Dan McDaid
NYCC | A round-up of news from Thursday
Superman by Jim Lee
The New York Comic Con officially kicked off this afternoon, with fans eager to get inside and publishers eager to begin releasing news into the wild. So let’s see if we can’t herd some of those announcements together. Here’s a round-up from today:
• DC Comics Co-Publisher and artist extraordinaire Jim Lee will team with Batman scribe Scott Snyder on a new Superman title next year, just in time for the Man of Steel’s return to the silver screen. “This will play along with the other Superman books in the sense that it’s in continuity, but we really wanted to carve out our own territory,” Snyder told CBR. “This really is sort of the biggest, most epic Superman story we could do together while having our feet planted firmly in continuity and making sure that everyone had enough room.”
DC also unveiled a Kia Optima that features a Batman design by Jim Lee.
• Marvel announced three more Season One graphic novels: Iron Man, written by Howard Chaykin with art by Gerard Parel; Thor by writer Matthew Sturges and artist Pepe Larraz; and Wolverine, written by the team of Ben Blacker and Ben Acker, with art by Salva Espin. Also, Cullen Bunn returns to Deadpool with Deadpool Killustrated, a miniseries that pits the Merc with a Mouth against Moby Dick, Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, Don Quixote and more. Spoiler alert: he’s gonna kill them.
Paul Grist and Sean Phillips on DC Thomson’s Nikki, from 1987
All this recent talk of defunct DC Thomson girls’ and kids’ comics, plus the release this week of the latest issue of Mudman from Image Comics, has prompted The Dandy‘s Lew Stringer to post some of Paul Grist’s early work for the historic Scottish publisher. These pages show how Grist’s style was born almost fully formed, remaining fairly unchanged to this day.
Grist isn’t the only familiar name to today’s U.S. comics audience to have worked there, of course: Grant Morrison wrote and drew some Starblazer digests; Sean Phillips also used to draw for DC Thomson’s girls comics, simultaneously to the period Grist was working at Nikki, while just out of art college, and was even drawing strips for Bunty in 1982, while just 17 (Sean blogged extensively on the subject in 2007); and Dan McDaid was once a sub-editor on a women’s magazine at the Dundee giant(!).
Reading the Internet so you don’t have to, Part 7
I’ve described some artists here as having “escaped” comics for the rarified air of the fine art world. I get the feeling Glenn Barr would deny that description, I remember seeing him describe his work before as “low brow art”. Anyway, I love it. There’s an interview with him over at the 1XRun blog, discussing the latest limited-edition print he’s produced for them, The Alien Bride.
Lots more art below, including Sergio Aragones, Jon Haward, Dan McDaid and Brendan McCarthy. Continue Reading »
Reading the Internet so you don’t have to, Part 3
Plenty of comic art blogs getting interesting updates recently. The Art of Simon Bisley fansite has a gallery of covers and concept work from Lost Angeles, recently announced by IDW Publishing as migrating there from Heavy Metal. This series will feature Kevin Eastman’s long-overdue return to drawing longform comics.
• Eric Canete has been posting loads of recently commissioned sketches on his blog since Friday, and a lot of them have been a tad NSFW, so let’s insert a break here.
Reading the Internet so you don’t have to
Not every comics artist is at Comic-Con International in San Diego this week; some are at home updating their blogs. Like Paul Pope (above). For this I’ll forgive his minor part in the Before Watchmen farrago.
Dan McDaid is home in Scotland posting an Easter egg-laden image from an upcoming issue of Doctor Who Magazine.
Artist line-up for Ashes takes shape
After the falling out between Ashes writer Alex de Campi and artist Jimmie Broxton, de Campi decided to pursue having multiple artists draw the sequel to the 2005 series Smoke. This week in an update to the project’s backers on Kickstarter, de Campi said the line-up of artists is now complete.
Joining A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran and Smoke artist Igor Kordey are:
- Dan McDaid (Jersey Gods)
- Bill Sienkiewicz (New Mutants, Elektra: Assassin, Stray Toasters)
- Milton and Felipe Sobreiro (Heavy Metal, Popgun)
- Richard Pace (New Warriors, Pitt)
- Mack Chater (Earp: Saints For Sinners)
- Greg Smallwood (Villain)
- R.M. Guera (Scalped)
De Campi said she plans to begin serializing it digitally in June and publish the graphic novel in December.