Ladronn working on Hip Flask comic

• Stan Lee and John Romita Jr. will collaborte on a Fantastic Four one-shot intended to be a future What-If story.

  It tells the last Fantastic Four story, sorta like what Alan Moore and Curt Swan did with "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?"

• Vertigo are currently looking for a project for Eduardo Risso to work on while he waits for "100 Bullets" scripts.

• There's a vague rumour that Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's next Marvel colour book will be "Captain America:" White.

Source: All the Rage & Lying in the Gutters

"Tim did a drawing last year for a fan*. honestly, when you look at it, you say, OK, I want to see that. It's the biggest, baddest, meanest Hulk you've ever seen," Jeph Loeb said.

"It will take place essentially between issue one and issue two where, for reasons only understood to Stan [Lee], they turned Hulk from gray to green. ... What's interesting to Tim and I is this monster, and how this monster released his inhibitions and destroyed his life."

Look for Betty Ross, Thunderbolt Ross and Glenn Talbot to all play a role, as does Rick Jones, as "the gigantic pain in the ass that he was back then," Loeb said.

*) It looks like I'm the fan Jeph Loeb was talking about. Someone at Marvel found my sketch of the Hulk by Sale on my site and sent it out with a press release, announcing the project. If you like to use the image in question on your site, please be kind enough to give me a nice "courtesy of..." mention

Peter Franken

• Comicraft released a Hip Flask promotional poster with art by Jose Ladronn and the Unnatural Selection one-shot with two alternate covers by Ladronn and Nathalie Gavet. They also released all of Ladronn’s art for the comic - plus more - on a limited edition CD-ROM.

• It was revealed that Alex Ross and Paul Dini will once again team for their annual, tabloid-sized book. The one difference - this time around, DC announced two Ross/Dini projects, both featuring the JLA - Secret Origins and Truth & Justice.

  For the complete article, click here.

• The 2002 Eisner Awards, were given out at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Winners of interest were:

  Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team - Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets

  Best Graphic Album-Reprint - Batman: Dark Victory, by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

  Best Continuing Series - 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso

  Best Serialized Story - Amazing Spider-Man #30-35: "Coming Home," by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna

• Comprised of 20 short stories and one main story, "It’s a Bird" is Steve Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s look at Superman, as told form the viewpoint of a scriptwriter assigned to work on a Superman movie script.

  "It's an 124-page hardback from Vertigo, edited by Karen Berger, painted by Teddy Kristiansen and he's done with about 90-95 pages of it, so it might come out sometime soon," says Seagle.

• Ed Brubaker, new writer of Detective Comics, said that his first story arc will last six issues. Tim Sale will provide covers for the series.

• Cameron Stewart is the new artist of Catwoman, taking over with #12. J.G. Jones will provide covers for the series.

• At a panel, J. Michael Straczynski said that he "may" have had a conversation with Joe Quesada about an artist who "may" have been Tim Sale about a miniseries that "may" involve Dr. Strange.

Source: Newsarama & Comics Continuum

Here's a small excerpt of the interview:

Russell Lissau: Love triangles pop up in your stories from time to time. "Daredevil: Yellow" certainly had a biggie; "Spider-Man: Blue" will as well. Are you a romantic at heart? Why turn superhero stories into romance comics?

Tim Sale: I am indeed a romantic at heart, as is Jeph, and sentiment is the yang to our melodrama's yin of violence. No one does a more sentimental Batman than Loeb and Sale, thank you very much. I think when you deal in melodrama, you need to have that.

To read the whole interview, click here.

Source: Comic Book Resources

Peter Franken

To read the whole article, click here.

Source: Newsarama

"The big question -- is the Daredevil: Yellow hardcover worth it? The big answer, for as objective as I can be about it -- yes," Loeb remarks.

To read the interview, plus some preview images, click here.

Source: Newsarama

...

"I can tell you that there will be between 10-16 pages of artwork and material that hasn't been seen (at least in this form). We've planned to show a sequence of pages that will start with script, then show Tim's layouts, his rough pencils, pencils, then inks and then his ink wash so the readers can see the entire process.

In addition there will be artwork that Tim chose to "go another way" -- some covers we didn't use -- all gorgeous stuff (Tim is such a perfectionist) with hopefully color commentary from me.

The book's designs are being handled by Richard Starkings and John Roshell at Comicraft who have done brilliant and stunning work on such things as the Astro City hardbacks and the Danger Girl collection. They are, quite simply, the best collected edition designers out there (and pals to boot!).

In addition, the book WILL be oversized -- bigger than a Masterworks, but not quite the size of an "Album" as you would find in France (or so is my understanding). It will not be a treasury sized edition as reported elsewhere, but should make a great looking coffee table book.

We're very pleased with the production values that The Marvel Knights provided us with (and many of you were kind enough to notice), so we have no doubt that the hardback will be a handsome edition and addition to the growing Loeb/Sale library."

...

Source: DC Comics Message Boards

To read the interview, click here.

Source: Comic Book Resources

Volume 1 will be presented by Chaos! Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Image Comics, with contributions from Oni Press, Top Shelf Productions, and other publishers.

Volume 2 will be presented by DC Comics, and will include WildStorm Productions, Vertigo, and MAD Magazine.

Contributors who have donated their time and talents to this monumental project will include Frank Miller, Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Walter Simonson, Stan Lee, Chris Bachalo, Joe Kubert, Jim Mahfood, Tim Sale, Kurt Busiek, and dozens of other superstars. The cover for Volume 1 will be painted by Eric Drooker, while the cover to Volume 2 will be painted by Alex Ross.

The softcovers -- each to be 224 pages in length -- are scheduled to ship on January 23, 2002. All publisher profits from the sale of the books will be donated to relief organizations assisting victims of the attacks.

For more details about September 11, see the solicitation online.

Source: Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc.

Source: Newsarama

Source: Newsarama

Here's a excerpt of the interview:

Newsarama: Do you think your color blindness helps to explain your attraction for inkwashing, such as you're doing in Daredevil: Yellow?

Tim Sale: Yeah - it's all gray tones, and that is scanned and colored on computer by the amazing Matt Hollingsworth. It's looks as though I was doing the art in watercolors or something, but that's not the case. There's a lot of black and gray on the page, but Matt doesn't change the quality of whatever brushstrokes or overlapping tones I create. He just makes them color, instead of gray. So they're different from the way a lot of other people have tried to do this in the past, like Travis Charest. But also, Marvel Knights did it with Texeira, but they wanted to do it so it looked more like paint, but I don't want that, exactly. It's very exciting to work this way, and I'm very happy with how it's turning out, but I couldn't do it in color.

To read the whole interview, click here.

Source: Newsarama

Hulk by Tim Sale July 6, 2001	Swamp Thing by Charles Vess July 16, 2001

Click on the images to get a larger image. Both sketches I got at the Forbidden Zone shop in Brussels, Belgium.

Peter Franken

For more recent news concerning this artist, click here

To sneak peek, click here

Source: Marvel.com

Fandom's Newsarama recently posted an interview with Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. In this interview Sale talks about the ink wash technique he's using in the series, which has proven to be more time consuming than originally thought, and is the reason for the delay.

To read the interview, click here

Source: Fandom.com & Marvel.com

Spencer Lamm, editor of the first Matrix comic and the recent, The Art of the Matrix reported that the work on display at the website will be collected, most likely in a hardcover book format. A timetable has yet to be determined, but may be held to coincide with the release of The Matrix 2.

To view the Matrix Comics click here

Source: whatisthematrix.com & Fandom's Comics Newsarama

WizardWorld posted a two part interview with Tim Sale on their website, in which Bill Baker catches up with Sale to get the details on how the Daredevil: Yellow project came about, why he and Jeph Loeb chose Daredevil as the subject of this mini-series, and what aspects of this character means the most to him.

For the 1st part of the interview click here

For the 2nd part of the interview click here

Source: WizardWorld.com

For the whole article click here

Source: WizardWorld.com

Here's an excerpt of the interview:

"As ugly as the yellow-and-red costume might be, especially when compared to the basic-but-cool crimson threads Daredevil wears today, Sale insists the original outfit served an important purpose. That's something he and Loeb plan to examine in Yellow. "It [the costume] doesn't make any sense at all, and it doesn't look good, but Jeph has come up with some great reasons for having it," Sale says."

For the whole interview click here

Source: Fandom.com

For the complete interviews click here for the Newswire interview and here for the Comics Continuum interview.

This earlier incarnation of Daredevil differs a great deal from this current day counterpart. The Daredevil in this story is from a period where Matt Murdock is fresh out of law school, full of hope and energy, and DD is a more freewheeling...even happier character.

The lightness in tone of the series will also be reflected in Sale's artwork, which will be a brighter style than the much darker Dark Victory.

Source: Newsarama

Here's a small excerpt of the Q&A:

Mania: How hard was it to maintain the mystery of The Long Halloween or Dark Victory for 13 issues?

Jeph Loeb: I don't really think in terms of the mystery as driving the story. Tim and I know when certain things have to happen and how they are going to resolve themselves, but the characters and the emotions of the scenes are far more important. The challenge is making the reader care about the characters so the mystery has some resonance. Otherwise, we're just playing Clue -- "It's Alfred, in the pantry, with a shoe horn." Not exactly involving!

For the full Q&A click here.

Source: Anotheruniverse.com

Here's a small excerpt of the interview:

Sale says he and Loeb -- who lives in Los Angeles -- have turned a traditional writer-artist relationship into a strong friendship. They've actually become close friends. "We are the best of friends," Sale says. "We talk pretty much every day, and we'll talk about anything. It's one of the things I'm looking forward to most about moving to L.A."

For the full interview click here.

Source: Anotheruniverse.com

For the full interview click here.

Source: Anotheruniverse.com

...

BB: You and Tim seem to have developed a truly special relationship over the years. What are some of the things that Tim does with his work that really fires your imagination, and takes your scripts to where you want them to go?

JL: I talk with Tim (he lives in Seattle, I live in Los Angeles) by phone every day. Every day. We talk comics, movies, women, life -- all of it. So, we have an enormous impact on the way each of us thinks. It gets tied up in a bundle when we do comics. We talk out the stories in my head and then I write Tim a very detailed script. He then interprets it in his own unique way. I try and write to his strengths, but he always surprises me. The best, hands down.

...

For the full article please click here.

Source: Comic Book Resources

John Cassaday:
American artist John Cassaday (1971) is best known for his work on the highly acclaimed Desperadoes mini-series and Planetary both for DC's Wildstorm imprint. Works of interest include the Union Jack mini-series and the X-Men/Alpha Flight mini-series.

Alex Ross:
Fully-painted comics are nothing new, but few painters can match the excellence of Alex Ross. His photo-realistic paintings are a real treat for the eyes. Work highlights include: Marvels, Kingdom Come, Uncle Sam and his exquisite covers for Kurt Busiek's: Astro City.

Tim Sale:
American artist Tim Sale (1956) is probably best known for his work on Batman: The Long Halloween, Superman: For all Seasons and his current work on the new Batman: Dark Victory maxi-series.

LOEB 2000: 'WITCHING HOUR,' 'SUPERMAN' 'DARK VICTORY'

The end of the 20th century was very good to Jeph Loeb, giving him critical and commercial success with a pair of lauded DC Comics limited series.

His 21st century may well look much the same, with a sequel to "Batman: The Long Halloween" and a move from the "Superman for All Seasons" limited series to the monthly "Superman" book receiving raves, as well as his "Witching Hour" limited series for DC/Vertigo.

"The reaction to 'Witching Hour' has been phenomenal," Loeb told the Comic Wire on Tuesday. "As with most things these days, under-ordered, sold out, reordered, sold out, etc ... Chris [Bachalo] and I have been talking about something for late next year. We've got a neat little story cooked up where Red and White meet a serial killer on Christmas Eve called 'What's Red and White and Black All Over?' that is very ... disturbing. But, how and where that takes place, we haven't decided yet. We've also been thinking about the character of Gray - who apparently is our breakout lead - and dealing with the 300 years he was waiting for White and the various souls he met along the way. That would allow us to do a Western Witching Hour, a 1940s crime noir Witching Hour - that sort of thing. And weren't the 1950s McCarthy hearings just one big Witch Hunt anyway?

"On the Superman front, the world just isn't ready for young Ed McGuinness (in about two short weeks). His style is going to set the course for Superman in 21st Century in the same way Swan and Byrne and Jurgens set it for their respective decades. What we're particularly excited about are the computer graphics designed by Ed and executed by Wildstorm for Brainiac 13 - the Brainiac of tomorrow's tomorrow. A lot has been tried using these graphics, but we don't think to the extent and importance of a major, major villain in the DCU. Not to be missed.

"Lastly, as frightening as it seems, Tim [Sale] and I are working on the second half of 'Batman: Dark Victory' with the end in sight. It has been an incredible delight the way people have responded this time around - and the amateur sleuths writing in and posting on the message boards who are working on the mysteries are even more clever than during ['Dark Victory' predecessor] 'The Long Halloween,' so it's really keep us on our toes. All we can tell you is that Valentine's Day (#6 'Love') will be a critical turning point for the series."

Witching Hour Sequel or Prequel?! / Dark Victory Turning Point