One Final Tribute to Batgirl

It was announced that Gail Simone was being fired from Batgirl. Once I picked my jaw up off the floor and the anger subsided I decided to draw Barbara as a final tribute to Simone's  run.

I'm not in a mindset to do Gail Simone's affect on me justice at the moment, so I'm just going to past what I wrote on Tumblr, the day I'd heard.

I started reading Batgirl expecting some weird cop-out, to see the next big issue everyone was yelling about on the forums as it happened, because of both Barbara’s past in the wheelchair and because of the other Batgirls that had risen in the interim. I didn't count on Gail Simone, mostly because I hadn’t read her work before.

Batgirl is one of the few books DC has put out that I’ve been able to get in to. It’s had some of my favourite moments and a drive behind it that was pretty damn original. I’ve seen heroes crippled. I’ve seen heroes beaten, bloody, with social disorders, out of their league, go through some incredibly traumatic experiences… but rarely have I seen them pick themselves up from something quite like what Barbara went through. The flashbacks, the anger, the fear, all of it spoke to me as someone who’s worked through depression, and seeing Barbara not just get past it, but leave it broken and bleeding on the floor in such a spectacular fashion… I loved it. I ate it up, and gladly so. Batgirl was one of those books I’d go homeless to keep reading.

Gail, whatever you’re doing next, know that you have my support, and know that Barbara has had an impact on what I do.

Clones! CLONES!

My two favourite murderous clones, Laura Kinney and Kaine, X-23 and the Scarlet Spider!

Kaine is a clone of Spider-man, made back when Spidey was going through this clone phase. Kaine was an imperfect clone and was dying pretty much from birth... Y'know, faster than usual. He was in constant pain, scarred, and constantly aware of his fate. He was rightfully angry. The anger turned him violent, and somewhere down the line he started killing for money.

Move forward to something I know about, Kraven's family wanted to bring Kraven the Hunter back to life, after her swallowed one of those ridiculously long hunting rifles (I assume, the image is funny to me) after screwing with Spider-man in fantastic ways, but to do so they needed to sacrifice Spider-Man. Kaine put on his shiniest tights and went out to either beat them or take Peter's place, and he succeeded at the latter, being killed for Kraven to come back as an undead, unfeeling, psychopath.

Skip forward a few months and Kaine was dug up and brought back to life. It was a very short death, even by comic book standards. He was turned into a spider monster, then turned back, and helped Peter beat another villain, and we have Spider Island. Kaine immediately starts running, because he's a wanted man (the previously mentioned "killing for money"), and took Spider-Man's stealth suit (he has one of those) with him to Houston, where he takes a shitton of money from some criminals, saves a girl's life, and decides to stick around for a day or two. It's around here that we learn that Kaine isn't dying anymore, by his word and the fact that his scars are gone. A whole whack of stuff happens in Houston that ends with him being responsible for an illegal immigrant that would be murdered the second she appeared in Mexico, and the police asking him to stay as their super hero. Kaine set up shop, and is begrudgingly saving lives.

X-23  is the character that got me into comics, I've explained her story before.

"That's what Jimmy kept yelling."

The guys at Roosterteeth are doing a Freelancer art contest. I decided to do the original badass Freelancer moments, where Tex rips out poor Jimmy's skull and beats him to death with it.

For those not in the know, up there is Agent Texas, of the Freelancer program, in Roosterteeth's hit machinima series Red vs Blue. Tex is the only Freelancer that was there from season one. I'd recommend going and watching it, at least from season 6. I'm going to say some big spoilers coming up here, but all you need to know is this. Season 1-5 are all comedy. The foundation for a few of the story elements in season 6-10 are laid down, but it's pretty much pure comedy. The quote above is from season 1. Season 6-10 is where we learn pretty much everything to do with the freelancers.

Tex up here is the best of the Freelancers, an elite team of badasses tricked out with the best equipment and training, using experimental AI to help operate said equipment. She's kind of in a relationship with Church, and she's kind of dead, and she was kind of never alive, and it's all very complicated.

So, big plot spoilers ahead. I mean REALLY big. So Project Freelancer was told to do experiments with AI, but were only given one AI and told to deal. It follows the Halo rules for AI, which means that the AI is based off of a human mind. There's a whole thing I can go down with how this affects everything, but there's no point. The person that the AI, the Alpha, is based off of once had a girlfriend who died, someone connected to the person so thoroughly that the process "brought her back" sort of, a fractured mirror image of her.

She's a bitch and she's the best. Both of these things have put her at odds with the two teams I've seen her on. The only person I've seen her get along with is Agent York, and their team ups aren't as frequent as I'd like and unlikely to increase in regularity. She's died a few times, but it never seems to slow her down, and I doubt the last time she died is actually going to stick. She's kind of a badass, and her voice actress is somewhat higher up in the company, the character having been there for ten years.

I'm not sure what episode the above quote is from, I kinda got reminded of it during a Red vs Blue marathon and didn't write it down, but it's early on in season 1.

A Kick to the Face!

Hey! I did it! Here's the complete picture.

Now, I've been listening to a lot of professional artists in the comic industries lately, so I feel the need to say something. I said this would be done on Friday. And I could have put it out there on Friday, I had a finished version ready. But since this was personal, and practice, I felt that I should fix some things. So the same problems didn't arise again.

All that being said, this is far from my perfect vision. I've just sort of dabbled in colouring thus far, and I now think I'm starting to get good at it, but since this is my first pic where I think I understand what I'm doing, I didn't really start paying attention to and/or understanding what other colourists were doing until I had almost everything done. I read the recent Batman over the weekend (for the fortieth time) and I started to pick up things I'd never noticed before.

Now, I could scrap this and recolour. Or I could draw another pic and see what I can do there. I've got six days left in the Roosterteeth Freelancer competition, figured I'd see what I can do with that.

Less-Than-Creative Complaints about my Creative Talents

I  have a Korra picture on my Deviantart page, it's her jumping to the left with  FIRE. I said, when I put  the picture up, that I was working on a background, and I am. The thing is, it's kind of a practice pic for a whole bunch of things. First, it's a picture with an actual background, buildings and such. I generally don't do buildings. My first picture on this account, "His Acrobatics, My Ballet" was actually my first stab at it, and lucky because I accidentally positioned it in a way where the horizon line wasn't necessary, I didn't know jack about horizon lines at the time. I've since been to a class and know... something, at least.

For this picture that's not an issue so much as detail. I'm not much for architecture. I've always been more of a people person. People  are round and squishy, you can do line on them that are wrong, just a little, but don't detract from the picture. Buildings have their own problems. Texture, colour, shape, position, it's all important. An argument could be made for character on that, and my having more experience there, but shut up. Smart ass.

Another thing I'm new at is multiple person pics. That Avengers piece I put out a few months back... even at the time I thought it wasn't very good. If I'd been able to pull back, give characters more space, it would have been better. Of course, I was using a regular shaped piece of paper at the time (idiot). Were I to do that today I have some lovely massive sketch books to screw around with. In fact, that doesn't sound like a half bad idea... Multiple people means multiple limbs and multiple individual details that need to be dead on. It's messy and complicated, and usually I draw for fun. Two people was a stretch for me, until recently. Since that Batgirl/Nightwing pick I've been going more and more at it. Add to the four people in this pick the fact that two of them have power effects, and worse yet elemental power effects, and adding in a character I've already drawn... This piece got complicated just because I threw Korra in there and didn't have the space I thought I needed.

Which brings in composition. I don't know where to put shit. I just put it where I think it looks good. I'm playing around with it now, mostly because I think I'm good enough to be a comic book artist with just a few tweaks to a few fields and a decent portfolio, and I think I got it, but putting Korra somewhere where it helped the flow of the page, and the upcoming tweaks I'm going to have to make to the picture, it's held me back.

The least problematic of the piece is that I just finished a series of Photoshop tutorials that filled in a lot of gaps my self-taught skills had jumped over. The picture of Korra was my first picture to practice this, and I think it's an incredible improvement. The colouring will speed things up... probably. But most importantly it'll make everything look a little less anime, a little more good cartoon (It's opinion, anime fans. Calm your shit.).

All that being said, almost the entirety of the pic has taken me two days (Took the weekend off. Watched cartoons. Played D&D. Didn't sleep Sunday so wasn't productive Monday. Good times.), I just need to do the shading and a little bit of editing to give the pic a bit of momentum and I'm done. Three days at most, probably closer to an early two.

So, yeah, everything above was just my dumping on myself for my inadequacies. But I can counter that by saying I'm awesome.

On Doing a Batman Movie Right

No art today, unfortunately, I've got half a million things to do and no time to do 'em. But here's a little rambling from lil ol' me, brought on by the recent return of the Joker to the DC Universe.

I don't believe that Nolan did Batman right. That isn't to say he didn't do an entertaining trilogy, and the Dark Knight still stands as one of my favourite movies, but Nolan's opinion of what makes Batman tick and the message he wanted to send didn't really click with the Batman I've grown to love.

First, Batman's crazy. Whether you want to say he's a schozophrenic, has a severe identity crisis, or is simply so introverted and driven to the point of ignoring vital aspects of his life, Batman is probably the most dangerous psychotic since his counter, the Joker. Like a lot of Super Hero stories, there's a distinct duality to him, Bruce Wayne and Batman, two separate personalities. "Which one is real? The one that hides your face? Or the one that is your face?" Green Goblin, Spectacular Spider-Man. But Peter Parker simply lets loose a little when he's Spider-Man. Bruce Wayne and Batman are distinctly different, and it rarely has anything to do with him putting the mask on.

Here's the thing. Bruce Wayne snapped when his parents were murdered. This privileged kid was knocked down for the first time. When this happens to most of us it's a small reminder of our mortality, or learning not to trust implicitly. We all have that fall at some point, usually pretty young, but most of us aren't as well off as Bruce Wayne and have our parents to fall back on afterwards, and while Bruce had Alfred, he still had to go from higher than most of us ever get to lower than most off us will have to go. That fall broke Bruce, gave birth to Batman.

In order to truly do Batman right you have to acknowledge that. Nolan made Batman driven, made Bruce Wayne be unable to stop being Batman, but it was Bruce Wayne's compulsion. Batman was barely in the movies, it was Bruce Wayne's show.

There's been a common issue with the Batman franchise with Batman being less interesting than his villains. For those who read the comics, we don't get this. Like I said, Batman's crazy, but the issue comes down to us not getting a good look at who Batman is. In the comics there's a massive supporting cast of people Batman has brought in, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Robin. But in the good movies all we've gotten is Alfred. Nolan's films had us learn about Bruce Wayne pretty much exclusively through Alfred. Rachel really didn't give us much, and Dent gave us a little bit more, but Alfred was the only one who knew both halves of him personally (Rachel practically ignored Batman, which meant she only got half a person out of Wayne).

The reason the army of teen (and one preteen) sidekicks is important is simple. First, we see Bruce Wayne's sympathy pushed on Batman's war on crime. Wayne wants to save these children, Batman wants soldiers, so they compromise with each other. Then we see how Wayne's traumatic experience has affected him. He's a father to practically all of these kids (The Robins, anyways). He adopted three of them, and is the genetic father of the fourth. And he does not get close to them. He pushes them away on a regular basis. Because he knows what his life will lead to and he knows the pain they'll feel from it.

Then there's Batman's view of the kids. They're soldiers to him. I've heard the argument that Batman's waging a war on Death itself, that's why he sticks to the code of no murder, that's why he has such rage in him whenever one of these murderers succeeds. I like this theory. Batman needs these kids to do their job, to wage his war, simply because he can't do it alone. He raises these kids with his ideals as basic training and then pushes them just far enough to keep an eye on them, so he can know that they've used his training to fight his war. This is why Jason Todd is his second greatest failure, because he died in training, and then came back as an agent of the enemy. The greater failure being the Joker, one small screw up leading to the greatest weapon of the enemy.

You might notice how close those two are to each other, in action alone. That's why he's rarely directly called schizophrenic, most of the time Wayne and Batman are together in what they're doing.

And then there's the Joker. I keep bringing up the Nolan movies because it's the closest we've gotten to a fair interpretation of the the comics, and the Joker is fairly close to the comics. They touched a little on how important Joker is to Batman, their connection ("You complete me." "We're destined to do this forever."), but the Joker, while crazy and incredibly well done in the movie, isn't the comic book Joker. The comic book Joker once said "He's real, like God. But worthy of respect." while the movie version said "I'm an agent of chaos. You know the thing about chaos? It's fair."

That's the fundamental difference between the two. The Joker wants people to lose. He believes in god, he believes in a higher power, but believes that god is a joke, a quack, a little pathetic being that simply has failed. He wants everyone to lose because that's the greatest affront to god, and the allmighty isn't going  to do a damn thing about it. The Joker in the movie simply causes chaos for chaos's sake, he wants to flip the worlds ideals, show everyone how fragile their beliefs are, how everyone's as crazy as him with a little help, simply to sow the seeds of chaos. That isn't to say that's not close to how the Joker is, of course, that's pretty much how the Killing Joke paints him. But that's taking it solely from one source and twisted to fit Nolan's mold.

Most importantly, the Joker in the movie isn't the polar opposite of Batman. He's one more adversary, though his greatest, the Joker doesn't really call the darkest recesses of Batman's mind into question, even the one morally questionable device Batman makes to catch the Joker is destroyed once it's done, and they don't bother bringing up the slippery slope of using that device to begin with. Maybe they would have brought this up, and delved deeper, if Heath Ledger was still with us. Instead we got the third movie, which kind of disappointed on that end.

And the third movie is kind of my greatest argument here. In the third movie we're introduced to the mediocre villain of Bane, and the league of shadows. What we get is a long story of who Wayne is and what he's willing to do to save his city. Which, yeah, great, except it might as well have been a Spider-Man story with less puns. Wayne was knocked low and just kept charging in. We didn't see him dealing with fundamental issues of the conflict in his personality, the morally questionable actions he'd made in the previous movie, or even the cost of Batman on his body. Wayne went into hibernation until Batman was needed again, which is another showing of how Wayne and Batman aren't really two people. In the comics, when Batman was retired Wayne would still go out. In Batman Beyond Wayne was still somewhat in the public eye. Batman went to sleep because his war was being  fought without him. Wayne went on living Wayne's life.

In order to truly get an accurate Batman movie Warner Brothers has to address just how crazy Batman is. You have to have one of his sidekicks, preferably Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon, be there to show different sides of the Dark Knight. And, finally, you have to show how his villains hit his rules and how they affect him. Batman can be the super hero that shatters peoples beliefs on super heroes, and I think we're getting to the point where that'll happen. But I'm also willing to bet that happens when Marvel does Daredevil.

Avatar Korra

Well, furk. It's been a while. Unfortunately I've been trying to do something professional, which has sapped all my time and still moved nowhere. So I figured I'd actually finish a piece to show I'm not dead.

So, yeah. Avatar Korra. Before I go on explaining who Korra is, and the whole Avatar series in a couple paragraphs, here's my opinion on the show. I loved the second half of Korra. The first half, with the Pro Bending and the boy troubles, that was pretty off-putting, considering what the Last Airbender was. Now that it's all done I can see their reasoning for this, they needed a first act before the inciting incident kicked in, but the first act took a little too long in my opinion. But that is my only complaint, besides Mako, and it gets blown away before the end of the season. I like Korra. I can relate to her a lot better than I can Aang, and the fact that it has been cleared up to season 4 makes me so incredibly happy.

If anyone's unfamiliar with the Avatar cartoon series, it's awesome. You should watch it. The Last Airbender movie was... I've honestly never been more angry at a movie, in part due to the incredible mistakes made on the cinematography end, but mostly because they were handed a great story and furked it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, IE the original cartoon, was an incredibly done story about war, cosmic entities, spiritual balance (not religion, for those of you who'd be put off by that), and a group of characters who I care more about than most live action television series aimed at adults. The basics of the story are that there is this world, called the Four Nations, where people can control ("Bend") the four elements, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, through varying forms of martial arts. These different elements make up the four nations, with cultures and societies based on some in our world. The Avatar is a single person who can control all of the elements, chosen by the spirits, and is sort of in charge of making sure everyone is playing nice, and keeping the world in balance.

The Last Airbender ended a while ago, but I recommend going back and watching it before moving onto the Legend of Korra. Not that you'd need to, you could probably pick up what you need to without, but it will help. Korra is short enough as is, you don't want to throw a learning curb into it. Korra is the story of the Avatar after Aang, the one in the previous series, and a big thrill is seeing the logical evolution of a lot of the things introduced back in the hundred year war. Korra herself is a lot more relatable than Aang, at least for me, in that she's a lot more talanted in certain areas than others. Aang was pretty well rounded in what he could do and his beliefs. Korra's really good at the fighting half of the Avatar and terrible at the rest, which has given her a more aggressive stance on things than Aang.

Also, I love the water tribe. Big fan of the Inuit inspired designs and culture.

Storytelling

A month or so ago I got in contact with someone who has worked in the comic book industry and got some advice from him. One little tidbit was to get a Twitter account and follow a whole bunch of writers and artists. For comedy reasons alone, this was a great idea. Artists and writers have a tendency to be really creative, witty people. Or complete d-bags. But every now and then, quite frequently really, I get a tidbit from some writer or some artist about what they do that makes my day.

I've been in a thoughtful kind of mood today. Thinking about storytelling and the various differences between genres, mostly because a certain musician whose work I hate got me going on what I dislike (I hesitate to say "what's wrong") about that particular industry. What it boils down to is that I enjoy the art of storytelling, oftentimes more than I enjoy the story itself. Due to this thought I've been jumping around blogs and tweets and quotes all morning, getting into the mind of the storytellers and artists.

One such search brought up a little musing from Gail Simone, the current writer of Batgirl, about how video games are changing the three act structure (http://gailsimone.tumblr.com/post/30447440749/the-video-game-as-game-changer). It's an interesting musing, and I like seeing how her mind mulls it over and adapts it,  but I'm pretty sure she's making a mistake.

First, nobody plays Skyrim or World of Warcraft for their story, they play those games so they can play. Neither game changes it's mechanics during the play time, but the mechanics are broad enough that you've always got new things to do. Second, the three act structure is apparent in every side quest, if dulled down a bit. The first act, meeting the characters, is the main quest line. The second act is finding the quest giver and accepting the quest, and the third act is the actual quest itself.

The most prominent point she made though was how the second act is the entire game. And that's not entirely true. I'm going to take some notes off of Extra Creditz here and their opinion of the three act structure in Bioshock. Almost the entirety of the play is in act 2, but act 1 is littered around the environment. Every bit of Rapture is the first act. You see it scattered along the walls, propaganda from when Rapture was first made to when it fell. The ideas that first built this incredible city down to the abuse that fell it and started the second act.

Here's the thing. Every genre tells its stories differently. Books tell you everything up front, leaving it to your imagination for the visuals but giving you every nook and cranny to build off of. Movies show you everything. It's very easy to consciously miss what they're doing, but everything down to the cinematography to the acting is nuanced to give you this general feeling that the director wants to give you. Comic books have this in between, where they direct your imagination. Everything's shown to you except the movement. You get various snapshots in time that are supposed to work along with the dialogue to give you an idea of what happened that your subconscious pieces together. Even music has it's own form of storytelling, without much of a story. The very specific choice of words mingled with the tone of voice and the music to project emotion and meaning, usually directed at what the musician wanted but defined by the listeners subconscious, an art that I feel is lost in today's "make 'em dance" top tracks that mimic each other.

All of these, though, are based off of one thing. The directed story. You have a protagonist who goes through this world to learn the ideas that the writer/director/actor/artist wanted you to learn. Video games are, quoting Extra Creditz again, the worlds first truly interactive medium, and it's new. Video games, at the moment, are nearing the end of their attempts to ape movies and moving into their own as an art form, we've seen a few pieces like Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Spec Ops: The Line try and move past that stigma of "we must be movies where you're doing the fight scenes" and become what games will do best.

Video Games make you a world. They make you the supporting cast for that world and send you into their story. But the story that a video game can tell better than any other medium is the story of the player. The storytelling in a video game should make the player do something that teaches them about themselves. It should be able to subtly direct the player, to the point where the player feels like he's in complete control, and then yank the rug out from under them. The effectiveness of this, and what no other medium can do, is that the player is the one that did it. He pulled that trigger, he spared that life, he made the call that killed hundreds.

Without the directed story the acts change. With an interactive story you want people in act 2 immediately because that's where things happen. Act 1 is always happening, because you are the character and the game is introducing you to yourself. Or the world is the character and you're being introduced to that. The third act does take a blow, but it's still there. The three act structure in video games is simply altered, almost unrecognizable, because video games are still so new.

This is all idealized video game storytelling, not every game is like this but it seems like the logical place they'll end up. The reason I play Video Games is for the gameplay. The people who play video games "for the story" wade through a lot of sandbox playgrounds, multiplayer, and poorly written but fun mechanics games to get to the well written ones, and they'll play and love the horribly written games for nothing more than gameplay. Modern Warfare, for example. But when a great game gets a great story we get to see what gaming could be, and will be.

All Work and No Play Make Me... Not Sure, Hasn't Come Up

So, I'm working on a comic. I'm gonna throw it up on Kickstarter  once I have a prologue online to show the world, but it's kind of taking up my time. I'll link everything up when I finish the prologue.

So here's the deal. I'm going to try and throw up one image a week, a pencil, of my favourite comic that week. I'll have one up tomorrow, when I've finished reading this week's comics. I'll also try and say why I like the issue without spoiling what happens and give what I know about the character and the current writer's current arc.

The Dark Knight Returns

I wasn't a fan. I'm going to say that now. Was it a good movie? Yeah, it was good. Like pretty much every other movie that tries to go into gritty realism and deliver a story that's supposed to be deep and show a hidden side to humanity. The advantage of Nolan's previous movie was the fact that it was Batman, so the message was generally that people were good. And in Nolan's previous movie they did it so much better. Beyond that, the story was pretty predictable, with one exception that's more my fault than anything.

There be spoilers ahead.

Okay, the twist. Talia Al Ghul. Why? Why didn't they make her the main antagonist? It would have rounded off the series perfectly, Talia's a much more interesting character than Bane, we could have understood our main antagonist, and we wouldn't have spent the majority of the movie learning a backstory for a character only for "Surprise!" all of that story is actually this character's and Bane's really nothing more than a glorified henchman. Seriously, go back to what we learned about Bane. At the end of the day we learned that the League of Shadows broke him out of prison, something that a large portion of Gotham can say due to the first movie, and he was too brutal for them. Okay, that knocks the League of Shadows down a peg, what with them previously being an army of murderous ninjas that were only a finger point away from slitting the throats of an entire city. Lets not forget that that included civilians. Children. Jophrey Baratheon would have been the only acceptable loss there.

The entirety of Bane's backstory was given to Talia at the last second. Which, I got to be honest, I didn't see the twist coming because I started getting angry at Talia not being there. Wanna know why I thought Talia wouldn't be there? Because I didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to put their main villain front and center for the last ten minutes of the movie! Seriously, we spend the entirety of a movie learning the backstory of a character that we only knew for ten minutes, and amping up a character who, in the end, get's shuffled off the stage so offhandedly that you can really tell he was the henchman now.

Okay, the good parts. This movie was probably the best example of Bruce Wayne as a character and Batman as a character that I've seen in a Batman movie. That bar's pretty low, but we get to see Wayne reacting to his new place in life after retiring as the Bat, and I found the whole shut in thing a great way to show Wayne as just the alias of the Bat. The Bat was gone, the Alias was gone. And, naturally, the prison time was pretty great.

And Batman. The few times Batman showed up in the movie were kind of great. I'm going to say it right now, the scene in the sewers with Catwoman walking past the guards while Batman disappears them can sit beside some of the lesser fights in Avengers (Better than Hawkeye vs Widow, below Coulson vs Loki). Something the series has done really well is the whole symbolism of the Bat and the theatricality. I loved those scenes.

And Catwoman! I felt like she was the only person in the movie who had a personality. I mean, Batman's supposed to be the quiet shut in type, Alfred disappears, and Morgan Freeman was great when he was on the screen, but that was pretty rare. Bane had a cool thing he was doing with his hands on his vests like he was wearing a fancy coat at all times. But everyone but Catwoman was so very bland to me. Catwoman was fantastic. She added a liveliness to the movie that was very in with her character in the comics.

That's pretty much it, but I have to bring up on little thing. What's with the super heroes sending their billionaire genius's with all the cool toys off into the distance with the massive explosion that going to kill us all? Tony Stark and Batman both flew Nukes away and "Surprise!" walk it off, and even Spider-man had to defuse a gene bomb on a skyscraper. For that matter, why was Spider-man the only one to actually fix his problem as opposed to letting it blow up a little to the left? I think Tony Stark could defuse a nuclear device while moving at Mach 4, what with being able to make a never before thought of battle suit in a cave with pop cans and having made these bargain basement nukes for years, and Batman not only found out how to turn his weapon into a bomb the second he found out it was possible, he figured out how to defuse it the second after. There's got to be a better way than depending on your inherent immunity to nuclear explosions.

Spec Ops: The Line

Might as well, I guess. My opinions certain games. Probably wont stick to just games. I'll start with Spec Ops: The Line, since it's the most recent new title I've played.

So, let me say this before things get spoilery. Buy the game. It's a great example of storytelling through gameplay, especially since the story is reacting to what would happen if some jackass in real life started acting like a gamer does in a video game when handed a gun. There's a lot of furked up shit in this game, some great imagery, and some great characterization. The gameplay is pretty samey but I took that as being part of the story. You've all done this in a game before, this is what it would be like if you did it in reality. And, y'know, were capable of healing several bullet wounds. I think it's a great example of story through mechanics. If I had one complaint it would be that I seemed to never have ammo, but that can probably be said to be part of the story too.

Spoilers from this point on. Seriously, do not read forward from this point. I will ruin the ending.

Well, holy shit. That ending. I loves me some psychopaths in fiction, and that may make me biased towards the Fight Club-esque ending, but here's a funny thing. At the end, as you all probably well know, I had grown decidedly hateful towards my character. The black guy (who's name escapes me, but so does the rest of the cast. Captain Walker is the protagonist?) was the only character I actually liked, and the way he went out, so hateful and suicidal... Well, that was the point when I started hating the enemy and my character equally. Your other squad mate, who I disliked, him dying made me have to restrain myself from killing the civilians who did it. Let that sink in, I actually restrained myself from murder in a video game.

But here's the point. At the end I hated my character, and when you learned what a crazy fuck he was and had the option to kill yourself... I didn't do it. I'd resolved to do it when whatshispersonalityface pointed the gun at me, but then came the countdown. I made it to 4, dammit! Then he had to ask "is this what you really want?" When he said that I pulled the trigger. Turns out, loathing and all, I'd managed to project a little onto the character. That hasn't really happened before. The final decision of the game, suicide by soldier after the credits, I decided to live. I wanted this psychopath to live, and hopefully get better.

This game strikes me as a great example of storytelling through gameplay, and the great part is that they didn't do anything new with the gameplay. The story was crafted for a video game, specifically this sort of shooter. We play tons of 'em, and in all of them we do horrible shit to people who don't deserve it without thinking. Killed a soldier? No worries, we've got millions. Hell, that character model will be back next level. Mow down a shitload of human beings? Eh, no worries, they're bad guys dumb enough to go up against the shredder of men.

You kill two types of people in this game. US soldiers, from your US, from your army. And civilians. As in these poor jackasses lost their homes and now you're taking their lives. I don't think you actually spend more than a mission or two with the same faction, you're just the lone gunman making sure to finish the job that mother nature in her sandy fury could not.

Early on it tries to make you seem more human, when you're running through and commenting on how this jackass, I think his name was Gould, was throwing civilians with weapons against trained soldiers. And then they ask you to save him or civilians! Naturally I saved the civilians, it was the slaughter of desperate homeless people that made the decision for me. And then you go on a mission with only half the plan, fished out of Gould's mouth, and wind up killing a shit-ton of civilians. I only learned later that they would have died one way or another, and all that really happened was that I saved the three civilians from the Gould choice (I think) when otherwise they would have died with Gould and the civilians in the fire. But at the time I got angry. The game had made me kill them. I knew they were there when I pulled the trigger, or at least I suspected, but the game had done it and your character reacts the same way. "They made me do it". Maybe that was the moment I felt a kinship with the protagonist, I honestly don't know. I didn't know about the kinship until I'd decided to let him live.

The game was great, plain and simple.

Contestant

Okay, so my lovely Gorgon is now up for voting in the T-shirt contest. Basically what you do is go here: http://browse.deviantart.com/designbattle/mythical/?qh=&section=&q=gorgon It's on the second to bottom row. Scroll over the icon, don't click it. An Icon saying "I want this" will come up. Click that.

Gorgon, Deviantart contest entry

http://cadhla182.deviantart.com/#/d582svv

The link above is where you can vote on a sexy sexy shirt. The image on the shirt, you ask? Why it's...

Why yes indeed, the lovely Medusa! Okay, I know she was supposed to be hideous. But I have two reasons for this. The first being sex sells. I'm not going to lie, that was a big reason for this image. Oh, here's the one I didn't have to cut down on the colours to finish:

Anyway, my justification. How different do you think one would have to be to be considered hideous in ancient Greece? The folk of yore have a tendency to be incredibly racist, I doubt the green skin and snakes on the head would have been considered beautiful in ancient days, and the turning people to stone when they look at you just adds to the myth. "How ugly could she be?" "Dude. Looking at her turns you to stone."

So vote above, please. Winning this would help considerably towards my producing Ragdoll Psychiatric, and I would be very appreciative. Also, it'll give you the opportunity to wear this beauty around all day.

Marvelous Characters

I have multiple issues when I read solicits, watch a commercial, listen to someone talk... Generally when someone would want to convince me of something. Which is whenever words are involved. All of the issues stem from terminology. In this case it's the "strong ____ character" line. It doesn't matter what the blank is --woman, black, gay -- that blank is a problem. Y'see, you're segregating the character, marketing it as the character as being a big deal because of blank. A lot of the time I expect it to be a moderate story trying to ride on the fact that their character is blank. The marketing scheme instantly turns me cynical.

Now, don't get me wrong. We need more strong ___ characters. The issue is making them strong blanks takes away from making them strong characters. A lot of the time I'll hear strong female character and I'll get a female character who's in charge and sassy while all the male characters are idiotic.

Why I bring this up today is Captain Marvel #1 came out today, by Kelly Sue DeConnick. I already love her work from Osborn: Evil Incarcerated, but Captain Marvel, a series that will hopefully be going on for quite some time, is a great book. The reason for this is Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, is a strong character. I'm one of those people who can forgive a flaw or two in the story so long as the characters are consistent and entertaining. Interesting characters make me buy books, movies, etc. Carol is an interesting character. She's flawed, she has dreams, both possible and impossible, and she has a trait that I love in all characters. She's tough. There's a theory that everyone has a favourite ninja turtle, and it signifies one of four different mindsets. Mine's Raphael. Carol Danvers, as Kelly Sue DeConnick writes her, reminds of of Raphael. Of Toph.

What I'm saying is I may have my new favourite book, and a new third favourite super hero. (Hulk, my first favourite super hero. X-23, because she got me into comics and by extension pushed me down my path in life. Ms. Marvel, general badass and entertaining read.)

Oh, Right, That's What I Do

I should probably say that I'm working on an art piece. It should be done by the weeks end, assuming I don't get any more distractions.

This one's not fan art. Not in the traditional sense, though it is a fictional being...

Avenged, Going to Avenge Again Later

Comic con is done, and I've heard wonderful news about all sorts of projects in the works. Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy (Rocket Raccoon!), the Winter Soldier, and what I can only assume is Hel (Thor: The Dark World). And there's Iron Man 3.

Now, I read a description of what was shown, and everything sounds amazing. It seems they're not even trying to hide the extremis ties, and the Mandarin has been confirmed. I'm a big Tony fan, and both of his movies seems to have brought him to a low point before he saves the day. Can't wait to see this new one.

But there's one thing that was denied that makes me very sad. The Hulk's not going to be in Iron Man 3. They may be trying not to over saturate the market, learning their lesson from the horror zone that was Deadpool a few years back (It put Wolverine and Spider-man combined to shame), but the Hulk was the best part of the Avengers, and considering just how amazing every aspect that movie was that's truly saying something. Seriously, I've had a few conversations about the movie and I always come away realizing some new facet about it. It's great.

What I'm hoping is that they're going to throw the Hulk into another movie. Hulk and Thor is always fun. But it looks like I'm just going to have to rewatch the Avengers... Woe is me...

And a reminder. Rocket Raccoon. 2014. It's a thing.

Nightwing

So, in the New 52 they redesigned Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing, so the blue bird shape on his chest was a red bird shape. I thought it pointless, being that the blue colour kind of fits better to the characters personality, more calm and collected as opposed to rage, and it fits better in a character who's essentially a ninja, it's not as attention grabbing.

But then I saw a picture.

I no longer like Nightwing's new look. Weird that they chose to take stylistic decisions from those films.

Practice

So, a few months ago I was watching a friends house for 'em. During that time I did various things on their fancy entertainment systems and wound up doing a LOT of drawing. Mostly rough stuff, practicing poses and hands and such. One practice, I think I was practicing with measurements, I drew a lovely Ms. Katherine "Kitty" Pryde, aka Shadowcat.

Here's her pencils.

 I honestly have no idea what I was practicing. Could have just been anatomy, could have just been that I've wanted to draw Pryde for a while and haven't found a reason.

Well, recently I got a new scanner that's capable of scanning at 300 DPI (recently being yesterday) because the day before I learned the relevance of being able to do that and just how old my other scanner was. So I threw it in and inked it in photoshop with my tablet. I'm not sure if 300 DPI made a difference on the inking process, but I found it much easier.

Here are the inks.

 And, from there, the natural move forward was to flat colours. There was really nothing special here, I just like flipping between flats and finished versions.

 This is where things start getting interesting. You see, most of my work since I tried doing anything other than the basic shading below I haven't been too happy with. Below, where the lines are obvious and it looks very cartoony, I'm good with that. I like that. Cartoony fits with my style. I'm not a fan of artists who try so hard for realism in comics on a monthly basis simply because the closer you get to realism the more mistakes are noticeable. When it's cartoony you register with what looks human and put a personality behind it. It's basically half-assing your way to a good piece. Or, alternatively, it's not overreaching and getting the same, if not better, results.

So here's cartoony.

 That went one without a hitch. It's simple and easy. I knew it would be simple and easy, and I knew I'd like what I saw. There's just no tricks behind it. But I needed to test my colouring skills, like I've been doing for the past couple dozen pictures, so I did below. And, honestly, I think I'm getting good.

There's the finished Kitty Pryde. At the end of the day I learned me a few tricks I probably should have known before (being that I've used them before) and I got a glorious picture of the best damn teacher in the Marvel universe, along with finishing the most "practiced" picture I've ever done. Now I'm going to do one final practice, the actual printing one, and see how it comes out.

Kitty Pryde was the youngest X-man, forever and a day ago. She proved herself in the field and to Xavier (a story I've had the privilege of stumbling over recently), and over the years she's become one of the most dependable and entertaining X-man on the team. She's a hacker capable of hacking into Stark Enterprise, she was a protege under Wolverine becoming one of the most badass characters in the Marvel universe, she's been all over the worlds (plural) and learned more than I'm capable of by the time she was fifteen. Okay, thirteen, but that's more on me than anything.  Right now she's a teacher for the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning (The Xavier school got blown up enough times that they renamed it and Wolverine took over, which is also one of the most consistently entertaining books on sale), and I couldn't be happier that Jason Aaron is in control of her. I haven't read nearly enough of Kitty Pryde, early or current years, and I can't wait for more.

Amazing Incentive

Another reason to see the movie, which I forgot to mention previously, is for the sequel. The origin story is the only thing that weighs this movie down, and now it's out of the way. A sequel can go either way, but they've got a story lined up. I personally can't wait.

It's good to be a nerd these days.

Amazing!

I feel this needs to be said. I love the new Spider-man movie. I hear a lot of mixed reviews, one big complaint being that it doesn't really cover new ground, and I completely disagree. First off, if you were expecting a drastically new origin story, you're an idiot. Spider-Man becomes Spider-man pretty much the same way he always does. The thing this story does that's new is the characters involved, and it shines for it.

Gwen Stacy, Captain Stacy, and Peter's Parents. First off, Gwen is so much better the Mary-Jane. Gwen is intelligent. She can actually challenge Peter on an intellectual level. MJ is one of those characters that never made sense to me, not in a high school setting anyways. In the comics she's a very nurturing, loving, supermodel. She's also an adult. As a teenager, it wouldn't work out. There's too much of MJ that needs to develop. She needed to go into the real world and realize her looks wouldn't be as useful out there, to have that failure that she wouldn't have as a teenager. Gwen on the other hand is just as much of an awkward nerd as Peter in this one (Stupid awkward sexy teenagers...). In general, Gwen works better than MJ ever did, but especially as a teenager. And Captain Stacy is fun because we finally get to see Spider-man's relationship with the police.

Peter's parents. This is unexplored territory in the movies, and due to movie rights being all over the place it can't be exactly the same as the comics. Peter's parents promotes the major drive in the film, besides uncle Ben. The trailers played up their purpose in this more than it actually was, but it was still an interesting addition, finding out who they were, what they were doing, and how it affected Peter.

And the second reason I loved it is the same reason I had a problem with the older movies. Spider-man quips. In the comics, he talks. A lot. He's smart, he's mouthy. That's something the other movies didn't touch down on nearly as much, and this movie shines for it. The scene with the car thief from the trailers was amazing when done in full. It was hilarious.

And the Lizard! If you're familiar with the recent changes the Lizard has gone through, you'll be familiar with this Lizard. He does keep a lot more of Dr. Connors knowledge than the current Lizard, he's still a chemist when monstrous, but there are a lot of notes from the post Shed world that are in this monster. And dear god is he ever powerful. When he fights Spidey you can really tell that Spidey is horribly overpowered.

All in all, the movie wasn't a new Avengers. But it was better than the old movies, easily. If you don't mind the retread of old territory, and one scene near the end that's kinda overdone, this movie will make you happy. Also, Stan Lee has what is easily his best cameo in this movie.

Rocket. Raccoon.

There's a lot of chatter about a Guardians of the Galaxy movie being announced. This would be a big step on Marvel's part, being that their most fantastical film element (Thor) has just barely been in there, what with Thor being on Earth most of the time, only fighting on two alien worlds, if you count both Jotunheim and the Loki fight in Asgard (Spoiler, Loki's a douche). Something like Guardians of the Galaxy shouldn't take place on Earth, with maybe the exception of a Nova origin, and I personally can't wait to have the wider Marvel Universe explored.

But all that pales to one important, fantastic point in two words. Rocket. Raccoon. I think I'm going to draw him and Molly Hayes going at it. The Runaways movie never should have been canned...

I'm rambling. Rocket Raccoon.

Blind Spot

Well, here's a Spider-man piece. For some reason I enjoy drawing him eating while his villains try and kill him. Seems to fit.

If you don't know Spidey's origin you should leave. Gets powers from a radioactive Spider bite, winds up being responsible for his uncle's death due to inaction and swears to never let that happen again, taking his uncle's teaching of "with great power must come great responsibility" to heart. Right now he's a scientist working for Horizon Labs, on the Avengers, on the Future Foundation last I looked in (A while ago), and if there's something else I've forgotten.

I know very little of the Rhino. He was a Russian mercenary, I think. But what I do know is that he hung up the Rhino suit a while back to settle down, be happy, with the woman he loved. Which went about as horribly as you'd expect. She died, he brutally murdered the killer (a new "Rhino") now he's a cold monster of a man. I should re-read that story arc...

Mr. Freeze

I'd just like to recommend everyone pick up the Batman Annual #1 that came out today. It's a story centered around Mr. Freeze, as you'll be able to tell by the cover by the best writer of the new 52 (in my opinion), and it's pretty damn amazing. Great first showing for the fantastic Batman villain.

Moving Forward

Sorry I haven't put anything up recently. I've been too sick to draw the last week, I've barely been able to play Diablo 3. Not that I haven't been, but, as simple as Diablo 3's actual gameplay is, the thought process behind pointing at an enemy and clicking him to death was just barely within my abilities this week.

So, no pencils. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do next for my big super hero pic, maybe just some anatomy practices and buildings. Maybe a Spider-man piece...

Well, while that gestates a little, I'm going to announce something. I may, just may, be able to put forward a comic in the upcoming months. One full graphic novel style comic, a .cbz file for all of you Comixology users out there. I'm still working out what, exactly, I'm going to do and how spit-shined it's going to get. Odds are I'm going to do a Kickstarter for it.

Anyways, with that in mind, you're probably going to see some concept art thrown up here. I wont spoil anything, obviously, but I figure I should post something for you fellows. I am taking a comic book course at Emily Carr starting next week, so any major production on the actual physical project will start after that. Which just means story and character designs at the moment.

Claws Everywhere!

Laura Kinney, X-23, vs Curt Connors, The Lizard. I was going to ask for this at one of the Artist Battles at Fan Expo Vancouver, and the idea kinda stuck. Never got around to asking, unfortunately. This is another in a long line of my learning to colour properly. I'm quite happy with it.

Curt Connors, I'm pretty sure you've heard of. Scientist injects himself with Lizard DNA in an attempt to regrow his arm, turns out horribly. And, just to add insult to injury, he doesn't even get to keep the new limb when he turns human again. I've only read two story arcs with him, the one where Curt Connors and the Lizard become one and the following X-men comic where they teamed up with Spider-man. Both were thoroughly entertaining.

X-23 I've done before. Clone of Wolverine, a lot more trouble with emotions and a lot less loved ones, let alone dead ones. Wish her comic was still running, but I'm happy Gage has control of her. I've been waiting for her and Finesse to meet up since Avengers Academy started.

Saw Avengers

And it is quite possibly the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The Hulk is one of my favorite fictional characters and he is in top form here. Marvel has said they don't plan a sequel for the Hulk but, dammit, he's your best character!

And Hawkeye is done surprisingly well. It's nice that I wont have to explain why the guy with a bow and arrow is on the Avengers anymore.

Avengers! Dogpile!

Here's the finished piece, done only eight hours before I see the movie. I am so furking excited for this movie. It's the only movie of the whole lineup where the hype hasn't pushed up my worry. That fact hast me a little worried, but whatever.

Loki and Hawkeye's outfits are different from their movie counterparts. Loki because I saw an outdated picture of him, Hawkeye because purple is his god damn colour. I'm not sure why they chose maroon, they're pretty loyal on everyone else, I don't see why a purple crest on Hawkeye's outfit would cause such a ruckus.

I don't think I have to do a backstory for these characters. Watch the movie for Hawkeye and the Widow, and watch the other movies for Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Hulk you should know by heart, and if you don't I'm very disappointed in everything about you. You heard me!

Anyway, enjoy the film. Lord knows I'm going to have to find one hell of a way to pass the next eight hours. I can watch the three Avengers films that are on Netflix, I supposed.

Thrillbent and Digital Comics

Recently Daredevil scribe Mark Waid released something called Thrillbent.com, what he's described as an an experiment in digital comics as a medium. Today I read Insufferable, his free digital comic. It looks good, it reads well, and you should totally go over there and read that. It's free.

Now, the only big difference I noticed was that they were able to chose when panels turned on. This was great for timing, something that comics struggle with. It hurts when your eye wanders to the end of the page beforehand, and this system seems to deal with it well enough. It's a cool idea, and it's well executed, and I imagine a talented creative team could use to to great benefit.

Now, I'm someone who's tried digital and regular comics and I've always preferred to have the real deal in my hands. Insufferable doesn't change that. It's a well done comic with a good delivery system and an actual sense of timing that doesn't get thrown out the window if the writing's good enough to pull the reader in. But I get pulled back out when I have to scroll down my page in order to get every word bubble on a single panel and then scroll back up to get to the next one.

What I will say is this. Any movement forward in storytelling is a good thing. Mark Waid has done something really cool here to move the medium forward, at that's something to be celebrated. We don't have enough of that, with digital distribution being a touchy subject, and this feels like a good step forward.

Also, can't stress enough just how good Daredevil is. What the man's done with Matt Murdock after everything that went down in Shadowland is astonishing. It's one of the "I must have this" books of the month, alongside anything with Rick Remender and Scarlet Spider.

Avengers!

Well, Thursday night/Friday morning next week I'm going to watch, for the first time, the movie that I'll be rewatching and quoting for years  to come. The new Lord of the Rings, the new Star Wars, is coming out next week. And, as such, my priorities on pics has kind of limited itself. Next pic up is going to be an Avengers picture. I haven't started it yet, I'm not one hundred percent sure what it'll be, but it will be drawn. And it will be great. And it will probably be yet another background pic. It does make the most sense for a group shot...

Okay, as I'm writing this it's coming together. A week and two days!

Magik Battle

Well, Avengers vs X-men 2 came out last week and I'd just like to say, no matter how obvious, I totally furking called this. Can't wait for the fight itself to be fleshed out in their VS title. If nothing else it should be a visual treat.

I tried doing two new colouring styles here, but the second one (the one I'd have to do on a tablet) didn't really pan out. First one was only a marginal improvement, I think, but it did teach me a few things.

Illyana Rasputin, on the right, is the sister of Colossus of the X-men, the big metal man if you're just familiar with the films. He's considerably more amazing in the comics. I'm not honestly sure what her mutant ability is, all I know is she's a magician, she was raised by one of many Marvel devils, Belaasco, who was the first Marvel devil I ever saw (New X-men, Pixie shivved him, Skottie Young drew it). Well, she's since taken over as ruler of Limbo, put the universe in danger to restore her soul (Her recent time on New Mutants was amazing), owns a soul sword (kills magic), and is currently residing in a prison on Utopia as a threat, only being utilized when Cyclops's Extinction Team needs to be deployed, mostly to control the destructive force that is her brother now that he's taken on the power of the Juggernaught.

Dr. Strange was once the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Universe, which basically meant he protected it from the worst of the worst demons and mystical mumbo jumbo. He used to be one of the most powerful beings there were, until he abused the power and his title got revoked. Now he's just someone with the accumulated knowledge of the Sorcerer Supreme, and as such is still one of the more powerful beings in the Marvel Universe, and he's currently serving on the New Avengers line up. He had one story arc to focus on him, which was amazing, and has used the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak pretty much every time he's appeared to restrain whoever the furk showed up, which are the red things surrounding him shown above. He's also currently serving on the Defenders, which really needs a solid story arc in it's corner moving forward as opposed to a bad one and some character specific stories.

Gamers and Video Game Violence Claims

I learned of a man in Norway the other night. Bombed a government building and went on a killing spree, murdering children, the body count eventually ending at 77, I think. He did all this for an organization he claims to be in called the Knights Templar. I'm sure the Illuminati will be watching the trials closely. The man's name is Anders Behring Breivik, and he seems to have an issue with Muslims. Look him up if you want to, I read two articles and skimmed a third to get the gist of it and it made me angry. The man's insane.

I learned this from IGN. Breivik mentioned in a long-ass manifesto that he used Modern Warfare to train and played WoW while planning, and IGN was trying to do what most gamers do, myself included. They were trying saying how the media vilifies the games when the man's clearly insane. I went from there and read an official article on the incident, even put video game in my search to find something hostile towards the games. Modern Warfare and WoW were mentioned at the beginning then ignored while the facts were laid out.

Now, there are a few storied about Captain America after he was defrosted in the modern age that have him fighting because he's used to the fight. Assassin's Creed Revelations has this theme to a certain extent. It's a fairly common story thread, and while I read this article I realized just what has happened to gamers. We're so used to fighting that we go through the motions automatically. We don't know that the fight's ending.

I'm not trying to say this as fact. I read two articles and skimmed a third. But this is going to be a serious issue coming up. We're going to need to know when to back down, so when we have an actual reason to fight we have the energy and effect we want.

Like I said, the fight is ending. Video Games have been accepted as an art form, at least so far as movies, with only a few people saying nay. I think the fact that it's few is being lost because those few are loud, but we've got to look forward here. The fight is calming down, more people are coming into power who have played games most of their lives or have children who play video games. This is a fight we can't lose, but we're so used to fighting it that we can't stop.

I'm not saying ignore these fights. I'm saying don't be so quick to react. Gamers have a negative image, one of a bunch of temperamental children. Reacting immediately to news that might be construed as negative wont help that. If we can find a real argument against gaming and then throw our voices against it, that will help. A lone psychopath who's attracted to violence isn't an argument against gaming.

My condolences to the families of the victims and the family of the murderer.

Next Pic

A new issue of Avengers vs X-men came out today, and it was much more enjoyable than the last. Though I do believe that Cyclops is being more batshit insane than he's got any right to be. And I'm pretty damn sure Jean Grey's going to come back to life, what with them hyping up the whole "rebirth" side of the Phoenix. I'm also starting to think John Romita Jr. might not have been the best choice of artist for this particular title, at least not yet. I absolutely adore the man when he's doing big epic pieces, like the opening arc of the current Avengers book, but so far it's just been a skirmish. That being said, the art still looks amazing, and I did love Enemy of the State and it's interiors, so I'm over it.

Anyways, the reason I'm posting today is to say that a fight happened in the book that, while it was inevitable, I totally furking called. It's the next picture I'm putting out. For anyone who's interested, there's a little hint.

Dickin' around

I'm playing with a new colouring style. Basically I'll be expanding on the gradiant tool to make things look a little nicer, have a few smoother lines and blend better. After this I'll try and use my tablet to colour, play around with the brushes, and see what I can horribly mangle.

Also, Avengers in two weeks. I'm gonna have to get started on a picture.

Art In Storytelling, One Jackass's Opinion

Okay, so I watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog the other day. This video/show/movie thing is fantastic. It is a musical, but don't let that turn you off of it. Niel Patric Harris is the protagonist, Nathan Fillion is the antagonist, and the woman from that one viral video (Do You Want to Date My Avatar) that's brought up every time she's mentioned in a separate project is a major supporting cast member. For anyone who hasn't watched it yet, go do that. Now. Then come back, if you're interested.

This video (It's a short film, but video is faster) is very clearly a parody of standard super hero cliches, as told through the super villain's perspective. What's great about it is the fact that Dr. Horrible is a well thought out character with real motives and a great character arc. His motivation for being a super villain is pretty much every argument I try and fight, that "human kind has gone insane", that the system is fundamentally flawed and only a complete overhaul will do (Agree with the flaw, disagree with the complete overhaul), and the way he sees Captain Hammer is just... amazing. There are no other words for this video.

What I love about this particular story is the way it's presented. It is comedic. This is a parody. But it doesn't fall in to what a lot of other parodies stumble on. While it makes jokes at it's own expense it's never directly making fun of itself. The closest thing to an over the top stupid thing that the audience is supposed to find stupid along with the main character is Captain Hammer, but I'm fairly certain he's just cast in that light because Dr. Horrible is the protagonist. It's his view of the man.

This story is done in such a way that you know Dr. Horrible is an evil man. You empathize with that evil man. The ending was heart wrenching, and, again, a lot of reality was twisted in favour of proving Dr. Horrible's point of view, his origin, and his rise. He's a comedic character, but his origin (that's what this video is at the end of the day) is just incredible. No stops were pulled in cinematography, story telling, or script. At the end of the day this was a story about a man breaking over a long period of time. If told by the perspective of Captain Hammer this would be Spider-man fighting Doc Ock (Ock views Spidey as a buffoon who wont stop joking and keeps ruining his master schemes, the more I think about this the more similar they seem...).

Pixar has been doing this for years. The Toy Story films are great representations of mortality. The Incredibles is the story of a man's midlife crisis. Ratatouille is the story of societal pressures. And with each of these everything is, again, amazing. Every shot is beautiful in every way imaginable. The sights, the sounds, the words, the ambiance, all perfect. And not a single story is so serious that a superhuman morphing baby can't have his moment.

Here's why I bring this up. To me, no matter what I'm reading/watching/playing character is the most important damn thing about it. I'm still working my way through Mass Effect 3 because I don't like the blank slate character. I love the story, love the supporting cast, but the blank slate irritates me. Kvothe from the Kingkiller Chronicles is quite possibly my second favourite character in literature, right behind Tyrion Lannister. I love comics because all that history people complain about guarantees that these characters are incredibly well fleshed out, because even a flop has to be dealt with and fixed by someone soon. My favourite live action character outside of comic movies is Malcolm Reynolds.

What I like about these characters, these stories, is that they're never all doom and gloom. Never. Life is never all doom and gloom. Even when you're dealing with nothing but the shit of life you find time to laugh. Soldiers occasionally hop on X-box Live. The ghetto child has friends. A part of the human experience is joy, and it's a rather large part of the human experience. It doesn't detract from the drama of life, it gives the drama meaning. I hate, truly hate, these modern dark and gritty takes on things, or shows, or games where no one can twitch a corner of their mouth upwards. If that's a single character, I can deal with that. But that only works on individual characters.

What I dislike is this idea that the only way to have a deep and meaningful theme/story/message is to make the characters down and broody. The Hulk is a monster fueled on previously repressed rage from his abusive father. And he has Rick Jones, the comedic sidekick. Betty Ross. The Avengers, on those times he's in control. Spider-man is a happy go lucky character who swings around cracking jokes while he fights these colourful animal themed super villains. One of which snapped the true love of his life's neck. Who's origin started with his uncle's murder.

One doesn't have to be afraid of a smile to sell a point. One doesn't need to have the Gears of War film filter on in order to make something look realistic. The issues brought up in these "classic" films that star a ghetto child who was raped or a person who's dealing with debt or gang violence or whatever else, they're all serious. But it's hard to empathize with a character whose entire life is doom and gloom when everyone's life seems to be doom and gloom, when everything in life is lackluster at best.

Dr. Horrible's life isn't very good. But Penny and Captain Hammer are both pretty happy characters. Dr. Horrible believes that people are flawed, and those two characters do their damnedest to make the world a better place every day. The fact that there is good in this world helps emphasize Dr. Horrible's flawed logic and downward spiral. It helps give the bad meaning.

And I just pulled all of that from a parody.

Psylocke walks into a bar...

The actual bar they were supposed to be in has changed so damn many times, I figured I'd just keep it at a club bar. Mostly because I didn't want to draw the shelves in the background. I'm noticing the ongoing theme of "I stop caring after the figures are drawn".

Sabertooth has been dead the vast majority of the time I've been reading comics and came back to life a few months ago. I've seen him for a single story arc in Wolverine, which was batshit insane, and one issue in Wolverine and the X-men in what I'm going to continue calling the best damn thing with a price tag. It also brought up a fight that should have struck me as a lot more obvious a while back that I'll have to do some time soon. Beast vs Sabertooth! Also, Sabertooth's lil speech at the beginning was great.

Psylocke I've read quite a bit about and know very little of. She's the sister of Captain Britain, and has spent a great deal of time protecting, for lack of the actual term used in Marvel, the multiverse. She's an English woman who's now in an Asian body, and I think it's the third Asian body she's been in. Now she might be in her original body again, I'll have to wait until the next X-Force to know. She's had an on-and-off relationship with one Warren Worthington, Angel/Archangel of the X-men. She seems to be victimized quite a bit, if the few things I've read are any indication. She's also a complete badass psychic ninja.

Also, from what I've heard, these two have a less than friendly history together. As in Sabertooth nearly killed Psylocke.

Ninja Turtles

I guess I'd better throw my two cents in for this whole Ninja Turtle business.

For those not in the know, if there are any of you, Michael Bay is producing a new Ninja Turtles movie. Well, the first Ninja Turtles movie, because the others were called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This one, on the other hand, will have no Teenage Mutant in it. It could have mutants, but that seems like it would just be a kick in the teeth for the fans. And I'm pretty sure the Turtles are still teenagers, but who knows.

What the movie's going to do is make the Turtles aliens, instead of mutants. I've heard a lot of arguments for and against this. The "for" are all well reasoned and well thought out, all stating the obvious fact that the Turtles that most of you know aren't the original Turtles. That the original turtles were a dark and gritty Daredevil parody. From what I've heard they were essentially Splinter's hit men. And as such the Turtles we know and love were, in fact, someone butchering the original concept for a toy line.

The "against" tends to be whining about Michael Bay ruining (or another "r" word) peoples childhoods. Since the arguments seem to be leaning towards the side I disagree with I figured I'd try and make a rational argument against the Ninja Turtles being anything but Teenage Mutants.

What is the point of making them alien? I can honestly see no reason for it. While it's true that it might help introduce the alien threats of the Ninja Turtle universe I disagree that it's necessary and it seems like they're sweeping away inconvenient story elements in order to make their job slightly easier. What I'm seeing here is that they don't believe the mutant aspect of the Turtles is believable and they're trying to simplify it as something that popular media is going crazy for these days. Aliens.

If I honestly thought that their being aliens was an actual change to the franchise to look at it through another lens, if I thought it was a creative tweak in a direction that they believed would improve the story, I would be all behind this. But turning the Mutants into Aliens doesn't strike me as any form of creative genius, it strikes me as them simplifying something to make it easier. At the end of the day all it serves is to make me wait a few days before going to see it, to see what the people think of the movie.

Of course, there's also the quite high probability that they only did it to give the movie some press before release. It's working. Good job gentlemen!

X-23 Swingin' Around

This was a lot of tests rolled into one. First off, I was trying to find a simpler way to do buildings. I wont lie, I do not enjoy doing backgrounds. Second, I wanted to do an acrobatic picture, mostly a running on a wall picture, and I had a Spider-Man picture planned already (though it didn't pan out). Third, extreme lighting. This is the first time I'd tried it. I'm still not the best at it, but I did learn a lot from this picture.

X-23 was the first comic I ever picked up. The original X-23 mini-series, not NYX or Target X. I recognized her from the cartoon, and I remember liking the cartoon version. And so begun a hobby that would drain money from me that I never knew I had. I regret nothing. One of the creators is writing a book for Marvel called Scarlet Spider now. Dear god I love that comic. There's something about that man and psychotic clones. Or maybe it's me.

Strongest There Is

One day I hope to write the Runaways. This is one of the first things I'll do. This is the fight I've been salivating over since I first started reading the Runaways.

Weather Goddess VS Force of Nature

This is a pretty recent addition to my list. Had a lot of fun figuring out how to do everything with this picture. Originally I was going to have the Hulk wrecking a little more stuff, practice my terrain. Then I penciled the characters and wound up too happy with them to really care about the terrain.


About the heels. I am one of those people who thinks that women in comics need to update their wardrobes to incorporate pants. I'm one of the few people who believed that the addition of pants to Wonder Woman's attire was a great idea simply because no woman would have her ass out there like that without some sort of excuse (a la Lulu Lemon). I understand the bright colours, brand recognition is important in the real world (Every one of you knows the McDonalds colours). I understand the tights, fictional figures have a certain musculature in all eras and cultures, and both artists and viewers like seeing the human body, and the argument that nobody wears tights can be thrown out the window (again, Lulu Lemon). I even understand amping up characters sexuality, I think people tend to only look at half the picture on that subject. The Hulk is wearing less clothing than Storm up there. All of this I understand and I think that people tend to blow them out of proportion. All of it has to make sense to the individual character, though.

Heels fit Storm. To me, anyways. Storm is very regal, she's very strong, very self assured. She has a very attractive way about her, and I believe that heels help with that.

Also, she flies and throws lightning. No tripping hazard.

Rogue the Mechanic

This is my most recently completed piece. I wanted to draw Rogue. I wanted to draw a wrecked Sentinel. Here's Rogue and a small wrecked Sentinel.

I have an odd relationship with Sentinels. I very rarely see them, but they're such a massive part of X-men lore. They're the ultimate image of hate in the mutant community, a machine designed solely to kill mutants. Wolverine, during his civil war crossover, compared it to a burning cross. The evil Sentinel from the future Nimrod (I laughed too) fighting the New X-men was one of the first comic arcs I'd read, but I never really connected Nimrod to the classic Sentinel because they look so different. And at the same time those kids were being watched over and protected by Sentinels for reasons I never really looked in to.

And then there's Rogue who, as far as my personal experience goes, has gone from being a complete wreck to an amazing teacher. I don't know terribly much about her, but I like who she is now. X-men Legacy is definitely a book to watch.

His Acrobatics, My Ballet

This brings me back. This was the first for many things. The first time I digitally inked something, the first time I properly and fully digitally coloured a project, the first time I doodled out a proper building, and the first thing I posted on my DA account.

I drew this shortly after the recent issue of Batgirl where Nightwing shows up. It's unfortunate that Batgirl's first story arc seems to be the hero's best, but she's still a fun character, and I wont miss her book unless I have to. Of course, I'm also waiting to find out how many Batgirls there have been over the years.

For those of you that don't know, Barbara Gordon up there got shot in the spine by the Joker a while back (3 years in current continuity), and in that time there have been at least two Batgirls. And they haven't been mentioned in this New 52 continuity yet. Though I'm pretty sure the upcoming Batman Inc. will answer a few of those questions, if Batgirl doesn't.

A Night with Dr. Beast.

Hello. This seems like a good place to start. This is Dr. Hank McCoy, one of the coolest Mutants at the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning. This is probably the first hour he's had of rest since the school was started all those months ago. It's really been one fight after the next.

Heads up, I'm planning on drawing a picture of him vs Sabertooth sometime soon. I'm not sure why that idea didn't click earlier, but this month's Wolverine and the X-men made it perfectly clear that that needs to be done.

Hello everybody!

Hello everybody, and welcome to my blog. Here I'll be discussing whatever tickles my fancy at any given moment. That will usually just come as some form of rage at nerd news, and these will come moderately few and far between. I'll also be talking about comic books a lot. This is called Dylan's Heroes and that means super heroes! This'll probably happen once a week, assuming something I love comes out (Wolverine and the X-men, Scarlet Spider, Daredevil, Batman, anything with Rick Remender).

Most importantly (for me) is art work. I'll be leaving up quite a bit of that. Most of it will be fan art of whatever tickles my fancy. Again, this will mostly be comic book related, though I doubt I'll be able to stop myself from doing live action and video game work. I'll try to do this on a week by week basis, but every now and then I'll hit a dry patch. If anyone has something in particular they'd like to see I'm more than happy to work on commissions. Nothing dirty.

Welcome!