"Your Turn" T-shirts!

I'm very pleased to finally be able to announce that I have teamed with Baltimore PressBox for official "Your Turn" Ravens/Orioles t-shirts!

Please check 'em out at the PressBox online store and spread the word!

http://stores.pressboxstore.com/Detail.bok?no=220

This is something that has been in the works for a few weeks now, and since I posted the "Your Turn" drawing I've been getting emails from people wondering when the shirts would be available again. The wait is over! 

The shirts are currently available in white and orange, and there may also be black shirts to come.

These are the only shirts with my artwork that I have approved-- accept no substitutes. I say this because it was brought to my attention last week that someone else had stolen my artwork and was trying to sell t-shirts with the image. We're in the process of taking care of this issue, but I do appreciate anyone letting me know if they come across any counterfeit shirts that do not match the above image and are not being sold through PressBox.

Thanks so much for the support, everyone! Go O's!

Mystical Warriors of the Ring

Above is a new piece I drew which will be used as box art for Mystical Warriors of the Ring, a new toy line coming soon from Fantastic Plastic Toys. As seen on their website:

Mystical Warriors of the Ring is a 1 1/2-2″ toyline created independently by Fantastic Plastic Toys ,for sale online and at various conventions around the USA in 2013 & 2014. Tentatively we will be heading to C2E2 2013, PowerCon 2013, and NYCC 2013... 

The idea is simple, if you were ever a fan of wrestling from 1970-1995 (Prior to the explosion of ECW/Attitude Era) then imagine that world of big characters and over-exaggerated stories in anthropomorphic form. If you have ever enjoyed small collectible figurines like SOMA/M.U.S.C.L.E or more modern lines like O.M.F.G. or The Trash Pack then you will hopefully be in for a treat.

The website above has photos of art for the series as well as sneak peeks of the upcoming figures. Awesome stuff, so please check it out!

I also wanted to thank everyone for the emails wondering about t-shirts for the 'Your Turn' Baltimore piece I drew up last month. We did have a Redbubble store online at one point, but the shirts are unavailable at this time.

But rest assured, the shirts will be back, and it's something I'm excited about. So... watch this space!

If you are still interested in shirts and other potential merchandise with the 'Your Turn' drawing, though, please do keep sending me emails at leanne@hannagram.com. All suggestions and questions are appreciated!

Baltimore Powah

Happy 2013! It's been a while, but the new year couldn't have started out any better after my Baltimore Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my Baltimore sports-- the highs and the lows, I've been there through it all. I love my guys.

The only other time the Ravens won the Super Bowl, I was still in college up at Towson University, and can remember the joy of it all. But it was nothing compared to this year's win.

Now that MLB's Spring Training is upon us and I'm transitioning back to a baseball mindset, I wanted to draw something to root on my O's. Hence the above image. I posted it to Twitter, Facebook, deviantART and Tumblr this morning, and it kind of went viral. I really, really appreciate everyone's kind comments on the piece. All of your shares and enthusiasm have been so awesome. Thank you!

In convention news, Rod and I will be appearing at the ANS Sci-Fi & Comic Con on May 11th, and we plan to hit Baltimore Comic-Con as always later in the year. Other than that, we're hoping to venture out to a major show in the summer (more on that soon)...

That's about all I've got for now. Keep checking out Blue Milk Special and Masters Cast, and feel free to follow me on Twitter, deviantART and Tumblr-- I'm always posting new art there.

Go O's!

Power-Con/Masters Cast

This entry's gonna be twofold.

Firstly, this coming Saturday and Sunday, September 22-23, 2012, I will be at Power-Con/ThunderCon in Los Angeles, CA, a convention dedicated to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and ThunderCats. If you're in the area, please stop by and say hey!

Show hours are:

Saturday: 10 AM – 6 PM
Sunday: 10 AM – 5 PM

I'll be doing commissions all weekend, handing out postcards, selling prints and will also be selling my new 2012 sketchbook which features 32 pages of art.

I will also be attending the Roast Gooble Dinner Dinner on Saturday night (7 PM – 9 PM), the Masters Cast After-Hours Mixer (9 PM – 1 AM), and I'll be a part of the MVCreations panel on Sunday at 2 PM in Panel Room 2.

And secondly, I gots to pimp out the newest episode of Masters Cast, the very first He-Man and She-Ra podcast. The fine folks at MC asked me to join the crew (crazily enough), and I accepted. So now everyone will have to put up with me going on about Stratos and whatnot. But seriously, the show is a ton of fun to do and I was honored to be asked to join.

And that's it for me! Hope to see some of you at the show this weekend.

Baltimore Comic-Con!

See! I said it wouldn't take me long to make another blog post.

This coming Saturday and Sunday, September 8-9, 2012, Rod and I will be at the Baltimore Comic Con, one of my favorite shows of the year! We'll be at table A96, so please stop by and say hey! I'll be doing commissions all weekend, we'll have prints for sale of various things (superheroes, Star Wars, Blue Milk Special, etc.), AND I will have a brand new 2012 sketchbook that will debut at the con, featuring 32 pages of art.

I'm planning on throwing the sketchbooks up on my website for sale sometime later this month, so watch this space...

Along with all this, Rod and I will also (if all goes well) be debuting a new Blue Milk Special banner that should be pretty sweet. Rod was also kind enough to put together a map of the convention floor to help convention-goers in finding us. Check it out here!

We'll also be handing out new Blue Milk Special postcards, which will be free as always. So if you're planning on going to the show, or just thinking about it, please stop by and say hey!

Later this month I'll also be attending Power-Con in Los Angeles, CA, but more details on that later. Hope to see you at the show!

Masters Cast

It's been ages since I last updated this blog, but I figured I'd pimp out the fact that I guest hosted an episode of Masters Cast, the He-Man and She-Ra podcast, just last weekend.

Masters Cast is a monthly podcast recorded by some of my good pals-- Jon Kallis, Katie Haile, Martin Penny and Josh de Lioncourt-- wherein they discuss anything and everything to do with Masters of the Universe, Princess of Power and beyond!

In episode 47 we discuss the recent Masters of the Universe print and digital comic series, the Mattel/MOTUC subscription craziness, and the utter injustice of Mattel killing off Stratos. (Curse you, Mattel!) Check it out!

September's going to be a busy convention month for me, so I'll be updating again fairly soon with more information. I swear.

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!