Merry Christmas, folks!

Talk about blog abandonment.

I hadn't posted anything since before the layoff. Here are my inks over Scotty's lines for the MAM Christmas card. You can see my final colored version over on the book's blog.

It was a kick to see Scotty's take on Denver, we've all seen his take on the Cloak and obviously no one can draw Phantom Ace like he can.

I've got some stuff that's been piling up, art-wise, I'll try to get it doled out over the next couple weeks.

BulletproofBeetle more costume tweaks

So here's some more tweaks to the Bulletproof Beetle's costume. I added a little extra to the suit make it a little leass glaringly simple. Location appropriate anti-friction ribbing in that cool muted blue that used to be his whole suit.

I hope it makes the look just a little more interesting while still clearly envoking feelings of the classic Blue Beetle and the Phantom.

Inspectre hittin' the pipe

I screwed up the Inspectre's pipe again....it's supposed to droop down a bit and I keep drawing it straight. As you can see he's found some evidence and he'll be doing on inspectreeng, inspectrung, inspectoring...he'll figure it out.

Starshield, RetroRobot, Megabolt and more...

The more being those two little bullets bouncing off of Megabolt's hand.

This is the raw scan of a battle damaged Jimmy (mid-sword fight) and some other stuff. Pen sketches on copy paper.

Starblast coming to IMAX 3D...

...well 3D anyway.

I used the ideas they've got over at CubeeCraft as a basis for the design

KRAGG in hi-fidelity technicolor

Kragg The Savage One... in color

KRAGG!

Here's a look at the monster from the forthcoming story by Scotty and I. I've begun referring to him as KRAGG, in true old school Marvel fashion.

I like this drawing because it's incorporating all the aspects I picked up from doing the monster in different artist's style, but hopefully let my own shine through. I was focusing on keeping the tree-trunk arms and fluid tendrills. I forgot the four eyes thing and I don't like the open hand all that much.

I included the raw scan on the inks w/o any of the much needed clean-up and the prelim pencils.

Inspectre...with no overcoat

That's right, I'm turning this into a fashion blog!

So, for the first time in a long time I managed to get some attitude into a drawing, and just my luck it's on a guy with no face. Here's the rawscan of my ghost w/ the most.

I'm gonna adjust the hat brim a bit digitally, it's a little too wide and droopy and I've noticed my unwillingness to draw fingers is returning...I expect that to be a trend that'll ramp up again in the coming posts. I mean really, in todays fast-paced world, who really has time for digits

Mysterious Mystery Guy

I drew this one QUITE a while ago. I remember speciically adding a bunch of that shadowy crosshatching mess to further hide the character's identity (not that anyone would know who he is). I had planned on doing a cryptic "this is a secret concept that I'm working on" kinda post....and never did. This idea is kind of on standby for now, but it's a pretty solid one.

So enjoy a random drawing...out of context.

BulletproofBug on the run

Here's the BulletproofBug in his more heroic duds. I washed out a whole lotta the blue so that I was left with a very steely grey instead. The enchanted scarab is black (obsidian) so there's no real reason to tie the character to the color blue anymore.

This look s definitely up for debate still. I still wanna stick with the classic look and not get too many "Hey, Cool grey Phantom in short sleeves, dickhead." comments...we'll see.

Monster From The Grave

So this is one that I'm really quite proud of...a rarity, so that's nice.

That forward most tentacle still bugs me because it's not fluid like the rest (I may change it). I think I finally nailed some of the Kirby-monster stubbiness that I was going for in earlier prelim stuff.

I might have done a wee bit of borrowing from Khary Randolph...or rather totally swiped the pose from him.

The Bulletproof Bug circa 1923

What first began as a love letter to an old Golden Age superhero in the form of an archetype tribute, has evolved into a character that I've REALLY grown fond of.

In an effort to still envoke the feelings of the classic BlueBeetle, IndianaJones, and thePhantom, alot of the visual cues are still the same as they've always been (with slight tweaks here and there). I ended up changing the name again, to move him a little further away from the source material that inspired it. I don't want anyone to think that I'm naive enough to believe this guy is wholey original, but I do want him to stand out like a viable archetype character similar to the respect that Omni-Man and TomStrong receive.

This is his short-lived look before he gets his real superhero duds on after he returns to Major City. His adventures abroad had groomed him into a rough & tumble fighter, bringing justice to the streets.

Doc Shaner does STARBLAST

I posted this on deviantart, so I figured I should throw it up here too.

-matt

USS Shiney Head

There was a nice young lady who came a took a picture and asked about the book on Saturday of the LongBeach Con. I guess she was from the LongBeachTelegram and put this one of myself and James Riot working on his 15 hour comic.

Happy Halloween folks!

Stay safe kiddies!

Zombie Self-portrait

Here's a zombie self-portrait from 2006

Of Man and Monster colors

More prelim stuff for "Of Man and Monster." Some colors...even though the story's in black & white. I should probably have my head examined.

Of Man and Monster inks-

More prelim stuff for "Of Man and Monster." Raw scan of the inks.

Of Man And Monster -Fourth pass

Scotty and I are working on a short little horror story for the next issue. We're basically both coming up with designs and then smashing them together to see what works. Here was my fourth pass at the look of the monster.

This one, I just kinda went nuts with texturing and heavy inks. I wanted to throw out some of the other themes that I'd been sticking to, just to play with it. This is one that I never considered a serious contender because it's not hulking enough.

Of Man And Monster -Third pass

Scotty and I are working on a short little horror story for the next issue. We're basically both coming up with designs and then smashing them together to see what works. Here was my third pass at the look of the monster.

This one is a drastic change- I started incorporating stuff that Scotty was doing in his. I also wanted to try a more serpentine look by slendering him up a bit. I used a Mignola drawing of FingFangFoom as a base mdel. Scotty added a cool mane of tendrils to one of his, while mine end up looking like wild medusa hair.

Of Man And Monster -Second pass

Scotty and I are working on a short little horror story for the next issue. We're basically both coming up with designs and then smashing them together to see what works. Here was my second pass at the look of the monster.

Some edges started rounding out and the gut-tentacles are becoming more prominent.

Of Man And Monster -First pass

Scotty and I are working on a short little horror story for the next issue. We're basically both coming up with designs and then smashing them together to see what works. Here was my first pass at the look of the monster.

Megabolt in living color

I used the same pallete that I always do and for some reason the colors look really saturated to me. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the fact that the linework is so much thicker in comparison to my usual stuff.

Stranded in distress

As in distressed or antique'd.

This is the "Stranded" pinup that Scotty and I did (original can be found here). I've been wanting to try my hand at the old school "rips and tears" weathered look procedure that makes our MAM covers look so damn cool, thanks to Skutterfly.

Now, as usual- this wasn't accomplished by me finding some easily accessible tutorial. I've found a few...they always baffle me. So in true mattcrap fashion, I've had to find some semi-tard low-tech way to do it. It's not perfected, and I haven't really gotta handle on it looking good in hi-rez.

I'm working on it, though

Josh "The Conqueror" Covey does MEGABOLT!

Joshua Covey did this majestic looking Megabolt for me. I slapped a little color on him. I've been looking for a style that really services the Megabolt that I see in my head when I write him. The first thing I said when Josh emailed this to me was, "Holy shit, that's him!" More so than every time I've drawn him, this looks like Megabolt. He's got the right measure of simplistic cartooniness with depth, shadow and dimension too. Just perfect!

I could fill a gallery with all the awesome versions of the big guy, that other folks have been nice enough to draw for me. (I'll compile some and post a bunch tommorow) But for all their greatness, they always leaned too far in a direction that didn't sit right with me. Too serious or too cartoony, one way or the other, they always looked great (and were a blast to see) but finding the right fit has been tough.

TinStarTex

Here's Skulljammer's TinStarTex character raw w/ no clean up. He's all colored up now, but i figured i'd share the dirty scan.

Traditional proportions

I was trying to give Megabolt a more traditional build. No I don't know why. He's always been the super buff-upper-body guy, I guess I wanted to see if he's work with more human proportions. I like the drawing ok, but not the build.

Give me buff or give me death!

Future Tense

Here's an image that could spoil a storyline...if there was more information with it.

I really dug how it came out, so I'm posting it anyway.

enjoy...spoiler alert

MEGABOLT solar vison blast

Here's the raw scan of a Megabolt pinup kinda thing that I'm doing. I got to play with my brush pen and chisel alot at LBCC, so I wanted to try a drawing using them exclusively. It didn't pan out once I needed some really thin lines (i don't have that level of control yet).

I'm trying to get Megabolt into MAM, so I wanna make sure he looks like a credible Golden/Silver Age character, as well as in a style that would reflect that too.

Aside from all the regular abilities that a Superman archetype would have, he's also got sub-zero and solar optic blasts.

Starshield new look sketch dump

Some ink drawings of Starshield in his modified new look. I'm downing the amount of color on him and going for a little darker vibe.

I'm also finally ditching that horrible anime hair that he had for so long. As some might have seen, I was toying with a pompadour for a little while, but it just made it look like i was trying to hard. So, I just went with a shortened version of the anime hair that looks a littler Greek'er, which is inline with the story.

DoctorMonster prelim

This is some prelim stuff for a Doctor Monster pinup that I'm working on for the Silver Comics mastermind, Johnny Ortiz.

I'm not sure if it'll work for anything, but I'm doing it anyway. As you can see, I'm a digital crutch whore. I'll generally leave a few things to be fixed digitally after the fact. Pesky things like paper size and symmetry don't stop me.

I'll let ya know how it comes out.

Long Beach Comic Con

Scotty and I will be in attendance at the first annual Long Beach Comic Convention. We'll be in Artist's Alley at booth #96. Eventhough we're DEAD FUCKING last in the listing, we gotta pretty decent spot right on the corner off one of the mail aisles. It looks like it's kind of a hike from the entrance, but hey- it'll work.

We'll keep you updated on what kinda goodies we'll have with us. Thanks for looking.

-matt

Scarabs, Beetles, colors, functions

BulletproofBeetle (yeah i finally landed on a name) is an obvious homage to the the golden age BlueBeetle. While trying to make him not look exactly like BB, I ran into the secondary issue of trying to make sure he doesn't look like the Phantom either. So I ditched the back&forth between "blue" and "emerald" naming and went with functionality.

He's the street-level member of the Super Powered Society of America. Relying on his fists and his .45

He has an enchanted stone scarab that grants him with extreme physical durability. His invulnerablity helps hand-to-hand combat by transferring his higher density to his appendages for a more powerful strike.

Remember Mike

SuperMage or SuperHyphenMage...that is the question

This is Super-Mage, he's the arcane leader of the Super Powered Society of America. He's a sorcerer supreme kinda guy- think young charismatic Dr.Strange...with some Alan Scott thrown in there.

He's the organizer and benifactor of the team. He saw the need to combone their efforts for mutual advantage and rallied the top superheroes of the time.

Super-Mage primarily throws fireballs and lightning bolts for offense but is skilled in spells and incantations as well. He hits all the basic magic hero archetypes, escape artistry, projected illusions, and extremely high intelligence.

every man's got gas

I'm finishing up the rest of the Super Powered Society of America. I'm trying to keep all the same quarter turn standing shots (in the same pose) so it's a little monotonous. But I've got the last 3 ready to scan and should be up soon.

Here's Everyman firing a gas bomb canister into the air. I'm gonna color this one too.

Everyman -man of a thousand faces (not uses)

Everyman can do some cool shit...but he's still kind of useless. He uses a chemical he developed to alter every facet of his physical appearance. In that repect he's an ingenious observer as he must articulate every epidermal imperfection of the individual that he's emulating. He can also mimmic any sound he hears, be it mechanical, animal, or most importantly a person's voice. The chemicals that he uses can be imbibed or turned into a vapor and released over his epidermis.

His primary (and only) real weaponry is his trusty gas gun. He uses the gun to weaponize a variety of canistered gases that he takes with him (knock-out, tear gas, etc). His pistol can also launch the gas canisters and act as a grenade launcher that pulls the pin as it's fired.

Everyman's primary use is infiltration and espionage and so he's not exactly an integral part of the Super Powered Society Of America. He's essentially the SuperFriends style Aquaman of the team, he can do a few cool thing, but those things are rarely needed in a super hero team scenario.

Johnny Majestic -the Flying Ace

American pilot, Jonathon Reagle volunteered to assist the French air force during World War I.

Reagle was shot down towards the end of the war. He wasn't taken down by enemy fire though. Thousands of years ago an alien space craft drifted close to the planet Earth. The alien craft hit a cosmic energy storm that tore the ship apart. The ship was made of an incredible metal and small scraps of the ship remained in earth's orbit. The cosmic energy irradiated the ship's remnants for centuries, in effect charging the already unique ore with almost mystical properties.

Over the millenia, small bits of the ship were eventually pulled into orbit and crashed to earth. In 1918, a gasket from the debris, that had been absorbing cosmic energy for thousands of years was finally pulled into orbit and started rocketing to earth. The small metal ring sliced through Reagle's plane like a white hot knife. It slammed into the bedrock and Johnathon crashed his plane just a few hundred yards from the crater. He was under heavy enemy fire as he ran to the crater to see what hit him. To his surprise, he found a small metal ring with a faint blue glow sizzling at the center of the crater. Most of the pilots were rather superstitious and as was their custom to retreive an object (ideally the cause) of a survivable crash. Reagle took off his glove and picked up the ring, as if fate had a hand in it, he put the ring on his finger instead of in his pocket, as enemy machine gun fire rained down into the crater. Reagle should've been riddled with bullets, but he emmerged from the smoke without a scratch and flew into the air with out the aid of a plane.

The French brass put him in charge of his squadron, not willing to look a gift superhero in the mouth. They called him Johnny Majestic and his squadron the Flying Aces. They dominated the French sky for what little time they had left in the war.

LadyLightning -the fightin flapper!

She was the first costumed super heroine to ever appear in Major City. A single lightning strike turned her into an almost unstoppable powerhouse. She gained unmatched physical strength and speed. Unbeknownst to her, the energies that gave her her powers were that of a stray lightning bolt from the hands of Zeus himself.

The idea of costumes and logos weren't prevalent yet, in the 1920's when she got her powers, so her costume was more of functional choice than a statement. Her then trendy flapper style dress was not without it's meaning though, she had idolized the free spirited women of her time who had made the style popular and to her it helped amplify her tremendous physical strength to use her sexuality as well.

From bookworm to bombshell, LadyLightning, forged a new path for future super powered females.

The Inspectre: YEAR ONE

I realized there's quite a few old characters that I might've drawn and posted randomly online without ever really revealing any of their backstory.

This is the Inspectre within his first human host, Steve Harlow. Steve was a down-on-his-luck security guard with a bit of a gambling problem that helped out his drinking problem.

Unlike the pesent day Inspectre, who has developed the ability to remain solid and be seen and heard by the living, back in the 1920's he was forced to possess someone in order to interact with the physical world. Over the years he had come into contact with unique people who could see and hear him without any arcane assistance. He found that these unique individuals could also give themselves over to him and through possession grant him access to the physical world while still being able to apply his ghostly abilities to his host. The hist would take on some of the ghost's featureless characteristics and most prominently his giant glowing eyes.

ModernBlueBeetle stage2

So here's the last one in my "Beetle Retrospective."

This is last individual (for now) to bear the name Blue Beetle. I really dig the raping of the original concept, only because they stumbled onto something pretty cool. Eventhough there are a couple leaps that spit in the face of even the most elastic comic book logic. The whole "this is the same scarab the original golden age Blue Beetle used" but this time around, it's all space agey and high tech. It bugs me (ha) but not because I don't like the new suit, I don't like the "it will be explained in time" or the "that's one of the mysteries" defenses.

I really like Reyes as the new BB, he's young, energetic, and brings more richness to brazenly retarded changes to the character over the years. He's got some cool Spidey elements to him with the "figuring out his powers" thing and he's a little more lighthearted in all the gloom and doom. His costume could very easily lean towards the dark and brooding side, so I hope they reserve that for when he's older (if the poor guy survives).

So until Kord comes back as the new Parallax, I approve of the new Beetle legacy.

ModernBlueBeetle stage1

So here's our dearly departed Ted Kord. This may sound jacked up...but I hope he stays dead. Let him go down tragically while being a smart guy (like he was supposed to be). This was the guy who introduced me to the idea of the BlueBeetle WAY back when with a DC Heroes trading card. I knew SHIT about DC's stable of characters (outside the main biggies) so it was kinda funny that I instantly identified with this guy that i'd never heard of before.

I may even blame some of my archetype-casting obsession on BB here. I remember looking at that trading card and thinking. "This guy is part Spiderman and part Batman, this is so cool!" So, you wanna blame somebody? Blame him.

ClassicBlueBeetle stage3

Now THIS version is probably the most common look for what folks would consider the "classic" look. He spent most of his career in these threads (which was actually thread at this point...or at least spandex). They didn't really make any more reference to the "light as silk" chainmail anymore.

We also had the widest array of powers and minor costume variations when he looked like this. Sometimes he had a domino mask, sometimes sunglasses type goggles, etc. Sometimes he could fly, sometimes he couldn't. Amazing what was acceptable when any editorial questioning on gehalf of the readership was answered with, "Shut up, they're just kids."

ClassicBlueBeetle stage2

This here is the costume that's primarily considered his FIRST costume, mostly because the hat&jacket look only lasted for a split second. This one is the one that was specifically referred to as a chainmail type fabric that was "as light as silk and as strong as steel."

Other than the fact that it's just SO damn classic, I don't know why I dig it so much.

Again, sorry about the quality...speed sketches, folks!

ClassicBlueBeetle stage1

In celebration of my rekindled love of classic GoldenAge characters (or to exercise the demons) however you wanna look at it. I've done a bunch of speed sketches of different guys...and then colored'em so they'd be semi-worthy to post. A couple years ago I had a rash of mini-obsessions with certain characters. BB here always comes back to haunt me.

This is how Blue Beetle first looked when he appeared in MysteryMen in 1939. This look didn't last long, but it resonates for me because it's a signpost for the spirit of the Blue Beetle. The character has always been treated with a "willingness-to-change" and distort to keep the character going. It's interesting to watch, not just the physical changes, but the back story alterations too.

This is the first in a series

Buffy theEmeraldScarab

I got carried away with the musculature on this one. I usually kee it pretty simple as to not reveal my limited knowlege of human anatomy.

Apparently deep down inside, I still wanted people to know.

Been writing...no drawings

Sorry for the lackin posts (i love apologizing to myself) I have had a personal goal to post every day....I had it there for a week or two.

I've been writing and tweaking a bunch of different shit, so there's been considerably less doodling.

Last week sucked beyond reason and had totally awesome shit go down too. I got to see this band that I really dig for the first time and they were great. I didn't show up for work one day because they fucked up my scheduel, so it looked like I just abandoned my job, no call in, no nothing. I hooked up with TWO new collaberators and within HOURS one of them is already showing me what a badass he is. My freakin awesome grandmother passed away and because she was sick for a while, I was able to build up this preparative wall and just make myself numb to it. So now i feel guilty that I'm not crushed, I've always been able to compartmentalize emotions if given enough time to prepare and I think some of my family is confused by my lack of emotion about the situation.

Now like any time when shit sucks, the inspiration comes flowing. I nailed the shit out of a song that i've been trying to do for a while. On the comic book front, I've been able to write some stuff completely in character and some that's completely OUT of character, which is a nice change. We've got some great movement on MAM and things are looking up.