At home today recovering instead of teaching. I caught the flu over the weekend and don’t want to infect my students. They’ve got enough problems with time management/workload without me diseasing them on top of everything else.

The Shazam fury died down fast. Once it finally got through to people that it was, in fact, NOT an official design… sanity finally returned. Controversy vanished, I’m no longer ‘special’ and the gawkers move on to the next internet house fire. Heh.

On with other things…

I’ve had a few conversations over the past couple of weeks that have made me step back and mark time. I’ve been back in Ontario and working with Udon for four years…. it doesn’t feel that long, but there it is. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done much or grown as an artist, other times I can see the huge divide.

Case in point behind the cut

Okay, posting this revised version to rebalance my karma with the Captain Marvel hardcore. 🙂

A more traditional/respectful approach to the character’s face/hair and a far less dopey expression. I do think it works better, honestly:

The question now is, will this stop their angry e-mails pelting my in-box and various other cries for my blood (even after it’s been explained that this design is not official)?

I’ll let you guys know how it goes. 🙂

Whoah… I used Google to find some Captain Marvel forums as I was curious what people were saying about the Shazam cartoon that I’m not involved in…

Hardcore fans are amazing and terrifying at the same time. I forget how passionate I’ve been about things I love and, man-oh-man, do these guys love Captain Marvel. If I would’ve known that piece was going to get turned in to a whirlwind of publicity/rumor/whatever I would’ve stuck closer to the traditional Captain Marvel face/eyes/nose. They aren’t all negative posts but the ones that are… they’re ballistic!

“dear Zod that has to be one of the butt-ugliest character designs i’ve ever seen”

“Not to happy about the design”

“Dreadful. And I thought Cartoon Network’s LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was bad.”

“that Captain Marvel cartoon looks so awful”

“Definitely a terrible character design – the head really drags the rest down – it doesn’t remotely resemble Cap.”

“it looks like it was drawn by a child. With no hands.

“The body doesnt kill me on this (I dont like it, but I could live with it) but that face…”

“I’m psyched that we’re getting a Cap. Marvel cartoon, but that picture is just painful to watch.”

“Why can’t they hire talented people? Like us. Phuck.”

Um, sorry?

I’m actually not angry at their comments – it’s not like I intended it to be a final professional design. These things would go through layers of revisions and approval. My late night kneejerk design for Captain Marvel was just that, something fun.

I need to print these quotes out and keep them at my bedside on cold nights when I need extra warmth. Their rage can melt the deepest chill in the air.

A friend just phoned to point me towards this week’s edition of the infamous comic book rumor column Lying in the Gutters…

Click the link there and scroll down…

Recognize that Captain Marvel promo piece?

Some crazy fanboy Photoshopped out my sig and made up a mock promo pic as if it was a real WB animation piece! That’s hilarious. I’m flattered and confused at the same time.

The rumor is marked as ‘green’, meaning it’s apparently been confirmed. So strange.

I’m quite enjoying Death Note so far (just finished reading book 3, which is equivalent to episodes 1-11 of the anime series).

As a brief summary, it’s about a Japanese teen who finds the ‘Death Note’, a notebook which can kill anyone whose name is written on its pages. I figured it would be some cheesy revenge story with this kid killing off bullies who’d picked on him but it’s actually become more complex than that… he decides to kill major criminals every where to make the world a better place and scare humanity in to being good. The mysterious deaths all over the globe create a sensation as people start worshiping or fearing a person/force the media dubs ‘Kira’.

From there, a cat-and-mouse style hunt begins between Kira (the teen) and an investigator, known only as ‘L’, who is determined to find out who Kira is and bring him to justice. All this happens in the first half of book one, so I’m not really ruining anything… the plot looks like it has a lot of places to go from here.

It’s not perfect or anything, but it is smarter than I’d expected and quite well drawn. A few friends recommended it and I’m glad I gave it a shot. I haven’t seen much current anime/manga that I’ve enjoyed. It’s nice reading a manga where characters aren’t stupid in order to propel plot forward and aren’t breaking out in to super deformed shenanigans every five minutes.

Anyone else reading it or seen the anime?

I am NOT making this up. Holy crap. I’m actually amazed and I thought I’d seen almost everything.

We get art and writing inquiries all the time at UDON, usually multiple e-mails every day.

Names removed only because I don’t want this guy crying that we’ve besmirched his reputation. Mind you, with an attitude like this, I’m sure he’s well on his way to screwing himself. Every thing else in the e-mail is pasted here unaltered:

_______________________________________________________________________________

From: ___ ______ <____________@hotmail.com>
Date: Mar 16, 2007 4:14 PM
Subject: ___ ______ is So Handsome And Cool
To: contact@udonentertainment.com

Hi.

My name is ___ ______, and I am a writer. An actual writer; not one of those weird hairy kids
at Comic Book Conventions who wants you to read his amazing fan fiction about Wonder Woman.

I wrote for the ____ ______ __ _______ __ ______, and I have two comics coming out. One of
them is an original project being published by ______ Comics, and the other iss a work-for-hire
piece for ____ _____ __________.

The bottom line here is that now that both of those comics are complete, I am looking for a job.
I have numerous original properties, and am more than willing to work on what you might already
have, provided it doesn’t, you know, stink. Might you have anything for me?

Nothing But Roses,

___ ______

_______________________________________________________________________________

Welcome to a tiny part of my day. I don’t know if this guy figured being a jerk was a good guerrilla marketing tactic or what… I mean, it IS memorable, I’ll give him that. I love that his writing inquiry has both spelling and grammatical errors, in addition to being unbelievably pompous and condescending.

Sending ego-oozing crap like that to a complete stranger is just sad.

*shudder*

Growing up, I was a Marvel Comics kind of kid. I almost never read any DC books or cared too much for their cast of heroes… except for good ol’ Captain Marvel. Looking at his design now, I have no idea what makes him so interesting but his slightly goofy, yet somehow regal outfit still kicks butt after all these years.

SHAZAM!

Pencil drawing colored up in Photoshop. I really like that animated look with simple high contrast light/shadow cuts and soft colored lines.

I had a fantastic day today overall. A couple major projects have just been taken care of with minimal headaches and things are actually quite organized. It’s almost freaking me out how well things seem to be going lately.

Hung out with charmingmonstrs and got caught up on the last three Battlestar Galactica episodes. Um…. wtf?

Battlestar Bitchin’ (spoilers) behind the cut