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.