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Well, our first issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold has been on shelves for a few days, and we now have some reviews. It's a bit of an exercise in anxiety, waiting to see if people like or hate your work. I mean, I wrote this book back in April. Eric finished drawing it in... May? I don't know. I don't really pay attention to what Eric does.

Anyway... this issue seems like a relic of the distant past to me. I'm currently working on my issue for next April and May concurrently. This thing? Ancient. That said, I think it may be one of our more fun issues of Batman. And by fun, it probably has our most bizarre moment. A moment that almost everybody who reads it comments on.

I'm talking specifically about this:



People seem to like the Penguin getting hit in the face with a seal. Anyway, here's the reviews:

Too Dangerous For A Girl

"it's a fast, fun ride by Eric Jones and Landry Q Walker"

Every Day Is Like Wednesday

"Landry Walker’s set-up is pretty clever and I greatly enjoyed seeing Jones’ takes on so many of these characters..."

Scifi Pulse.net/

"Not bad for a comic based on a cartoon, actually."

But Before I kill You

"It built up to an ending which I'm admitting being moved by, and it sold it for me."

BW Media

"I predict awesomeness every month."

Exile In Geeksville

"It’s all about bringing in the new readers. – Grade A-"

There's also a nice conversation on the DC message boards here.

So there we go. Next Wednesday I think my (real) first issue of the Incredibles will be released, and we'll have a new issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold out near the end of October.

Our first issue of "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" just arrived in stores. It seems like a long time since we had a new release. Particularly when you consider the volume of work we've been doing. I'm up to the May issue of Batman with scripts and the January (or later) issue of the Incredibles.

FYI: Yeah... our Catman is a bit different from the one on the show. This book was actually finished before that episode aired. However, that doesn't mean we don't have a plan...

Doesn't mean we do have a plan either.

Anyway, new issue. Go get it. Read it.

We're now less than two weeks away from the release of our first issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. So it seemed like this would be the appropriate time to start making some Batman related posts.

When we announced our work on this book, I mentioned that Eric and I had already been developing something conceptually similar to the current Brave and Bold animated series. Well, I found some of the images. This was very much a work in progress, but I'm going to share it anyway.



Above is the first batch of images Eric created. He was shooting for a 1960's approach. But I wanted to see a bit more of a 1950's lantern jaw look. So this was his next batch:



I was of the opinion that this Batman was to smiley.

We envisioned the series would be titled: Batman and Robin. Robin would have been a key player in the series. But, having just come off of a Supergirl series, we would likely have avoided Batgirl.

Our intent was to revive some of the long lost TV show Batman villains, along with certain iconic trappings of 1950's-60's Batman. It would start off as goofy weird fun, but edge a little to the creepy side by the end of the series. Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a different animal. As it is based off of the current cartoon, we have a little less latitude than we might on a series we created. But sometimes imposed structure strengthens artwork rather than curtailing it. Eric and I work well with guidelines, and we're having tremendous fun on the series. Eric just finished drawing his third issue, and I'm writing my 6th, with at least 3 more mapped out.

So... let me frame things a bit.

Eric and I had been working on comics for over 15 years. Many of those years were spent working on Disney Adventures. Once Little Gloomy and Kid Gravity had been picked up by the magazine, we had quit our day jobs and dedicated all our energy to comics creation.

Then, at the end of 2007, Disney Adventures folded. We were still very busy working with 1492 Pictures on Little Gloomy for the small screen, and there was some comfort in knowing that this work would keep us afloat... for a little bit.

Flash forward to February of 2008. WonderCon. We have no jobs. No money and no immediate prospects. So we turn to long time aquaitence Bob Shreck. It really was a whim. We had nothing prepared and though we had known Bob for many years, asking for work from someone I think of as a friend is not a thing I like to do. It feels... I dunno. Not something I like.

But we asked. Because we were desperate. So he recommended the Johnny DC line. There was (at the time) a bit of a push to expand. He offered to set up a meeting with Jann Jones for us. It was more than we hoped for and we seized on it immediately.

We had 24 hours. We needed to prepare. So we took a look at what else was coming out from Johnny DC. Turns out the big thing being pushed at the time was the work of fellow former Disney Adventures creator Art Baltazar and his coworker Franco. These are two people we had already been having dinner with annually at ComicCon. When Disney Adventures put out a call for new material, it was Art's Gorilla Gorilla and our Kid Gravity that were picked up. When Disney released collected volumes of previously printed material, Kid Gravity and Gorilla Gorilla were top of the lists.

So the familar work of Art and Franco bolstered our confidence. We realized that the best thing we could do at this stage is what Art and Franco were doing. The same thing they had been doing, only with DC characters.

We had just come off working on Kid Gravity. Kid Gravity had always been slightly inspired by Superboy. Superboy was, to the best of our knowledge, legally unavailable. Besides, we were more inclined to work with a female lead. So... Supergirl. At this point, we're maybe 2 minutes out of our brief discussion with Bob. Lots' of time to prepare, right?

While seated at the SLG booth, Eric started drawing. This is what he came up with first:


Cute, but too Kid Gravity. Besides, when you're pitching to a new editor, it' smart to show versatility. So Eric went back to the drawing board and...



To much belly shirt. To old. I pushed Eric to draw something inbetween the two styles. Bear in mind that Eric had spent years drawing characters with really big heads. He wasn't particularly comfortable with the more realistically proportioned character designs.

But he persisted. And this was the result:



This was more like what we were looking for. But we still wanted to hedge our bets, and Eric had time for one more drawing.


You will please notice that this is not Supergirl. Better safe than sorry. But to be honest, I'm not a fan of Batgirl in any of her forms, with the possible exception of Betty Kane.

The next day we tracked down Jann for our meeting. The rest I have talked about elsewhere on may occasions. Her eyes lit up when she saw the Supergirl samples. Turns out she had been seeking someone to create an all-ages Supergirl book, and the person she had in mind had declined the day before our meeting. She called up Dan Didio (he was elsewhere at the convention) and showed him the art. He picked the third design, the middle school style Supergirl.

So we went home and concocted the pitch for the series and after one rewrite, it was picked up very quickly for a mini-series.

We were lucky on alot of levels. It was an amazing turn of events considering we were at an all time low. Supergirl was our last stab effort. If we hadn't found work that weekend, we were going to have to exit the world of comics.

Not that the industry isn't still a scary place. I was unemployed again from the beginning of December 08 until the beginning of April 09. All while anxiously waiting to see if our series was well received or not. I know in the world of the internet, people review comics readily and casually. If you're a reviewer, remember that on the other end of your review might be someone anxiously nail-biting. You're criticzing their jobs, after all.

Luckily, the series was very well received. So my nails have started to grow back in place. Also: The tremendous buzz around the series has helped Eric and I with other work. I've actually found myself at a point where I'm working on two comic series at once. I'm busy... but I really can't complain. And frankly, I have the readers and reviewers to thank for it. Thanks readers and reviewers!

I promised Supergirl next. And that's what you're going to get. Kind of.

Supergirl isn't just Supergirl, of course. Unlike Superman she didn't arrive to Earth as a baby. Unlike Superman her Kryptonian name isn't simply a part of his heritage he discovered late in life. Supergirl's name is Kara Zor-El. But when she first arrived in her rocket back in the 50's, Superman tells her she needs an Earth name. Of course, I know a few Kara's. But I suppose times have changed just a bit.

So Linda Lee was born.

That's Linda Lee on the left.  I think we debated between a ponytail and the final hair design. The images on the right were a bit of an experiment. How to properly portray Kara Zor-El in her native Kryptonian guise.



Anyway, I felt I needed a bit more of a rationale for her not using Kara as her name while on Earth. So when she crashes in the middle of Metropolis, she's swarmed by reporters. Why wouldn't she be? And they want to know who she is, the poor disoriented, confused girl stammers out her name. Again, why wouldn't she? Subsequently, she needs an identity that no one associates with a blond girl in a Superman style uniform.

In her original appearance, Linda's solution to disguising herself from her Supergirl self was to wear a brown wig. I think that if you have a formula that works, stick with it. Glasses coupled with a hairstyle change = Secret identity. I once tried this myself to great effect. Readers are conditioned to this formula. It's comfortable. They don't question it. So giving Supergirl a glasses based secret identity seemed the way to go. In fact, I was rather amazed that it wasn't already the common solution for her.

And I know there are a great number of people who question whether or not Supergirl even needs a secret identity. The answer is: Yes. Sure, she could fly around all day, performing acts of incredible strength and what not. Sure. And while that might even be the reality if a teenage girl had superpowers, comics are not reality. Comics are entertainment. And one of the key factors in entertainment is relatability.

Peter Parker/The Amazing Spider-Man hits this balance perfectly. I find now that when I go back and read Ditko's early work on the character, I skim the moments where he's Spider-Man and focus instead on the trials of Parker. I'm much more interested in how Parker will deal with Flash Thompson than I am how he will deal with the Green Goblin. I know the frustration of being a regular person with regular problems. I don't know what it is like to fight a guy in a fright mask on a flying broom stick.

Don't get me wrong, those fantastic moments are the glue that holds the rest together. But there is a balance that should be maintained. The recent Pixar film "The Incredibles" is another good example. Yes, we want the fantastic and the amazing. But we want to care about the characters first. If we don't, than the fantastic and amazing can become trite and trivial.

Of course, there is room for another take. MiracleMan is a perfect example of this. Why would MiracleMan ever change back to his human self? But this is Supergirl. A character who, despite her alien origins, was always shown to be more human than humans were. A deeply empathic and caring person who would allow herself to live in an orphanage because she believed that the rest of the world would be better served by her sacrifice.

So Linda Lee was an unquestionable necessity. Particularly when you consider that Linda is a more accurate reflection of who Supergirl really is. A young teen-age girl alone in a confusing new environment. She's not like Superman, pretending to be bumbling Clark Kent. She's really a normal young girl who just happens to have suddenly been given amazing powers and is striving to live up to an impossible heroic ideal. She's still going to be awkward and nervous and shy. If she isn't, than we can't relate to her. And if we can't relate to her, why would we want to read about her?

Next up: Supergirl. For real.

Today I will post images of Belinda Zee.



See. Told you.

Belinda is notable as she is really the only original character we introduced to the Supergirl mythos. Admittedly, our version of Lena Thorul seems to have very little in common with the original version. But still...

Obviously, Belinda Zee's name is also a take off of Supergirl's secret identity, Linda Lee. Not quite as obvious is the fact that her name was also inspired by my fiance's name: Belinda Lee.

I've also seen it mentioned that she seems to have some common elements to Grant Morrison's Zibarro. What with the non-Bizarro like speech patterns and the color scheme and the prominent "Z" in the name... Coinicedence. I won't lie. I think All-Star Superman is one of the best books out there. But I didn't read it until a few months ago. In fact, I rarely read comics anymore. That's changing a bit... out of necessity more than anything else.

The design of Belinda was partially inspired by Archie Comics character, Veronica Lodge. A little of her temperament springs from this source as well. Belinda is a fun character to write. She's not exactly evil, and she certainly isn't good. Her emotional state of being is on a hair trigger. Essentially, she's an agent of chaos. Chaotic neutral, if I must let my roots as a D&D geek show.

The images here of her as Superiorgirl are Eric's original take on the concept. But I was looking more for the mirror image feel, so we switched to classic Bizarro look, with the mask. The mask was specifically inspired by the Silver Age appearance of an evil Superman, who was indistinguishable from the good version, except for his domino mask.

I didn't really realize just how common Supergirl doppelgangers were until after we had put the Belinda Zee wheels in motion. I'm not sure I would have done it differently anywaey. Anyone who has read much of our work will know that doppelgangers are a fairly common theme. Our Tron comic has a character who deals with multiple versions of himself. Seems natural in a universe with copy and paste functions. Little Gloomy has met two different doppelgangers in the pages of Super Scary Monster Show, and Kid Gravity once met his parallel universe twin named Kid Anti-Gravity in the pages of Disney Adventures magazine.

Evil duplicates are nothing new. But they're always fun. Belinda Zee was alot of fun to work with. From her arrogant sassiness, to her vulnerable emotional outbursts. Fun.

Again I bring you artwork from the depths of time. Almost a year and a half ago, to be precise.

First up is Streaky the Supercat. I just happened to have inherited a young cat about the time I began working on this. Her name is JoJo and she is made of razors and barbed wire. She's tamed a bit now. With me, anyway. Everyone else she still wants to see bleed. Anyway, she was the inspiration for this version of Streaky, and Eric designed Streaky accordingly.




I mean really. If a cat were to gain super powers, we would all be in serious trouble.

Next up: Brainiac 5. Brainy was never seen in the series. Originally he was planned to have a major role, but the only limitation given to us by DC was to not use Brainiac 5. At the time, he was a major player in the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st century book so I can understand why. The sketches below were done before Eric and I found this out, and truthfully, he wasn't quite done cooking. But unlike most of the other characters, we're not able to compare with a final version. Ah well. This was as far as we got with Brainy. Maybe Eric can be persuaded to draw a more up to date version just for this blog.

It was nice to have him working behind the scenes, even if he's not actually an active particpant in the story. It seemed very Brainiac 5 to me. To send Supragirl back in time with specific instructions to involve herself in events with some basic misinformation. Maybe someday I'll get to tell the story of why he did that, beyond the obvious "stop Mxyzptlk from destroying all reality" thing. Because it's never quite that simple with Braniac 5. His plans run very deep.

That's it for now. Next up? Maybe Superman and Zor El. Probably Monday. Depends on my mood.

I promised that sketches of the students would be posted today. And here I am, posting said images.



Okay... so there are less student images than I thought. Thing is, we had three female lead characters from the onset. There were also going to be male characters of more prominence. Here's a look at what they might have been like.

The characters were cut because it turns out that 6 issues at 22 pages long each isn't as much room as I might have liked. The relationships between the three girls would have been horribly muddied by these nonsensical subplots. So they were cut.

But just to go a step further and show you what you were denied...


There was an entire story behind this that involved duplicity and betrayal. The heart was to be made of gold kryptonite (heart of gold) that only had a short term effect. We had already explored the effects of green, red and blue. So gold was the next logical choice.

As mentioned above, this was cut due to lack of space. It was also cut after I witnessed the recent revisions to Reactron. The two concepts aren't identical, but they are very, very close. Now, it's important to note that no one outside of Eric and myself were involved in this creation, so in case anyone thinks I'm making some kind of allegation... no. No one knew of our plans other than us. Reactron's revision (which I very much like) was (for us) an unfortunate coincidence. That's the world of comics for ya.

FYI: The indent on the inside of the chest panel is a power meter.

That's it for today. Next up (unless I change my mind) Streaky. Maybe more than Streaky, maybe less.

I promised there would be more art. And more art there is. Unfortunately, I'm still searching for those original Supergirl illustrations. All of Eric's original art is at my house for some reason, which means boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of paper. 17 years of comics work in boxes (minus that one back cover illustration we left in a copy machine at SDCC about 13 years ago). To make matter worse, each panel of each page of Supergirl was pencilled at full size on a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Think about that. Each panel of each page of each issue.

This all adds up to alot of paper.

Anyway, here's the next installment of Supergirl production art. A feature on this blog that I like to call: "Eric probably doesn't want you to see this but then he shouldn't have left it in my safe keeping because I'm not particularly trustworthy."

The teachers!



The gym teacher goes by the name Mister Mongo. I don't remember if we ever mentioned his name in the comic. He's based off of a close friend of ours named Joel, who has gone by the nickname of Mongo since we were about 12. Not pictured is Miss Bigglestone. She's based off another old friend with the last name Bigglestone.

Then there's Mister Mxyptplk. Mxyzptlk/Pyckelmeyer required very little planning. His basic disposition in his Pyckelmeyer form was inspired by the character of Bob Kelso on Scrubs. As seen here:



In my mind, that's pretty much the real world version of Pyckelmeyer.

On Wednesday I will post sketches of the students, including classic Supergirl supporting cast member Ricky Wilson (AKA Dick Malverne).

I've been putting off posting this stuff for awhile. The fact is, I am lazy. The other fact is that Eric keeps hiding this art. I intended to lead off with one of the three original illustrations he produced for our initial meeting with DC. I'll have to search a bit deeper to figure out where those images are hidden.

Anyway, instead I'm going to lead off with some Lena Thorul.

This first one might be the actual first attempt on the character. Truth is, Eric and I had a pretty solid idea of what she would look like from the onset. The only issue with the initial designs was the question of hair.

That was resolved fairly quickly. Yeah I know. Exciting. Woo.

So we knew she would eventually end up in armor. I guess the armor was the real issue. If you've read the series, you know the armor exists in 3 states. The first is the backpack, which appears two issues before it is revealed to be armor. The second form is the transformed backpack, and the third is the full upgraded suit.

So those are the three forms, and if you've read the comic, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't read the comic, well... In truth you're a little dead to me.

But only a little.

So here are some sketches Eric threw together early in the development.


Do you like them? If so, good for you. We didn't. So we went in a different direction. Part of it was that these designs were way to busy. Part of it is that they removed to much of Lena's personality. But mainly, it was that we needed to strengthen the association between Lena and Lex. By having Lena in battle armor reminiscent of her brothers giant indestructible robot, we helped create a visual short-cut between the two characters. This is just as effective at establishing the relationship as the secret emails between brother and sister at the end of issue 2. I think it is anyway. Maybe it isn't. Does it really matter now? The book is finished. Not much we can do about it if you disagree. Right?

I'll upload some more soon. Maybe tomorrow. Probably Monday. There's alot of this stuff, so expect several posts of images that Eric would probably prefer you never saw.

Well, it's in the new Previews catalog, so I guess I can finally announce what Eric and I have been working on since we wrapped up Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures...



We'll be doing some issues of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. A comic series based off of the current animated series. A funny thing about this book for Eric and myself:  We had actually spent a bit of time before San Diego ComicCon last year formulating a pitch for an all-ages reinterpretation of Batman based off a combination of the 1940's Dick Sprang art style and the 1960's television series. We then arrived at ComicCon to see images everywhere of this cartoon series and immediately scrapped the proposal.

And now we're doing a comic that is fundamentally the same as the series we spent the summer quietly creating. Strange world.

Our intention with this series is to capture the feel of the cartoon rather than literally interpret the style of the animated series onto a comic book page. Comics and animation are two very distinct (even if related) mediums, and neither wholly translates into the other. We're a bit past our first issue now, and I'm very happy with the result of this approach.

Our first issue introduces a character that, at the time of conception and execution, was unseen on the television series. Catman appears as a mysterious new superhero with bold plans to help Batman takes down his most notorious foes. Since we created this particular issue, a very different rendition of Catman has appeared on the TV series. Such as it goes.

Our first issue of this series goes on sale September 30th.