Entry 291: Revisiting Kingbreaker

For fun I started messing with the colors on some of these old X-Men Kingbreaker pages. Kingbreaker was a four issue series I did back in 2009 and it was my first work with Marvel. I was never satisfied with how it came out. I've always felt the art could have been better served with a different approach to the colors. To test that theory I messed with some pages to try to get the results that I would have liked. I did these quickly and I was working from already colored jpegs, so these don't fully represent how I would color them if I was working from the originals, but they're pretty close.

(For the record, I think the colorist could have been under tight deadlines with this series and couldn't do more detailed work even if they had wanted to. Changing the colors as I have isn't a criticism.)

Entry 171: AVENGERS #7 Notes + ECCC 2013 Commissions

AVENGERS #7-- is there anything I can say about it? Do I have any concept art?

Emerald City Comic Con. I went there. What commissions did I do, and can I show them to you? 

Also, LOVE. Is it real, and is there such a thing as a soul mate?

ALL of these questions, and more, will be answered in this blog entry!

So lets get started!

Entry 150: Astonishing X-Men #52

 

Well look at what the cat dragged in-- the cover to ASTONISHING X-MEN #52!

Well done, cat.

Not your typical X-Men cover, I think. Convincing the editors to let me go with this idea took some doing. You know how they tell you to pick your battles, well I picked one. But now I'm left to wonder, if I've only got so many battles I can fight, did I pick the right one?

Entry 149: Uncanny X-Men #14

UNCANNY X-MEN #14      BOOOOM!

That's right, 13 year-old me. You did it. You have now drawn an Uncanny X-Men comic. You're a winner, dude. A winner. Start shitting your pants with happiness now, bro. You earned it. 

Actually, everyone, I have to get something off my chest. 13 year-old me isn't with us anymore. He's dead. I killed him about a year ago. That dummy just had some stupid ideas and he had to go. There is no 13 year-old Dustin anymore. THERE IS ONLY 33 YEAR-OLD DUSTIN NOW! LAHAHAHAHAHAUGH LAHAHAHAUGH!  (THAT'S HOW I--I mean--That's how I laugh now-- by saying "lahahahaugh.")

The issue comes out on 6/20/2012. If you are reading this the day I post it, that's next week it's coming out! Mark it on your calendars.

Entry 148: Astonishing X-Men #51

Marvel has been teasing this for months now, but now the cat is finally out of the bag!

Northstar is getting married to his boyfriend, Kyle!

Entry 147: Astonishing X-Men #53

Wolverine DONE GONE ATE A BOMB!!!

"...We got your x-ray back from the lab, Logan, and we think we know what your problem is. You done gone ate a bomb, dinja? DINJA?

... Oh, and also your skeleton is all effed up. You shouldn't cover it with metal like that. It's really bad for you. I know you have a "healing factor" and all that, but I'm guessing that healing ability and immunity of yours is supported by blood cells and lymphocytes both of which are created in the bone marrow which you have completely shut off by coating your bones IN METAL!"

RELAX, imaginary doctor person. Wolverine's a mutant. Maybe he creates blood cells in a different part of his body. What am I saying, of course he does.

Anyway. Thanks for looking at this and reading these words. This is Dustin Weaver's blog and that image is my cover for Astonishing X-Men #53. That's right, we've skipped over previewing #51 and #52. We skipped #51 obviously because it's a big secret and Marvel has big plans for it's unveiling. And we skipped #52 I don't know why. Marvel hasn't put it out for preview. I'd like to show it to you, but I guess I'll wait.

But who needs those other covers when you've got Wolver-bomb!... Bomb-verine? I'm going with Bomb-verine.

This is the most conceptual and graphic cover I've done. I've been wanting to do something in this vein recently (more on that when I talk about the cover of #52) and with the idea of "Wolverine as a bomb" I saw my chance. The editor, Jeanine Schaefer, suggested a bomb schematic idea, which is a good idea. I put it all through some problem solving and came to the idea to do it like an x-ray. I got really pumped on the idea of drawing Wolverine's x-ray. I've only just imagined how his skeleton really looks. Now I would find out-- by making it up.

 I also had to make up an x-ray of a bomb... I am certain that I'm flagged by the FBI now for all the bomb-related searches I was doing.

Here's the black and white version. I actually drew all the x-ray stuff negative to what you see here. So it was black on white rather than white on black.

And here's my sketch. I don't typically do my sketches in color, but the colors were important to this image coming off right.

And before I go-

I DONE GONE BLOGGED!

Entry 144: ECCC 2012 Commissions

Oh, my brothers. Oh, My sisters. I drew till my fingers got blisters.

Not really. I just said that because it rhymed. My fingers don't have blisters. Calluses are what my fingers have, but that wouldn't have rhymed.

Anyway. So I'm back from the Emerald City Comic Con, and I've got commissions to show you!

Here's the first of the bunch.

Entry 139: Astonishing X-Men #50

"WHAT IS WITH THESE X-MEN COVERS, MAN? Where is S.H.I.E.L.D. # 5?... I needs my Shield V2 #5, man. I need it! I NEED MY FIX!"

That was the voice of an imaginary Shield fan in my head who really likes Shield. To him I say: "Hang in there, ol' chum. You'll get your Shield V2 #5, and it's going to be so good. It's going to make you forget there was ever a time when you didn't have Shield V2 #5. In fact, it's going to make you forget ALL your problems."

Does such a fan really exist? I don't know.

There is another Shield fan that lives in my head and he sounds something like this:

Entry 138: Back in the Saddle.

Hi. It's me-  Dustin. Thanks for reading this! You are a wonderful person. I mean, this is a whole blog entry you're embarking on by reading these first few sentences. Do you think you can make it to the end? Has the Internet completely ruined your attention span? Can you commit to anything?

Sorry. I don't mean that as a challenge or attack on you. It's really about me. I've been putting a lot of stuff on my Tumblr lately. (Most of it has appeared on this blog, some of it is new.) But it seems like a place that caters to low commitment and short attention spans. All you are expected to do is press a button that says "like" or not do that. I find myself looking at an image for all of 2 seconds and thinking- "yeah, it's good but... no like." It's fostering the most superficial evaluation of art. My positive spin on it is that it's gut level. It's a more true evaluation... but I don't know. Just because it's good doesn't mean that I'll like it, right? But, if I don't like something, how do I know it's good?

Is the internet evil? Do I have a spiteful bias against most things I see, or just good taste? Are all the people who are not liking my stuff doing it on a gut level and revealing the truth of it not being that good? What's going on? Who am I? Why are we here? Is there a god? And if so, can I follow her/him on twitter?

At any rate, if you are on Tumblr please follow me and, for god sakes, like my shit... You don't have to like my shit. Like it if you like it. I don't want to have to add to the list of questions in my head- "are they just liking it because I asked them to?" So like it if you like it.

Anyway, I'm back in the saddle again... Kind of redundant. "BACK in the saddle AGAIN." Makes it sound like I've been out of the saddle before. How bout this- Once again I've returned to being back in the saddle again. Do the math on that.

So yeah, I'm back to drawing again! I spent a few weeks there just taking it easy and I gotta tell you it was nice... Did you know that I have slippers? That's right. I've also got some very comfortable pajama pants. I have CASHMERE SOCKS! I didn't even know that. All of that, along with my bed and a borrowed Kindle Fire made those 2 weeks not bad. The pain killers were also good. There was a moment there where I thought- I could see why someone might want to do this all the time. But really, I'm super happy to be back to working. To be back in the saddle again, once more, for the 7th time.

The image above is my cover for Astonishing X-Men #49. It's the first thing I did after my 2-week break. I wanted to do a cover image that wasn't the ol' "running at you looking fierce" or the "standing there looking fierce" or the "jump attack on an unseen foe... looking fierce" (which was my cover for #48). If you look at the history of X-Men covers most of them will fall into one of those "fierce" categories, which, at best, only tell you who's in the issue. I ended up doing the "hero in danger at hands of villain" cover, which is just another super hero cover trope, but it's one with a bit more storytelling to it. The problem is that you just don't get a lot of info on what's in the issue when making these covers. It's hard to get specific with the storytelling of it, and make it a better, more compelling cover. You end up getting a lot of covers that are characters standing there, looking fierce, on a pile of rubble or rocks, with a dusty hazed out background... Which brings me to my cover for #50...

Till then-
blogged and blogged

Entry 137: gallbladder ATTACK!!!!!!

Oh, hi. I didn't see you sitting there. It's okay, you're not bothering me. Sure I'll tell what's up with me.

Well, you see, it all started about 6 months ago. I was sitting there at my desk in Periscope Studio one bright Portland afternoon drawing my little heart out when out of the blue I was struck with the worst pain I've ever felt in all my life. At first it felt like a gas pain just under my ribs, but within no time the pain had grown to consume my whole abdomen through to my back. I twisted and stretched trying to undo the pain. I paced, I pressed my muscles onto the corner of the wall for a deep massage. There was no escaping it, there was no massaging it away. At that time I was under a very tight deadline. I was stressed. I had been working long hours and not sleeping much. I was essentially running on caffeine. I figured I needed rest.

That episode did pass within a couple hours and I went on with my life not thinking too much of it.

Months later it happened again. The circumstances were similar. Deadline, stress, tired, caffeine. This time it happened just as I was waking up and this time I threw my guts up. And I threw them up hard. Nachos. That's what I had eaten the night before. A big plate of cheesy black bean covered nachos with sour cream and jalapenos. And after a whole night of being in my stomach it was still recognizable. Gross, I know, but clearly my digestive system wasn't working right.

A friend of Lauren's had said she had had the same kind of pain happen to her and that it had to do with the gallbladder. When I had had only the one attack, I thought the gallbladder thing was a possibility but I didn't think much more about it. After the second attack, I took the idea more seriously. Then Travis Charest posted on his blog that he just got his gallbladder removed after a trip to the e.r. due to what he could only describe as "unspeakable pain".

That's when I realized, "oh shit, this could get real". And, my friends, REAL it did get.

2pm on New Years Eve- I was struck with that horrible gallbladder pain and what was a nice day became the crappiest of crappy times. I twisted, writhed, gritted, threw my guts up, whimpered, meditated, achieved a state of calm, threw my guts up again, decided to believe in god for someone to beg to, dry heaved, started sweating, felt the need to remove my clothes and climb onto the ceiling like some kind of gecko. At 6pm we decided to go to the hospital. Why did I wait so long? Well, I don't have health insurance, plus, I really wanted to wait it out so that I could go to Steve Lieber's New Years Eve party.

Lauren and I had our new years kiss in the e.r. while my head was swimming in dilaudid. I was in the hospital for 4 nights. I didn't eat during that time (unless you count a little chicken broth one night). I had a lot of pain meds, i.v. fluids, and watched a good deal of junk t.v. They found enough evidence to cut my gallbladder out and that's just what they did.

I hurt now. I'm spending a lot of time in bed. I'm catching up on seasons 1-4 of Doctor Who. (I've only seen seasons 5 and 6) And I'm really looking forward to hitting the drawing board again.

The piece at the top of this entry is the cover I recently did for Astonishing X-Men #48. I was working on the Astonishing X-Men #49 cover when this all happened to me. I was really happy with how it was coming out. I can't wait to finish it up so's I can show it to you.

Hopefully we'll qualify for financial help with the medical bills. You might see me start to sell off a bunch of artwork in the next few months. We'll see.

Now back to my aching abdomen, oxycodone, bed, maybe some tea, and Doctor Who.

Love
Dustin

blogged and blogged



Oh, here's the sketch I did for this cover.

Entry 132: NYCC Report

ALRIGHT!
D-WE here, and this is my New York Comic Con report.

Entry 79: Nation X #3

Hi!
Here is my third Nation X cover. Like the other 2 this was colored by Morry Hollowell. I had actually imagined this as a day scene, bright, sunny with the ocean shimmering in the background. But night works.

Here's the black and white version.

This cover references the first Nation X cover. I liked the idea of exploring the island through the covers. They're also staking claim to they're territory much like the X-Men on the first cover.

Unfortunately, I won't be doing the 4th Nation X cover. I really wanted to do all 4 covers but it had to make way so that I can focus completely on SHIELD! Since I'm currently having a lot of fun doing SHIELD I don't feel to bad about it.

Entery 77: X-Men : Nation X #2 cover

Hi.
This would be the cover for Nation X #2. This is a 4 issue mini series and it looks like I'll get to do all 4 covers.

I had a lot of fun drawing this cover. It's kind of a strange assortment of X-characters. It was particularly fun getting to do my take on Jubilee. Jubilee's outfit back in the day was pretty 80's and I thought it would look dated now. So I wanted to change it but I also wanted her to be recognizable so I didn't want to change it to much. Luckily there are a lot of retro 80's trends out there right now. So I could get away with keeping her style intact and still give it a current feel. My hope is that it now looks like she's consciously being retro rather than dated... Though, has a bright yellow trench coat ever been in style?

Once again Morry Hollowell did a great job on colors.

Here's a look at the black and white version. You can see that I was referencing a dated version of Northstar's costume and had to change it from what's in the original.


I recently did an interview for Jazma Online. Check it out here: Dustin Interview

A few weeks back I went up to Calgary for the Calgary toy and Comic Expo. It was my first time in Canada. I liked it. I got to hang out with Craig Rousseau, Norm Breyfogle, and show owner Stephen Fuller and I gotta say it was a lot of fun. Stephen is a great host treating us artists to dinners and to a trip out to Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum which was really cool! I'm a fan of dinosaur museums and exhibits and this place was the best I've ever seen. It's in a town called Drumheller where there is a Dinosaur statue literally on every corner.

The Show was pretty great to. I did a lot of sketches and talked to a lot of cool fans. But the best part was meeting Peter White who has created a fantastic Zayne costume from Knights of the Old Republic. I didn't design Zayne's costume but I did give it a lot of personal touches and defined a lot of the detail. It was very cool to see that Peter had really studied those details. Here's a picture of me and Peter.


And here's a sketch I did for Peter along with a version that he colored himself.

Entry 76: X-Men: Nation X Cover

This is a cover I recently did for a new X-Men mini series called Nation X. I pencilled and inked it. It was colored by Morry Hollowell.

When I was 11 I had a Jim Lee X-Men door poster. You remember the image.
That poster is burned in my mind.
Getting to do this cover was so cool for me. It was like getting to do a new take on that Jim Lee door poster. (except my take isn't as much fun, in my opinion)

Some thoughts on this cover:
It is strange to do these big team shots because it's kind of hard to imagine why the characters would all be standing there like that.
In  this shot the X-Men are on an island that used to be Asteroid M. The only distinguishing characteristic that was portrayed with any consistency that I could remember was that big arching window. So I had to include that.
I purposefully didn't draw Wolverine with his claws. It just seemed so obvious that he'd have his claws out. In fact I cropped him at the wrist. His claws could be out, but I've chosen to focus on the man not the claws.

Here are my original un-colored piece and my sketch.

The sketch might be my favorite version.

Entry 73: X-Men Legacy Annotated-Part 1

In this post I'm showing you all the penciled pages for X-Men Legacy #226. And I'll be talking about just what went into each page. It will be like a dvd commentary. So here we go!

Entry 72: X-Men Legacy 227

X-Men Legacy 227 IS OUT!
Pay for it. Then have it.
If you like to own things that you didn't once own, this is the comic for you.
Here are some preview pages.
Click- View big- judge!


 

Entry 67: X-Men Legacy 226- out next week.

From The Adventures of Thing Thing to this. X-Men Legacy 226 will be out next week, July 8! Here's a peek at the first 5 pages in black and white.

These pages were faithfully inked be Ed Tadeo. This issue was my first time sending my penciled pages over the internet to the inker for him to then print out and ink. Which means I get to keep all my original penciled pages. It's booth cool and not so cool. On the one hand I get to keep all my pages and not have to split them up with an inker, but on the other hand none of them are inked, and I like ink. Also, that means there are 2 originals, one in pencil and one in ink. I suppose, for a collector it would be really sweet to have both the pencils and inks side by side.

Here are the same pages in color with text.

Entry 65: Wolverine 100 Project

Down at the Periscope Studio Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker got some of these Wolverine: Weapon-X #1 sketch covers from the Hero Initiative. If you don't know what the Hero Initiative is, it's a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to helping "yesterdays" comic book creators in need of emergency medical aid, financial support for essentials, and to provide an avenue back into paying work.

Apparently, there are 100 of these blank sketch covers out there with a hundred different artists sketching em up to be auctioned off to benefit the Hero Initiative. Steve and Jeff got 4 of them. That meant there were 2 up for grabs for anyone in the studio to sketch on. Colleen Coover got one and I got the other.  I figure someday I'll be yesterdays comic book creator. So it's probably worth supporting these guys. Plus, I will jump at any opportunity to draw Wolverine.

Wolverine was the first comic series that I ever collected. It was the comic that made me a comic book fan. But my favorite Wolverine story was Barry Windsor Smith's Weapon-X.

You can check out my fellow Periscoper's pieces at there respective sights Here: Steve and Colleen. And you can see Jeff's preliminary sketches Here: Jeff. And you can see some other artists' pieces here.

Here's my piece.

Entry 62: Kingbreaker final thoughts

 

Well, X-Men: Kingbreaker is behind me now and I've moved on to new things, but now that it's over and I can look back at it, I can really see just what I think of it. During the course of drawing it there were times when I was really enjoying myself and feeling confident, then there were times when I hated every line that I put on the page and questioned my ability to do anything of value. At times it was kind of rough. Maybe it was the pressure I felt to deliver on my first Marvel job, but Kingbreaker kind of effed with me. And only now can I look at it with a little objectivity and really determine how I feel about it. And I kind of like it, despite some real regrets. 

Obviously X-Men is a superhero genre book, but it's always had a sci-fi edge to it and it was that aspect that I wanted to emphasize. And with this story taking place in space, emphasizing it as a space sci-fi was a natural.

You might be wondering what I mean when I say that I wanted to emphasize the space sci-fi aspect of the story. Isn't the story just what it is? If the writer writes a sci-fi then it's a sci-fi? Well, yeah, but sci-fi's, especially space and futuristic sci-fi's, have a particular way of depicting things and telling story. Think of Star Wars, or Blade Runner, or Alien and think of the big moments that you are meant to pause and soak in, the big impact moments. Those moments are giant amazing space ships, flying cars zooming over expansive cities, strange ship interiors, they're settings, they're things you've never seen, they're the world. Now think of the big moments in the Superhero genre. They're one guy punching another, the villain once thought dead has returned, the hero is facing death at the hands of the villain, the big moments are characters, they're action. One genre emphasizes the world and the other emphasizes characters and not just characters, but the power and violence of characters. Not to be confused with emphasizing character, which is something the better superhero comics do a bit of. But over all, with some exceptions, the world superheroes inhabit isn't made to be very important... I wanted to make the world in Kingbreaker important, emphasize places and things... On the other hand, I also wanted to definitely have those superhero moments... It was a constant balancing act.

By the end of Kingbreake the focus was clearly on the power and violence of the characters. There was no denying it was a super hero book.

When an issue that I've drawn comes out I've always liked to keep up with the message boards and see what people think. When people like something I've done it gets me pumped and excited to hit the drawing board and produce more. For Kingbreaker issue 1 the reaction was overall favorable. But when Issue 2 came out it was a different story. It wasn't the message boards that were so bad. It was the review CBR did. It was not a good review. I read the review the morning on the day the issue came out without having seen the issue yet. It kind of killed me. I hadn't read a review like that for any of my previous work. It really knocked the wind out of my sails. At that time I was just starting issue 4 and it took me a few pages to get my confidence back. I don't really like the first few pages of that issue, but once I recovered from that I started to like drawing again.

Here are a few pages from issue 4.

 

 

I was glad when Newsarama gave a good review of Kingbreaker #4.

Over all, Kingbreaker was a lot of fun. It was exciting to do my first work in the X-Men universe, the universe that got me into reading comics. And despite my spirits getting killed and the regret of not being able to finish all of issues 3 and 4, I like it. And I like issue 2.

Here are some more sketches. Also, the piece at the top of this post was a commission I did at the Emerald City Convention last month. Thanks to Eduardo for e-mailing me a copy.