Randy's Sketchbook: San Diego 2005 by Randy Lander My Con Report has been delayed a couple of days due to some flight difficulties that got me in a day late and robbed me of my extra writing time. Expect the Con report in a few days, and if you want a little glimpse of the Con, check out the blog by my friend (and roommate from this year) Nate Southard. In the meantime, however, as is the annual tradition since 2003, I've got scans of the various sketches that were done for me this year in San Diego. If you missed last year's sketchbook feature, you can find it HERE. If you're here for the new stuff, you'll just need to scroll down a little bit to start the image parade. My sincerest thanks as always to the artists who did sketches for me this year. Like last year, we start out not with a sketch, but a full-blown painting. Scott Morse was again doing paintings on boards, and I went by and dropped off reference material for Deadshot after seeing some of Scott's work on DC heroes and villains on his website. The results, as always, were exceptional. Morse is still working on Everest with Greg Rucka at Oni Press, as well as finishing up a book about his mentor, Maurice Noble, called Noble Boy, which he will self-publish. Saw that one at the Con, and it looks great. Morse is also quite busy with his new son and his new job at Pixar, but hopefully we'll see more comics from him in the coming year as well. This is the third year for my Monkeys, Pirates, Ninjas and/or Robots theme sketchbook. The first sketch in this one this year is actually on the outside, though! I saw a girl whose sketchbook was covered in silver sharpie sketches on the outside from various creators, and realized that this was the ideal way to put the theme right on the cover. So when I bought Usagi Yojimbo volumes four through seven from Stan Sakai, I asked if he'd do me a quick ninja head sketch on the cover of my book. As you can see, he turned in something a little more elaborate and beautiful. Sakai, of course, is working on the brilliant and long-running samurai comic Usagi Yojimbo. Me, I'm working on figuring out who to get to do the robot, monkey and pirate on the cover. This year was a great year for me in terms of meeting creators I had long wanted to meet but never had the chance to. That included Kerry Callen, creator of the amazing humor comic Halo & Sprocket for Slave Labor Graphics. I asked Kerry if he could put Kate in the sketch, as I love the way he draws that character, and he came up with this, another indication of his ability to do humor in a short space. Callen is currently at work on more Halo & Sprocket, as well as a variety of anthology pieces, like the ones that recently appeared in Comiculture and Strange Eggs. Steve Buccellato is a name that many fans will recognize for his coloring work on any number of comics, but he's also a talented writer, artist and editor, as his contributions to the underrated Comiculture Anthology will attest. Buccellato took my sketchbook for a couple hours to work on an idea and came up with this amusing image of a monkey pirate being hunted by a stealthy ninja robot. Buccellato is one of the contributors to the recently released Comiculture Anthology, as well as doing colors on a variety of Marvel and DC books and the English translation on Tokyopop's Remote. Seems I need to check that one out! Another indy favorite who I finally got to meet in San Diego was Jim Rugg, creator of the outlandish (and outlandishly beautiful) Street Angel. Rugg has tackled ninjas and pirates in the pages of Street Angel, so I figured he was a perfect match for this book. As you can see by this stunning, detailed rendition of a pirate, I was right. Rugg is at work on more Street Angel, and he's also got some anthology work recently released or coming out, including work in Project: Superior and True Porn 2. Leaving the themed sketchbook behind, we open with the first sketch I got in San Diego, and one of my favorites, the delightful all-ages read Owly by Andy Runton. How do I love Owly? Let me count the ways! One! Two! Three! If you haven't read Owly, you're missing out one of the cutest, most fun and best drawn comics in the market... period. Everyone loves this book, and once you've given it a read, you'll know why. Runton is currently hard at work on volume three of the series. Last year, Tony Moore zombified me in a sketch. This year, I wanted to get a new zombie sketch from the new Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, and he was kind enough to accede to my request. Adlard is of course still hard at work on more issues of the terrific zombie comic The Walking Dead from Image Comics. OK, here's something a little different. Joe Casey was sitting next to Adlard when he was doing the sketch for me, and we were chatting about a variety of things, including how much I love the Casey/Fraction column The Basement Tapes, how interested I am to read Casey's cosmic opus Godland from Image and how we're in a very similar headspace when it comes to the mainstream of comics right now. Readers of this site have always been more fond of one reviewer or the other, whether it's due to writing style or, more commonly, just shared taste in comics. This humorous aside from Casey might give a little peek into which of the two of us he's agreeing with more often these days. It's always hard to pin down my favorite sketch of the Con, and this year is no different, but my favorite might just be this Batman done by Chris Samnee, artist of the mind-blowingly good Capote in Kansas from Oni Press. Samnee spent a long time on this one, and my buddy Nate Southard and I just watched in amazement as, every time we thought he was done, he added a little more shading or detail. Samnee almost certainly has something coming up with Oni Press, but I can't remember what it is... Chris, if you're reading this, drop me a line and let me know so I can update this section with what you've got in the hopper! While wandering the Con floor, I came upon a booth shared by Ken Knudtsen (of My Monkey's Name is Jennifer) and the Ma Brothers, who had with them their comic about Chinese gang warfare called Burn. The art looked great, and the premise intrigued, so I picked up the first two issues, and found that any purchase came with a free sketch. Thus, this cool as hell sketch by Jerry Ma of Iron Man. You can find out more about Burn, the comic that Ma draws and his brothers write, HERE. OK, let's go for three mentions of the underrated anthology trade paperback Comiculture! Don Hudson does the art on several features in that book, and as you can see, his work is terrific. This is a sketch of Gunpowder Girl and the Outlaw Squaw, the heroines of Hudson's western, which was recently completed and collected by Active Images in a graphic novel. Thanks to a timely warning from Zack Smith, I found out that the New Warriors creative team of Zeb Wells and Skottie Young were at the Marvel booth, and I made a beeline there. I introduced myself and got a quick sketch of the Armadillo from New Warriors #1 courtesy of Skottie Young. There are three more issues of the funny and amazing looking series New Warriors from this team, and you can see more of Young's work at his website. The review hasn't gone up yet, but I absolutely adored the all-ages Banana Sundays #1 by Root Nibot and Colleen Coover. So much so that I went out and picked up both volumes of Coover's previous work, the surprisingly cute lesbian porno comic Small Favors, and went out of my way to find Coover and Nibot to praise them for Banana Sundays. Coover gave me this terrific sketch of Go-Go, the sleepy, food-obsessed talking monkey from the Oni Press series. Though I have disliked all of the Star Wars prequels, I've become quite a fan of the epic Clone Wars saga that Dark Horse is publishing, written mostly by John Ostrander and illustrated mostly by Jan Duursema. These two have created a number of memorable characters who have gone on to play huge roles in the Star Wars universe, including Twi'lek jedi Aayla Secura and this guy, dark jedi infiltrator Quinlan Vos, both of whom appeared (or were mentioned) in Episode III. If you're a Star Wars fan and you haven't picked up the Clone Wars trades (there are six right now, with one more that will eventually finish it up), you owe it to yourself to give them a shot. Duursema and Ostrander are finishing up the last three issues of their Star Wars: Republic run, and have a new (as yet unannounced) Star Wars project in the works from Dark Horse when that finishes. After finishing up Demo, it was certain that Becky Cloonan was going to make another splash in the industry. And indeed she will, as she's got two awesome-sounding projects in the hopper for the future. One is a Vertigo series called American Virgin written by Steven Seagle, the other is an OEL (Original English Language) manga for Tokyopop called East Coast Rising. This character is from that new manga, which I personally can't wait to see. Another project announced at San Diego was a full-color spy series by B. Clay Moore and Jeremy Haun called The Leading Man. I've chatted with Jeremy a number of times at this Con and previous ones, so I kept stopping by, and finally I couldn't resist anymore. Even though I've requested a sketch from him at the last three Cons I've encountered him at as well, I had to commission a sketch of his new lead character, the Leading Man. Haun is working on that series as well as finishing up Battle Hymn, his Image-published collaboriation with Moore. Ryan Ottley is immensely talented and superfast when it comes to art. That's the only way I can explain how quickly he did this amazing sketch of Allen the Alien, from Image's Invincible series. San Diego saw the release of the Invincible hardcover (expect a review of this gem sometime soon), and Ottley is still working with Robert Kirkman on the monthly adventures of Invincible, which show no sign of slowing down. One of the unexpected joys of San Diego 2005 for me was getting introduced to Dean Haspiel in the Hyatt Bar by Alex DeCampi. I've been a fan of Haspiel's work since Billy Dogma, but I was also blown away by his work with Evan Dorkin on The Thing: Night Falls on Yancy Street. Haspiel was an exceptionally nice and personable guy, and the next day at the Con, he was kind enough to draw me this sketch of The Thing. While I watched him work, I also flipped through galleys of The Quitter, his collaboration with Harvey Pekar for Vertigo, and let me tell you folks, it looks fantastic. My last sketch of the Con came from Mike Norton, artist on the terrific new hero miniseries Gravity with Sean McKeever over at Marvel. There are a lot of things I love about Gravity, but the simple yet effective costume design is a big one, so I was quite pleased to get this sketch of the character from Norton. Norton is currently working on finishing up Gravity, and is no doubt working on some other stuff that I don't yet know about. That's the last sketch in my sketchbooks, but it's not the last of the sketches I picked up. Below you'll see an amazing sketch that I bought off of Steve Lieber's table of Conan. Lieber has just finished another minicomic with his wife Sara Ryan (expect a review soon), as well as work in the Four Letter Worlds and Negative Burn anthologies and a collaboration with Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker on Gotham Central. Finally, on the last day of the Con, I picked up some of the gorgeous full-color prints that Ross (Spooked, Wet Moon) Campbell had done for the Con. One of them is scanned in below. Campbell is currently working on the next Wet Moon volume, as well as a project from Tokyopop. That's not quite all! I picked up a ton of sketchbooks this year, and you can find my overview of those sketchbooks (as well as sample art and links to buy most of them) in my sketchbook review column HERE. Email Randy Lander comments about this column.