On the Drawing Board- 2/12/09

Here’s what I’ve got on the board right now:

• Supercapers Comic Book– 13 page full color promo comic for the movie I did illustration work on. I was given two weeks to get this done, which is almost impossible so I am collaborating with my friend and ace comic book artist/inker Tom Nguyen on it. I’m doing the penciling, color and all design/layout while Tom is inking most of the book with me inking the caricatured faces and some other detail work. It’s been a long time since anyone else has inked my work, so this should be fun to see. Tom is one of the best inkers out there. The comic is going to be given away as a promo item at WonderCon in San Fransisco the last weekend of February. I will share some of it here on The MAD Blog once its released.
• MAD Job– Working on a two page gag article likely for #500 but might end up in #501. It’s one of those “evergreen” type pieces.

In the meantime, here is a job I did for movie industry magazine Fade In a few months ago. The issue just hit the news stands. It was a tough job, as the topic was discrimination in Hollywood. Short of throwing KKK hoods on studio executives or having some burning crosses in front of the Hollywood sign, it was difficult to come up with images that demonstrated the discrimination minority creators and actors/actresses deal with in the movie business. The main image was the client’s concept, playing on the popularity of superhero movies:

The idea is that the studio execs are ignoring black superhero films in favor of ones with white heroes. Apparently nobody wants to make a Black Panther, Luke Cage or Jon Stewart Green Lantern movie, but they will make The Hulk. The thing is, there are sadly few mainstream black superheroes anybody outside of comic book fandom has ever heard of (Blade comes to mind as one that went from relative obscurity to a three film franchise, but had anybody ever heard of “Blade” before the first film?), so that’s not exactly a strong message. Also, the Hulk is green… not white. 🙂

The other spots were illustrating specific stories of discrimination in the article.

A few other small projects in the works as well. Next week I should be able to share the artwork I did for an article in the March issue of Penthouse, which should be on the stands by then.