Thomas Edison Kicks Ass.

Here are pencils to the cover of Silent Scream #1 featuring Thomas Edison looking all heroic in front of the Optimus Effect. That doo-hickey around his waist, on his back and arm is the Optimus. A nifty device for plucking souls from the void and placing them into mechanical machines and retaining their sense of choice. Our pal Max Schreck on the other hand wants to obtain the Optimus to enslave these souls into his war robots and have them do his bidding.

Cheers

Young Robots In Love

A cover shot for a future issue of Silent Scream. Maria and Guiseppe dream of having offspring and of course I had to work in a robot infant development scene with black inky placenta goop.

Cheers,
Mk

Ink'd

Both bookmarks have been inked. Bristol board, Faber-Castell brush and pen tips.

Cheers

Titanus Walleri #2

A little more of a fierce pose with some nice white space.
And spittle.

Cheers

That damn bird

James Robert Smith has had a great year. Besides meeting me and having me bounce artwork off of him of his writings, he's also been busy having novels published, short stories being published, novels being optioned and moved into movie production and making book deals. So Bob is looking to do some book signings and he asked me to draw up some artwork for a couple The Flock bookmarks. Heck, that's easy and it will be fun because I haven't drawn those damn birds in a couple months. Here's the pencil rough for bookmark #1.

Cheers

Another Passing

Barry Blair was a friend and a fellow duo-tone afficiando. We met in Boston in the 90's at one of the many Cons that we would see each other at. We lost touch when I got out of the business, but re-established our friendship on-line. I heard yesterday from Tom Sniegoski that Barry had passed away due to a brain aneurism. It's sad to see someone as talented as Barry pass from something so silent and hidden. I'll remember the talks we had about art and the insane comic book business.

Barry's Home Page

News From the Beat

Cheers to Barry

To young to go so soon

A friend of mine died this past year...and I didn't even know it until recently. An old comic book compatriot, Jon Adams, just found me on the Hellboy.com forum. We got to chatting because we were both part of the comic book company abortion called Dark Moon Comics. I won't go into detail about that here, but what I want to talk about about is a writer friend of ours named Steve Kendrick. He died in September and I didn't know it because we're all so damn busy and this is an impersonal world and we lose contact with one another. Steve was the writer of a book I started inking at Dark Moon called Thespian. Zoe Rochelle was the penciller and he needed a strong inker to help out his layouts. I was brought on and knocked the book out of the park. I don't think Zoe liked the book so I did some pencilling/inking samples and I was put on the book as penciller. Steve Kendrick was a young, eager writer. He wanted to be the best at what he was doing, and I think the work he was creating at DM could have propelled him into greatness. He was influenced by Neil Gaiman and that dark humor came out in his writing. I visited with him a few times at his home, got to meet his mom and his sister and we talked often on the phone, going over story ideas and character designs. DM came to a screeching halt after no one was getting paid and I had had enough and contacted the rest of the creators to let them know what was going on and then make up their own minds on what they wanted to do. Steve and I stayed in contact for a little while longer, but like any long distance friendship it faded. I feel bad that I lost contact with him, and yet I feel good that I knew Steve. His health was always tricky and with any organ transplant there are always complications and I'm guessing the body gave up, but I'm sure the mind never did. Here's to you Steve Kendrick, always a great writer and always a fantastic person.

All In The Un-Dead Family

To my surprise our next door neighbor wanted their family zombie-fied for Christmas. The husband is a movie fiend like me and he loved my cover to James Robert Smith's zombie novel The Living End. They provided me a few good shots of the family and I went to town on it. Baby Liam is creepy!

Cheers

Jobs Lost Due to Ending of Greyhound Racing in Massachusetts

This is what I've been reading all morning. My boss even sent me a link to Boston.com about this. Jobs were lost because the factual word didn't get out strong enough. Massachusetts had some of the most cleanest and regulated tracks in the USA. Greys were seen by a vet before, after and in-between races to assure their health was up to standards. Now that the citizens of Massachusetts have voted to have Grey racing Not-In-My-Back-Yard, then they haven't ended racing, they've just pushed it onto another State. Tracks in other Southern States are filthy and grossly unregulated so what have we done? Sent healthy animals in good conditions to unhealthy and mismanaged conditions. Hurray for us. The idea of Greys not racing was a huge positive, at least that's how the supporters made it appear. They didn't tell you about track conditions. Where did people in this State think the Greys were going to go after racing was banned? Our Rescue group will take in those dogs that are available and that we can handle. How many injured animals will be left behind by breeders, trainers and owners and where will they go? Hopefully into loving, caring homes. In my opinion shame on us for sending our Greys to another State instead of leaving them here, letting them do what they enjoy to and were trained to do under watchful, caring eyes.

Shame on you.

Zombie Wedding

When Greg wanted to get a zombie picture done, I thought quick and easy...Oh NO! He wanted his brother and sister-in-law done up and he wanted it to be their wedding picture. I must say I had a lot of fun with this piece. It's 10 x 15 and mixed media of pencil, india ink, Dr. Martins dyes, grey markers, black markers and some razor blade scratching. Here's the before and after.


Cheers

More Zombies

And here are a couple more zombies to get you into the Holiday spirit.


Cheers,
Mk

Finally, more zombies

So November pretty much sucked. I got the swine flu right after Halloween so I was down for 12 days. 12 days of the worst headache, fever, cough and body aches I've ever felt. I usually don't get sick. Pretty healthy guy who tries to eat well and tries to get enough sleep. Well then it was back to work while feeling like crap and the Thanksgiving crept up on me. A few freelance gigs came through and I struggled through those. Now it;s December and I'm catching up on the friends who I met at Rock-n-Shock who wanted to be Zombiefied. Here are some of my new friends.



UPDATE: Here's the last one of the single zombies. Here on in it's couples and families. Mike Whelan (yup that's his name) was very patient and he was a joy to speak to. I was inspired to add a little rot green to his undead complexion. I hope you like it.

Cheers

Silent Scream pages 2 & 4

More amazing pages of inks from Bill Anderson. I gotta start working up more pencils for Bill to keep working on. I do have the 2 Robot God covers that will drive him nutty so that will give me some time. Getting close to having the proposal ready to go to a publisher.

Cheers

Silent Scream Page 5...inked!

More amazing inking from Mr. Bill Anderson! And you know what, the pencils weren't too bad either.

Cheers

What Makes Me Happy?

Coming into the office and seeing that one of the numerous e-mails I have is from Bill Anderson and that means a new inked page! Bill kicked the ass out of this one. My pencils were pretty tight, and it's nice to see how Bill fleshed them out and let his style show through. I loved this cover when I first drew it and I love it even more now that I see it in ink.
Awesome job Bill!

Cheers

Watch me Zombie-fy!

The very nice and personable Shaula Clark from The Boston Phoenix came by our Rock-n-Shock booth on Sunday as I was just starting my last Zombie picture for the day. She asked me if I would mind if she video-taped me drawing and explained it would be used as time-lapse demonstration up on the Phoenix web-site. Of course I said yes!!! Here it is in all of it's gore-licious beauty!
Zombie-fied!!!!!!!

Cheers

Rock-n-Shock Wrap-Up

We love this show! This is my second time attending and my first as a vendor. I went with my two partners Mike Dobbs and Marty Langford. While they were selling DVD's and memorabilia, I went with the idea to sell my art prints and maybe do some sketches. Well after two rockers asked for me to draw them as zombies on Friday night, I then drew two more of their band mates on Friday and then after cobbling together a sign announcing Zombie-fying and a Alive/Dead comparison, I was booked solid drawing folks as zombies from 11-9 on Saturday and 1105 on Sunday. The management team at Crimson, and especially Leah Urbano, are top notch and were extremely helpful and caring to our needs. One thing that was great was that Kevin Barberi from WAAF was doing the PA work and playing soundtrack music all weekend. That made it a creative place to be. As for the 2 tattoo artists, we were set up right next to them and they were buzz-buzzing all weekend and they were both awesome guys. Jamie Cross gifted me a wonderful painting and I'll definately look him up if and when I decide to get inked. I'll be going back again next year so come on by and get Zombie-fied!!!

Big Silent Scream Update

Do you remember earlier this year I was all giddy about the new project Silent Scream? Well I'm giddy again because I'm seeing inked pages from Bill Anderson and colored pages from Craig Rippon. Seems the Albany Boyz are catching up to me so I gotta get cracking on the initial issue layouts. Here are some pencils/inks and the first color we've seen from Craig on my original take on a couple of our characters.






Cheers

Rock-n-SHock is almost here!

I'm sure you're tired of hearing about this, but seeing it's the first Con that I've been set up at in over 10+ years, it's a biggie for me. I'l be selling art prints of my latest work and selling sketches if you find something you must have drawn. I'll also be selling a 50th Anniversary print of Fiend Without A Face! Richard Gordon has graciously let me use his license for this print. They are limited and signed to 50 prints (50th Anniversary) and I will sign them and doodle a little brain if you like. Rock-n-Shock is at the DC Center in lovely Worcester, MA. Friday starting at 5:00 pm, Saturday at 11:00 am and Sunday at 11:00 am. MIke Dobbs, Marty Langford and myself will be set up at booth 52 under the moniker of Inkwell Productions. If you're a friend of ours, or you read our blogs or FB pages, or just are into the horror/sci-fi/heavy metal scene, stop on by and say hi. If you're reading this, If you come up to me at the table and say "Dude, nice zombie", you'll get a free print of either the gore red zombie or the rot green zombie, your choice!!!

Wednesday Comics

So DC's 12 week experiment has wrapped up. What did you think? I enjoyed the entire experiment. I thought it was a clever way to shake things up for 12 weeks. I have to say the Wonder Woman story did not grab me and neither did the Teen Titans. I like Hawkman and I like Kyle Baker, but I though the reproduction of his art was too murky. My favorite part of Wednesdays was Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook's Kamandi. It was fun, it was clever and it harkened back to the days of Hal Foster and Prince Valiant. Ryan Sook was born to draw this material. When does the mini-series begin? I'm also curious to see how DC is going to compile the 12 week experiment into one collected volume. I'm hoping for an over-sized coffee table style book. Hard cover please. Softcover, as per past editions (H.R. Giger) will just simply fall apart when the binding let's go.

Cheers