N-Man vs Draculex!

Wanted to post a quick sample from a recently completed project. This is page one of my pencils for "The Bride of Draculex!", a brand new N-Man story that's going to be featured in the upcoming "Tales of the Uncanny: vol 1" by Stephen R. Bissette.

(Script by Stephen R. Bissette, pencils by Josh Rosen; artwork & N-Man, Draculex, Sally Stevens, all characters and concepts TM and ©1992, 2011 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. The penciler asserts his moral rights.)

You see, Draculex has totally stolen N-Man's girlfriend, Sally Stevens, and wants to turn her into his Space Vampire Bride! Well clearly N-Man's not gonna stand for that! Unfortunately, N-man's first gonna have to punch through all of those wolves, as well as a bunch of other things, before he's going to have a chance to save her.

Longtime followers might remember me blogging about this project a year ago, over here and here, as well as Steve's comments on the collaboration over here and here. These new pages are an expansion on those "sample pages" from a year ago, having recently decided to take what we had and transform it into a full story for the finished book. The story is currently being inked by Bissette himself, which is a huge honour, especially considering his current state of "retirement" from the mainstream industry. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited to see the finished version in print. :)

Anyway, "Tales of the Uncanny: Vol 1" is due to be coming out later this year from About Comics. I'll keep you guys posted as it gets closer to release.

Web 2.0

There are some things about the internet that I really like. And there are some things about the internet that I occasionally find strange and slightly overwhelming and oh-god-don't-go-over-there-never-go-over-there! Historically, intense social networking/"microblogging" sites like twitter and tumblr have fallen more into the latter category than the former, for me. I know, I'm so "web 1.0," right? Well this grandpa has finally decided to take a step off his rocker and see what all the fuss is about! I've started a tumblr account, where I'll likely mostly be posting links to songs I'm listening to and quick computer sketches, and a twitter account, where I'll be doing... whatever it is you do on twitter. Feel free to friend me if you have either of those yourself! I'm not entirely used to this sort of stuff, but I'm honestly going to try to give it a shot. Let me know if you have any advice! Heh.

Also, speaking of people and the internet, I've been meaning to post a link to Denis St. John's submission to the Public Domain Superhero Project for Panel to Panel Magazine, which he recently put online. I don't know about you, but it looks pretty frickin' cool to me. I've also been meaning to make another addition to my People You Should Know series...

How cool is Katherine Roy? So cool she farts lush, beautiful drawings without thinking! So cool she recently got accepted for a spring residency at the Vermont Studio Center! She's got strong opinions on 19th century literature, and taught me pretty much everything I know about book binding. Keep an eye on her, because I'm fairly certain she's going to accomplish some pretty huge things before all is said and done. http://caterpillarpublishing.com/

CCS Awareness Week

Hey all, just wanted to make a quick shout out to the fact that this past week was CCS Awareness Week.

For those of you who maybe just recently stumbled onto this blog and aren't, perhaps, in the know, the Center for Cartoon Studies is a school focused entirely on the study and production of comics, and it's where I did my graduate studies for the past two years. I was, of course, making comics before going to CCS, and had I not gone there, there's still a chance that I might have continued to make them today. CCS is the place that got me militant about making comics though, the place that put my face to the wall and said, "Look! This is what comics are! This is what they're about, and this is what they demand of you!" And faced with said metaphorical wall, a young(ish) Josh, full of hopes and dreams, was forced to either embrace it or turn away. And so he embraced it. He embraced it, and he ingrained his ink-stained fingers into the coarse brick of it as hard as he could.

CCS also taught me about not being alone in this insane pursuit of this oddly specific artistic medium. There are others, just as dedicated, all pretty much universally amazing in their own unique ways, many of whom I can't now imagine not having in my life to some degree. CCS also gave me the tools to sustain all this, and to approach this art form with a far greater competency than what I'd possessed before. Essentially I'm trying to say that CCS was a pretty great place for me. And I've since graduated, and have started to move on towards that next big question mark on the horizon. And lord knows how that's gonna go. But I also know that I wouldn't be able to approach that horizon without nearly the same confidence I have now had it not been for CCS. So you know. Be aware.