Hulk Panel

My old buddy Kelly Jones helped me ink this sucker. 

I remember Kelly helped with the brushwork on Hyde's coat.

All this over a duck?

A duck?

That's what Joker asks, when Batman waits on a blackened night for a police van to pick up Joker. 

Most of my stories are about people who have some childhood incident that causes them to be somewhat developmentally stunted.

I was going to hand-paint some panels of the series, so here's a color image of grass -  a panel which i never used in the story.

Here's that: 

In Batman Secrets, i tried to talk about the after effects of grief,  without dwelling on Batman's parents being killed, which other writers had already handled much better than me. 

My editor said  you can't have Batman reveal his origin to the Joker.  True. So what i tried to explore, was another simpler trauma that happened a few months after the murder, young Bruce was involved in a friend's accidental shooting of a duck. Since Bruce couldn't even begin to deal with such a profound loss, this duck accident amplified an otherwise ordinary incident, thus Batman sublimated his previous grief into a more acceptable form. 

Batman does tells Joker a deeper, more personal truth than the details of his parents’ murder.

Batman just left out *who* the duck, reminded him of.

Thus batman had revealed his secret,  he just left out the worst memories: the robber's gun, his mother, the pearls, streetlight, blood, etc. 

Inverted Tree

By accident i inverted this tree painting in Photoshop, kinda interesting to see it in blue.

You may remember original green version. 



Which do you prefer... and why? 

Annie, Nola & Mommy Issues.

In Ojo, Annie had her dead mom mixed up with a red eyed monster in a drain pipe.

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Nola has different Mommy issues.  Nola has her mother confused with her own red eyed childhood flaws, which Nola refers to as "the Mote in her eye".

Grown up Annie meet and Nola meet in the new Nola graphic novel, to talk about pipes,  red eyed creatures, and other convoluted issues.

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You know, it even strikes me sometimes . . .

. . how friggin' *weird* my stories are.

Haunting Image

Rough Art from Children's story in the 'Worlds of Sam Kieth' art book.

Epicurus Spread, Pencils & Inks

Always love looking at  rough pencils to see whatever changes happen after the inks.  In the pencils, Socrates is leaning against a wood pile, which became a wooden barrel in the inked version.

Added a basket of fish next to the pig. 

Also changed Socrates 'profile' to 'three-quarter' to show him off better, then added the other philosophers - in the penciled version, i was lazy and tried to keep the philosophers 'off panel' so i wouldn't have to draw them.

I was a very lazy artist back then.

Still am.