Questions, questions...

Morten wanted to see the pencils to #11 so here they are...notice that true to form our guys in gold walk into this locale muddying up the floor with let us say Wetworks matter. Oh and that's the whole team except for Dane. In gold its Dozer, Clay, Jester, and Pilgrim. Grail in human form (this is before he gets the "blue"). With Mother in her spiked look at bottom. Notice Dozer has white spikey hair. The real Dozer (Joseph Mendoza...my brother-in-law) is now a vice Principal in Sun City, California and if he had more hair it probable would all be white pretty soon. Clay is still bald and with today's fashions he will be sporting lots of different headgear and eye gear. With two pretty ladies (Mother and Red) I thought I'd go meek with this incarnation of Pilgrim, it'll go better with her shy character and how she blends into any background.

Lots of questions from the comments sections so thought I'd try to get to them here in one post...

Yup, my contract is up and for insurance reasons hope to sign up again with DC and of course the chance to do Wetworks because like I've been saying there are zillions of things I still want to say with the characters BUT...

...we have to be real (a fact made clear to me again before 2006 ended) I created the book but the book is not mine to do with what I would want. If there was a possibility for me to get the copyright back I would jump thru whatever hoops there need be to get my baby back, we can't take back the past, its gone, its been done, all we can do is the best we can with whatever we have to play with now. Wildstorm has been great in giving me the leeway to do what I want but there are realities to deal with. My page rate demands the book sells a certain amount, we all know that sales all around ain't what it use to be so sales are now a priority 'cuz it cost money to put these books out. In that light of course a company that holds my exclusive needs me to sell books, that's totally understandable and part of the game, so when push came to shove and my output dropped last year because I had to go on insulin I had to temporarily go off of Wetworks and finish Batman (which will end for me the end of this month). We had originally planned to finish Batman by December and then go full throttle to finish the first WW's story arc but my body just couldn't do the load last year and so instead of postphoning the series we opted to go on with fill-ins to keep the series going forward of course with me peeking over everyones shoulders... the same decision being made with Rich Friends the inker. We are both contract guys and the company makes the decisions. I am not a young and lone wolf anymore I have a family of three growing kids to feed and body that is medically failing so health insurance is my top priority. I mean lets face it if my doctors can't help me keep me in the best shape I can be in with diabetees then I can't draw. So I need the insurance to stay healthy and to draw.

So to the point, with all those reasons running around I have to make the decisions I have to make. If Wetworks was mine I would implement immediately everything I have been talking about and a million more things to boot. But it is not, I am a contract player, I can only do what they will allow me to do. Now if zillions of people were buying Wetworks then the company would let me do anything I wanted. For that I thank you all for the support you've been giving this book and its stalwart characters. You guys have made this book thru the years survive and grow. I mean who would a thought we would be here with a brand new series now in 2007. No one thought in their wildest dreams (well I did in my dreams) that we would ever see our guys in gold dance again. So please, like life my friends, enjoy what you have in front of you with no reservations, enjoy it and your loved ones as they are and for what they are, while you have them. No one knows what the future has in store for us. If faith is pre-written for more Wetworks or if it isn't enjoy what you have now, don't muddy your enjoyment with what might happen, as I've found out with my health the future is something you have very little if any control of. you can only do your best, with best intentions, and be happy with that...

So on to news...in the next few weeks I will know for sure what will happen in my drawing future. I have been given assurances that it will still be with the DC family, but the details as to what is still up in the air, again in the next week or two should be definite news. One thing that I can almost be sure of is we have been talking for awhile of a new Wetworks mini/maxi series. I handed in the synopsis a few weeks ago and the editor is gung-ho about that, that most likely will be what I will immediately be working on after I finish my last page of Batman. DC wants me to do something for DC being that if we renew they will be the ones holding my contract so I naturally should do something for them but I do still want to do Wetworks so I think we are leaning towards me doing a DC mini and a Wetworks mini annually. Or a DC mini and work on Wetworks the series with built in breaks to do the DC mini but I control the breaks.

As to what the DC thing would be it would be cool to have your suggestions as to what DC character you think I could do something with...suggestions?

As you know with solicitations WW's #5 and #6 were my pencils with Brian Haberlin's digital inks (Thanx to 'da Almighty Francis Takenaga for overseeing...an ole WW's alumnai) , then we have #7 thru #9 the ending of the first arc with fill-ins by Peter Gross a great guy who really cares about the book and his work on it. That will take us up to the re-introduction of the old team. Then #10 has J.M. DeMatteis writing a special short arc about Ab-death. I felt before we could get into the real mayhem that follows the reintroduction of the old team we needed to fill the void somewhat with one of our new characters...namely Ab-death. If we didn't take this time I think he might have gotten lost in the excitement of so many characters in one book, so we needed a short break.

The arc is touched off by the image in my mind of the new team checking out their new digs and they see Ab-death walking down the hallway and they wonder who and what he is. For our military guys in gold this is a macho challenge seeings how Ab-death is well over six feet in height and maybe close to four hundred pounds or at least he looks it. So especially for Dozer he would want to see where this Ab-death guy fits in. Is he another strong guy to challenge Dozers position or what? What skills does this guy have? He looks the part but does he walk the walk? Lots of questions that the team would want answered before they could accept him. So we went about thinking about who Ab-death really is, then someone mentioned (I forget who) that since he is part of the Dead world where souls are could it be he has more than a fleeting connection with souls. Then our fearless editor Scott Peterson had the audacity to approach a veteran writer like J.M. Dematteis, who to my shameless surprise was intrigued by the character of Ab-death. After a couple of bouts of e-mail conferencing Marc (as he is called) came up with a self-contained story that takes us for a ride because it heavily employs Mother and Dane and more importantly gives us glimpse into the reality of what Ab-death has become.

After having these short conferences with Marc I was honored to have him write a few issues of Wetworks. Marc has a well known spiritual side to him that makes him emminently qualified to see the sides of Ab-death that us less inclined to would be able to witness.

First we had Mike Carey a modern vertigo and now Marvel wiz who wrote the beginnings of our humble new series who who would have thought was a Wetworks fan of the old series and then now to have a writer like JMD be inerested in one of our new characters. A great sign that Wetworks is still working and it is definitely growing...

The mini that I have planned that is going thru the approval process deals strictly with the aftermath of the first story arc. That and specifically being how Dane deals with the new horrific status quo that ends up in his lap. He makes a monumental decision that men in his position are from time to time and forced to make. The story then deals with how the team takes that decision and what it means to mankinds future in dealing with the Night Tribes. With three full mission scenarios within the arc we get to see how this new setup of a two team Wetworks can and will work. Mission scenarios was an idea I had with the first series that we never got around to do. I've always wanted to take you readers thru a full mission from start prep to target acquisition and green lighted battle to mission debriefing, the full nine yards. That we will do in this arc because it is the best way to show how the new team configuration works. It also then reveals a dark and frankly bloody side to the Dane. We start on the path to remind you all that our fearless leader is truely alone. In other words the price he makes himself pay for the leadership role he plays. That will hopefully trigger a future mini I have in mind that shows how Dane is able to keep his sanity intact. The let us say virtual solution he comes up with to solve his sanity problem. In that we make clear his words in the Wetworks preview where he intimates that mother is the key to everything. We will learn that she is the key to not Wetworks direct future but to Danes sanity...then third on the list for story arcs is after the aftermath of the first arc is given its proper time to "incubate" (let's see if anyone can figure out that clue) the result is a war with the night tribes we have never witnessed before...so maybe then we'll need yet a third Wetworks strike team...hhhhhmmmmmmmm

Hey I'm back...

Sorry people been away for abit doing Conventions, commissions, finishing Batman, lots of Wetworks planning stuff that I can't talk about yet, and my contract with DC is up next month so been figuring what's gonna happen and how and when...will have alot of updates added by tonight (westcoast time)...

...but to tide you over here's the cover for WW #11 it's a simple little scene not actually in the issue but a scene that would happen...the first meet and greet between the two Wetworks teams...

YOU asked to see the whole image...

Mother in color...

Here they are in color, I did this in Photoshop last night on top of digital inks...again this is part of my new banner for CON's...that scribble in the background will eventually become a penciled Batman...

Mother...

Mother will be a major character this time round...not only is she key to Dane's plan she will be one of the two keys as to the secret of the symbiotes...

This is a piece that will be digitally inked by myself for the banner that the Grail drawing is part of...

Grail...

As before we will play up Grail being self-conscious of his looks. Therefore he will have a Philippine movie star look to him and be very fashion conscious...

For those in the know Grail this time around will be loosely modeled (looks and character) around the actor Robin "Bad Boy" Padilla...

Jester...

This new Jester is more dark looking foreshadowing the darker character he will play this time round. Although originally he was always gonna be one of our more tragic characters...

Again mixed media, mostly colored pencils and Copic markers...

Pilgrim...

The new Pilgrim is more ethnic looking. As originally she is of Native Indian descent. All new versions of the original team will look more characteristic than superheroic.

Notice the large cat-like eyes...

This is a mixed medium technique and she came out more bronze than golden...what do you think?

WW #9 cover...Dane in new armor...

Last minute changes to WW #7 cover...read:no nudity...

I was asked last week to denudify Red on this cover so I opened up Photoshop and added a few lines here and there and then couldn't help but enhance the depth of field and color FX...the finished peice ended up coverying up some of the drawing but the goal of the piece was to show Red as she would appear in the Dead World where everyone living appears as a shining glowing figure...

The new Wetworks armory...inventory 111...

Digital INKS...

I personally digitally inked this piece. It is part of the WW's #10 cover and will be used for a banner I will use during conventions. Issues WW #5 and #6 are digitally inked by Brian Haberlin's studio...cudo's to Francis, the man...

Steps are...

1) Scan and then "level" in Photoshop to look as close to the original as possible...

2) Since you always get alot of pencil "dirt" and smudges using a 100% tiny "pencil" in Photoshop to "erase" as much dirt as possible...zooming in liberally on the image...

3) Apply "Contrast" in Photoshop until the pencil lines start to darken and look like inked lines, tho' not too much so that the hatch lines start blending into each other...

4) Then laso and fill in with black all black areas...

5) Finally take a very tiny pencil (in Photoshop) with 100% white and make sure all "halo's" have no dirt or extra lines drawn thru them, making sure all white outlines (around figures and for some hair) are purely open and white...

Guess who???...

WW#5 cover...

Here's the cover for WW#5. You don't see this on the Wildstorm site because it wasn't finished in time for solicitations (when they announce a comic book usually four months before it goes to print). I had the bare bones meat of the image done but none of the background and nitty gritty detail of the actual figure. Again, this is a full computer painting, done in Photoshop except for the fairy sparkles done in Painter...

For the fans this is a beast. It is usually a criminal vampire that lives its entire life in beast mode. It is forced into the bestial state by the psi-powers of a BeastMaster. It is controlled by him at all times, so he must stay near a Beast. Powerful BeastMasters, ones that hail from Royal Vampire Bloodlines are said to be able to control many Beast at once. These Beast are the Shocktroops of the Vampire Nation. They are the enforcers of the Nations laws. Notice the metallic armbands and oversized metallic boots the Beast always wear, these are safety mechanisms. Should a BeastMaster loose control of his charge or suddenly die these metallic bands activate powerful magnets that lock the Beast's arms and legs together rendering him immobile...so yes, this cover signifies the Vampire Nations return to Wetworks...

Liquid Thoughts #2

The first scene with Vascar feeding in mid-flight on a handglider, and the next scene with a Werewolf in full beast mode both show a vampire and a werewolf in beast mode but in control of themselves. A very tiny clue which is hard to see is that the clothes on both of them are not ripping or tearing. A sign that both of these creatures come from a world where they design clothing to make adjustments for transforming. In this case clothing made with rubber like stretching qualities.

Another thing to notice is the army green soldiers are the ones advancing while the high tech soldiers stay by Danes side to protect him.

During the interrogation scene we start to learn a few things about Ashe. Namely he being a werewolf (and in this moment in human form) (again notice now in his smaller size form as a human his clothes still fit him). A mall not notice the insignia on Dane's sleeve, that's the new Wetworks logo.

The next scene with Vascar in the alleyway bears a continuity blooper which won't become apparent until issue #4. Vascar is dressed as he is dressed in issue #4 but in issue #4 he has two stripes on the front of his jumper. The correct version is the one with stripes. This is my fault. That's what you get when you as a penciller don't keep track of your pages. You see issue #4 there is a big flashback with Vascar and others wearing the same outfit.

I really like everything about this scene. It's a great intro for Vascar and the kind of a person he is and it sets-up events to come all in two pages. The addition of strong white highlights (by Wendy) really add to the form of the figures and most importantly the mood of this scene. Here also is where we strongly establish the broken shadows motif that follows Vascar and his dastartly actions. Large irregular blocks of black used as a mood enhancing design element...here they are in full black ink while in later issues we play with changing the opacity and color of this blocks...all part of experimenting with the medium...

The next page with Mother still unconscious we see one of the code "enhancements" done to this page to keep it safe for kiddies. Yup, this issue also was originally done when this new relaunch was gonna be for mature readers only.

The next scene holds lots of little touches. The computer guy is Dane's man. He is the Wetworks complex head geek. We also see next to Dane in panel four Dane's attache, the one we were introduced to in the second preview. This is the guy who runs the Wetworks complex. And also notice Dane's gaurds flanking the jumpjet.

Next we show Dane levitating the team down to San Francisco. Here we showoff another of Dane's abilities and thereby start to get into dangerous ground. It's called the Superman complex, when a hero gets too powerful, too infalleable, he becomes boring because no one can beat him. Which is why Kryptonite was created for Superman. So we must create something to bring Dane down a couple of notches. The hint is the headgear he wears, which is the result of an event in Dane's past...which we will slowing reveal as the book goes on...not now...

Originally Mike had Mother fully waking in issue #1 I told him I thought after having her dead for all this time and then wake her up right away was to subservient to the story and therefore her wakening should spread out and take longer and have complications so we can later allude to errors in her reboot...so the prior Mother scene in this issue and this brilliant Frankenstein-ish wake up scene was Mike's answer. This exemplifies the kind of working relation we had. I would suggests things and explain my point of view and if he saw my point he would deftly weave it into his story as if it were apart of his original first take.

In the next few scene's we see the team for the first time in combat and it's not that pretty, in the sense that it's not a coordinated attack, it's sloppy, it eventually results in a win of sorts but not a decisive clean win. We also start to see Mike weaving this new kind of a battle field, the Dead World. We have already established this other world and it's creatures that can transgress into our world and now we introduce a character (Ab-death) that can effect them in their world. A new possibility. We start to see as readers a new need. Question is can Wetworks answer that need. Is the original team or this new team equipped to handle this new battle field? This is a conscious effort to expand the reason for reviving this book and its characters.

Notice too how even tho' Dane doesn't understand exactly what Ab-death did and how he did it he quickly and quietly accepts the win and immediately sees the new threat and the path he must take and goes. This is pure Dane, pure military. He doesn't understand why the creature exploded but knows it has something to do with Ab-death accepts it and files it away for later use. This means he doesn't fully accept Ab-death either. Notice also he doesn't berate Red and Ab-death for the sloppiness of the fight but blames only himself. He is the leader and it is his fault if he hasn't pulled his team together properly. So you can bet he is on his silent intercommunications system and is putting the old team on alert...what started as a simple mission of capturing a single lone vampire is growing into a complicated mess...how big will it get...how much must Dane adjust his resources to this growing threat...where is this all leading?

Attached image is a compilation of some of the sketches done for Vascar...all done on a computer tablet PC...

Liquid Thoughts #3

This is the issue where we really get into Mike Carey's territory...horror. We start in a disco, where any decent Vampire with delusions of granduer would galavant in. It is after hours and Dane and the S.F. Police are on the scene. They are shifting thru the remains of forty odd bodies, or parts of bodies. I love how thruout this scene with the police sargeant Mike handles all of the characters and places them in their proper positions. Notice rarely is anyone is just standing there, except Dane who's role in most situations is to stand there and oversee the situation and give orders. I think Mike would indeed make a great movie director.

Then we have the next scene, which is exactly what I had hope Mike would bring to the series, Vascar's mystical version of a human computer. Fingers for a keyboard, hearts for harddrives, eyes for a monitor, and a head for a CPU...brilliant. And to add to it the constant tension in dialogue between the Blood Box and Vascar...I could just imagine this scene playing out on the big screen.

The interaction of Dane and the eam in the next scenes is a wonderful part of working with a writer who loves his characters and how they would fit together. Mike and I had talked a little of how they would work together like a CSI team/detective team piecing together pieces of a puzzle and that driving the plot. Here we see the whole team individually contributing. That's how you build a team put them into a situation and watch them work together.

More than anything else this issue (in terms of just the team) we watch and see a new kind of a team form. In the original series we watched as an attack team was put together. We introduced individuals that together formed a complete team designed to attack and destroy a target. Here we are now seeing a team assembled together that solves problems/tracks targets. A wholly different team than the original Wetworks. That is a conscious effort, I wanted to bring back the original team as it was. It worked so well as they were...assembled killers. But I realized that's all they were. Even Mother who is smarter and more analytical she still is at the core a killer too, and therefore limited. In any effort to revisit the Wetworks world I realized we must expand on its theme somehow. My solution was adding a new kind of a team, a new team that would complement the old team. As we progress in the series we will see that this new team tho' individually they are made up of great fighters, together they are best put to the task of analyzing and tracking.

We have seen the new team in a fight already and we will see them in countless more fights but we will also show that this team is not really built for action. As in issue two where they fought the "oil slick" creature, Dane and Red at best held their own with the creature never really hurting it. Ab-death dealt the final blow to the creature but no one including himself understood what he actually did. Analytically we can look at this team and see we have Ashe, who is a loner, Ab-death who is not quite sure who he is and what he is capable of, and then we have Red, who is trained as a lone bodygaurd and Dane, who is a leader. These pieces do not fit together to make a cohesive attack team. They don't fit together well...at least in terms of fighting enemies.

The gratuitous violence in the BART train scene was my fault. The plot originally had Vascar break the driver's neck. I felt after smashing the guys face into a building (in issue #2) snapping a neck was too tame for this character. Vascar always needs to show he is better, more powerful, suave, disgusting, over the edge...crazy.

The next scene is the first reveal of the consequence of Mothers new configuration. In the original series she was bionic, mostly human but with bionic enhancements. Now she is almost entirely tech with very little organic matter. As such she can control every inch of her tech body. Here for her vain side she was built with tech skin which she can manipulate in any way she desires. She can reinforce parts of herself by layering, she can reform her tech skin into any kind of a weapon desired. She can remotely connect to any signal or system. She can even play online games.

Notice the clothes and adornments Vascar is wearing. There was much talk about Vascar's demeanor. He is to be very avantgarte, very much like a Rockstar, a showboater, flamboyant, an exhibitionist. I had drawn up about ten possible outfits for him to wear so Mike and I could make sure we were on the same page with where we wanted Vascar as a character to go. If we had more time, and if readers were more willing to wait to see things progress I would have liked to seen alot of scenes with Vascar out on the town. I would have like to have seen him in the VIP lounge of the disco with celebrities.

As we see with the last few scenes the team is not all that together in terms of fighting or even capturing even one target. They just don't work well together. They don't see things as one. Therefore as a fighting team they are destined to lose more than they win. So here Vascar escapes to live another day to drive the plot further. But before he leaves we see that he can indeed be hurt.

We end with Ashe transporting Dane and Mother to his world of Thea Mater...the world of old fashion Science fiction/fantasy. The world I am at home with.

Mike deftly shows us boat loads of horror and then easily segways us into sci-fi. That is the core of the book. The idea that the superhero genre actually contains within itself any genre easily is I think becoming more and more reality. The way modern comics have broken the barrier of the superhero was to expand its worlds into other genre's....

Attached is a compilation of sketch's done for Buller, again all done on the computer, no paper was harmed...

Remember this...

Post to Myself...

Got behind on the blog so I am posting an online reminder to myself to accomplish by end of next week to have post on commentary for Wetworks issues #2 and #3. #2 came out a month ago and #3 just last week. Also I want to post the actual art process of how I draw now...there you have it by end of next week three new post...

BTW-attached image is just me testing out color pencils and markers with acrylic highlights, notice the Batman. Did that about a month before I started drawing Batman...so I guess it was my first official rendition...

Hey People...

Been gone awhile doing this that and the other thing and am finally back. Everything that happens and effects Wetworks you will read about here. Alot has been happening, mostly work on Batman, but what had me off kilter for the last month was my diabetes. After three years of good regular blood sugar controls my pancreas is failing, meaning it is not producing the correct amount of insulin. In fact less and less. So for the past few weeks I have been on insulin injections to keep my sugar levels continuously even as possible. The reason I am telling you all about this is that what it means is when my sugars are out of control I can't concentrate and can't work. When my sugars are good little buggers I can concentrate evenly and work my butt off. It also means that if you see me at a convention I will be taking strict meal breaks every four hours. So I ask you all out there for patience while I try to adjust my life to the inevitable ups and downs of my condition.

Personally it's kinda disappointing to have to be taking insulin injections. I have been trying so hard since my diabetic coma in the summer of 2000 to keep my sugar levels normal, but my Doc says no matter what I do my pancreas failing was an inevitability. It was just a matter of time.

This isn't the end-all there are many, many other diabetics worst off than I. I've had relatively an easy time with my diabete's. For that I thank GOD. I've got many, many, many years of productive art ahead of me. It's just a matter of adjusting my life style to fit my condition. As simple as that. It has taken me all these years since 2000 to retrain my artistic brain to draw again. All this time to recalibrate my artist eye to see the world as I use to see it. My hand to reliably follow the minute, subtle commands my brain gives it artistically.

You can't understand what my mind went thru that one day before August of 2000 I could draw with the ease that a lifetime of art training had given me and then in one day to wake up after losing one week in my life and all of a sudden thirty pounds lighter, not being able to walk, in fact barely being able to stand, but most important not being able to draw anymore. My mind could see what I wanted to draw but my hand couldn't accomplish it. It was six months before I could pick up a pencil again and draw SOMETHING, anything. It was a year later before I could draw somewhat like I use to. My biggest problem being not being able to "see" with my eye whether things like eyes and ears were aligned or even the same size. Sometimes I couldn't even see if what I had drawn was any good at all. In 2002 to 2004 I had thought I had it back and as you could see by the uneven quality of some of my work then like StormWatch. I was still being effected by my diabetes.

The last two years are joyous ones for me because my condition was under control most of the time and I was able to draw six issues of Wetworks and four issues of Batman with the style and quality very reminiscent of my old style.

Now is another time of adjusting for me but thankfully I can still draw. I am feeling great especially because now and for the last two years I can draw anything I want to...again. Wait til you see what I have in store for our guys and gals in gold. I've got so much planned for them. I am thrilled by the response so far to the storyline and can't wait til you see what's to come...

Attached is the cover to WW's #6 my fave cover so far of the new series...

Blast from the past...

Someone also wanted to see some of the old covers so here are two and thruout we'll occassionally show you more of the old glory...