OzComics: Yes, I'm messing around in my spare time.

This week's OzComic draw-off thing was 'The Sandman'. I rolled with the inspiration behind Neil Gaiman's successful series, the 1970's reboot of The Sandman by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Neil Gaiman (apart from being a big Simon and Kirby fan), said he based his version off the idea of a hero that dwells in people's dreams like the 70's story.

Keen eyes who are fans of Simon and Kirby would notice that the costume of their 70's version was very much similar to their 50's superhero 'The Stuntman'- apart from the obvious colour differences. So, I slimmed down the body structure, similar to a lot of the pre-60's Kirby hero structures.

This was originally a black & white image that accompanied a pitch for a writer late last year, so I did a quick re-colour and submission for the draw-off. I do quite a few commissions that never see the light of day, so sometimes I like to throw them up when the opportunity arises.

Well, back to it :) (Link to come)

Soldier Legacy T-Shirts and Clothing! Now Available at Zazzle

Call it an experiment, but I figured since I had fans and friends pestering for Soldier Legacy clothes, I got myself organised between deadlines and now have an initial online store where you can get the Soldier on any T-shirt, Jumper, Hoodie etc. at any size, for men, women and children.

the address is http://www.zazzle.com/soldierlegacy

As well as the first wave of designs featuring covers from the comic series, comic pages and logos, there's also some not so serious designs, as you can see here.

Gotta run,
Paul.

Chris Sequeira: ASA Comics Creator of the Month

http://www.asauthors.org/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=ASP0016/ccms.r?PageId=10289

One of my best mates and writer collaborator, Chris Sequeira, is the Australian Society of Authors "Comics Creator of the Month". Chris has worked on books for Marvel, DC, Boom!, Moonstone and also Black House Comics.

A fantastic guy, and someone who helped (and still helps) my slowly growing professional comic book career, he gave me an unexpected plug and very kind words regarding "The Soldier Legacy":

"What Australian titles would you recommend?
This is really hard to do, because I know a lot of folk working in the industry, and am also ‘stable-mates’ with a few at Black House, so, whatever I say will seem like an ‘in-crowd’ thing. Paul Mason’s The Soldier Legacy is kinetic and very cool (Paul’s become a fast friend these past few years but I actually judge his work separate to that and it’s bloody good too!)."

Thank you, Chris. I'm very touched.

Updates to come, I'm 8 pencil pages deep into Soldier #4- not a bad start to the New Year, and juggling between 5 other thing. More to show soon, and no Spoilers, I promise ;)

More "Fix ups" for Soldier Legacy TPB

Below are pages from issue 1 of 'The Soldier Legacy', (that was originally released back in 2010, and reprinted by Black House Comics in 2011) which I'm flying back through, attempting to lighten the shadows for the TPB version to be released in April. Truthfully, when I first reopened all these original art files, I couldn't help but cringe- I guess I've tried to learn a lot with each passing issue, including where I felt I went wrong with the previous issue. The look between this issue, and issue 2 for instance, was in no small part due to not only trial and error, but through very useful feedback on penciling and colour considerations by Stewart McKenny, and W.Chew Chan.

So anyway, as I'm currently working on #4, I couldn't help but shake my head at the original pencilling methods I employed in this first comic. No doubt if I had the time today, I feel as though I could surely pencil and colour a far better version of this story. I guess considering Jack Kirby retold and re-penciled Captain America's origin a number of times in his career, perhaps one day I too will get the time and opportunity to revisit this.

Again, the pile of deadlines and obligations has prevented me from doing a complete overhaul of the original colours, but hopefully from the examples documented below, there is an obvious attempt on my part to try and rectify a few things that bugged me about the pages between the computer and the printed page. Come April when the book is printed, hopefully the issues in contrast and shadows would have been addressed enough to be happy with the final result.

Back to it ;D

Paul.

Original Page 17 Issue 1.


Treated Page 17 Issue 1.


Original Page 6 Issue 1.


Treated Page 6 Issue 1.


Original Page 22 Issue 1.


Treated Page 22 Issue 1.

Panel Pencil teasers for current Black House projects

Black House Comics posted this facebook status today :

"New year starts now for Black House with the 2012 publication schedule going out to the creators. I tweeted we had 34 books scheduled but it's more like 39/40 at the moment. Don't know how we are going to get it all done!"

Needless to say, I was very excited. At this stage, I'm going to be very busy. More updates soon.


In the meantime, I have two random pencil previews, one of Dark Detective: Sherlock Holmes #8, and the other is a random scanned section of Soldier Legacy #4 page 4. More to come when I can come up for air :P

Example touch up- blink and you miss it :P

Original Page 13

Corrected Page 13

OK, who knows how this will look on your monitor, but just a super-subtle knocking back of the shadows, and a single typo correction of this page for the Soldier Legacy TPB volume 1- It seems at 4am you might miss something first time around ;P

This page (from #3, available now) features a little bit of the back story of Keiji, who will play a bigger role in the coming issues.

Soldier Legacy Vol 1 TPB is a go :D

(Not final cover look- stay tuned for update)

Not sure if I've mentioned this, but penciled in to be released around the same time as issue 4 (April 2012... *sweats*), is the first collected edition of issues 1 to 3 of 'The Soldier Legacy', to be published by Black House Comics.

This Trade paper back edition will include a new cover image (seen here as a work in progress), concept art, pencil sequential pages, and a several page pencil preview of issue 4. (Also with remastered pages (ie: checking for typos and colour errors ;P))


Currently, issue 3 has been checked and is almost ready to rock 'n' roll for the TPB, 2 shouldn't be too difficult, but I'm thinking 1 will need some tweaking. Meanwhile, issue 4 is being penciled as we speak (sort of...I'm really typing ;P) and the next installment of The Soldier Legacy vs. Dr Nikola for Black House's 'Dark Detective: Sherlock Holmes #8" is due in a few weeks, so including the uni thesis/journal article work, the 3 secret things I'm doing too, there's a hell of a lot of juggling and post-it notes going on in my work area. Here's hoping some of this pulls off in the positive box for me this 2012 :D

Batgirl: Yes, more time wasting :P