Crogan's March character lineup

In my final prep lead-up to starting the pages of Crogan's March, I've done a Legion line-up. Designing the legionnaires has been a real pain because I'm a big proponent of shape-based character design, and by definition these guys unfortunately all have the same clothing, and it's very cumbersome clothing, at that - tall hats, triangular cloth, baggy pants, clunky coats - gotta tell ya, it was pretty tough trying to make some thirty-five characters look strikingly different while dressing the same. Anyhow, here's the complete lineup, which is a pretty tiny image when shrunk horizontally for the web:

 So to compensate, I'll show a few selections standing by themselves.

Okay, so in other news, I'll be in Savannah, GA this weekend, so if any of my Savannah friends want to get in touch with me, I'll be at Norris Hall most of Friday, from noon until sixish. Also, I still have my old Kentucky phone number, and have had it for years. Why is that relevant? Well, KY has been hit hard by ice storms (Liz's family, for example, is likely without power for the next week or more), and our cell network is down as a result. So while I can make outgoing calls without any difficulty, I can't receive calls - try, and you'll just get a "Network unavailable" recording. So if you need to reach me, shoot me an e-mail - chris at curiousoldlibrary.com.

Good News for Impoverished Comic Art Collectors

Big news for anybody who buys prints, original pages, or who just wants to put up their own stuff on the wall. We in comics use the 11x17" paper size a LOT. It’s the right ratio for standard comic pages, so originals are often done in that size, and as we’re a fiscally frugal group we often cap our self-printed posters at this "tabloid" size, because the printing costs jump exponentially for anything larger. 11x17 has always been pricey to frame, because it’s always had to be a custom job. It’s one of the reasons I give out 5x7 or 8x10 sheets when I want to do an art trade – prefab framing is within my budget, and custom framing most definitely is NOT. But now, 11 x17 is in my mix. Wal-Mart (yes, everyone’s corporate chain boogeyman) now carries 11x17 frames – standard, non-nonsense black frames – for $6 apiece. Six dollars. The last (and only) time I got something 11x17 framed it cost me almost thirty dollars.

 Here’s an original page, which is a gift for a friend, and a print for my office, both framed using these new six buck Wal-Mart babies (Liz is out of town and has the camera, hence the drawing). So now you’ve got a reason to get one of those purty Smokers of the Marvel Universe prints the next time you’re at a con.

ISR Anthology story thumbnails

I'm doing seven pages for the upcoming ISR anthology Awesomer (available for preorder at the Top Shelf website). Aside from having a gorgeous cover by Bone cartoonist Jeff Smith, the book is gonna be chock full of work by some really great cartoonists. I've got my pages thumbed out pretty tightly (for me, anyway) and am gonna go to pencils as soon as I get the Japanese dialogue translated into characters. A friend of Hung Lee at SCAD has helped me with Japanese translation before, so I may beg for her brain again, but if anyone reading this is fluent in Japanese and capable of writing out the characters for me (which I'll subsequently rewrite in my own hand), I'll show my gratitude by giving a copy of Crogan's Vengeance, as well as an original page from this story. Any takers? There'd be about sixteen balloons worth. Anyway, here are the thumbnails for a few of the pages: