Struggling for a title

New Year's: Well my New Year's Eve was pretty failed as my plans got canceled at about 9PM. by that point I just said "Screw it" and decided to not do anything. I still had people trying to get me to go over to their house or drive up to Winstar (a casino). Instead I just sat in front of the TV and watched a marathon of Lockup on MSNBC. I did at least stay up to midnight. I haven't before.

Karma: As some of you may or may not know I used to do volunteer work for the Hero Initiative. Well since there hasn't been a show near me that they have been at I haven't really done anything to support them lately. Well this year I decided to actually join them with a membership. I looked at the options and plunked down that money for the Bronze membership. 29 bucks, no problem. Just a few hours later I got an e-mail from the guy who runs the charity saying he was bumping me up to the Silver membership. Which I thought was very kind of him, and totally unnecessary. If you are a comic fan at all, I would highly recommend supporting them in some way. A donation, and they put out several books a year that are really fun. Like a collection of all of the Stan's Soapbox from I think 1968-1980.

Legion Sketchbook #34

Ah, the great Tellus appears this time. Tellus was drawn by Nate Bramble. I think his cartoony style fit Tellus perfectly.

This is actually the last of my Legion sketches for now. There is a show in just two weeks, so hopefully I will get some more done then. If not, I have some other things in store.

Legion Sketch #33

In this edition:


We get the lovable, hugable Gates. This was done at the last show I went to in January, by Brock Rizy. A nifty little sketch I think.

Legion Sketch #31

In this episode:


I will be honest and say that this is probably my favorite sketch I have. We have Shadow Lass, of course, painted by Evan Bryce. He is another member of Space-Gun Studios.
I just think this one is incredible.

Legion Sketch #30

We get the older Star Boy this time by Jake Ekiss. He is part of a group of young local artists (Space-Gun Studios) that I think could do some great things. I always though this version of Star Boys costume would be a pain in the butt, but I think Jake did a great job on it. This was done at the last Wizard World Texas show.

Legion Sketch #29

In this edition:



Lightning Lad by the Great Rob Osborne (he likes it when I call him that). I first met him at a party at Wizard World Texas a few years ago, and he is just one of those people you meet in life you just hit it off with. I've had the pleasure of chatting with him and his wife a number of times since then. This sketch was done at CAPE (RIP, sniff), which was a huge Free Comic Book Day event in Dallas, about two years ago.

Legion Sketch #28

This time we got:



We got a Sun Boy pic by Tom Morgan. He was a very entertaining guy to listen to at the convention I met him at. He did quite abit of work for the Big Two in the '80s & '90s and just kind of disappeared from the comic book scene. He said he was getting calls all the time from artists friends saying that they could get him work on a book if he needed it. He didn't, he had moved on to a career doing storyboards for films, tv, and commercials.

Decade of Dross

Well, my friend Rob tagged me in one of them blog meme type things. It is a “best of decade” thing that hopefully I can squeeze 3 or so categories out of. From Ami Angelwing’s original blog post:

It's the "of the decade" meme! Basically come up with 3 categories and who you think wins that category! Be creative!


Like what I mean isn't just "best comic book of the decade"... like "best moustache of an comic creator of the decade" or whatever.. it can be serious (best Asian male film character of the decade) or not or whatever.. it doesn't have to be about comics, or games or whatever.. it can be about nething (worst hair of a world leader, weirdest food trend... etc etc)

and tag 3-5 other ppl! And then they come up with 3 categories.. etc :] The main part is to be creative!

Be creative? That isn’t my specialty, but lets see what we can do…

Best Piece of Radio Audio of the Decade: Just go and listen to this piece of audio. The thing to remember is that this was a radio host interviewing the Dallas Chief of Police. Oh, what must have been going through his head!? I have heard this well over a hundred times and it makes me laugh every single time.

Best Sporting Event of the Decade: This decade was the second time I went to the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. The first round is four games with quite a bit of time between the first two and second two games. Between those games two friends and I were drinking at the bar in the arena. One of my friends hits on a girl there and, she offers to give us the seats of some of her family who have already left. We ended up watching the games that evening on about the 15^th row. A little bit better that our seats on the last row in the arena.

Best Website of the Decade: The Captain Comics message board. One of the most civil places on the web were we discuss so much more than just comic books. I have even had the pleasure of meeting a few of the people on there.

Best Comic Book Memory that has Nothing to do with Comic Books of the Decade: I don’t believe I have ever told this story on the web before. Okay, so it is the first year of Wizard World Texas in Arlington, TX (I wanna say 2003). I am volunteering at the Hero Initiative booth (still called ACTOR back then). One of the guests of honor is George Perez and he is also donating some of his time to sign comics at our booth for donations. I meet him Friday and that was very, very cool.

Saturday night a friend of mine who was their peddling his comic with some other friends was having a party at his house, and I went to that of course. We almost pulled an all-nighter, and I ended up with a solid 2 hours of sleep. I went to the con that day very tired and very hungover. I sat in the back of the booth feeling sorry for myself waiting until the time I had to go back on duty. At one point George shows up ad he looks miserable too. It turns out he had gotten mild food poisoning the night before and also felt like ass. He just wanted a place to hang out before he met more of the fans, so George Perez and I just sat in the back of the booth commiserating with each other for about an hour. That’s right kids I had just about every fan boy’s wet dream as I had a one-on-one with George Perez. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I know it had little to do with comic books

That is it that is my list. Who to tag? I reckon Howard, Jeff, and Mike. I would tag P-Cat as well but I don’t know if his serious sports blog would be up for a meme. If you are go for it as well.

PS I am trying to see how many places I can out that picture of me and George Perez. This is either 4 or 5 sites. This picture was taken a few years later though.

Legion Sketch #27

Ah in this edition we get Blok as drawn buy Mike Hankins who does a funny little web comic called Dorm Dorks. I liked that he had some fun with it.

Legion Sketch #26

A very sexy Lightning Lass by Eric "ebas" Basaldua. Done at the the Dallas Comic-con or whatever they were calling it in '08.

Legion Sketch #25

We finally close out Wizard World Texas 2007 with:



We have Andy Kuhn's rendering of Karate Kid. What I like about this was this was done late on the last day of the con, and he still seemed to really get into it. A nicely done sketch.

Legion Sketchbook #24

This time:



We are still at Wizard World Texas 2007, and we also get our second appearance of Wildfire in the sketch book. This time he was drawn by Angel Medina. Perhaps best known for his run on Spawn. I really enjoyed listening to him talk, and hearing some of his thoughts on comic books.

My favorite line (to someone else at the table),"Are you impressed with my skill?"
"Yes."
"Then why doesn't it get me laid more?"
Pretty close to that anyways.

I do find it interesting that on the sketches that are pencils only the paper looks yellowed. Oh well.

Legion Sketch #23

In this edition:



This is Dream Girl of course as drawn by Thom Zahler who does a very neat little comic called Love and Capes. I really like his style, and I don't know if it comes through here, but he did put in some cool silver coloring on the costume. This is also from Wizard World Texas 2007, where I definitely got the most sketches done at one time.

Legion Sketch #22

We finish out the Fatal Five:



This rounds out the Fatal Five from Wizard World Texas 2007. This was actually done by one of the other Hero Initiative volunteers: Hector Avila. A very cool, menacing Validus. He filled the page up so much part of the left hand side got cut off on the scan.

Legion Sketch #21

Continuing the Fatal Five:



This is of course Tharok. I figured he would be the biggest pain in the butt to draw because of the robotic half of the character. I think the artist, Hal Saville, did a nice job of with it. At Wizard World that year he was really trying to promote his subscription site, the sketches just became part of the promotion.

Legion Sketch #20

For this edition:


As I continue the Fatal Five from Wizard Word Texas 2007, this time it is the Persuader as rendered by Juan Carlos Ramos. I think he did an excellent job, and very cool with the colored pencils.

Legion Sketch #19

In this edition:



As mentioned previously, at Wizard World Texas 2007 my goal was to get the Fatal Five done. This time we get the Emerald Empress drawn by Brent Schoonover (who did the art on my buddy, David Hopkins' comic Astronaut Dad. This con was the first one were I saw the artists taking using digital cameras to take pics of all of the sketched they did. As one guy told me at the time: "I am getting more done this weekend than I do in a normal month."

Legion Sketch #18

My objective for Wizard World Texas 2007 was to get the Fatal Five done. So, we start off with Mano by Billy Tan. The question is, did I succeed in my goal?

Legion Sketch #17

In this edition we have:



This is Dawnstar of course, as illustrated by Kristian Donaldson, perhaps best know for his work on the Brian Woods' series Supermarket. I dig this one a lot, and Kristian is a really nice guy. He is almost the personification of the typical artist though.

Soup for you!

Over at Rob's blog, he did a post on who he gives a free pass to. Those who could piss in his soup, and he would have seconds from, or something like that,. Actually, it is people who have entertained you so much, they get a pass on their lesser works. Here are mine:

Quentin Tarantino: I loved Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, so much I will pretty much watch anything he does. I even watched the episode of All-American Girl he guest starred in.

Jimmy Page & Robert Plant: Simply for their previous work in Led Zeppelin. I liked the Coverdale/Page album, and when Jimmy Page was playing with the Black Crowes. Also, Plant's CD with Allison Krauss was great. John Paul Jones gets a lot less press (or none at all), but if I knew what he was up to I would check that out as well.

Geoff Johns: I don't think anyone does pure superhero fare better than Johns right now. I wanted to hate his run on Flash, and I loved it. I went into Green Lantern: Rebirth with great skepticism and he won me over. His run on the two Justice Society of America series' is some of the best comics of the past decade. All of that is so great I can forgive his Avengers.

Ed Brubaker: At one point he was writing my enitre pull list from Marvel: Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Fist, and Criminal. Only his leaving Iron Fist changed that.