The first issue of Hellblazer Presents: Chas - The Knowledge is off to the printer today. It marks not only my return to Vertigo, with whom I worked for years (including on Preacher) but my return to the Hellblazer universe. I colored the monthly Hellblazer for a couple of years, working over lineart by Sean Phillips with writing by Jamie Delano, Eddie Campbell and Paul Jenkins. I think that was around 1994-1995 or something, certainly a long time ago.

This book is a five issue series written by Simon Oliver, drawn by Goran Sudžuka, lettered by Clem Robbins, edited by Jonathan Vankin and colored by myself. We're having some good fun with it. Hope you'll pick it up.

The book that is replacing Iron Fist in my schedule has been announced in Philadelphia, at a comics show. So, I guess I can mention it now.

I will be coloring the five issue mini series Magneto: Testament for Marvel Comics. It covers the early years of Magneto's life, between the years of 1935 and 1945, when he was living in Poland and dealing with Nazi persecution.

Greg Pak is writing this series and Carmine Di Giandomenico is drawing it. The editorial team is Warren Simons and Alejandro Arbona, who I do most of my work with.

This will be an interesting job, allowing me to color with more real world colors and explore the gritty nature of World War 2. On a personal note, one set of my great Grandparents went to the States from Poland in the late 1800s. And one of my grandfathers died fighting against the Germans during World War 2. His family was 100% German and had moved to the States sometime earlier. He was German by blood but fought for the Americans against the Germans. He was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans and died in a POW hospital only a few short weeks before the end of the war. It was another tragedy in a war filled with tragedies.

Anyway, I have some higher level of interest in this comic and will enjoy painting it. Check it out, won't you?

Here's a brief interview with the writer:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=158611

On Monday, I wrapped up work on my final issue of The Immortal Iron Fist for Marvel Comics, issue number 16.

When I started the book in 2006, I was returning to comics after leaving my job working on visual effects for films in Los Angeles. Warren Simons, the editor, had told me of an artist named David Aja who he wanted to pair me with. He sent me a link to David's website which had a lot of samples. Upon seeing his amazing art, I agreed. Warren didn't know which book he was going to put him on yet, but it didn't matter to me. I wanted to work with David.

Then, it turned out that the book he was being put on was Iron Fist, along with Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction doing the writing. I'd worked with Ed many, many times over the years and loved working with him. I love his writing and he's also a good guy to work with. I hadn't heard of Matt Fraction yet, but Warren told me to go check out a book called Cassanova, which I did. Wow. Matt's stuff was also great.

This was a great book to become involved with. The scripts handed in showed a deep understanding of the character and a ton of new ideas and directions to push him in, all with a large pinch of humor. They were great scripts to read. Some of that humor wasn't even in the actual book, just little asides to those of us working on the book. I always looked forward to getting those fun scripts.

And David's art was always top notch. His style fuses a realistic, photo referenced look with a heavily cartoony look. The result is a book with a lot of dynamic movement, a lot of gestural shapes, nice layout and design while retaining a touch of realism. Perfect for this kind of book. He shows an understanding of emotional nuance in the facial expressions rarely shown by comics artists.

Then I saw that Dave Lanphear was lettering it. He's great. He's got a nice design sense that fit well with the look of the book.

And to top it all off, the book was being edited by Warren Simons and Alejandro Arbona, the guys who I do 75% of my work with, if not more. We have a nice connection and ability to work together in tight deadline situations. I like working with them.

So, naturally, the book was a pleasure to work on. Sure, it had some tight deadlines that were a pain in the ass. But this is comics. This is what happens. We got through it and had some brilliant little gems that we put out.

But times change and books change and after #16 the entire creative team on the book will change. I don't know that much about the new team, but I'd say give them a chance. Meanwhile, David Aja and I are joined at the hip and will be doing some more work together again soon. Keep your eyes peeled!

Hahaha! This one's for Talaja! It's some DVD commentary for the film Conan, buy Arnold. He sounds like he's wasted. Funny shit.

Enjoy!

Before I moved to Croatia, I had never heard of the Eurovision music contest. And I suspect most Americans have never heard of it.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Eurovision is a music contest in Europe. Each country selects who they want to send to represent them. And then there's an overall contest between European countries. But, by saying "Europe", it's stretching the boundaries a bit as Israel, Turkey and some other questionable countries are included. Nothing wrong with those countries, but to say that Israel is part of Europe is a bit strange. Anyway, it's sort of like American Idol is for Americans I guess. When you watch, you can then vote for whatever country but cannot vote for your own, either by text message or phone call.

We missed most of Tuesday's runoff but saw maybe 5 acts. And ALL of them were fucking horrible. There were around 20 on Tuesday and 20 on Thursday. 10 are selected each day to go forward to the Saturday final. We watched all of Thursday when Croatia had their turn.

It's sort of sad to watch because so much of the music is really horrible crap. Really, really horrible. Most of the countries choose some extremely cheesy dance music. And most of them sing in English. What the fuck? Latvia had their guys dressed up like fucking pirates singing about being pirates and in English. They're the new Village People! I suspect they'll have a gay dance hit in northern Europe. Lithuania had, by far, the worst music of the night. It was one guy singing. He looked like some weird sort of heavy metal Michael Bolton, singing a ballad called "Nomads in the Night", while accompanied by weird Joe Satriani type guitar. Finland was on Tuesday and had their usual speed metal sort of act. They were funny but at least it wasn't someone trying to be fucking Whitney Houston or something.

The competition takes place in Serbia, which I think is good. Last year Serbia won, though I didn't watch. From what I've heard, and what I've read, the Balkans countries banded together in voting and people were happy that Serbia won, even here in Croatia. I think this is good. Serbia's having a rough time at the moment, so anything that can get spirits up can't be so bad, eh?

Strangely enough, I actually like Croatia's entry. It's genuinely representative of some music from this country. Most other entries seem really western and seem just like crappy dance music that doesn't really represent the culture of the country they come from. They seem more to be pandering to what they think people want to hear and what might increase their chances of winning. Well fuck all of that. The Croatian entry really sounds good and sounds genuine. I've seen the old guy in the video playing music on the streets in the center of Zagreb, accompanied by an accordion player (locally called a harmonica). And he's great. In the act they played on stage, he was funny too. He was like this ancient Balkan rapper. During the act they had an old record player with the giant funnel for the speaker, that sort of thing (phonograph?). And at the end he went up and was scratching on it.

They were great. I suspect that they could even have a chance in the long run because really, on this crappy show they're a breath of fresh air.

We couldn't vote for Croatia, though. So we voted for Turkey. They had a halfway decent rock act. It wasn't the usual crappy dance music either and they sang in Turkish and had some real Turkish flavor mixed into the rock. So there you go.

Croatia and Turkey both made it to the final round on Saturday.

Here's the video for the Croatian act:



And here's the actual video from the Eurovision contest with the old guy scratching at the end:

Back from Makarska and working like the dog I am. Some monday deadlines approach. Yes, 2 deadlines.

For those folks who may have seen me around some forums, notably the Bendis board or other forums, I will no longer be active on forums. Never say never, right? But for now, I'm done. The quantity of stupid motherfuckers I had to deal with on each and every forum I ever posted on was just getting to be too much. There were also some really great people on the boards. But I started to realize that the amount of time I was aggravated or angry on a forum was higher than the amount of time I was enjoying it. So, that's it. No more. I'd rather spend my time in front of the computer doing something I enjoy.

Like painting comics, for instance. So back to work now!

I'll post more pictures soon.