#2

Wierd.

Just last year, it felt surreal hearing that Slipknot's debut album, which I had in the sixth grade, was ten years old and now the bassist of that band, Paul Gray, is dead. In all honesty, it's been a long time since I've listened to Slipknot. It's been even longer since I felt the same ambiguous rage and desperation that they were able to channel in their music that is perfect for middle and high school kids. That said, every once in awhile, when I'm in the right mood, nothing is better than that first album.

I remember a cousin Matthew taking me to church with him in his blue Camero and asking if I'd ever heard of Slipknot because I had just hit the age where my friends fell in love with Korn and Limp Bizkit and Slipknot was in the same vein. He played it too loud for comfort. I stepped out of his car and walked into church with my ears still ringing and how amazing that felt.

I remember too when I was in the eight grade, an aunt of mine got me a Linkin Park shirt for Christmas. I was never really a fan of Linkin Park so I asked my mom if it would be okay to take it back and get something else and when she said okay I used that money and I got the Slipknot shirt I posted a picture of up there. Back then, the black was a little less gray and the image was a little less cracked but it was the first of many slipknot shirts I would waste money on through out high school. At one point, I could wear a different shirt every day of the week and they would still say Slipknot on them.

I remember going down to San Jose with my stepdad to go to my very first concert in 2001, my freshman year of high school, and feeling a nervous excitement as we waited through the line and Christian protesters shouted that all who entered would be struck down by god for worshiping satan.

I remember being fairly timid as a kid and yet, the more I embraced that music, that culture, the more I was able to open up and be more confident in myself even when that confidence was pretty unwarranted. Had you asked me then who my favorite band was, I would have answered Slipknot without hesitation. It wasn't even a question, really.



The reason I'm writing this is because Paul Gray, the bassist of slipknot died today, or at least he was discovered dead today and it feels a little weird. I didn't know him and he alone didn't have any significant impact on my life but he was definitely a part of something that did and it's an uneasy feeling to deal with that. In high school I played bass because I wanted to be cool like Paul Gray. I got a mohawk because I wanted to be cool like Paul Gray. I even started wearing ties because I wanted to be cool like Paul Gray. And then I didn't. I hope his family is okay.



An old painting I did

Frank And Elenore In... Raining Blood on Prom Night

Hey everybody, here is the comic that Adam and I made for Free Comic Book Day. I thought I'd share it with you because odds are if you are seeing this online, you won't be able to buy it unless you live anywhere near us and if you do, we're selling it for one dollar. It was very fun to make even though it was a lot of work but you know... worth it.

Also, I should note that it was drawn on 8x11 sized paper folded in half so each page you see here is half of that so the writing is a bit large because you'd have to read it on a pretty small piece of paper.

Odds are if there are any typos its been fixed by Adam's awesome wife Alicia who handles all the technical stuff I'm usually way too tired to deal with. But these are the rough files she got so that's what I'll upload.

New Guardians

You guys... Blackest Night is awesome.

Magnus... THE ROBOT FIGHTER!!!

Okay, so there was this older comic book character named Magnus. He was very high concept back for that time in that while other superheroes fought all sorts of different variations of evil, Magnus had a specialty. Yes, in theory he could fight tyrants, thugs, and mad scientists but he did not. No, instead Magnus focussed the core of his fighting activity towards the asswhooping of robots. Why robots? Who cares, Magnus was around to fight them and them almost exclusively. That's why I did this drawing showing Magnus doing just that.

Here's the pencils


Here's the inks


Here's the thing all done


I don't feel like labeling the whole thing but I'll just give a wordbank of characters and you can place the names where you may.

Terminator, Iron Giant, Robocop, Astro Boy, Rosie, Maria, A femmebot, Optimus Prime, that kid from A.I. whatever his name is, the Bad Robot, Bender, R2D2, C3P0, A.W.E.S.O.M.O., Alpha, and the robot from Lost in Space. I know its not a complete list of all robots and you may be wondering, "What about robots like Data, Gort, and Wall-E?" Well my answer to you is this: I don't want Magnus to fight them. Because he would crush them. And I don't want that. Thanks for looking.

The X-Men

Here's an X Men drawing I did. This one I've been wanting to do for awhile because growing up I loved the X Men. Of course I didn't read the comics, but the cartoon, that was the shit. I remember drawing on the back of papers from kindergarten my own stories with the X Men that said things like, "They all think beast is dead but Magneto knows he is not but they all think he is."

It's brilliant, I know.

All the characters seemed so awesome back then but looking back now the costumes seem a bit well... "dated". Basically, I cut out any pouches, crazy shoulder pads, and random straps around legs and arms and I think they look really iconic. But that might just be because I loved the show so damn much.

Hey look, I drew Batman and Robin. Unusual..

I think I've drawn Batman and Robin pretty much more than any comic book characters ever. That's just because they are awesome. When I'm bored, and I scribble stuff, most likely my doodles are of them two. It's just like... an uncontrollable urge. Some people can't help but hit people over the head unconscious, drag them home, carve them up into pieces dipping parts that would identify them into a vat of acid and eat their flesh but I draw Batman and Robin instead. Anyhow, here is the latest picture of them. This is an homage or swipe or whatever you'd personally like to call it of an iconic Carmine Infantino drawing


And here is mine.

The pencils:


The inks:

The flats:

And finally the finished one with lots of airbrushing and effects to hopefully distract people from the fact that its not all that well drawn.


Thanks for looking.

The Defenders

Here's another collaboration I did with the San Joaquin Graphic Arts League (yes, that's what we call ourselves, impressive huh?) This time around we decided to do The Defenders because it was another super hero team that consists of four reasonably popular superheroes. Technically, it was my pick and that was all the logic I put behind it. Next time up we'll be doing either Jem and the Holograms or the characters from Wizard of Oz fighting flying monkeys. It should be awesome. Anyhow, here are the individual drawings that I received from Frank Stone who was kickass enough to ink all of the drawings for us.



Okay, so this is my Silver Surfer...



This is Mike Dimayuga's Doctor Strange... To see more of Mike's work go here



This is Frank Stone's Namor the Submariner... To see more of Frank's work go here



And last but most popular, this is Betsy Luntao's Hulk. To see more work of Betsy's work go here

I would also like to note that Frank named all of these files DefJam_charactername which I think was pretty hip of him. I certainly didn't think of it ever the process of working on this jam picture until it was pointed out to me by him in his file naming.

After some coloring and cutting and pasting and frankly, sorcery, I was able to come out with this here...




I was going for like a cool mid nineties alternative feel with the unsaturated colors and the squished font. I think it worked. And it conjures up the idea of bananas I think because it's so damn yellow. That's still pretty edgy and stuff, I think. Bananas, I mean.

Thanks for looking.