Merry Mahnke Inks!

My man Doug slathered his juicy inks all over this piece. How cool is that?!? I love the way this turned out. Original post with my pencils here.

Grit-O-Rama

Here's a little experiment where I wanted to play around with ink, texture and grit, and going right from a very loose rough right to ink. I was fairly happy with the results.

Yet Again...

Another Jason Voorhees sketch from the archives. I did a bunch of these so New Line could see how I would approach the character for the Wildstorm comics. The funny thing is, the "iconic" version of Jason isn't even in the issues that I drew! HA!

MONSTER DUMP!

Some more random play from my sketchbooks. Monsters!

Some may question my sanity or maybe figure I had a bad childhood, since my doodlings quite often drift toward the grotesque or disturbing. When I finally gave it some thought, I think I know where most of it comes from.

When I was a tiny kid, my uncle and I used to stay up late and watch horror movies on a show with Dr. Sanguinary. The stuff would scare me absolutely silly, and I would lay in bed at night with the sweats, holding my breath. The ghouls were just outside the window, peeking in, or under the bed, or there, in the closet. Monstrous noses, bulbous eyes, and cadaverous hands boiled from the thick, black dark, until I'd finally pass out, either from exhaustion or just lack of air. However, I just couldn't get enough. So many sweet childhood memories of my uncle in the chair, eating popcorn, laughing at me, while I huddled behind the footstool, stealing glimpses of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, jr. or The Blob. So, thanks Unc!! HA!

Some of these sketches were for projects that didn't go anywhere (particularly the nazis) others were just for fun.

Dream gig = Generating this shit for Hollywood money!

Enjoy!

Angels Ink

Tattoo design for a friend. Archangel St. Michael, patron saint of paramedics.
Favorite bit: The way the caduceus worked into the sword and armor.

Killer Clown

Here's a piece from a few years back. This was just me playing around with how to approach a story that a friend and I have been messing with since the mid-90s. I suppose we'd better "pull the trigger" one of these days...

Mimetic Poly-alloy

Here's a little "behind-the-scenes" for ya. The first image is the final pencil version of a page from #26. The second image is what I had drawn originally. In the script, Peter had written "flat like a spear" to describe her hand. Since Jaz is a shape-shifter, I mistakenly thought he was making a reference to TERMINATOR 2, so that's how I drew it. He was actually asking for a good, old-fashioned "spear hand" or "kwan soo" from martial arts, to illustrate how badass our girl Jaz was.

Also notice that I'd screwed up and drawn pants on She-Hulk in the last panel, originally... Thankfully, he caught that, too.

I was moving pretty fast when I did this page, but ultimately, it had some stuff I really dug. Favorite parts of this page include the cold look on Jazinda's face when she impales him and then panel 3 when she walks past the soaking wet, stunned Jen and tells her "I'll be in the car." Oh, and Jaz's hand on his shoulder in panel 1.

Bearly Legal

Some pencils from issue #26. That bear was fun to draw. The page description was something about a big "grizzly", but in the dialogue, Jen was talking about "black bears". So, I just went somewhere in between with a generic comic book bear. I particularly liked his big, flabbery lower lip. It didn't come through in the scans, really, but I had a bunch of drool whipping off that lip, too.

Just Law

Here's another sketch from back when I was playing around trying to decide how I would approach Shulkie.

More process

I thought this was kinda cool. Here's another example of some behind-the-scenes of how I work, sometimes. The script called for Jaz to be scanning some FBI files or something with this holographic/projection of a sort of 3D computer screen, so I blocked in floating screens in the pencils and then mocked up a separate version of the page with how I thought it might look cool. All kinds of layering of "greeked" text, images, symbols, etc... floating in front of her, glowing and translucent. I haven't seen the printed version, so I don't know what coloring came up with, but I thought this was a cool opportunity to get some funky design in there.

Pencilage

Haven't posted for awhile, so here're some pencils from SHE-HULK #25.

High Gear

A Fistful Of Pages

Now that it's on newsstands, here are a few pages from SHE-HULK #23.

Those Pesky Ninja

Another She-Hulk piece from the archives.

Go With The Flow

One of my favorite parts of drawing comics is having the opportunity to really get nuts and explore composition, experimenting with how to move the viewer's eye through a page, while still telling the story. In the case of these pages, She-Hulk doing what she does best -- Kicking ass.

Mother Of All Evil

Here are a few of my favorite pages from FRIDAY THE 13th: PAMELA'S TALE for WildStorm.
In these pages, Pamela Voorhees, the mother-to-be of Jason, exacts her revenge on her abusive shitheel of a husband.
I worked from a plot-only style script on these books, which gave me a great deal of freedom with the pacing and storytelling of the pages. I was still subject to a few changes from New Line Cinema, but overall, it was a pretty darn good time.
Edited by Ben Abernathy, Written by Marc Andreyko, Penciled and Inked by Yours Truly.

More Fun With A Pencil

I see they've got these pages from #23 posted over at http://www.comicscontinuum.com/

Skizzle

Couple more doodles from my sketchbook.

Pencil Pushing

Now that issue #22 is out, I'll post some pages. I got a kick out of some of the faces on these.