Supplementary Spy Packet

To the cadence of a children's song:

Here are some more of my favorite things...

Favorite things...favorite things...

Lalalalalala...lah

One of the ONLY pictures I've had in my databanks FOREVER because I love it so much. So simple, so complex, so self-contradicting. Actually, this is Greg Tocchini's piece and I love every moment of it. Tocchini's problem is that he's better when he draws, inks, and colors his own comics, but he takes forever to do it all by his lonesome, so he rushes, and fucks up. My only dream is to draw something as badass as this picture.

One of my favorite moments of the game: The Sending. I wish Square Enix wouldn't have tried to appeal to the horny male audience with X-2. She may've been hot in those spank shorts, but classic Yuna can fuck X-2 Yuna up with just a glance. Though Rikku does look better in sluttier skimpier clothes...but that's Rikku. Yuna is classy. Rikku is cute and risque. Don't even get me started on Lulu and Paine. I mean, if X-2 were realistic, Lulu would've bitched out and shunned Yuna and Rikku for hanging out with this OBVIOUS Lulu knockoff. Fuck that. Pregnant Lulu could still beat ass better than emo-cut-myself-for-pleasure girl, Paine. Lulu for life, dude.

Also, did NOT know Jo Chen was a girl. Doesn't really matter, but to find one of my favorite cover artists to be a chick is kinda weird, like when you find out that person your friend has been dating with the ambiguous name is actually of the same gender as your friend and you had no idea he/she was into that sort of thing

Hiro Mashima turned up the heat with this page, panel 8-- the one where Lucy is moving forward on the cart. That one panel is the BEST panel I've EVER seen in his manga and he's had a lot of awe-inspiring panels over the years. With so much energy and tone in one panel, it's hard not to fall in love.

Side note: if you're not reading Fairy Tail, do so immediately. Then read Rave Master. No scratch that. Read Rave Master first, then Fairy Tail, immediately. If you see this and don't read either Mashima books, then shame on you for living without reading Japanamanga at its awesomest. If you've been reading Fairy Tail AND Rave Master, then congrats you're now an SSS rank spy [All three S's stand for sexy].

Bill Otomo. I wish I could go back to that lovable blaxploitation era and be black and beat ass and call everyone my brother and smack around drug dealers and use the forbidden word, "jiveturkey," and swoon women for being so many and blaxploited. Actually, I do interchange the word, dude, for the word, cat every now and then

Corey Lewis needs to animate some Morrison-era Batman and Robin so I can watch Jerkman dog some fools with his grappling hook of ass whoopery and wee Damian go ape-shit on villains for calling him wee like he was Edward Elric-- hahaha, that shrimpy midget alchemist is lucky he's fictional. He'd be soooo pissed if he went online and found this smack talk.

What's that noise? Did someone just clap their hands? Seriously. What the fuck was that sound? OH SHIT, IT'S THE FULLMETAL ALCHE----------

This is Edward Elric here. Anyone else want to call me a pint of tiny in short supply because of shorter demand? Then, get ready to receive a pike through your chest, assholes. E. E. OUT.

I need an Assassin to assassinate an asinine Art Tool

So.

There's this thing that's been bugging me. It's called a bamboo tablet and I have one. Silly thing is I have less control over the medium on the tablet than I do on good ol' paper and I gotta say, the old ink and paper method, the Joe Kubert tried and true style, is where I'm best at-- I'm just old school like that. That being said, I do want to give tablets another try when I can muster enough chump change to purchase a Cintiq, which in my opinion, is as close to digital ink and paper as you can get. I think I'll still ink my pages by hand, but maybe I'll try to sketch out the roughs on a Cintiq before then print to proceed.

Now then.

Shown here are some of my recent/unpublished tablet craptasterpieces I had laying around with a full reasoning of why and how. I'll start posting my old sketchy favorites that no one but I have seen after this.

This is a character I've had since forever. She's a work of art, but this is not. NEVER try to do a spontaneous 1am tablet poster when you haven't drawn the character in months. I actually FORGOT she had an eyepatch and fingerless gloves when I did this. Then I added the eyepatch. Not the gloves though. This is a realistic version of why I hate that damn tablet. The tablet itself is just a black board that you draw on, but when you use it you have to get accustomed to drawing not where you're looking. Thankfully, when I get that Cintiq, it has a screen that you actually draw ON, much unlike this bamboo shit

I wanted to draw something random as hell with just an eraser and a base color. No idea why I drew a gator who turned into a samurai. Maybe it was the cereal I was eating at the time or maybe it was an amalgamation of dream-like warriors I had forgotten and ended up creating. Hmmm...actually I may've just stumbled upon a great story: Gator Samurai, Savior of the Swamp. Hahaha

After reading a whole bunch of noir tales, working on my graphic novella, and spending oodles of time with my girlfriend, I decided to draw one of my favorite creations, Fantine, in a particularly shadowy setting. I was fucked around with the dodge tool on this and screwed up her hair. She'd beat me if she was real. The only thing I really like about this picture is that name plate I drew at the top. Been reading too much Brandon Graham shit

So this is a super-late night attempt at a comic on the tablet with no idea where the story was going and no idea what I was drawing other than drawing what I wanted to. It was supposed to be part one of a Valentine's day gift comic, hence all the love and heart themes, but my loved one came over too quickly and I had no time to finish it. This one's for you, pie of cute

Drawn for my facebook during a particularly Pokemon week for me. I was experimenting with layers, little to no solid black lines, and cool, manga effects-- came off rather how I hoped it would with a few exceptions. The pokeball turned into an evergrowing disaster the more I worked on it. My throw hand looks like crap. For a cheshire ghost, Gengar sure is stiff. Also, I wanted to give Gengar a nickname but didn't think anyone would get his name out of context. My Gengar's name is Gengarvitis-- could never spell that shit in the game because it was one letter too long

Standard Spy Secrets

To the attention of: any venerable spy lord.

Lately, I've been thinking up fun creative comic exercises for myself but I thought up too many too fast...so now I have much more to do than I originally planned. You'll see said comic exercises when I find time to scan them, haha.

Anyone know who Shirow Masamune is? Good. He's the guy that did Ghost in the Shell way back in the 80s and he's a fucking genius. Recently, I finished an Appleseed gn and I was intrigued more by the designs for the mecha, vehicles, and cities than his actual comic. Masamune is a madman for the detail. He has the science, engineering, and physics logistics all worked out. Really amazing stuff. So if you don't know Shirow Masamune, don't you think it's past time you do?

If the internet was an ocean, I'd surf it in the mornings with a web to catch treasures I pass by. Below are the treasures I have caught in my net.

I only wish painting would be so cool in the future. It'll probably be the same though. Hopefully I find someway to beam the images in my mind onto canvas with some new form of future tech. I do my best drawing it but it would be so much easier to beam it up

Folklore, from any country, has always been my forte. I like the concepts bored villagers would come up with to scare their kids in the olden days. Tengu has got to be one of my favorite legends because I don't know, haha. To see hip Tengu gangsters ninja an unsuspecting car in the hills is BAD-to-the-ASS. Literally, I imagine anyone who can fly, control the wind, and stand on those one-panel sandals would also be able to fuck you up big time.

Alright, so I had this dream once where I was in an amalgamation of theme parks. I forgot who I was with, but I know that I was being followed by 40 clowns shoved into a small mech suit like some nightmarish cyberpunk perversion of the old clown gag. When I saw this [besides dropping my jaw at how well done it is] I remember that shit and voted for an amendment to the Constitution that states that a clown may never own or operate a mech in this or the next life.

Been playing FF13 A LOT lately and when I say "A LOT," I mean in between meals, showers, pisses, eating, snuggle time, comics, and work. This here is something the assistants from Love Hina drew up. If only life had more blue lion bodyguards

Oh, and I'm obsessed with Street Fighter. Saw this on some French anime forum and it found its place in my heart [as well as in my computer's memory]. I imagine Ryu would actually be that socially retarded in person

Seeya' later, spies, and remember: good spy boys and girls know when to hide from the cops and when to play it cool.

LOVE AND WAR

Dude, I love the stuff I love. This is what I'm currently digging out of the net:

The Scizor Gundam: I smell a crossover...

Any cover Dave Johnson did for 100 bullets

Brandon Graham's Kitty Pryde. Dude can draw

The Monster Hunter and Hello Kitty crossover. Aren't they cute?

Eiichiro Oda's fan art of Goku. I love seeing famous artists drawing other artists characters. We all draw fan art. They just do it better, haha

"I got secrets a plenty..."

I definitely wasn't trying for a double entendre when I wrote that title after I decided to post this picture, but it came natural, and it felt natural, and it works better than anything else. Aside from that, these are from my neo-fairy tale project. They're the highly stylized fairy tale princesses we all grew up with, but as adult as the fairy tales originally depicted them. This takes me to a certain point I'd love to express: diluted classics.

The quote/un-quote classics of yesterday have become severely diluted from their original flavor. The Little Mermaid for example. In the original Hans Christian Anderson tale, a mermaid sells her voice to a sea witch to be with someone she lusts after, even going so far as to endure the constant pain from walking as a side effect of the spell. She is then dated, left for another woman, and turns into seafoam. The original is a SAD FUCKING TALE.

The Disney version though is a childish take where the mermaid, Ariel, winds up with the man she's always been after and the sea witch is the enemy through and through. No seafoam, no heartbreak, no REAL morals. It was a money making venture into culturing kids into thinking the world is bright and cheery and there's always a villain.

After Disney remade the Little Mermaid, Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli made one too. It's called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. Here is where it gets crazy. A kid discovers a sea creature and keeps in in a bucket. He loses it, the sea creature turns out to be Ponyo, a sea princess, and falls in innocent love with the kid. Ponyo unleashes sea magic that caused a) a tsunami and b) Ponyo to turn human. The kid and Ponyo undergo a trial of love and all is better. Though I love Miyazaki for everything he does, and even though Ponyo is an animated achievement back to his hand and paper basics, Ponyo is whack. Enjoyable but whack. It's closer to the original tale, but makes it feel like a Japanese folklore copy.

All I'm saying is, don't stray too far from the original when doing a remake. Otherwise you'll end up like the Watchmen movie, haha.

I absolutely love that tattoo. Her back is the pond itself.

Madame Villeneuve would approve.

I always liked bubbles.

EMERGENCY ART IMPORT

Steampunk girls are hot.

Yes. Quite snowy.

This is what happens when you watch Citizen Kane.

Don't stare too long. It might stare back.

I dreamt of this and HAD to draw it the very next morning.

A Spy's Lament

I write this on what is the eve of my birthday. If I was on Eastern Standard, I'd be old enough to drink already. It's not like I even want to drink right now. No no no-- tonight is turning into something bigger than you or I have ever imagined.

The night a man decides for himself where his life will go.

The night a man strips his existence bare and studies it carefully.

The night a man transforms into a better man.

I wandered aimlessly around today after spending a double shift at the job - a bare minimum wage run by drunks, whores, and corporate bigots who want nothing more than obedience, hard-earned time and money, and every employee's soul. I'm here to tell you I'm the secret spy in what is easily to become the new Nazis. I'm the ninja in the shop. The raptor in the long grass. The sith lord in the jedi council. I can go on really. REALLY. I took the job to pass some time and meet people - I did, didn't think I'd be tempted to sell my soul so many times, but I survived somehow. Now that I know the inside of the organization, I've been secretly letting random strangers, hereby deemed my "associates," get away with things they shouldn't be getting away with. Nothing illegal, I assure you. But as I loudly proclaim when my oppressors/"bosses" aren't around: "SHOP AT ANOTHER FUCKING STORE - CONFORMITY IS NOT WORTH YOUR PAYCHECK."

Well, let's get back on track here. After wandering aimlessly around for what seemed like hours, I find that maybe tomorrow is going to be different than I'd imagined. Maybe it won't be anything really. I imagined it a day in remembrance of my life, a kick in the ass, and ending with something similar to blinding clarity/epiphany. Tomorrow is, and will forever be, just another day. No worries, I can deal.

Off tangent: Finished the Warren Ellis run on Thunderbolts today. If you're reading this and planning to read it, then let me let you in on a little secret. Book one doesn't have SHIT on book two. Granted book one , entitled Faith in Monsters [hmm...don't know how I feel about typing that - sounds like my life really], is a very good book with interesting character studies in the insane lunatic minds of superpowered serial killers turned cops. But book two, so aptly named Caged Angels [hmm...fuck Warren Ellis for making titles that sound like my life at this very moment], is a wondrous thunderfuck part two - a romp, rather, where your wildest dreams are answered. The only hint I'll provide is that after THAT book, Thunderbolts Mountain should be christened Arkham Asylum.

On the road yet again. After coming home to absofuckinglutely no one, I went straight back into the world...via the internet. Doing things here and there. Did you know that I was actually interested in other people's lives once? Yeah, weird. Today? Not at all. Shortly after I turned the appropriate age to gamble in Vegas [Eastern Standard], I had a phone conversation with one of my best friends. Turned out to be one of the better conversations about life that I've ever had. I write these words now during a "break" in the life lesson. I'd like to say I taught her a new lesson of life, and she taught me a new life lesson, but the fact of the matter is we both found a new lesson learned just from having a conversation that, undoubtedly, could not be shared with anyone BUT one of your best friends. I think I'll start terming my oddly shaped circle of friends my "Rogue's Gallery." Not because we are what equates to rogues, but because I like the connections it makes with Batman, and a lot of my friends are quite like the friendly faces gracing Detective and Batman comics monthly.

Some more messages to those of you out there.

To you-know-who-you-are: Happy Birthday. Thanks for the conversation/peptalk/life lesson trade/phonecall. It really made my day after having such a shitty day. Your birthday present is being made after I finish this up. I miss you and the next time I see you I'm going to literally hug as much as I can out of you - and then we're going on an adventure into whothefuckcareswherewegosolongaswearegoingsomewheretogether.

To my oppressors/"bosses": Did you see that pick of our old manager I put up? Check it out and then go fuck yourself with something spiked, cold, and spoon shaped. Looks like I got the last laugh --> Hahaha

To the Brian K. Vaughan: WRITE MORE COMIC BOOKS.

To Warren Ellis: I'd love to have lunch and discuss the world and comics through your truly sardonic eyes. Next time I'm in jolly ol' Southend-on-Sea?

To Matt Fraction: More Casanova please.

To whoever-you-are-out-there: I SEE YOU.

To all birthday wishers worldwide: Thanks for the early, on-time, late, and hopefully not, supertwomonthslate birthday wishes. Much obliged and yes, I will drink responsibly. Which is spy code for a fish bowl filled with ice and the best "margarita-type" spirits man can buy - with a side of huge fucking burrito.

Message to myself: Goodnight and good luck.