And in today's news...

Just a quick update as it's very late, and I'm deep in the trenches of Soldier Legacy #4 and the TPB. I have 1 page left to pencil of SL#4, then about 4-5 weeks to colour and finish the book. That's roughly a page a day. Going to be very tough.

Anyway,some Soldier Legacy love coming this week- firstly, John Retallick of 'The Comic Spot' blog and podcast posted some very kind words regarding the series.

http://www.thecomicspot.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/quite-big-news-stuff-here-comes-postie.html

‎"Paul Mason's Soldier Legacy - Very impressive and definitely Australian to it's core. Usually genre comics are not my thing but Soldier Legacy whilst inspired by action and adventure comics is not derivative. If this was next to a Phantom comic when i was sixteen i would have flipped my lid. It's full of action and I had fun reading it. Looking forward to more." -John Retallick, The Comic Spot.

Thank you for the kind words, John :D I get a huge buzz when someone comments on the series,particularly when I'm buried in work and wondering if anyone actually enjoys the books for what they are. So thanks again.

John also comments on some great books from Bruce Mutard, Chris Sequeira, Matt Emery, Bobby N, Tom Taylor just to name a few. Australian comic book goodness.

The other news came from good friend Jason Franks, creator of McBlack, Sixsmiths, and the editor of Black House Comic's Terra Magazine (http://www.terramagazine.com.au/), who was interviewed this week by Emmett O'Cuana from the international Comics news and reviews site Comic Booked.com about the upcoming Melbourne event 'Big Arse 2'. The event will be launching 15 titles, from heaps of Australian creators, and all Australian publications. Jason has three titles in the launch, more information can be found during the podcast here: http://www.comicbooked.com/comic-booked-podcast-preview-interview-with-jason-franks/ where Jason and Emmett briefly discuss the Soldier Legacy's appearance in the Youi TV commercial (which is still playing! Saw it on 7Mate during the recent Sunday night Rambo movies :D). The website also liked the Blach House Comic's article, and the Ad on YouTube (Thanks Emmett!)

Thank you for the plug too, Jason; I should start paying you as my one-man PR firm!
http://podcasts.comicbooked.com/cbp9-interview-with-jason-franks-on-big-arse-2/


It's rare that I hear anything about the series outside of the Black House crew and the readers at the cons, and as much as I greatly appreciate it, I still value it greatly when a Podcast or Comic news blog acknowledges the work that I'm pushing out into the world. It happen's very rarely, but when it does, I'm very touched.

Another Random Page Update

Ok, still searching for a "look" that I want to give this first scene of Soldier Legacy #4, but it's a start. We'll see.

In the meantime, I think I'm about 2-3 pages away from completing the pencils for the issue, giving me roughly a month to colour and letter the book, and prep it for print. So, the very late nights will continue, at least until the first week in April, when I can go to bed at a reasonable time :)

The TPB is just about ready to rock and roll- I'm wanting to put a few pages preview of #4 in there, so there's those pages, plus a possible foreword going in there. Otherwise, it will just be a matter of finalizing the cover/spine (based on the thickness of the book in print), so provided I stick to the schedule, and keep juggling the other tasks (oh damn, Dark Detective #8 in the mix too!), I'm still in the ball park of achieving all this nonsense by the due dates :)

Fingers crossed for me, gotta run,
Paul

Random Page update: Soldier Legacy #4

Hey!

So I figure I've been a little quiet lately, due to the fact that I have several comic projects all due at the same time in March/April, and the unfortunate thing about being a 'one man army corp' in regards to pencils, colours, lettering and assembly, it doesn't leave much time to waffle away endlessly on blogs and social media (though I do manage a little craziness at 3am :P).

So anyway, since one of the books, Soldier Legacy #4, litters my work area floor (17-18 pages of pencils so far), and since I've shown virtually nothing of it (I'd hate to leak spoilers after all), here's a totally out-of-context page from the next issue, that doesn't give too much away (unless you haven't read issue 3, in which case, you may be a little lost ;P)

Anyways, back to it. A post of some more, if not limited, intellectual substance sometime soon :)

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