Randy's Sketchbook: San Diego 2004 by Randy Lander If you missed last year's sketchbook feature, you can find it HERE. However, if you're here for the new stuff, then you're in for a treat. I got some great sketches this year, and I got the last few pages in my first ever sketchbook finished, meaning that I now have one full book of sketches like the ones you'll see here. 8 years of work, beginning in Chicago '96, collected in one place, and a unique treasure for this comics fan... I want to thank all the artists who sketched for me this year, but I also want to throw out a shout-out to the many who have contributed to my sketchbooks for years. We start out this year with not a sketch, but a full-blown painting. Scott Morse had announced on the Oni Press boards that he was not doing sketches this year, but would be doing paintings, and I quickly chimed in to ask if he'd paint an Elmo for my 15-month-old daughter's room if I brought him reference. He enthusiastically agreed, I dropped off the reference material, and he rose to the challenge of creating a black-and-white version of Elmo admirably. My daughter was quite delighted to see the painting, pointing and giving an excited noise when she recognized her favorite Sesame Street character immediately. This one will, once framed, hang in her room, and is probably my favorite piece of the show because it made my little girl happy. Scott Morse, by the way, has just released the graphic novel Spaghetti Western from Oni Press, has a beautiful sketchbook, Pink: Grrr! coming from Adhouse Books and is working on Everest with Greg Rucka for Oni Press. And if I know Scott, he's working on several other things as well. Last year I began my Monkeys, Pirates, Ninjas and/or Robots theme sketchbook. I only got a couple new sketches in that one this year, but they're both really good one. First of all, with that theme, you know I had to get James Kochalka to do a sketch. He gave me a monkey from his famed Monkey versus Robot series. Kochalka writes a daily diary strip, American Elf, which has just been collected into a gorgeous (and huge) book from Top Shelf, and is so prolific that he has probably finished three graphic novels while I was writing this blurb. At any rate, if you're looking for a place to jump into Kochalka's work, I highly recommend American Elf: The Collected Sketchbook Diaries, although Peanutbutter & Jeremy or Monkey versus Robot are also favorites of mine. Speaking of favorites of mine, we come to the other sketch in my theme sketchbook from one of my absolute favorite artists, Cameron Stewart, who did a hilarious and beautiful ninja pirate (check out his dialogue balloon, which gave me a chuckle) for the book. Stewart, of course, just finished Morrison's wild Seaguy miniseries, and is going to be doing an issue of Human Target soon. Beyond that, there's the possibility of more Seaguy and other things from Vertigo. If you're unfamiliar with Stewart's work, I highly recommend his work on Catwoman especially. I was lucky enough to catch up with Jock on his way through the DC booth late on Saturday, and even luckier that he was a prince of a guy and agreed to give me a sketch even though he wasn't technically at the booth for sketch duty. What he gave me wasn't just a quick sketch, but a fully-rendered portrait of the enigmatic Cougar from the pages of The Losers, the book where Jock's artwork can be seen on a monthly basis. If you've never read anything by Kyle Baker, well... shame on you! From the wackiness of The Cowboy Wally Show to the acid-tongued slice-of-life Why I Hate Saturn to screwball suspense/comedy like I Die At Midnight, Baker is a talented and versatile writer/artist. Some of my favorite work, however, has come in his new self-published series of graphic novels, Cartoonist, and volume two of the series, released at the show and soon to hit retailer shelves, is every bit as fun as the first. In addition to Cartoonist, Baker continues to write and draw DC's Plastic Man and has a satirical/political graphic novel, Birth of a Nation (with Boondocks' Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin) due out soon from NBM which also premiered at San Diego. Mike Hawthorne is a talented artist who continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Currently, he is working on the much-buzzed-about Ballad of Sleeping Beauty from Beckett Entertainment, but he also has other things in the hopper, most of which are top secret. I really loved Hawthorne's work on Queen & Country, Hysteria and Ruule, and expect to enjoy any future projects as well. He blew me right out of the water with his first work on the flashback sequences in Too Much Hopeless Savages, then impressed me again with his work on Spooked. From these two projects, I expected Ross Campbell to sketch me something with a goth sensibility, so you can imagine my surprise when he instead drew a sketch of the monster from The Relic, a thoroughly-forgettable (and reputedly awful) movie. Campbell told me that the movie wasn't too good, but he really liked the monster, and seeing his version of it drawn here, I do too. Campbell's next project is Wet Moon, an original graphic novel for Oni Press. Replacing a fan-favorite artist on a buzz book can be a bit rough, so give Ryan Ottley credit. Not only did he take on Invincible in the wake of Cory Walker's departure, but to my mind, he's actually doing better stuff than the impressive work that Walker did in establishing the book. Ottley did this head shot of Mark, the title character of the book, and though it looks good here, it looks even better in person, with blue pencil lines to reinforce the artwork. I'm a latecomer to Usagi Yojimbo, but I've become an almost fanatical devotee of the book recently, and so I was very glad to finally get a chance to meet Stan Sakai and tell him how much I'm loving this character. I also bought volume one (and read it on the plane ride home) and got a sketch from Sakai of the famous rabbit ronin. Stan Sakai is of course working on more Usagi, and an Art of Usagi volume coming out from Dark Horse in October. The first artist on Queen & Country, Steve Rolston took a few issues to grow on me, but I soon realized the strengths he brought as an artist, and happily followed his career through Pounded (with Brian Wood), Mek (with Warren Ellis) and One Bad Day (written and drawn by Rolston). His recent return for issue 25 of Queen & Country inspired me to ask for a "Tara with a gun" sketch, but I also picked up Rolston's surprisingly sweet 24-hour comic Lost Souls in Love and heard that he's working on a new graphic novel for Oni Press in the "slacker noir" genre that One Bad Day epitomized. If not for the Katy factor and my love for everything Morse, I think this would be my favorite sketch of the Con. I mean, Tony Moore, original artist on The Walking Dead, recreated me as a zombie! How cool is that? Pretty damn cool, as are Moore's upcoming projects, which include a western project with writer B. Clay Moore and a sci-fi/comedy piece about an "alien exterminator" written by Rick Remender, both at Image Comics. As I mentioned above, I finished up my long-running first sketchbook in San Diego, and it was Becky Cloonan who drew the last page, providing a sketch of Emmy from Demo. If you haven't read any of the self-contained Demo issues by Brian Wood and Cloonan, you really ought to check one of them out... they're all fantastic standalone reads, and Cloonan shifts her style slightly in each issue to reflect the tone of the script. Wood and Cloonan are currently hard at work on the last four issues of Demo. One of my other favorites of the show is this gorgeous piece by Cliff Chiang, one of the two regular artists on the Human Target series for DC's Vertigo imprint. From the vague suggestion of a "two-gun Christopher Chance," we have this stunning action shot. Chiang's work can be seen in the Human Target monthly when he's alternating with Javier Pulido, and the first trade collecting Chiang's work on the book should be out before the end of the year. Jeffrey Brown writes painfully honest and often very funny graphic novels about love and loss for Top Shelf. Clumsy and Unlikely are the first two, and then he published a satirical macho flipside in Be A Man, and all three are worthy additions to your bookshelf. Last but certainly not least, we have future art superstar Jeremy Haun, formerly of Image's Paradigm. Haun is currently hard at work on Battle Hymn, the World War II superhero book by Hawaiian Dick author B. Clay Moore, as well as the next chapter of Desperadoes by Jeff Mariotte. He had pages from Battle Hymn at the show and some western pages as well, so I can tell you without guessing that the art on these books is going to be spectacular. Jeremy kindly provided me with a sketch of one of the characters from Battle Hymn. Email Randy Lander comments about this column.