Another Way To Read Monster Patrol

Much earlier today, I posted the story of Johnny Ruckus teaming up with the Monster Patrol. Here on The Laughing Reindeer, we must abide by the rules of Google, which are fine by me and incredibly generous. However, I knew that eventually some of my plans for the site must be done offsite due to space considerations.

What I'm getting at here is after having provided a story I created for Big Bang Comics for the first time in full-color story posted page by page this morning... that same story is now online in one trim package to be read like a comic book. Basically, I bound the whole story together using .Rar, but instead of the file saying .rar, it says .cbr. That tag will allow you to use a nifty freeware program in the Internet called CDisplay, which works with PCs, but not Mac OS (sorry Mac users... I'll keep my eyes open for one for you, too.).

The great thing about CDisplay is that you can read my story just like reading a comic (okay, maybe not in a bathroom). This program can be found myriad places, including Download.com or go ahead and Google for it. Once you download and install, it's easy to set it up so that you can read my comic story (and others available online). As an FYI, in the future, as my stories finish up, I will also provide these "bound" versions online to download... gratis.

I'll have more details for you later, but these stories (and more) will be available (at least until 2012, when the world comes to an end) on my Roadside Horrors website (http://www.roadsidehorrors.com/).

I'm currently extensively updating that creepy travel website, but the new section I envision will be accessible from the home page. Don't get me wrong, I'll still continue to debut my comics work here on Blogspot.

For the moment, you can download the Monster Patrol team-up story by right clicking this link Right Here, and save the 4M document to your desktop. Once you get CDisplay, you can read it, too. [Please note that it still is a .rar file and can be opened via that program the usual way.]

Coming next: the latest Agents of Peril strip... and perhaps more.

Are You Ready For Monster Patrol?

I've mentioned about a million times that I'm the midst of working on quite a few projects these days, one of which involved a seemingly one-off appearance by an oddball team of creatures called Monster Patrol.

The Monster Patrol was conceived by me years ago after the first Creepsville series went to temporary rest in cancelation land. For those few of you who never saw it, Creepsville was my homage to cheesy, low budget horror films... particularly the rubber suit monster types. Monster Patrol went one step further in my manic desire to draw monsters, this time having them as the central characters in the comic.

I had a goofy idea. Suppose you took a handful of those great old monsters drawn by Jack Kirby for Marvel in the late 50s - early 60s and I made them the good guys... fighting crime. I thought of the fun of drawing a story with a huge monster tip toeing through city streets chasing bad guys. I started designing them, getting an idea of what types of creatures would make up this group.

The breakdown was a 4 creature team led by a scientist named Dr. Malone along with a robot woman named Martha. If you noticed that Dr. Malone shares the same surname as the family in Creepsville, there's a reason for that... which will be revealed sooner or later.

Without giving too much away, the monsters are Dr. Bigfoot, Neptus (a sea monster), Kona (a living statue of the Easter Island variety) and Xarkorr (a giant space invader). I set to work creating an origin story of this team when along came Chris Ecker.

Chris Ecker was one of my co-workers at the late HERO Illustrated magazine, but I already knew him from years of working in the comics retail biz... I owned a comic store and Chris was working at Moondogs. When I got the gig of editor at HERO, one of the best moves that Sendai Publications ever did was to hire Chris. At that time, Chris was also one of the creators (with Gary Carlson) and creative forces on a comic published by Image, called Big Bang Comics. Big Bang spun stories told in retro style, for example the Knight Watchman drawn in an uncanny Dick Sprang style of the great, old Batman comics. It says Tom King drew it, but I've gotta give Chris his credit for drawing some gorgeous work. Somehow or other, Chris gave me the greenlight to do a homage to those great old Brave and the Bold DC team-up comics of the 60s that would appear in a future Big Bang.

I created a 9 page story (including a fake cover) for a series called The Free and the Brave. Rather than doing a Batman riff, I used an oddball character I had laying around called Johnny Ruckus; a co-creation with a very talented guy named Ron Murphy of Tor Love Betty fame (published by Fantagraphics under their Eros Comics imprint). A future blog will cover Johnny more in depth, but basically he was a take on the 60s Captain Action toy line. I think of him as sort of a boy scout-like Superman with no powers.

Even though I had been working on the Monster Patrol origin story, here was an opportunity to debut the team. I decided to not to tell how they came to be, but drop in hints from the bigger story in a seeming one-shot comic story. This was just the established team, operating more like DC Comics' Metal Men than anything King Kirby created. Published in Big Bang Comics #16, the story also teased at the end that the Patrol would be back next year... which didn't happen.

I get the feeling that a lot of people weren't sure what to make of the story. It was deliberately humorous in style, whereas most of the Big Bang comics were played straight. One review of the story flattered me greatly saying something like the comic was "more Kurtzman than Kirby." That reviewer really seemed to like it, though the cover of that issue doesn't even hint at the story inside.

Let's jump way ahead to today. What you have here is that story presented for the first time in full color. Though it's intended to be a part of a larger project (Secret Project #2), I decided some time ago to reprint the whole story right here. Click on the images below to see the larger versions.

I hope you enjoy it. I had a lot of fun drawing it way back when and more fun now coloring it. Oh, and click on the images to see the larger versions.

Oh, and I promise that this time, there is more Monster Patrol fun ahead. I am hard at work coloring the Patrol's origin story and will be posting it here... one page at a time, sort of like my Agents of Peril strip.

Enjoy the story, and as Neptus says, "GROWWF!"

Agents of Peril 4: Rescan

Here, again, is the fourth Agents of Peril strip, rescanned at a size that allows the artwork to shine. I'm thinking I may remove the posts that had the original, much smaller scans. What do you think?

Regarding my other projects... some time back I showed you all a colored version of the Johnny Ruckus/Monster Patrol comic story from Big Bang Comics. I'm just about done with that. When I do finish, I will be posting the entire full color version here. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Meanwhile, Secret Project #1 is making large strides. I've been doing lots of inking... and the pages are begging to be colored. All will be revealed soon. Thanks for your patience!

I have to add again that I'm having the most fun I've had in a long time doing comics! The more I do, the faster I seem to be getting.. without a loss of quality.

My biggest fear in the years of my creative "break" had to do with the fact that I have Parkinson's Desease, something I've mentioned before. I feared that my anal craziness in inking, particularly evident on my Agents of Peril work, would no longer be possible. Self doubt is a terrible thing, but my urge to draw plus encouragement by my wife and family made me pick up the brush and pen again. It was a shakey start (literally) but I learned that I really had nothing to fear. I also learned that when I get down to drawing, the shaking stops (not that I shake all that much, really). Even if there's no cure, I'm beating the desease.

Having said that, I wish I could show you all that I've been doing. Of course, I will.

From the Past and Back to the Future, Again...

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was working on a few new comic book projects, which included showing a piece of artwork from a comic story published in Big Bang Comics (Image). This story will appear in a full-color comic I'm working on at this time, the name of which I will reveal later when it's done and available. Aren't I secretive?

I'm pretty happy with this color version, which brings out my characters. Click on the image above to see a much larger version.

Hope you like it! I had a lot of fun doing it.

The Past, the Present and the Future...

I've been a very busy boy these days, somehow sneaking in some time on my comics projects while dealling with the important stuff at home. So, I thought I'd tease you all a bit with some of what's coming while explaining how I work.

Let's start with the future: I'm hard at work on two seperate comic projects right now. One involves Creepsville and other things (which I'll get to in a bit here). I thought I'd show you a very early stage in how I work on my comics... from my second project using a name with which I'm going to keep mum about for now.

The panel here will give you an idea how loose my pencils are initially. I prefer that looseness in rendering figures, which I think helps big time in the body language area of my characters. In the panel I'm showing here, I've actually started inking, which is not unusual for me. I ink what I like, what works... and then I may even go back and erase some of the pencils and redo them, changing elements or tightening them up. For example, the camera on the left side will be replaced. This project is a period piece set in the 50s and the camera looks too modern. I need to get some reference and will redraw it.

When I'm finally satisfied with the pencils, I'll ink it in full, erase the pencils and then tighten up with the ink. I don't know if that's normal, but it's how I work.

That same technique was used on the second piece of artwork here, which is a fake cover of a 60s era Brave and the Bold team-up type comic series. This piece and the story it belongs to actually first saw print in Big Bang Comics (#12, I think) published by Image. I'm going to be coloring that whole story for the project that includes Creepsville, which I mentioned earlier. I figured that a lot of you may not have seen this.

Regarding the Monster Patrol, much more lies ahead for them. I have a full comic story finished featuring the origins of this unlikely team as well as a penciled and half-inked follow-up. There's even a short team-up story where the titans momentarily hook up with Greg Hyland's Lethargic Lad that is fully penciled, except for some areas left open for Greg. Gotta get that one done, because not only is it a chance to work with Greg (one of my best buddies in the comics biz), but the story touches upon my affection for the Chicago Cubs. Monsters and the Cubbies? You'll see...