Comic Book Tattoo Tales Inspired by Tori Amos , hit comic and book shops yesterday. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is a gorgeous brick of a book at a staggering 480 full colour pages for only $29.99. I got a chance to see it yesterday and I’m pretty impressed with the overall quality and pretty proud to be in it even for a brief 5 pages.

The product desription goes something like this: Over 80 of the best creators from every style and genre have contributed over 50 stories to this anthology featuring tales inspired by the songs of multi-platinum recording artist, Tori Amos! Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman and an extensive roster of talent, Comic Book Tattoo encapsulates the breadth, depth, and beauty of modern comics in this coffee table format book.

Full list of contributors include: David Mack, Josh Hechinger, Matthew Humphreys, Jonathan Tsuei, Eric Canete, Jason Horn, Dean Trippe, Sara Ryan, Jonathan Case, Rantz A. Hoseley, James Stokoe, Tristan Crane, Atticus Wolrab, Kako, Nikki Cook, Drew Bell, Kevin Mellon, Jeff Carroll, Mike May, Jeremy Haun, Amber Stone, Leif Jones, Elizabeth Genco, Carla Speed Mcneil, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Andy Macdonald, Nick Filardi, Cat Mihos, Andre Szymanowicz, Gabe Bautista, C.B. Cebulksi, Ethan Young, Joey Weltjens & Lee Duhig, Omaha Perez, Irma Page, Mark Buckingham, Rantz A. Hoseley, Ming Doyle, Mike Maihack, John Ney Reiber, Ryan Kelly, Alice Hunt, Trudy Cooper, Jonathan Hickman, Matthew S. Armstrong, Neil Kleid, Christopher Mitten, Kristyn Ferretti, Stephanie Leong, Sonia Leong, Peov, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Laurenn Mccubbin, John Bivens, Hope Larson, Emma Vieceli, Faye Yong, Chris Arrant, Star St.Germain, Mike Dringenberg, Paul Maybury, Jim Bricker, Craig Taillefer, Dame Darcy, G. Willow Wilson, Steve Sampson, Neal Shaffer, Daniel Krall, Adisakdi Tantimedh, Ken Meyer Jr., Mark Sable, Salgood Sam, Tom Williams, James Owen, Seth Peck, Daniel Heard, Ivan Brandon, Callum Alexander Watt, Leah Moore, John Reppion, Pia Guerra, Mark Sweeney, Kristyn Ferretti, Jessica Staley, Shane White, Ted Mckeever, Chris Chuckry, Jimmie Robinson, Lea Hernandez Derek Mcculloch, Colleen Doran and Jason Hanley.

The press this book is getting is pretty impressive, from mainstream news outlets down to all of the usual comic book news sources. If you saw Comic Shop News a few weeks ago, there was a 4 page cover story on CBT with numerous samples of art from the book, including this page from my story.

Now that the book is out I guess I’m allowed to show more artwork in detail. I’ll be uploading the story to my portfolio section some time next week (with the lettering erased) so you’ll be able to see the whole thing, assuming you haven’t bought the book. And why haven’t you bought the book yet? Seriously. Go click on the image up top and you’ll even be sending me some extra cash from Amazon for your troubles!

Back to the art! I spent a few minutes yesterday poring over each page in detail. I was a little worried what the art would like like at the 12 x 12 print size as I was only able to print the page out on typing paper to proof it. There are a few minor things I noticed once blown up and printed on photo quality paper, but over-all the story turned out fairly well. As I’ve mentioned before, the whole story including the style I drew it in to doing a for-print story digitally was all one big experiment for me.

On to the next experiment!

Like the title says, another quick digital sketch. This one is is likely to end up as the cover to the next collected volume of Wahoo Morris – assuming that it turns out the way I want it to, that is.

I got an idea for a Wahoo Morris poster, print, or wrap-around-cover the other day and did a quick sketch. It was inspired by a classic photo of the Beatles that was in the newspaper which I thought I could adapt for my purposes. It will be a while before I have the time to finish this, but I thought I would post the sketch now.

I’ve mentioned before that I was working on a story to be included in the upcoming Image anthology COMIC BOOK TATTOO: Stories inspired by The Songs of Tori Amos.

I was illustrating a script by Jim Bricker, inspired by the song GOD.

Well, I finished up the art and colours yesterday and sent them off to the editor for inclusion in the book. It was my first attempt at colouring a full story, so I’ll be nervously awaiting the book coming back from the printer to see how my effort turns out.

We were asked to not show any art until the press junket had started. I think showing a panel or two should be okay at this point.

The story itself is a conversation piece, which I’ve done a lot of in WAHOO MORRIS, so to challenge myself I decided to try and draw in a new style. I was going for a vaguely Tintin-ish cartoony realism style. I’m a little too close to the job still, so I’m not sure how successful I was. Plus, as I said before, the whole job of colouring a story was new to me. So the story really was one big experiment!

Colouring is a skill I would like to develop, though. I’ll definitely jump at the chance to do another colour story when the opportunity comes along.

Since making the decision to get back into doing comics two years ago, it had always been my intention to start pursuing mainstream work once WAHOO MORRIS was back on track. While many opportunities have come up in that time that have kept WAHOO MORRIS from getting to where I want it to be, I started working on some mainstream samples back in September (those samples are still in the unfinished stages because of the increased workload I’ve been under lately, but that’s another story!).

But, back in late October, in anticipation of having those new samples to show, I emailed a link to my existing portfolio to every editor I could find an address for, and got a number of positive responses. So when Mark Paniccia at Marvel Comics emailed me in late February, asking me to do some sample sketches for their new MARY JANE series, I was pleasantly surprised but I didn’t put two and two together.

See, on January 31st, the cut-off date for email entries for Marvel Comic’s talent search ChesterQuest, I sent CQ a link to my on-line portfolio as well. I’d actually forgotten about it, but about 15 minutes after receiving the email from Mark Paniccia, I received an email from C.B. Cebulski himself letting me know that I had made it into the semi-finals of ChesterQuest. Needless to say, I was thrilled!

So, I ran out and got some reference for Mary Jane, did some sketches and sent them in.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Two days before I was leaving on vacation, the suspense got the better of me and I emailed to ask if they were close to a decision. Unfortunately, the reason I can now talk about this whole experience is that the decision was not in my favour. They chose to go with one of the other artists under consideration. You win some, you lose some.

I will admit that I was second guessing myself from the moment I sent the sketches in that I shouldn’t have drawn the characters so “on model” of the original artist’s style, and instead drawn them more in my style. Who knows… I’ll be very interested to see what the art looks like when the book comes out.

Obviously I’m disappointed that I didn’t land the job. I think it would have been a fun gig, but, there will be other opportunities. I’m still pretty excited that I made it as far as I did. I believe there were something like 1200 entries world wide, so it’s pretty encouraging that I made it into the top 30 and was being seriously considered for an assignment.

Anyway, I’ve been bursting at the seams since February 25th wanting to tell the world the news!

Lastly, a big “Thank you!” goes out to C.B. Cebulski, Mark Paniccia, and Marvel Comics for the opportunity!