Wooo…. I received comp copies of some of my comic work this week. First off, the Avengers Academy Volume 2 trade printed amazing. These colors are way closer to what I had intended and what the actual images looked like on my screen. The individual issues didn’t necessarily print bad, but they just lacked or printed a slight too saturated. There were three pencilers on this arc. Mike McKone, whom I’ve always enjoyed working with, Sean Chen who really knocked it out of the park and gave me plenty of room to play with colors and the third is my good friend Tom Raney. I first met Tom years ago at Wildstorm in La Jolla. I immediately liked his style and realized he was the guy that came from Marvel doing some, I think it was Infinity War or some other Adam Warlock story. Tom worked on Team One: Stormwatch at the time and I dug his style. I really grew to love his art a few years later when he, a bunch of other Wildstorm artists and I were doing a signing in Florida. I was sitting next to Tom and the quick sketches he was doing for fans were just great. Flash forward 15 years or so and I’m at a New York comic con party at the Empire State building and Tom comes up to me and says something like “Isn’t it great?” and I say “What?”. He told me we would be working together on Avengers Academy. Such cool news. I immediately knew what I would want to do with Tom’s art and then the story arc that Christos Gage came up with was just pitch perfect for what I felt Tom and my strengths are. Korvac showing up and battling  all these Avengers and  the Avengers Academy kids. Fun, fun stuff. The colors in this trade really sing. Hats off to Jen Grunwald and everyone in the Marvel collections department. This made me extremely happy. Oh, and the back cover is the cover that was deep fried on Thirty Rock last year.

The other trade I received from Marvel this week was the newest collection of X-Factor. I only colored around two issues in this collection, but they printed just as well as the Avengers Academy trade. This story arc is where I was weened off the book as it were. Somewhat sad because I enjoyed working on Peter David’s stories and I really did want to stay with the book. In this trade, new artist, Emanuela Lupacchino took over. I’d never seen her stuff before but it is really sharp. I would have loved to have colored it but lucky for the book, my friend Matt Milla took over the colors and is doing a pretty insane job. Really rich colors. Matt came into Wildstorm shortly after I left, but we have a ton of similar friends. I think Matt also used to work with Brian Haberlin, and old friend of mine that ended up running Top Cow’s color among a million other things. If you get a chance, check out what Emanuela, Matt and Peter are doing on that book. Really cool story line.

Lastly, I received my copies of Dark Knight 4 and the final issue of DMZ. Dark Knights cover is colored by Alex Sinclair and the cover to DMZ 72 is by John Paul Leon. John’s cover is perfect and I’m happy that the colors actually printed good. I had some problems on some of the final issues running a bit dark because we switched printers, I believe. There are so many variances in colors and printing that it can be a bit unnerving if you let it get to you. So many things are out of your hands, that when you finish, you just sorta half to let go of it. These two issues printed great though, so no complaints. I need to get an iPad or an android tablet so I can start seeing these issues in their digital download versions.
-J