Funny Animal Pulp Project

My friend Chad Thomas (whose art run on Archie's Mega Man begins next month) and I have, since first meeting around five years ago, played with the idea of working together on a kid's adventure comic.  The ideas continually shift and change, and he's one of maybe five people that I can comfortably chat on the phone with for more than a couple of minutes (I'm just not a phone guy). 

We had the chance to work together on a couple of books coming out this Fall - some younger reader choose your own adventure-type of books that I wrote and Chad drew (he handled Coyote and Monkey) - and are chomping at the bit to do so again.  I love Chad's animal characters - he's really great at them - and we've been talking about the idea of doing a "funny animal" project together ("funny animal" is basically just a term for anthropomorphized animal character stories, which includes comics like Usagi Yojimbo to Blacksad and movies like Disney's Robin Hood, Kung Fu Panda, and Rango... they don't necessarily have to be FUNNY).  We're starting to put it together to pitch to a publisher - hopefully as a floppy - and have been doing a few sketches just to get an idea of things.  We'd both be handling writing AND art duties, in an attempt to do a much more intensely collaborative approach than is usually done.  It would have a very 1930s setting, and be very pulp high adventure type of stuff (big surprise, I know).

Anyway, here are a few sketches we've done to start getting our heads around it.

And here are a few of Chad's...

In any case, we're in the EXTREMELY early stages right now, but feel good about the project.  It has a good premise that allows for a lot of episodic narratives, a fun idea for an overarching story, and best of all it gives me and Chad a chance to work together again.  Don't worry; Crogan's comes first.  I'm working on finishing the current book and am hard at work prepping the next one.