’s also my first ensemble piece… Took hours just to render… then more hours on Photoshop… I really should get a faster comp.. 😀
Not completely satisfied with Superman, might redo him one day in the distant future..
Still trying to find my “style” so C&C most welcome.
Thanks!
WARNING: Images contained in this post contain MAJOR spoilers for Flashpoint and Fear Itself!!
The last comic week saw the release of the latest issues in the Big 2’s tent-pole summer events.
Flashpoint #2 for DC – which sees Barry Allen making sense of Thomas Wayne Batman (AKA Red Eyed Casino Bats), and trying to kickstart his Flash powers by means of… ermm… electric chair suicide?
and
Fear Itself #3 for Marvel – which sees Bucky Cap and the Avengers FINALLY confronting Sin and Blitzkreig USA after THREE months of hemming, emoting and hawing…
The result of all these events?
Is it me? Or is there something oddly similar about the two images above?
And… how misleading would these pictures be?
My take:
Barry Allen – Being one of only two people aware of the “original” DC universe, it’s unlikely that DC will kill him off… Unless Booster Gold suddenly acquire Flash like super speed and becomes the surprise Protagonist of Flashpoint, Barry will probably have a “rebirth” with speed powers returned at the start of Flashpoint #3
Bucky Cap: Here’s the dootzy. We’ve seen Steve Cap getting ready to leave the command post and take his place “as a soldier in the battlefield” in Fear Itself #3. It seems the perfect opportunity for Marvel to reinstate him as the ONE Captain America in the Marvelverse after trying Bucky out for a year. It would also be just in time for the movie release of Captain America: The First Avenger. Newcomers to the Marvelverse via the movie would not be confused by a different Cap than the one featured in the movie. Also, the crossover is not called Fear BUCKY itself…
There is one small problem though… People LOVE Bucky Cap.
Ok, I LOVE Bucky Cap. Guns, metal suit with American Flag pointing towards his crotch and all… He’s conflicted and flawed, with a hazy and mysterious past that had not fully been explored yet. He’s not the perfect, blond, all-American Blue eyed Captain America that Steve Rogers was. In other words.. he is more INTERESTING.
So, if you are listening to me, Marvel… PLEASE DON’T KILL OFF BUCKY CAP!!
A while ago, I showed my render of Poison Ivy.
Over the past few days, I have been trying to pose and post process the Poison Ivy model.
This is a first draft of my first creation.
It’s definitely a work in progress.
And so it ends.
For a 4 issue event, Siege lasted 3 issues too long.
I mean it is essentially ONE big BRAWL and Marvel managed to drag it out over the main “Siege” books, “Siege Embedded”, “Siege: Random Marvel character”, “the XXX Avengers” among the OTHER countless tie ins. It is paced less like a brawl than a leisurely game of Bridge played at the local old folk’s home.
Siege IS the BIGGEST damn Mess I’ve ever seen.
I speak as someone who is not above sitting through an entire M Night Shayamalam movie just for the payoff at the end. If anything. the ending of Siege was ALMOST as bad as the whole set up and premise. There was no emotional connection to the *surprise* death at the end of it all. The only thing going for the ending was how conveniently (and sneakily) Marvel (or Brian Michael Bendis) managed to tie up some loose ends in their current continuity. In one fell swoop, Marvel found a way to kill off a character that was too awkward to exist in their little multiverse and at the same time found a purpose and place for a newly resurrected one (who conveniently is gonna be starring in a movie real soon). *cough* Steve *cough* Rogers *cough*
Which brings me to the “death”.
We now have the obligatory heroes send off at the end of the mega crossover. The “send off” issue, besides milking fan boys of our remaining pocket money for the month, serves as a recap of the fine things the “hero” has done and a reminder of why people love him.
In that respect, Siege’s hero send off was staler than the sweat of the boy who had just ingested a gallon of Cheezit (trust me, I know about this subject, sadly) because there just isn’t so much to “remember” *insider nudge nudge wink wink* about this particular character!
It’s exceptionally bad when compared to the “sending off” in Marvel’s other event for the moment – The X-Men’s Second Coming (Insert your own lewd joke here)
It is MY Marvel event for now. To be honest, there is not much of a fight here. It is currently pitted against Siege and… *horrors* World War Hulks. I am a HUGE fan of the Hulk. I even semi enjoyed Ang Lee’s vision of a poetic Hulk. But a Hulked out Marvel universe is too much for me to bear. This shall be a gripe for another day…
The pacing for SC has been superb. The death was really shocking. The emotional investment I have in it is immense. Added on the whole new team dynamics of the X-Men since the Utopia storyline. I get the feeling I always get from reading my favourite pulps – That there might not be that bright cheery ending at the end of it all. That we are watching the characters go to hell in a fast car, but it is too damn fine a ride for us to look away.
Simply awesome.
Of course, I must point out this week’s fine reference to sunny lil Singapore.
Fear the prowess of Maxwell Lord!!
Grant Morrison’s story lines are weird, convulated and difficult to understand.
Before all the Grant Morrison fans out there get their panties in a bunch and accuse me of being narrow minded and not seeing the genius of His Excellency’s method in breathing new life into a genre exhausted by cliches and cheesiness, let me clarify something…
I do enjoy Morrison’s independent works. He shows people why the medium is unique in bringing to life abstract ideas and images not possible by any other. He also shows us what amazing story telling potential the medium has.
Unfortunately, my gripe with him involves all his dabbling into established franchises. To be fair, the Big 2 has been actively seeking out “sexy” (read:popular) independent creators and putting them onto projects which might or might not suit the creator’s personal style.
To be fair, some of these “imported” creators have been bloody brilliant. Examples that spring to mind includes Garth Ennis’ bloodiness and gore in Punisher and Ed Brubaker’s penchant for writing noir and fleshing out the irredeemable hero in Daredevil.
Morrison’s weirdness just does not sit well with franchised work. His decision to make the X Men wear black leather, while sexy and in line with the movie at that time, has been quickly flipped flopped once he was off the line. Batman R.I.P. while quaint, just did not appeal to me. I think my tolerance stopped at Ninja Man Bat Assassins.
Morrison’s big shakeup for the DC universe was “TECHNICALLY” killing Batman during Final Crisis.
But we all know that Bruce Wayne was too big to kill. Everyone knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne is Batman. Nobody expects DC to try to establish Dick Grayson as Batman. It was simply a matter of time before Bruce Wayne returns as Batman. Batman came back for a cameo as a zombie in Blackest Night but he couldn’t stay to play. So the question on everyone’s mind is “Where the hell is Bruce Wayne?”
If you pause to think about it, Bruce Wayne had not featured prominently in the DC Universe in some time. He “disappeared” along with the other Big 2 for a year during 52. And quickly after, he was “killed” in Final Crisis.
Personally I am starting to warm to the concept of Dick Grayson as Batman. Bruce Wayne’s Batman, while not Superman was invulnerable, in his own way. He was dark and scary and totally BadAss. He could take on serious big guns like Darksied and even Superman through tactical (and Toys… i mean equipment) superiority.
Back to Grant Morrison. The latest issue of Batman and Robin marks the start of the “Return of Bruce Wayne”. So far in the series, we’ve already seen the Batman of Britain, the Squire (Robin of Britain), Doppelganger Batman, Lazarus Pit-rified Batman, Failed Clones of Batman, dead Batwoman, revived Batwoman. Morrison seemed to be writing wierd for wierdness’ sake again.
That is until issue #10. All the Batman storylines of the past 2 years seemed to be finally coming together. True. The issue is still weird as hell, but it seems to suggest that minor plotlines and unresolved issues from Morrison’s run on the whole Gotham franchise ties down to one big bomb that is going to drop on us in The Return of Bruce Wayne.
I know a whole lot of weirdness is going to come down from that. But maybe, just maybe, I might enjoy this Morrison run.
With no real Blackest Night installment this week, I was pretty convinced that this would finally be the week for Wednesday Comics (WC). WC is a new anthology that comes out every Wednesday (REALLY), or in sunny home town, Thursday featuring many one page stories of (relatively) popular DC heroes… much like the 1 page comic strip serials seen in the newspapers( think Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, etc…)
The cool thing about WC is that they have a truly hardcore stable of creators which translates to some (wet) dream pairing up of writers and artists working on hugely established characters.
Exhibit A: Post 100 bullets (something I should definitely blog about) Azzarello and Risso working on a noir-ish Batman murder mystery. Hot dames, check. Wittily punny (or is it punnily witty?) dialogue, check. Hard talking, smooth dealing men, check. Batman? Check! Check! and check!
Exhibit B: Neil Gaiman (yup, HIM again) and Michael Allred in an almost trippy Metamorpho adventure. Neil Gaiman, check! Michael Allred, check!
The whole comic is consistent in keeping with the tone of the newspaper strip. The dialogue is accessible (meaning comic nerd will not be the only ones who will understand the speech) and a lot of this is because, like all Sunday comic strips, the stories does not carry the baggage of continuity. EVERYONE can just hop on and be entertained. We have Agatha-ish mysteries, Last boy on Earth fantasy adventures, War stories and of course, Super hero tales. There really is something for everybody.
And did I mention the art? The deliberate news paper-ish lettering and adding of color half tones to the images to make the strips more vintage looking really brought on a wave of nostalgia… in a VERY good way
Sample art. Un Photoshopped
The reasons why WC is not top of the pops this week?
1. It’s an anthology. For every cool Busiek Green Lantern story, there is one lousy and confusing Wonder Woman one. Having a book with something for everybody means everybody has something not to like in the book. Though the average quality of the book is good to rock your heart out superb, there are still some jarring tales that just does not sit very well with you (I’m looking at you Wonder Woman)
2. Three words. Brian Michael Bendis with his Secret Warriors.
The Group that Fury built during Secret Invasion finally come of age. With the addition of a new kick ass member and the return of the Howling Commandos, the Secret Warriors are slowly shaping up to be the prickly thorn in Osborn’s backside. It’s like watching the growing of the Rebel movements in Star Wars.
Finally. Reason number 3.
And the top reason why Wednesday Comics is not the king of the hill THIS week.
Post Secret Invasion, we’ve seen this team take a beating week after week after week. We bemoan the lost of the darkly humored Thunderbolts and silently, we think that this incarnation of Thunderbolt is just gonna be the forgotten step sister to the Dark Avengers.
I mean… villains masquerading as good guys that save the world for personal gains. That’s basically the premise of Thunderbolts since its conception. So with the Dark Avengers around, who need the Thunderbolts?
The final page of #134 throws that question right open. The final reveal shows the huge and intricate web of deception that has been built around the readers. We’ve been played for WEEKS. And this normally means 2 things.
1. The old direction for the book is not working and the editors decide to take creative liberties and give a big twist in the tale to bring it in a whole new direction (think soap operas)
or
2. It was planned for all along. (Much like George Lucas planned his Star wars to be part of a nine-0-logy. It’s all bout the money, it’s all bout the dum dum de de de dum) (think soap operas)
Either way, consider me gullibly swindled due to the smoothness in the handling of the twist.
Without giving too much of a spoiler away, I’ll say this image of a future cover of Thunderbolts says it all…
It begs the question… WHO are the Thunderbolts?
And for those not afraid of a spoiler, I would say this lil minx will be getting a LOT of exposure in the coming year.
Oh, I forgot to include the context…
I’ve spoken about this before but nothing prepared me for Omega Beam Fried Batman.
This post is a bit late, coming to the party. The cynical among you would diss this as just another publicity attempt and that Bats would “return from the dead” soon enough.
To that, I say… “Bah”
We already know that Bats (version: Bruce Wayne) is not dead from the final pages of Final Crisis. But this doesn’t stop DC from dishing out a plethora of “Life after Batman” stories.
Unlike the publicity stunt that was Death of Superman, the follow up stories to the death of the Bat were surprisingly good. The ongoing “Battle of the Cowl” series brilliantly highlighted many of the bits characters of the Bat-verse fighting it out to see who would be the next Batman.
Of course, special mention goes to “Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader” by, who else, Neil Gaiman.
I got the comics a few weeks ago. I had to visit 3 comics shop before being able to acquire Part 2 and Part 1 of the tale… at a cut throat price. I had to do it all with a ranting Girlfriend in tow.
So, the question to ask is… Was it worth it?
To be honest I bought the books based solely on the brand name of Neil Gaiman.
I am a Blind Fan.
And to be even more honest, I kinda hated the books on the first reading. It felt like Neil Gaiman was trying to outweird Grant Morrison, who, of course was the guy responsible for the death of Batman in the first place. (Check out: Batman: R.I.P. and Final Crisis for more information)
Grant Morrison is weird. Grant Morrison has a HUGE fan base from him being weird. Reading a Grant Morrison story is like trying to ride a roller coaster through the House of Mirrors while ingesting copious amounts of Magic Mushrooms.
I don’t like Grant Morrison.
Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, Neil Gaiman wrote the Sandman, for goodness sake. I simply cannot believe that he weird write just for weird writing’s sake. I had to assume he was doing a “Game of You” again. “Game of You”, for the uninitiated is one of the Sandman collection featuring Barbie (yup, actual name and not the doll) and her adventures into her dreamland. The story features a talking cockatoo, a man with a chestful of blackbirds (chest as in breast and not the wooden variety) and witches traveling by way of menses.
Hated the story the first time. Loved it on re-reading.
So I dug out “Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader” again today to give it a second reading.
Ok. Even on the second reading, I wouldn’t say it is a story that would live on through the ages.
But it’s starting to read good.
You start to appreciate how the various eras of Batman is represented in the stories.
You’ll appreciate the “Dream” leimotiff (fancy french word for snails) that Gaiman has since the start of his career.
You’ll see how Gaiman used the various short stories scattered in the series to showcase different aspects of the Batman myth. It’s almost like Neil Gaiman’s love letter to Batman.
There is even a central message through the whole story. A message of “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you die. People will always remember you for something. And that something depends on how you lived your life. On your part, you just die at the end of the day.”
I kinda like that.
This will seem blasphemous to some, but I did not really enjoy “The Dark Knight”
After raving about the hype in a previous post, I felt a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience. “Batman Begins” was an awesome flick. I think that’s partly because it seems like a breath of fresh air after the farce that descended on the whole franchise when Joel Schumacher took over the series. (I shall not bitch about bat nipples and neon villains). We had a tank-like Batmobile, we have Aslan as Ra-shal-gul, we even have a wise cracking Alfred and Lucius Fox. Batman remains as the dark, methodical bastard that he is, but we could still see glimpses of Bruce Wayne.
“Dark Knight”, however is a dark, dark flick with nothing to counter balance it. The plot is semi-deep (which is twice as deep as most Hollywood fare these days) and there seems to be no end to the blanket of doom and gloom that envelops the whole show. Batman (and the denizens of Gotham, of course) just keeps finding himself mired in deeper and stickier layers of shit as the movie progresses.
You’d think that the presence of the Joker will elevate that. After all, he is created to be the Super ego to Batman’s Id. He is wild abandonment compared to Batman’s cold calculations. He is everything that Batman is not. In other words, the Joker is supposed to be fun.
No offense to the dead guy,(preparing for more gasps of disapproval…) but this will always be my Joker.
“Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”
Kudos for Harvey Dent though. He is definitely one of the most 3 dimensional character in the show. Because we are the sadistic bastards that we are, we all love the story of a fall from grace. “Schadenfreuder”, if I remember my Boston Legal correctly. Huge Kudos for the design of Two-Face too. Don’t think I could’ve sat through another one of this…
On other news, (warning: HUGE geek alert), NEIL GAIMAN IS WRITING BATMAN!!!
And if I did not make myself clear on that statement,
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!
Right, now that we have that out of the way.
I know, I know. It is probably more of a marketing move than a creative one. I mean, there are fanboys out that who will just buy ANYTHING that Gaiman even scribbles on right? So Batman + Gaiman =Â Ka-ching, Kaching.
Having said that, this is not the first time Gaiman wrote Batman. If memory serves me right, he actually wrote some tales about the bats that was collected in Batman: Black and White, along with other stories from Frank Miller and such.
Don’t remember the story, but I don’t remember it as particularly outstanding. Which can be looked at from both ways.
But that’s the thing about anthology short stories. They don’t really have time to grow. I know some of the best stories are the shortest ones. But I also believe in the rewarding of loyal readers. To be there from the start of an epic and looking at all the pieces coming together after a long build up is something else altogether.
Gaiman’s take on Batman will come by after Grant Morrison’s arc that is ominously named “Batman R.I.P.” I have no idea how long Gaiman’s arc on Batman will be, but I hope that it has time to grow and mature..
And that the Joker’s in it…
And that it involves no Bat nipples.
I HAVE to do that
Oh right, if it warms your cockles to (probably) see Batman tears (literally) someone a new one, there’s also this lil thing coming up…
Yeeeesh….
Whoever thought Forbes could have a sense of humor. Besides their annual 100 richest people list, they’ve actually published a “Forbes Fictional Fifteen” once….
The list goes like this:
| Rank | Name | Net Worth |
| 1. | Santa Claus | $ ∞ |
| 2. | Richie Rich | 24.7 billion |
| 3. | Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks | 10 billion |
| 4. | Scrooge McDuck | 8.2 billion |
| 5. | Thurston Howell III | 8 billion |
| 6. | Willie Wonka | 8 billion |
| 7. | Bruce Wayne | 6.3 billion |
| 8. | Lex Luthor | 4.7 billion |
| 9. | J.R. Ewing | 2.8 billion |
| 10. | Auric Goldfinger | 1.2 billion |
| 11. | C. Montgomery Burns | 1 billion |
| 12. | Charles Foster Kane | 1 billion |
| 13. | Cruella De Vil | 875 million |
| 14. | Gordon Gekko | 650 million |
| 15. | Jay Gatsby | 600 million |
Bruce Wayne gets my vote for best use of money.
Bat mobile and Bat plane over a vault of money to swim in, anytime…. and he didn’t even need to make chocolate
Also, Santa Claus ROCKS!!
by jumping on the “Dark Knight” bandwagon… there… Surely I’ll get some traffic from the mere mention of the name “Dark Knight” (oops… I did it again).
It must be one of the most anticipated movie of the year and I guess the promoters are trying to generate all the hype they can before the movie’s release. Not that I blame them.. there must be shitloads of money invested into the show.
The thing is that this is such a large cash cow that there will be many people trying to milk it. And when there are so many people fighting for the same piece of pie, how do you stand out from the rest of them? The traditional answer to that would be to make your product so much better than your competitions’ that people will have no choice but to buy yours. But these days, I guess, the more cost-efficient way to do it would be to generate as much controversy around your product as possible, so that us desensitized zombie masses will sit up and take notice. I just thought that some lines will never be crossed… such as these…
Announced just weeks after Heath Ledger’s funeral, this stinks badly of cashing in. What makes it worse is the hypocrisy of over emphasizing that “the family gave their blessings” and that he will be “immortalized” by these actions. I guess the headlines says it all, that this might well be a “Cruel Joke”.
Anyway, just managed to catch “A Knight’s Tale” on TV (which was, of course showing a Heath Ledger marathon). Am quite amazed by his on-screen charisma. What can I say? Medieval knights dancing to rock and roll…. rocks! And hence, this outpouring…
But then, I’m probably just taking this wrongly, or as this too cool to be true poster ask:
Despite my complains of the insane publicity involved, I have to admit… They sure know how to make some really cool posters….
Clones are people two 