Daniel Best is at it again at his website, posting another blog entry (“Original Art Stories: Sal Velluto and Bob Almond’s Thirst”) about me only a month after the last one. If he wasn’t a friend of mine I’d wonder about a stalker situation-LOL! Honestly, it’s always appreciated, Dannyboy!
For the NHL All-Star Game on January 30th the Stan Lee Guardian Project was revealed during the second half-time show with a Stan Lee taped announcement, an animated sequence and with the announcer flipping through the GP volume of 30 collected stories and Neal Adams’ covers. This followed with the online site revealing the stories in lo-res pdf files.
I worked on the following: The Ranger, The Blue Jacket, The Hurricane, The King, The Red Wing, and The Senator. Hurricane was pencilled by Jack Purcell, Blue Jacket by Al Bigley, and all of the rest by Sal Velluto.
I also discovered that the bios page has entries on all 30 characters and each entry has two images of art and I inked one image in almost every one (pencils: Dave Krupcyk). Much of those were collected into the montage images below.
For those wanting to purchase the book for $29.99 (and other related merchandise with my ink art on it) you can go order it online at their site’s store. I do not yet know if it’ll be subsequently available through Diamond Previews/retail stores.
PRESS RELEASE
Brockton, MA: First stop on the 2011 Inkwell Awards Tour!
As the non-profit organization The Inkwell Awards commence with their fourth year of advocacy for the art form and artists of inking, they make a premier appearance at the Brockton, MA store of the popular, long-existing franchise New England Comics on Saturday, Jan. 22nd from 12-4pm. The Brockton store will be celebrating part of their Grand Re-opening (one week later) at their new, larger location, eight doors down in the mall venue at 716A Crescent Street. To commemorate, the store will be running sales on various merchandise and Heroclix tournaments will take place this day. The Inkwells will be represented by it’s founder and director, vet ink artist and columnist Bob Almond (Black Panther, Warlock & the Infinity Watch, Quasar, Stan Lee’s Guardians Project) who will be offering Inkwell Awards merchandise for fundraising donations as well as selling original art, sketchbooks, trades, etc. of his own work for himself. His website is http://www.almondink.com Accompanying Bob will be the organization’s spokesmodel Ms. Inkwell, as portrayed by model Bethany Marino. Attendees will be able to take photos of or with the model for a small donation.
There are also tentative plans for another Ms. Inkwell model to attend the Southcoast Show.
The following are confirmed appearances for me and, other than the signings, will have an Inkwell Awards presence:
*January 22: Grand Re-Opening New England Comics: Brockton
*March 27: Southcoast Toy & Comic Show
*April 15-17: Pittsburgh Comicon (w/ Joe Sinnott & Ms. Inkwell–and I’ll be hosting an
inking panel)
*May 7: Harrison’s Cards & Collectibles (Free Comic Book Day)
*June 3-5: Heroes Con (our first live awards ceremony, with Ms. Inkwell and much of the organization in attendance)
FYI, I will not be attending NYCC this year again nor The Boston Comic Con for the first
time,both due to costs. The Inkwell Awards are also not supported with free space at
these venues like the other venues listed above.
Daniel Best devoted one of his blog entries to me. The guy will write about just about anything. Thanks, Danny!
For those who’ve been following the status of my Inkblots column in Sketch Magazine (last reported in my April new article) it looks like starting with issue 40 all future printed issues of the magazine will be exclusive to the subscribers only, not ordered through the Previews catalog for the stores, but there will be digital issues available to the public at their Blue Line Pro website where you can also subscribe. I finally received my comp copy today and reread the article I wrote 3-4 years ago! For those interested, it is a 4 page career-retrospective (“Getting There: My Very Own Origin” and “Staying There”) describing how I broke into the biz and how I survived my early days and the disaster of the ’90s. None of the photo files I submitted were used due to space limitations. I hope to have the time one days to revise my columns and the files and use them online at FirstComicsNews who also post my Inkblots columns.
Looks like I didn’t make cover billing again. And I’ll post an update when I know for sure when issue 41 is out.
Jim Starlin has been a hero to me since I was in elementary school and he was the man who directly got me hired as a comics professional and who was long overdue to get a prestigious coffee table-style art book on his life and work. So after picking up this book today from my retailer I was riveted in reading his career history retrospective and surprised that they used one of the covers I inked over Angel Medina for Warlock and the Infinity Watch issue 20 in the section where he talks about this work he wrote at Marvel in the early ’90s. (Incidentally, I had an opportunity to ‘go home again’ and recreate this cover recently.) Regrettably, this is one of the early covers I cringe at when I see it so thankfully the image is reproduced small, and while I normally bawk at books not crediting the ink artists, in this case I can forgive them;-) Regardless I am sincerely honored to be included in Jim’s art book, even if not by name.
Handbook Hunt: In the recently-released AVENGERS: THE ULTIMATE CHARACTER GUIDE from DK Publishing (USA), there are sample art images inked by me for the entries on Black Panther (recolored), Klaw, and Man-ape, all over Sal Velluto’s pencils.
Sketch Magazine#30 update: as reported back on December 11 a year ago (when it was already many months late) Sketch Magazine’s site announced that they would be getting back on schedule with this issue shipping in January. I recently inquired with the editor and they said that because it is so late they will not be shipping it to the stores who ordered it but will be sure to send it to subscribers who paid for it (also posted at their site on July 11, 2010). So if you see this one around you may want to pick it upsince it’s a low-supply/distribution edition.