Gokaiger

I watched the last episode of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (Pirate Sentai Gokaiger) yesterday, the latest Super Sentai series in Japan. I ended up loving this series so much that I thought it warranted its own blog post. If you have no idea what Sentai is, it's basically the set of Japanese superhero team series that have been adapted into Power Rangers here in the U.S. Every season the Sentai teams change, and so (sadly) must Gokaiger.

The 2011 Gokaiger series was celebrating the 35th anniversary of Sentai in Japan, so they obviously had to go all out. I'd never watched any Sentai before (though I've been a Power Rangers fan since Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in 1993), but usually every year I'd only keep an eye on what the new outfits looked like (knowing that they'd eventually make it over to the U.S. in some new Power Ranger series). I actually distinctly remember rolling my eyes when I heard that the 2011 Sentai would be pirate-themed. Stupid pirates, I thought. Then I actually saw the uniforms, and was surprised how cool they were. But I still wasn't planning on watching the thing...

Then at Power-Con last year my friend Augie told me how freakin' cool the series was, and tipped me off on where I could download subtitled episodes. So I decided to give it a shot... and then I was hooked. I mean, hooked.


The premise of Gokaiger is that a group of space pirates are trying to find the "Greatest Treasure in the Universe," which they track down to Earth. However, they can only obtain the treasure by first acquiring the powers of the previous 34 Super Sentai teams. They end up having to battle the Space Empire Zangyack, whose invasion force wiped out the 34 Sentai teams before the Gokaiger series starts.

So basically, the Gokaigers can transform into any of the previous 34 Super Sentai teams after obtaining their powers. Want to see the team randomly transform into the Mighty Morphin' rangers to battle it out? Check. Want to see different color combinations from various teams at any given time? Check. Want to see an all blue/black/white/red/etc. team fighting it out at any given time? Check. The combinations are endless, and that's part of what makes it so fun.

But apart from that, the characters in this series are fantastic. Every one of them is likable in their own way. When Gai, the sixth member of the team, showed up, I disliked his overly enthusiastic nature for like half an episode. Then I couldn't get enough of him. He (along with Doc) ended up being my favorite characters. But I love them all, really.


I didn't want this series to end. And I can't count how many times I teared up either thinking about it ending, or seeing screengrabs from the last couple episodes and knowing that it was almost time to say goodbye. (And I would think, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME, it's just a Japanese show aimed at kids! But still, I couldn't help myself. It was too damn good.) And the last episode, which we finally watched last night, didn't disappoint. It was glorious, with balls to the wall fight scenes and a proper goodbye to our favorite characters. Sigh.

I still have two Gokaiger movies to watch that haven't been subbed yet, so at least I do still have something to look forward to. But still. I will miss this show terribly. Such a great way to get into Super Sentai. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to either give it a shot, likes Power Rangers, or is even slightly curious about Sentai.

Goodbye, Space Pirates!

Happy Xmas + Holidays + Etc.!

It's been ages since my last blog post (as usual), so I figured I'd better get one in here before 2012 is upon us! (Plus I'm sick at the moment, and I figure I can't feel any worse sitting here in front of my laptop getting this update done...)

Above is the holiday greeting we used as a voting incentive pinup for Blue Milk Special this year as Vader and TK8008 enjoy themselves with a bit of holiday cheer. Hope everyone had a nice holiday!

Since I haven't posted in a while, here are some updates: Power-Con in Los Angeles back in September was awesome-- I had a great time and met up with so many friends I hadn't seen in years. Definitely one of the highlights of the year for me. My auction piece was bought up by pal Jon Kallis, who I'm sure will put it to good use... if he knows what's good for him. XD

While at Power-Con I was interviewed by MTV Geek. You can watch both clips (if you DARE) in which I talk about my work on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Blue Milk Special.

Part One:


Part Two:


Apart from that, Rod and I also had a great time at the Virginia Comicon in Richmond, VA in October. It's always great to meet up with friends and fans, and the VA show was no exception. Extra thanks to Matt, Suzanne and Charlie Wieringo for being such great hosts! Love you guys.

Apart from all that, work continues on BMS, though we had serious doubts as to whether or not things would keep going as they are. At the beginning of this month we had a scare with Rod's health issues (for which he's having surgery in January), and having to read nitpicky comments from readers knocking us for trivial things right in the middle of all this real life drama just didn't mix well. We questioned whether it was worth dealing with keeping BMS going at all. But in the end we had a really great response from readers (we were both totally overwhelmed by the support), that we decided to keep going, at least for now. But in order to do this, give Rod time to heal and have time to work on our own projects, we're cutting back to one strip a week beginning in 2012. But fear not, we'll still be around (I think Biggs might kill us if we weren't).

Other than that, work is progressing on a manga webcomic project that Rod and I have been planning for ages (more on that in a future update when we have more to show), I got a bloody fantastic boxed set of Rammstein's music videos and making ofs that we just finished (I did not think it was possible to love this band more than I did before, yet I was WRONG), we discovered the Japanese Sentai series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (which I love and am obsessed with and can't say enough good things about and when it ends I will cry), and we're still continuing with our Doctor Who watching. We've made it up to the end of the 6th Doctor's first season, which has been... interesting (and not in a good way). These last few seasons have been quite the ride. But we're in it for the long haul, behind the scenes drama and all. (I'm going to eat popcorn when we watch the documentary that deals with Colin Baker's firing, though. I'm not kidding.)

So... with that finished, here's to a much better year for everyone. Bring on 2012!

Power-Con!

In just a few hours I'll be on a plane bound for Los Angeles, CA where I will be a guest at the first ever Power-Con/ThunderCon, a convention devoted solely to Masters of the Universe and ThunderCats.

There is a really large and impressive guest list, and I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of friends I haven't seen in years.

There will also be a charity auction at the show, with proceeds going towards the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation. For more information on how you can bid on a piece of art (regardless of whether or not you'll be attending the con yourself), go here.

The inked piece I donated for the art auction (pictured above) measures 11" x 17" and features Stratos, Teela, He-Man, Man-At-Arms and Skeletor. I thought someone reading this blog might find it interesting to see my process as I worked, so I figured I'd leave everyone with that before I head out for my long weekend in L.A.

I've started working digitally a lot lately, so I thought it might be fun to do all of my thumbnail and roughs in Manga Studio (my drawing program of choice), so this was basically my first stage-- roughing out ideas:



Once I'd decided on this composition, I set to work fleshing it all out. I actually used several layers to get this rough piece. One was mostly for anatomy, another for adding costumes/armor, and another where I roughly laid in areas I wanted to be shadowed when I inked the final piece.



I then printed out my rough and used my light table to do the final inks by hand.



Then I spent several hours coloring the piece in Photoshop. While the black and white original inks will be auctioned off, I will have this colored version for sale at my table as prints. So if you're interested, swing on by!



And with that, I'm off to finish packing up the last of my things. See you in CA!

Bmore and VA Con Followups

I've been horribly behind at getting updates to the blog about the shows we've been to lately, so I thought I'd throw up a quick post with some sketches and photos and all that good stuff.

Rod and I attended the Baltimore Comic Con a few weeks back, and it was our first real show of the year. Kind of strange getting back into the swing of things, but we found our footing pretty quickly once we hit the show floor. I always love meeting and talking with people who enjoy the work we do, whether it's Blue Milk Special or some of the comic work we've done for other projects. That's always one of the highlights of the shows for me. And it's also really cool seeing some of those same faces or people we'd only just met at a previous show, but dug our work enough to come back and talk to us again. It always makes it worthwhile.

(Our table also happened to be next to the signing area where Stan Lee was camped out off and on throughout the weekend. He walked past our table a couple times, which was pretty freakin' sweet. It's one thing to read about Stan or watch him in movies and such, but seeing him in person is like tahiepaheioaghepoiahgoebngoeiahgeo29ruaeagr. Just sayin'.)

The other upside to being at these shows is seeing all of our artist/creator friends again. Always awesome catching up and hanging out with our pals! Todd Dezago, Craig Rousseau, Matt and Suzanne Wieringo, Kelly Yates, Rich Woodall, Bryan and Judy Glass, and others I've forgotten (but are no less awesome). And my buddy Jon Kallis was again on hand to help us out at our table-- he is always a huge help!

I sold out of my remaining sketchbooks, we sold a ton of prints and I did a slew of commissions (and finally got my first Harry Potter commish, which was refreshing)! Here are some examples of the commissions for the Baltimore show...

Guy Gardner:



Karl (from Perhapanauts) and Stratos (from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe). Probably my favorite commission of the show:



Han and Luke:



Remus Lupin and Sirius Black:



Vader sketch card:



Endor Rebel Trooper:



Vision:



Vegeta:



Slave Leia:



We didn't have much time to catch our breath before heading to the one-day Virginia Comicon the first weekend of September. This was our first time attending this show, and we had a lot of fun. Definitely a smaller show than Baltimore, but it was nice seeing some of our regular readers and especially hanging with the always awesome Matt and Suzanne Wieringo.

Also, I finally got to meet Charlie! I think we are best buds now. I was reading one of Matt's comic scripts and he kept me company while everyone else was downstairs:



Yep. BFFs.

I did a few commissions at this show, too, including a Cobra Commander and my first ever Star Wars vehicle commission of Slave-1:



I also drew this up, which Rod lovingly colored a few days later. It's our tribute to the new Star Wars Blu-Ray disc set:



And just like that, the VA show was over. We had a complete blast hanging out with Matt and Suzanne and dug the VA show so much that we'll be back for their Halloween show next month! More details on that soon.

Now I'm getting a few last minute things ready for Power-Con this weekend. Whew. But more on that tomorrow!

Baltimore 2011!

It's that time again...

Time for one of my favorite cons, the Baltimore Comic Con!

Both Rod and myself will be at the Bmore show this weekend, August 20-21. If you can make it to the show, you'll find us in Artist Alley at table A175, located at the end of one of the rows facing the signing area (bottom right hand corner of the convention floor plan). As always, I will be doing commissions sketches and we'll be selling prints of all kinds, as well as giving away Blue Milk Special postcards and milk cartons. And we'll also have a BMS exclusive Baltimore print (if I can manage to finish it in time...).

You can click here to download a larger version of the convention center floor plan.

Baltimore Comic Con is semi-local for us and it’s a pretty large two-day show that keeps growing and getting better every year. It takes place at the The Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday, August 20 & 21, 2011. Show hours are: Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 10-5. Stan Lee will be there!

Apart from that, still been chugging away on Blue Milk Special, which has recently gone through a site makeover, and working on putting the last issue of Rob Zombie's Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock? comic series together. Also, thanks to my sister's rather ingenious birthday present of a sketch journal back in June, I've started doing daily sketches. I post all of them on my twitter account, but some of them also make their way onto Facebook. I'll add more every once in a while. They're all totally random and usually based on what I'm currently watching or reading or whatever. Check them out if you're into that sort of thing.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check out the new trailer for the big screen adaption of The Woman in Black. The British TV movie that came out in the late 1980s is still my favorite ghost movie of all time, and I'm pretty psyched by what I'm seeing so far with the Radcliffe version. F-ing sweet.



That's it from me. Hope to see some of you this weekend!

The Reign of Pertwee

Jon Pertwee is a badass.

Just wanted to get that out of the way first.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Rod and I have been going through the entire classic Doctor Who run, and now we're into the Third Doctor's last season. I decided when we started this journey that I was going to completely wipe out my list of favorite Doctors (I'd never seen much of William Hartnell's era, and certainly not enough to base an opinion on, so it wasn't a complete list anyway) and I'd decide as we watched each season how my new list of favorite Doctors would shake out.

I surprised myself by the time I got to the end of the Second Doctor's run by just how underwhelmed I was with him this time around, and pretty much knew that he'd end up slipping a few slots (previously he was my second favorite Doctor). Patrick Troughton seems to be a pretty popular Doctor with people nowadays, and I mean, he was way up there on my initial list, too. He's funny and quirky and likeable. But after going through his entire run (including reconstructions of missing episodes) I came to the conclusion that his popularity is probably due to the fact that a lot of his stories are, in fact, missing, including some pretty horrible ones. So most Who fans only get exposed to his better works, and they don't have to sift through the blandness of stories and companions and recycled storylines over and over.

Anyway, by the time we got into Jon Pertwee's era of Doctor Who, I was psyched. It was a breath of fresh air. One of the reasons the Third Doctor's run saved Doctor Who from cancellation back in the day is because the thing is so damned solid. There are very few stories that I'd call bad or bland, and the Third Doc also has the luxury of having an absolutely brilliant supporting cast in the way of U.N.I.T. (except for Mike Yates, who I have issues with), and some great companions. Oh, and having the the first (and best) incarnation of the Master, played by Roger Delgado, doesn't hurt either.

Also, Pertwee had that knack of kicking ass.



Indeed, this Doctor is a James Bond kind of Doctor. A guy who wears frilly shirts, capes and velvet coats and won't hesitate to kick your ass while doing so. Jon Pertwee brought a physicality and a love of adventure to Doctor Who, and suddenly the Doctor went from being a loveable, funny (and sometimes terrified) kind of Doctor, to someone more stern and authoritative (who could still crack jokes and poke fun with the best of them). His Venusian Akido could cut anyone down, and he could paralyze opponents with but a touch.

Pertwee's run is tons of fun to watch and you can tell the entire cast was having a blast. Great stuff, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to watch a really nice, solid run of classic Who.

So now my only dilemma as we near ever closer to the fantastic Tom Baker's era of Doctor Who is.... who comes ahead on my list of favorite Doctors? Hartnell or Pertwee? I really grew to love Hartnell's incarnation of the Doctor, and yet Pertwee is so badass and has such a solid run... Who will come out on top?

Ahh, decisions, decisions...

Anyway, whatever happens, I wanted to draw a Doctor Who piece featuring the Third Doctor ready to beat someone down, frilly shirt, cape and all. So there you have it.

And as a side note, I hope all of my pals heading to Heroes Con this weekend have a great time and a safe trip. Wish Rod and I could be joining in on the fun! But at least the Baltimore Comic Con looms ever closer. More info on what you can expect from us at the show will be forthcoming!

Elisabeth Sladen

Elisabeth Sladen passed away on Tuesday morning, aged 63. She'd been battling cancer for some time, although as an intensely private person, it doesn't seem that anyone but her immediate family knew she was ill. Lis played the character of Sarah Jane Smith on the long-running sci-fi program Doctor Who (and would later return to the new Who series as well-- her reappearance on the show was so popular that it resulted in her own spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures).

For many of us, Sarah Jane was OUR companion. THE companion. She was someone you instantly liked, wanted to root for and become friends with. As viewers we could relate to her, and we saw things through her eyes. She was one of the reasons I took to the series after my husband (who grew up with the show) introduced me to it after we met. In many ways, I suppose, when I think about our early relationship, the Doctor and Sarah will always be linked in there. I remember when I went to New Zealand to visit him and meet his family for the first time, we watched 'The Ark in Space', a 4th Doctor and Sarah adventure. I will always remember that.

It wasn't long before I was drawn into the Sarah Jane era of the program, which just about everyone considers to be Doctor Who's Golden Age. There is a reason for that. And much of it has to do with Sarah Jane Smith, plucky, independent journalist, who meets the Doctor, falls into joining him on his adventures and quickly becomes his "best friend."

Last year, Rod and I decided that we would rewatch the entire classic Who series, starting with William Hartnell in 1963 and working our way through to Sylvester McCoy and the end of the show in 1989. We just finished 'The Time Warrior' on Sunday night, Sarah Jane's very first story. We have been through 10 years' worth of episodes, three Doctors and 13 companions (many of whom I have enjoyed), and then here comes Sarah Jane, and she is such a huge breath of fresh air. She is a light. A refreshing, plucky light of a person who isn't afraid to tell anyone what she thinks (no matter what time period she may be in). This time round I was immediately struck by how well she played off of Jon Pertwee's 3rd Doctor, and it made me even more excited to get to Tom Baker's era because her chemistry with him is magic. MAGIC.

When the new Doctor Who series started and reinvented itself into something I wasn't taken with, it was still cool to see that Sarah Jane was still Sarah Jane. Elisabeth Sladen still played her as the same person. That same plucky, likeable character you wanted to root for. It was as if she hadn't aged a bit.

And so it was devastating to fans to hear that she had passed away, and so suddenly. I was absolutely gutted and didn't want to believe it, even as more and more sources began confirming it. I had always wanted to meet her one day, but now I will never get that chance. And now there are tribute pages and tribute art, stories from people who knew her, and even a link on the Sarah Jane Adventures website to help parents in comforting their children about Lis Sladen's passing. I love so, SO much that she had this resurgence of popularity late in her career, and that the character of Sarah Jane Smith could be introduced to new fans, and to children. How wonderful.

I cannot imagine how devastating Lis' passing must be to her friends and family. My heart aches for them. She left behind such a wonderful legacy.

There are many pieces of tribute art popping up online. And, after taking some time to process things and deal in my own way, I decided that I didn't want to do something sad. Sarah and the Doctor had a special relationship, and neither wanted to part. Sarah was there with the Doctor through it all because she wanted to be. I loved that when she did leave, it was out of necessity and was forced upon them, rather than having her written out of character and marrying someone she'd just met, or deciding she'd had enough of traveling. Doctor Who companions come and go, but Sarah Jane was special. And so was Lis Sladen.

So, I decided to draw a picture of one of the happier adventures the Doctor and Sarah may have had. Not sad, but looking to the future. Because Sarah Jane Smith will always live on.