And the Winner Is...

Well, folks, it took a while, and the result was very close, but we finally have a winner for our Write a Caption Contest !

After a lengthy and highly subjective judging process, the three person panel of me, myself and I have chosen Jason Chalker and his witty entry as the winner! I think it was the Planet of the Apes reference that sealed it for me. You can read his genius above and see for yourself.

Jason will be receiving the semi-awesome prize-pack of my recent Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook children's comic as well as a selection of ultra-rare mini-comics by me.

Congratulations, Jason! And my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to enter. Clearly, there are some very funny writers among you. This was so much fun -- I think I'll run another contest soon.

Bad Inking Day

The "write a caption" contest is still going on (see previous entry), but I thought I'd share a gag I doodled after I had a bad inking day recently. It was one of those days where every line I set down was shaky and no amount of warming up would get rid of it. I don't usually get like that, and most often I just work through it and it goes away, but this time it stayed with me the whole day! It was especially frustrating because the day before, I felt like I was on a real roll and every line came off my brush with a "zing!"

Anyway, I drew this up after I finished up the day's work, to try and cheer myself up. And what do you know -- in the course of drawing and lettering it, my shaky line went away!

What is this monkey doing?

Sometimes, I'll doodle while watching TV. This is one I did while watching a recent press conference from the White House.

I hereby apologize in advance to anyone offended by sketches of apes giving the finger.

Wowie Special Contest!
Ok, here's an idea -- I've decided to run a contest to see who could write the best caption for this picture. So, if you're the creative copy-writing type and/or the compulsive contest-entering type, take your best shot in the comments section and I'll pick the winner at the end of October (or thereabouts).

And what does the winner recieve for his or her efforts? Howsabout a free copy of my recent Max Finder Mystery book and a rare stash of my mini-comics (so rare that I have to go deep into my closet to find them!). Is that enough to entice your creative juices? If your answer's no, well...that's all I got. But you answered yes or even "ehh..maybe, whatever", then enter today!*

*offer void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Some contestants may be asked to answer a skill testing question relating to the Jack Kirby era Fantastic Four. Well, maybe not.

See No Evil

Here's a spot illustration I did recently for Canadian Business Magazine (Tim Davin, art director). It was to accompany an article on stock regulators. It might sound pretty dry but really, how could I ever turn down an opportunity to draw monkeys?

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Who is Max Finder, you ask? Well, he's the 7th Grade detective who, together with his friend Alison Santos, solves mysteries and crimes around his neighbourhood in Whispering Meadows. He's also the star of the popular Max Finder Mystery comic feature that ran each month in Owl Magazine for the past 3 years. Now those you-solve-it stories are being collected up into a trade paperback series with the first volume hitting the shelves this month.

I'm thrilled to see it collected up in a paperback, as Max Finder Mystery was the first ongoing comic feature I ever drew, and I enjoyed working on it so much that it made me want to write and draw comics full time. I learned a lot about drawing comics in the 3 years I worked on it, and I had a great time illustrating the scripts by writer Liam O'Donnell.

For more information about Max Finder Mystery:Collected Casebook, you can check out the links below:

Visit the Owl magazine webpage for Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Read a sample Max Finder Mystery online at Owlkids.com

Read an interview with me on Silverbulletcomicbooks.com discussing Max Finder and other upcoming projects

Check out the website of Max Finder creator and writer, Liam O'Donnell

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook is available at your local bookstore, but you can also order it online directly from the publisher, Owlkids books, or through retailers like Chapters.ca and Amazon.com.

Finally, here's a promotional Max Finder poster I drew for the launch and Owl Magazine's 30th Anniversary Kids Day event at the CN Tower, here in Toronto:

Toronto Back Alleys Pt. 11

For those who asked, here are two more ink drawings of the alleys near my home in Toronto. The first was drawn earlier, at the start of the summer, while the second was drawn a week or so ago. As you might be able to tell, I was bit rusty when I drew the more recent one, and my markers were a little more worn down.

Fear Agent Part 2

This is a pin-up I did recently for Rick Remender's Fear Agent comic. Actually, it's the 2nd pin-up I've done for FA (you can see the first one here.) and it took way longer to draw than I originally thought. I drew the rough sketch for it fairly quickly, like under a half-hour, so I thought I'd probably knock out the final in markers over a couple of hours. Of course, sometimes things don't go as easily as planned, and after deciding to change up the lighting for more accuracy and added drama, I spent a full day learning how to draw double-lit figures in two colours. I still see a lot of problems/mistakes in this piece, but I thought I share it anyway.

Commissioned Heroes

This is a recent commissioned piece I drew up for a nice fellow who asked for Green Lantern or Doctor Fate. I threw in Superman and the Flash for the extra "Superfriends" feel, but being the geek I am, I decided to draw the old "earth-2" Superman (fellow geeks will get it). I think I just like the idea of drawing Superman with grey hair.

Anyway, the drawing was done is markers and then scanned and cleaned-up in photoshop. The original colour was green (surprise), but I changed it up for variety's sake. Below is the original small pencil rough.

The Grasshopper Part 3

Sorry about the delay between posts -- I had some snafus with blogger and my mac, which kept crashing. Anyway, here are a couple more pages from the Grasshopper. These were part of the preview/sample book I brought to the San Diego Comiccon. Thanks to everyone who's commented on this project -- I appreciate the kind words!

San Diego ComicCon Wrap-up!

I'll post more Grasshopper pages in a bit, but first, since I'm now sufficiently recovered from the experience, I thought I'd post some pics of my first visit to the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had no idea what to expect, and went down to sunny california with a great crew of fellow canadian artists including Ramon Perez, Rob Coughler, Andy Belanger, Cameron Stewart and my hotel-mate and fellow Kirby-obsessive, Steve Manale. These are actually Steve's photos that I'm posting, since I didn't snap a single picture while I was there! Thanks, Steve!


Sometimes you just gotta read the instructions...


Never mock the power of the Yellow Stripe!


Stylin' and Profilin' at the beach...


...ah, the beach!


Frank Cammuso and his lovely wife, Ngoc, demonstrate their musical-theatre background with an impromptu display of jazz-hands. Ramon Perez is mildly amused.


Our fellow Canadians miss their flight. Ramon feels a migrane coming on as Andy B. prepares to optic-blast Cameron Stewart from across the cramped hotel room.


You know its time to leave when you get this jaded. Kill your idols, Steve!

More Grasshopper!

More pages from the Grasshopper. For those who asked, these were drawn in marker and cleaned up digitally. The final book will be drawn completely in the same manner. I'll post more info and pages soon. Thanks for looking!

The Grasshopper!

Its been a few weeks witthout a blog post, so I'll apologize again for the delays. I've had quite a hectic month, including my first ever trip to the San Diego ComicCon. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the event, but I had a great time nonetheless. My thanks to all my fellow Toronto cartoonists who went down to the US with me, including Ramon Perez, Steve Manale, Rob Coughler, Andy Belanger and Cameron Stewart and to all the very nice artists and comic-people I finally had a chance to meet in person! Special thanks to also Frank Cammuso, who was gracious enough to let me and Steve use his booth as a homebase. I owe my gratidude to you all for making my first visit such a fun and exciting one.

One of the things I brought to show at the con was a 7 page sample I wrote and drew up for an action-adventure comic book I'm working on called the Grasshopper! I've been wanting to write and draw a straight-ahead, full-throttle action and kung-fu story for a little while now, and I've finally gotten the opportunity to do so with this one. Below is the artwork for the first 2 pages. Of course, the REAL action begins on page 3...and doesn't stop for another 45 pages! And if you like these pages, fear not, I'll post more Grasshopper artwork soon.

el Capitan!

Here's yet another Captain America drawing I did recently. I think I doodle Captain America these days almost as much as Iron Man -- and whenever I do, I can't resist "going all Kirby" on it! I've always loved the way Jack Kirby drew Captain America with the boxer shorts and the meaty hands. And, getting all geek-history here, I gotta say that the definitive Kirby inker on Captain America was Frank Giacoia. Those two made one heck of a team-up.

work work work

Well, I'm still very busy drawing some new comic pages, so I'm posting another image from my files. This one's a spot illustration I did last year for Canadian Business Magazine, and I thought I'd share it because its a good example of the kind of editorial work I do. Unlike many of my recent pieces, this one was painted old-school style in gouache.

BTW, I think I've drawn several variations on the "multi-armed, multi-tasking worker" in my career and I don't think I'm the only illustrator who has done so -- it seems to be a visual concept that comes up again and again. For further proof, check out the example by my friend and fellow artist, Ramon Perez, on his blog.

House of Fran

I've been very busy drawing up some new comic pages, so my apologies for not updating this blog more frequently. I'll try and post more stuff soon. In the meantime, here's a quick marker cartoon I did of my wife, Claudia (aka Fran), who also has her own sketchblog called the Fran Pages. Its filled with her excellent drawings and illustrations -- needless to say, I'm a fan!

Toronto back alleys pt 10

Another drawing in ink-markers, done a few weeks ago.

My Name is Eunice Jung

This is actually a story I wrote years ago, which I recently revisited and re-drew. Like "Night Time", the other story posted on my blog, it was originally published in the local magazine, Taddle Creek as their "illustrated fiction" feature. Recently, the very excellent Korean comic publisher, Sai Comics, contacted me with an offer to reprint this and some of my other comics for Korean audiences (and translated into Hangul!) in their anthology series. Well, after seeing some of the other comics going in the same book, and after taking a look at how badly I drew and lettered this years ago, I decided to re-do most of the artwork before allowing it to be published again.

Now normally I wouldn't redraw old artwork, since its like going backwards, but this time I thought might be fun. Especially since the story was only 2 pages long and really simple. I was fairly happy with the results, and it was actually a nice break to work on from the longer stuff I'm drawing now.

The Black Coat

This is a recent pin-up drawing I did for fellow artist Francesco Francavilla and his very nice comic book, the Black Coat. Its a historical adventure, set around the time of the American revolution and features a mysterious hero in, what else, a black coat.

Since the comic has such an interesting historical setup for the stories, I tried to keep some of that period background and mood in my drawing. As with everything else recently, I drew this one in 2 colours with Pitt pens and then cleaned it up digitally. You can compare the final against my original mini-sized, quickie pencil rough below:

Pages Books Signboard

A while back I posted an entry on a window display I did for Pages Bookstore in Toronto over the winter. Shortly afterwards, I was asked by owner Marc Glassman if I wanted to design a sandwich board for them. Having really enjoyed the experience of painting the large pieces for the window display, I said yes on the condition that I got to paint the final boards myself, rather than having them fabricated or painted by someone else.

Below are some sketches and photos showing the progress from rough idea to completed signboards.


After a few initial thumbnails, this was the final colour sketch I drew up for the 2 sides of the signboard. Originally, I was hoping to find some way to have the top of the heads protude above the sign, but that proved unfeasable.


Here they are in progress at the studio. The boards were just over 4 feet tall by 2 and 1/2 feet wide, and I painted them in acrylics.


And an installed view of the final boards. Not much difference from sketch to final, just a few minor tweaks here and there on the images.

Toronto back alleys pt 9

My sincere thanks to everyone who has commented on this series of drawings. I've had a lot of fun working on them -- it's been a good way for me to get loose and spontaneous after a few years of doing very slick and tight commercial illustrations for children's books.

Toronto back alleys pt 8

I noticed today that the leaves on the trees are already losing that new-green colour and becoming rich and dark for summer. Personally, I like that early green the best, especially when the trees are wet and black after a rain. Then that lime colour just sizzles to me.

Toronto back alleys pt 7

This one's really more like Toronto back yards.

I enjoy drawing in all the wires, cable-boxes, satelite dishes, pipes and antennaes that sprout out of downtown homes. To me, these back yards and alleys are natural places. They seem to evolve slowly and in unexpected ways - a new rooftop deck here, a new addition to the kitchen there (maybe with some aluminum siding and a rebuilt laundry pole) -- it all seems very organic. Its in sharp contrast to all the giant waterfront condos and preplanned communities going up around Toronto lately.

Toronto back alleys pt 6

A couple more spring-time drawings of the back alleys in my neighbourhood.

Toronto back alleys pt 5

Another drawing of back alleys in my neighbourhood. Its spring now and all the city trees have new green on them, so I've tried to include a hint of that in this sketch. Like most of the other drawings I've posted lately, this one was also drawn in brush-pens on cream coloured paper.

My favourite superheroes Pt. 3

Continuing on my recent theme of favourite childhood superheroes:

Captain America!

I don't know about you, but these days when I mention I like Captain America to non-comic readers, they often look at me like I'm insane. They can accept Spider-man and Batman because of the recent movies, but to many of them, the idea of a guy running around wearing a flag and being patriotic seems hopelessly old-fashioned and ridiculous. Or worse: ultra-conservative and jingoistic. And certainly some of the Captain America comics I've seen recently don't help the point. I read one where he threw a terrorist bad-guy to his death from a train. After that, I closed the comic and threw it away.

But it wasn't always this way. The Captain America I read as a kid was a Kirby super-hero! That meant he stood for truth and justice, not trash-talking and revenge. And he was always the underdog in those stories, always taking a pounding and always struggling against impossible odds to show how anyone with will and determination could find a way to triumph against oppression and injustice. He didn't kill any one. He fought fascists. What more can I say? It was good adventure stuff for a kid to read and grow up on.

More collaborative goodies

Last week was very hectic and busy, so its time to post another drawing "from the files". This one was a collaborative page that was printed in the book that the excellent Toronto comic shop, the Beguiling, put together to give away at last year's Free Comic Day. They ran a series of 1 and 2 page stories showcasing a variety of canadian comic talent and this one was the contribution by Darwyn Cooke, Brian McLachlan and myself.

Now how did I get mixed up with such illustrious canadian cartoonists on such a momentous continuity-shaking project? Well, its a long story. The short version is that Darwyn Cooke was given two pages in the book, and generously offered to share one with Brian McLachlan. After trying to brainstorm a one page idea together for a while with little success, somehow Darwyn decided that the funniest thing for him to draw would involve me in a cowboy hat (even longer story there, so forget it). So he roughed out the story and drew up a quick pencil page, which he sprung on me to ink up the day before it was due at the printers. Nice.

Anyway, to make up for the short amount of time, Darwyn very graciously told me I could walk all over his drawing, and redraw things as I saw fit. His mistake. Needless to say, I took him at his word and changed/botched/mis-read everything! Now, while I was inking this, Brian wrote the excellent dialog and jokes to go with the story and we got it all in just a couple of seconds before the deadline. And of course, I got my revenge for the cowboy hat joke by doing a terrible set of likenesses of us all in the last panel.

Outta Space!

No, this isn't one of the travel sketches I mentioned earlier, but rather a sci-fi sample I drew up recently. Its based on Rick Remender and Tony Moore's excellent Fear Agent comic book, published by Image. I really like the homage to Wally Wood/EC-type sci-fi they've got going in the comic and wanted to incorporate some of that feel into this drawing...but in my own 2-colour style of course!

I want to give Special Thanks here to the Jimmy Olsen Club buddies for their crits and comments when I was trying to work this one out. Especially to Ramon Perez for the quick re-pose. My gratitude to you all, guys.

Odds and Ends

This will be the last post from me for a week or so while I'm out of town, so I thought I'd share a variety of things. These are miscellaneous sketches and illustrations that have accumilated over the last year or two. I'll be back soon with some nice travel sketches but for now, I hope you'll enjoy some of these:


For all non-comic geeks: Jor-el is the father of Superman. This was my contribution to a drawing-jam on the drawing board.


This was an invite for a summer bbq at my house a while back. Dormammu did not attend. Dr.Strange was there, but only in spirit.


The Conservative Party of Canada is BACK!


These were from a series of spots on water-skiing safety for Cottage Life Magazine.