Do you know about the Pokemon Battle Royale show? If you aren’t into Pokemon you might not care, unless you’re into super amazing artists like Sam Bosma, Kali Ciesemier, Mare Odomo, Niv Bavarsky, Gemma Correll, Meg Hunt, etc etc. etc.

Oh! And me! And my recent new bro Nathan Bulmer. We got Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, who are sort of related in Pokemonishness, so we decided to team up on ours. By “team up” I mean Nathan came up with most of the idea, including thumbing out both of our strips, etc. So if you like these guys, he gets most of the credit.

And even if you don’t like them (cad!) you should definitely check out his site–he does a DAILY comic that is pretty hilarious–here’s a good one. I’m super envious of his ability to come up with ideas endlessly. What a jerk!

At any rate! The show opens on April 20, and will be up through May 11–each piece will be just $40, which having seen some of them, is preposterously cheap. Possibly stupidly cheap, but what can you do? I guess take advantage of some dealzzz. You can buy my original art from me from $50 plus $3 shipping right here though.

Before you ask, the one Annie is giving the other a footrub–hopefully this worked better in print, but here it’s a little teeny to tell.

This was an ad for the just-completed Brooklyn Comics + Graphics Festival program book, where Koyama Press debuted (as you can see in the strip) new books by Matt Forsythe, Maurice Vellekoop, and Jeremy Kai. I have Matt’s book, it’s awesome. And I’ve seen Maurice’s book, it’s raunchy! Jeremy’s book is presumably also excellent. Keep your eyes peeled for when those books are available in the wide world, either through better comics shops or through the creators’ sites.

Torn from the Twitter headlines! I know this makes no sense, I know. But minutes after I posted this blog post about drawing in themed sketchbooks at shows (and how I’m such a rude crabapple sometimes), the amazing Sam Bosma posted this amazing image on his Tumblr. The only thing better than one me, is two me’s with extra legs and no pants at all. Good work Sam.

Bewere the Wolf.

In case you’re worried that my joke-writing abilities have atrophied even further, or that I’m throwing my hat in the ring for who owns the Fantastic Four copyright, this was a commission for the Fantastic Four 9 project, run by Mr. Jason Young. I was super flattered to be asked, especially as it puts me in the august company of a ton of amazing artists like Chester Brown, Anders Nilsen, Jeffrey Brown, and more. I certainly don’t mind being on that list. Oh and Brandon Graham too, although I don’t think his has been added to the site yet.

This was a pretty fun project. It’s hard to think of a cartoonist with stronger layouts than Jack Kirby, but this particular page was not one of his best, so I fiddled with the layout just a little bit, which was really instructive. Composition is probably my number one challenge, so having a Kirby page to play with, even a mediocre one, is a great start. It also gave me a chance to ink with a brush for the first time in forever, which was predictably frustrating. Here’s what the original page looked like:

Inking with a brush is so hard, but having a Kirby page to look at really makes it a lot easier. Even a Dick Ayers-inked one. For instance, look at Alfred Hitchcock’s hand, then Stan Lee’s hand next to it — the Hitch hand I inked based on the original, and the crummy Stan Lee hand I obviously just winged. I should just go into the reproduction business, I’m much better at that than thinking up my own drawings! Also, many thanks to Evan Dorkin for identifying all the Hollywood types in the original page, although I ended up deciding to sub in the artists who worked on the book. He even had a good theory on who the eyepatch guy in the first panel was.

By the by, it should be stated for the record that the Fantastic Four is © Marvel Entertainment, at least that’s what the lawyers say!

Robocop is the most insane movie ever, and the faces are the most insane part. I could easily have doubled the number of crazy faces to 32, but there are only so many hours in a day. Faces I cut from my intial list include:

1) the stick-up guy who screams EFF ME EFF ME EFF ME while shooting Robocop, just before being thrown through the cooler door
2) Robowife and Roboson
3) The doctor selling hearts at the beginning
4) The Old Man
5) Pretty much everyone else.

BONUS! You can buy an 11″ x 14″ print of this strip, on high quality fancy-dan paper, totally suitable for framing! And the first 10 will get a special numbered edition with a separate free sketch of any character from the movie! Details here!

When I was a kid I thought the Dr Doolittle movie was the coolest thing in the world. The idea of talking to animals–although not as much singing and dancing with them–was pretty much all I thought about after I saw it. Of course, if you could talk to animals, half of what they said would either be “AAAHHHH” or “let me go” or “I can’t believe you expect me to breed while you watch, are you kidding me?”

People get so WOUND UP about politics, I swear! Anyway, happy birthday USA! Also happy birthday to Carly Monardo, who along with Kate Beaton and Meredith Gran created the Strong Females, have you seen these yet? Finally our great nation has been rid of sexism forever, just in time for its b-day!

Be sure and bookmark this page, in case you one day find yourself having just run out of fears, and would like a quick reference for some new ones. Or just print this out and carry it in your pocketbook or billfold, for quick reference.