The Caped Crusader Rises… in the WEST!

The Caped Crusader Rises

I just made this for no good reason. It was in my head and it had to come out. I now return to actual work.

New Headers!

I just posted a number of new pieces to the gallery of header artwork that randomly populates the spot at the top of this blog. Most of them are horizontal slivers of covers or interior art from recent issues of Young Justice. Refresh the page a few times to check some of them out! The old ones are still in there too, so don’t be surprised of some familiar ones pop up.

If you are looking at this blog post while the header art in this post pops up for real, let me know if coins spill out of your computer. I get 10%.

Coming to the pages of Young Justice…

Cold as Crystal, with eyes that BURN!

He is coming…

I can’t show you the whole cover to Young Justice #23 yet, but when you see it in a month’s time, you’ll see one of my favorite covers I’ve drawn for the series so far, and one of my favorite character designs. The character in question appears before then, but here’s an even earlier peek, pencils and inks by me, colors by Zac Atkinson.

As always, you can find Young Justice at your local comics shop or in digital form!

Coming in November: Young Justice #22

Young Justice #22

YOUNG JUSTICE #22
Written by GREG WEISMAN
Art and cover by CHRISTOPHER JONES
Color by ZAC ATKINSON
On sale NOVEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E

• The Invasion continues!
• Earth’s greatest heroes are kidnapped by Kylstar!
• Brainiac has Metropolis under glass and Lex Luthor’s secret weapon is on the loose!

Those are the things DC chose to plug in the solicitation, but the online Dick/Babs “shippers” are already geeking out over the Nightwing/Batgirl moment captured on the cover!

I’m having a great time drawing all the new Season 2 Young Justice characters, plus all the amazing guest heroes and villains! Young Justice #18 is still on the stands, and #19 will be out soon. You can find Young Justice at your local comics shop or in digital form!

Comic Book Storytelling: Wally Wood’s Panels That Always Work

A lot of comic book storytelling is an art that is hard to quantify and distill into set rules. Some of the best analysis of this subjective art form has been written by master for the form Will Eisner in books such as Comics and Sequential Art, and by the great Scott McCloud in his seminal work Understanding Comics.

But rarely has there been anything as simple, and elegant as Wally Wood’s Panels that Always Work.

Wally Wood is one of the comic book greats of the 20th Century, and not much was known about the origins of this piece as it began circulating among comics professionals and fans, first in the form of photocopies and then on the internet.

In 1980, Wood’s original, three-page, 24-panel (not 22) work was published with the proper copyright notice to Wood, in The Wallace Wood Sketchbook (Crouch/Wood), but the most widely-distributed version of this work was an unauthorized one. Around 1982, Wood’s ex-assistant Larry Hama, by then an editor at Marvel Comics, pasted up photocopies of Wood’s copyrighted drawings on a single page, which Hama titled “Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work!!”  Hama left out 2 of the original 24 panels as his photocopies were too faint to make out some of the lightest sketches. Hama distributed, what has been called, Wood’s “elegantly simple primer to basic storytelling,” to artists in the Marvel bullpen, who in turn passed them on to their friends and associates.

Wood’s “Panels That Always Work” is a trademark of, and is copyright, Wallace Wood Properties, LLC as listed by the United States Copyright Office which assigned the work Registration Number VA0001814764. The Wallace Wood Estate has released the ONLY official, authorized print of the work. Larry Hama appeared in support of the Estate’s official print, at the 2012 Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Aritst Rafael Kaynanan assembled 22 Panels Revisited, recreating the 22 examples with actual panels from Wally Wood’s completed comics work, rather than quick thumbnail sketches.

Wood’s 22 Panels Revisited

And finally, cartoonist and publisher Cheese Hasselberger created 22 Panels that Never Work, featuring… well you get the idea.

22 Panels that Never Work