Concept art from my new superhero comic

[Michael Anden]

Lt Kara Flynn's overtures of diplomacy are blocked at every turn by the forces conspiring to return Ryzar to the world. Once the being is rendered manifest, she becomes less conflicted about taking up arms against them... but secretly using Cade Cyger's son as a decoy in order to conscript old- and soon evidently suspect- allies, soon begins to eat at her.



"I know feel bad about the kid, Kar, but you do know the saying 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'"
"Well maybe that’ll slow up everyone tearing strips off each other for five seconds."

[Michael Anden]

Overlord Nargun's battleblade Hailstormer is rather more open than other 'charged' weapons about where it draws its power from.

[Michael Anden]

Rager on the hunt

[Michael Anden]

Sequential inks

[Michael Anden]

Ryzar's Sphinxes - fifty-foot tall walking bunker busters - are themselves able shrug off all but the most concerted aerial bombardment.

[Raven]

Sure- I've done girls-next-door sitting in pubs, I've done anthropomorphic numbers and letters for children's literacy & numeracy publishers, I've done lesbian vampire comics (that's comics with vampires for lesbians reader market, naturally, rather than exploitative comics with drawings of spuriously swimsuit-clad be-fanged supermodels in them); computer repair adverts, orange juice cartons, portraits; graphic design for a vintage car dealership; portraits of people's pets... and I'll never get those hours of my life back!

It's all grist to the mill! I just found myself wondering what a Michael Anden kitchen sink drama might look like (maybe you could post a sample of those pub girls sometime?) - and imagined your style could probably adapt to horror quite well (especially the kind with Lovecraftian-type entities), which a few pictures you've since posted, like the Door of Dementia and Rager on the hunt, also suggest.

As to a script, to tell the truth, I've put far more time into the Gods script over the last three years than art. I've gone from being utterly mortified by the results of my writing since 1992 (two unpublished novels plus various scrips, short stories, Doctor Who pitches etc) to being able to sleep a tiny little better at night with how I write now. And I am absolutely positively of the opinion that in comics, as in movies, script comes first.... never really understood the point of anyone approaching comics otherwise!

I agree, but I think writing is too often considered a less important adjunct to art in comics. You can sometimes get an interesting thing when action/genre artists start writing their own, in that they can tend to stick to writing the things they love to draw, eschewing the "boring" talking heads stuff, so every scene is a big action/monsters/high impact image - but it doesn't have the right balance or pacing as a story when read. A background of writing means you're coming from a completely different angle, of course.

[Michael Anden]

Thanks for your thoughts, Raven.

The girls in the pub work is actually set in a Claridges coffee house, the girls' attire isn't quite on the formal side of the sartorial spectrum and the waiter does end up with a fork embedded in his forehead- but I guess that's convent school girls for you. Writing by Dr Roderick Lane (OBE- for what, I couldn't tell you, but I doubt it's for this), art and lettering by me (not my best work- my enthusiasm wasn't exactly through the roof, but I did my best), circa 2008. Raven, I give you 'Harpies' (that's 'Harpies') - see below.

Addressing your points, I seem to get the vibe from you that you find action/genre works to be without exception somehow less 'legitimate' than other works, or perhaps just aren't much to your taste, which is fine. But I do wonder if you would have asked Simon Bisley or Frank Frazetta if they could come up with, say, a kitchen sink drama?

In terms of if they could draw one to someone else's script, it would be pretty hard for me to imagine they couldn't just because they lean toward fantasy etc. Whether they would attempt to do so off their own bat, say to 'challenge' themselves further, is perhaps a little moot, much as to enquire whether someone training for volleyball can hack it at Formula One racing- perhaps on the premise that there is a lot more security and commercial demand for success in the latter.

Stephen King has related that during much of his career, many people have asked him why he wastes his 'God given talent' on all that 'trashy stuff', as though he 'just does it for the money'. For him, much as for me, there is no concern as to whether time is being wasted doing what you love.

There are plenty of people already providing 'literary fiction' or domestic drama comics (well, perhaps no so much the former, but you know what I mean). I don't particularly want, say, Knockabout Comics beating my door down to get me to draw a comic book iteration of Downton Abbey. If that makes me closed-minded, I can live with that definition of the term.

There has never been a work set to by any writer or artist which has been universally lauded without exception (even Shakespeare has always had his detractors- I'm not one of them but clearly my own material will never be anywhere in the same ball park, or even the same sport

Incidentally, in regards to writing, I am well aware of the artist-attempting-to-write cliche and how flat the final products frequently turn out. I'm also aware that many people would much prefer I were one or the other, perhaps because to aspire to competence in both is perceived by them as hubristic.

Perhaps it is, but I'm fairly sure many endeavours whose results we now take for granted- whether or not we personally perceive them of value- were considered hubristic until they succeeded critically, financially or academically.

You will see from the first page of this thread an exhaustive list of new titles I am tinkering on aside from Gods- ranging from hard science fiction and humour to psychological thriller and horror, and yes of course, more superheroes/vigilantes- of a sort. But I will leave issue of the worth and limitations my own efforts for you and others to decide- because these things aren't going to be writing and drawing themselves!

[Michael Anden]

Apologies- just noticed remembered Harpies' dialogue is a little on the colourful side.

[Raven]

Addressing your points, I seem to get the vibe from you that you find action/genre works to be without exception somehow less 'legitimate' than other works, or perhaps just aren't much to your taste, which is fine.

Though boys' toys mega-muscled power-fantasy stuff isn't so much to my personal taste, I don't consider genre work to be less legitimate by any means - I'm a big reader of genre (western and SF are two of my favourites in comics); it was just out of interest, seeing so many of your BIG strokes, how you worked with smaller strokes. I didn't imagine you couldn't; I was just interested in seeing how you did - and, more broadly, in seeing what else you'd done, to get the bigger picture of what you do. Thanks for posting Harpies.

But I do wonder if you would have asked Simon Bisley or Frank Frazetta if they could come up with, say, a kitchen sink drama?

Well, Kevin O' Neill was my 2000AD favourite, growing up, and I just mentioned James Stokoe above, but I do think it's interesting when you see an artist known for specialising in one genre doing something completely different, especially in how they envision the everyday when they're known for really out there stuff.

If you look at the classic Fifties EC horror comics, the stories often only have their high impact horror image in the very final panel after seven pages of fairly "domestic" goings-on, and I've sometimes wondered how a budding horror artist today, who wants to get going with the high impact stuff, might respond to being given scripts like that! Also, in how the artist-writer deals with the temptations of not writing stuff he might find less interesting to draw. But just discussing a few ideas, here, in the nature of forums!

You will see from the first page of this thread an exhaustive list of new titles I am tinkering on aside from Gods- ranging from hard science fiction and humour to psychological thriller and horror, and yes of course, more superheroes/vigilantes- of a sort.

I'd seen that, but hadn't been sure if these were all yours, or if you were looking to compile an anthology from lots of different contributors.

[Michael Anden]

Definitely agree you can't have all the high-octane shenanigans going off a mile minute through a whole comic, Raven!

Plenty if not most of the material needs to be talking heads and low-exertion, metaphor-rich 'show don't tell' actions, for the ramped up stuff to have any consequence.

I think the sequential with the protagonists conferring at the security door (again, on this thread's page one) will be more representative of the overrall pacing of Gods, but we'll have to see.

It's not too often you see the 'muscle-bound heroic power fantasy' genre done with a hint of sophistication, maybe because the two are rightly so mutually exclusive in the minds of most of us. Certainly there will always be something inescapably camp about the superhero/power fantasy genre regardless of its straining at the leash to attain any measure of literary credibility- that's probably no bad thing. What matters to me is to try and improve on what's gone before without being too beholden to commonly-held notions of what a decent read 'must' be.

Some of the most interesting subjects for me which I am trying to incorporate into a coherent and hopefully kick-ass narrative are transactional psychology, quantum theory and general relativity, all of which I feel have important things to reveal us about our lives beyond the mechanistic work-breed-holiday selfie-die ritual that society and biology would have us adhere to.

Pretentious, probably, but I feel there's a lot of people out there latching onto pseudo-scientific interpretations of mankind's discoveries over the last hundred-plus years, when there can be more to be gained than seeking to divine from these disciplines ways to get you the girl of your dreams or a bigger house!

For me, it's kind of a case of not being able to find stuff out there precisely to my taste, so I'm having a go at doing it myself, as you can see from the 'upcoming titles' list.

So when you wonder whether I can draw something 'normal', I'd say that I may well try one day try, but I'm in no hurry when I'm having this much fun drawing the abnormal... unless of course somebody wants to dump a truckload of money in my garden to read my take on Eastenders!

Speaking of other stuff on the boil, some sequentials from Devil Island here...

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

good stuff: chockablock with detail, incident and action throughout.

I myself used to draw as detailed as you have done here, but I've went a more 'economic' route these days [probably because digital cartooning is so time-consuming].

[Michael Anden]

It is indeed, we only have so much time, and then there's bills to pay. It'd be great to see what comics could be created with decades, centuries to refine them. Well, a horrible mess probably with all that faffing- but who knows?

[Raven]

Speaking of other stuff on the boil, some sequentials from Devil Island here...

The shifts of perspective/point of view from panel to panel give the story a really dynamic feel, there.

[Michael Anden]

Dogfights in Battlespace..

[Muffy]

Superb art, as always now Michael. This has become my favourite thread on the forum.