13/01/21
15/01/21
20/01/21
Couldn’t resist picking up some titles from the recent TKO STUDIOS sale on comixology. Hicotea, the follow up to Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez was a lovely surprise gift from my wife, highly recommended.
17/12/20
Fire Power #6 was EPIC! such a great end to the second arc, the choreography by Samnee continues to blow my mind with each issue.
Finally got my hands on a print copy of Stealth by Mike Costa, Nate Bellegarde, Tamra Bonvillain, Sal Cipriano & Jason Howard. I’m a HUGE fan of Nate’s work so I was ecstatic to learn about this series and his return to drawing comics at Image again after his outstanding run on Nowhere Men. If, like me you missed out on Stealth due to lockdown/speculators I’d highly recommend picking up this trade.
Solid Blood #17 was a MASSIVE surprise this month, an awesome homage by Kirkman, Ottley & Rathburn to all the early 90’s Image books that defined the period. It’s clear Ryan Ottley had a blast here with overly elaborate character designs, splash pages and his signature spatter practically featuring on every page. The inks by Cliff Rathburn are equally impressive, his colouring perfectly evokes the retro style of books like WildC.A.T.S, Stormwatch, Prophet, etc… and THAT paper, oh boy… just glorious… so great to read a book printed on newsprint again!
I love collections like this, different interpretations of a well known character by various creative teams/creators. I’ve read the previous volumes and couldn’t resist grabbing this latest issue as I’d already seen some previews of Greg Smallwood’s art for “Metamorphosis” written by G. Willow Wilson with letters by Clem Robbins (above).
29/12/20
Got some great gifts this Christmas, hope you all had a good one!
14/11/20
Wolverine Black, White & Blood has firmly rekindled my early nineties obsession with the art of Adam Kubert, still undoubtably one of my favourite artists on Wolverine. Weapon X has never looked so good in “The beast within them” (below), I mean look at those pages, 32 panels of sheer jaw dropping detail, AMAZING! As a teenager, the Kubert’s were my comic art GODS, the image of Magneto ripping the adamantium from Logan in X-Men #25 by Andy is permanently seared into my brain along with the page by Adam in Wolverine #79 when Cyber smashes the Ol’ Canucklehead’s bone claws.
The limited colour palette is such a unique selling point for this book and the creators show real restraint with the application of red to draw the eye or create mood, etc. When red features on a panel or page its genuinely striking, for example, in “Cabin Fever” by Declan Shalvey you really feel the flash of machine guns in the page above.
Great to see Shalvey’s use of grey wash so clearly here as well, it’s something I’ve enjoyed in his work since the early days of Electic Micks and also the short story “Ball Park” published in Tripwire Magazine, 2009 (page one, page two & page three are available on his old dshalv blog).
21/11/20
I’ve been looking forward to Barbalien Red Planet since the early solicits. I’m a huge fan of the Black Hammer books by Lemire and Ormston so I’m always particularly interested in anything related to that series.
This is a fantastic first issue that expands on the back story of Barbalien and his personal struggle with identity during the 80’s, highly recommended!
22/11/20
Tim Daniel kindly sent me a pdf copy of The Plot #7 after he offered the issue up on twitter. I’ve been curious about the series for some time and was hooked straight away, I pretty much tracked down issues 1-6 immediately after reading issue 7.
I buy trades fairly regularly so it was a pretty satisfying experience to sit down with six single issues from a series like this and read them all in one sitting.
The story of The Plot is hugely compelling, I love the characters and the creeping feeling of dread that practically oozes from every page.
28/11/20
Jaguar was one of the more memorable characters from Season 3 so I couldn’t wait to read Marc Ellerby’s take on the highly skilled rebel fighter.
I laughed like an idiot pretty much all the way through this issue, Marc deserves an award for this panel (above) of ‘barista’ Jaguar serving coffee.
One of the BEST moments in a comic for me this year!
03/10/20
Looks like everyone had a blast reinterpreting this classic, fantastic stuff from everyone involved!
05/10/20
Loved this! The pages positively krackle with silver age Kirby energy! Read the first issue online here and be sure to check out the process by Alex Diotto in the DEC 2019 issue of PanelxPanel.
07/10/20
Hadn’t intended on picking up the Walking Dead deluxe… but dayum! that cover by Charlie Adlard is awesome! I originally read this series in the collected hardbacks so it was refreshing to read issue one again as a single. I always really loved the black and white aesthetic of the walking dead (especially the greyscale work by Cliff Rathburn) so I was surprised how much I also enjoyed the fantastic colours by Dave McCaig. It’s staggering to think that McCaig has been steadily working on these deluxe issues for the last FOUR years! Whatever your feelings on the recolouring of the book, that’s a gargantuan undertaking, McCaig has completed 100 issues so far! There’s also new lettering by Rus Wooton to replace the original treatment by Robert Kirkman and a fresh design by Andres Juarez. Other additions include a variant cover gallery and a fascinating script breakdown by Kirkman in the back matter.
The latest title under Vault‘s NIGHTFALL imprint is a dark atmospheric folk horror that oozes with the rural pagan weirdness of cult films like The Wicker Man (1973) and The Kill List (2011). If you’re not familiar with artist Chris Shehan I’d highly recommend reading MANDIBLE an eerie 3 page horror story about a dental practice mannequin written by Dillon Gilbertson with lettering by Cristian Docolomansky, just don’t have nightmares… chok chok.
14/10/20
Fantastic halloweeny special from DC including the stand-outs “Baytor vs Darkseid” (W) Garth Ennis (A) PJ Holden, John Kalisz (L) Rob Steen and “From Humble Roots” (W) Amedeo Turturro (A) Max Fiumara, Dave Stewart (L) Aditya Bidikar.
Lookit that art by Leonardo Romero, soooooo good!
30/10/20
Visceral, claustrophobic… deeply unsettling storytelling available on Gavin’s gumroad.
I’ve put together a 16 page collection of drawings and illustrations from the last two years, check it out below or download the free pdf.
Darren-Reynolds-2020.pdf (approx 6.2 MB)
I’ve largely been reading digital comics in the last few years, only really picking up the occasional small press printed book from creators at comic markets or through their websites. It’s really a space thing for me, there’s only so much stuff I can keep and I’ve even been selling things online to reduce my collection. With lockdown though and everything else that’s going on (insert internal screaming) the urge to visit comic shops again has been reignited for me in a big way. Newsagents like WHSmith and Eason have already closed in Northern Ireland and some other small newsagents have paused their magazine sales entirely. Comic publishers and local comic shops are taking a HUGE hit right now and it really feels crucial to get behind them in whatever minuscule way I can. With that in mind, I’ve now got a regular pull list with a LCS and thought I’d post some of the stuff I’ve been reading the last few months… it’s all great btw.
15/07/20
When I heard Cory Walker was returning to draw Science Dog again in Oblivion Song #25 I couldn’t wait to grab a copy, check out that cover!
22/08/20
Absolutely loving Fire Power atm, the process pages from Kirkman & Samnee in issue 1 was an unexpected bonus!
So excited for the Invincible animated show, these designs by Cory Walker are awesome.
Lorenzo’s fight sequences in Oblivion Song #26 are something else!
12/09/20
17/09/20
23/09/20
Some inking practice in clip studio paint using the real g-pen (one of the default brushes supplied with the app). The aim of the exercise was essentially to improve my digital drawing by limiting myself to using only one brush. I love the default brushes in CSP and the real g-pen is one of my favourites. This page was completed over a couple of weeks by adding a few heads at a time usually for about 20 to 40 mins.
I had the urge to colour some of these and tried out a few palettes and added some rendering.
I’m pretty pleased for the most part with my work from the last few weeks, I tried some new working methods and I gotta say I’m really enjoying inking at the moment.
Started off the month with a #MonsterMayhem art challenge prompt. I began inking without really figuring out the structure of the horns but the colouring was a lot of fun and I even added a little noise to the background for some texture.
Kermit turned 65! YAAAAAAAAY!!! The perfect opportunity to try out Matty B’s big wet set in procreate.
I LOVE this set! there’s sooo much variety and the included overlay layers are just amazing, a real quick and easy way to apply subtle textures.
I’ve also been using this inking brush set by Juan Albarran available now on gumroad for clip studio paint, favourites so far include the main brush, dry brush and rake brush.
Here’s some quick tests using the set:
Big F@#k off Worms fan art sketches…
Fan art sketches of X-365 created by Neill Cameron.
Legacy of Kain sketches.
Current lockdown mood…
#AlienDay sketches drawn in CSP using mostly default inking tools to get those nice chunky inks and colours.. that xenomorph blood sure is acidic!
April sketchdump… swamp guy, mister deaaathhh, dental dude.
Finally watched Primal!
Been a hell of a month… hope you’re all keeping well, looking after yourselves and each other.
Drawing is my refuge in times like these so I decided to do something for #NationalPencilDay to take a breather, relax a little and get lost in some hatching.
I also drew a quick Buzz Chickson for a #drawthisinyourstyle challenge by Tim McCourt.
and some rough sketches…
