Years ago when I was drawing The Batman Strikes (tie-in comics for the 2004 The Batman animated series) one of my favorite covers I did on that title happened to feature Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, so I decided to remake that cover in the style of the current Harley Quinn animated series and make that my newest 11″x17″ color print. After NYCC this will be added to the prints available in my Etsy store, but it will make its debut at this year’s New York Comic Con. Like my other prints it will be available at my convention rate of $20, or 3 prints for $50.

Here’s the original Batman Strikes cover for reference.

Find me at table A-14 in the NYCC 2023 Artist Alley for this print and many other favorites. Read more about my presence at NYCC 2023 here.

Denver Comic Con kicks off today! I must say, this is one awesome comic con that I am VERY proud to be back at. Every comic con has its own flavor and personality, and even though Denver Comic Con draws around 75,000 fans, it still does an impressive job of feeling like a community. Plus I get to hang out with Greg Weisman all weekend.

 

I will be set up at Artist Valley table D16 throughout the convention! Here’s a handy map to help you find me:

My Denver Comic Con Schedule:

FRIDAY

Young Justice – MINI Main Friday 4:45pm to 5:35pm

The creators of this fan favorite series will talk all things about the team of Super-Hero sidekicks.

Four Color Mixer  – Breckinridge Brewery/Hilton Garden Inn 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Denver Comic Con’s intimate cocktail party to celebrate our special comic book guests, along with a limited number of attendees.

SATURDAY

Batman 75th in Comics – Room 203 2:45pm to 3:35pm

The Dark Knight has prowled the streets of Gotham for 75 years. Come hear from some of the people that made his journey possible over the years.

SUNDAY

Aurora Rise – Booth 532 10:30am to 11:00am

I’ll head over to the Aurora Rise booth to hang out and sign, maybe contribute a sketch for their next charity sketchbook! Check out this great organization!

DMZ Art Talk – DMZ/Corral 1:30pm to 2:15pm

Fans of all ages are invited to come chat and draw with Christopher Jones in the DCC Comics Corral teen zone!

All other times, I will be at my Artist Valley table signing, selling & talking to fans! I didn’t do any panels at last year’s Denver Comic Con since my decision to attend was sort of late in the game, so I’m super excited about my schedule this year. You may also wish to check out Greg Weisman’s Denver Comic Con schedule.

Who Doesn’t Love FREE Stuff?

I’ve got several freebies this year at my Artist Valley table!

Free Mini-prints for followers!

Show me you follow me on Twitter or like my Facebook page for your FREE signed mini-print!

Free Parallel Man posters!

Parallel Man is my upcoming sci-fi comic series for FutureDude Entertainment. I’ve got a limited supply of FREE full color 11×17″ Parallel Man posters featuring characters from the book, which I am more than happy to sign for anyone who wants one.

    

Free Candy & Healthy Snacks!

I always have free candy at my table! It’s part of my evil plan.

Step 1: Have free candy at my table.

Step 2: ??????????

Step 3: Profit!

Recently I’ve also started stocking a supply of granola & breakfast bars for anyone who asks for one. I know convention food can get expensive and it can be tough to eat anything healthy, especially if you’re a young fan on a budget. So if you feel yourself energy crashing or just in need of an energy boost, PLEASE do stop by Artist Valley table #D16 and just ask for a granola/breakfast bar.

Aurora Rise Sketchbook

Available at Aurora Rise Booth #532! I contributed a sketch to the Aurora Rise Sketchbook Vol. 2! All purchases go to benefit victims of the 7/20/12 Aurora Theater Shooting. You can find more information on the Aurora Rise website here.

Prints! 

I’ll have all my Young Justice & comics 11×17″ prints available at my Artist Valley table, including a new Artemis Crock and Wally West print, “Spitfire”. Prints are $20/ea or 3 for $50, which is a significant discount from my Etsy store.

  

  

I’ll also have some smaller, black & white prints for $5, including a Young Justice and a Batman ’66 print.

Signatures are ALWAYS free, so feel free to bring stuff for me to sign.

Classic Doctor Who fans may be interested in picking up my new-in-2014 print, “For the Fans”, based on Peter Davison’s fantastic 50th Anniversary special, “The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot“. This will be the first comic convention I’ll have it at! And of course I’ll have all my other Doctor Who prints, too.

Day one of Denver Comic Con.

It is a full moon and Friday the 13th.

GERONIMO!

Cover for Batman ’66 #7 by Mike Allred

BATMAN ‘66 #7
Written by JEFF PARKER and TOM PEYER
Art by CHRISTOPHER JONES and DEREC DONOVAN
Cover by MICHAEL ALLRED
On sale JANUARY 22 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED E • DIGITAL FIRST
Horrors! Bruce Wayne is trying to scam a jewelry store and put the blame on poor Aunt Harriet? Or could it actually be the work of that mysterious master of disguises, False Face? Then, find out how crime really pays when the Clown Prince of Crime tries to downsize his mob in “The Joker’s Layoff Riot.”

I’m doing the False Face story in the issue, written by Jeff Parker. I can’t share any artwork from it yet, but I *can* show you the Batman art I did to be approved to work on the comic! This is a real treat for me to work on as I’m a HUGE fan of the 60’s Batman series, and the False Face episode is among my favorites. In fact, there’s also a cameo by my *absolute favorite* villain from the show, but you’ll have to pick the book up when it comes out to learn who that is!

You can look for print versions at your local comic shop when they come out, or look for it in Digital Form on Comixology where you can currently find past issues of the series. The book is presented in DC Comics’ DC² (pronounced “DC Squared”) format, where each tap of the screen actively advances the next element of the story, whether it’s the next panel or individual art elements on the page. It’s been an interesting challenge creating artwork for that format, but I think it creates a reason to seek out the digital version of the story rather than waiting for it to be collected in a print format later!

I’m having the best time working on this, and I think it shows in the pages. I can’t wait for the story can come out so you can see for yourself!

Here’s a piece I just finished for my good friend and collaborator Steven Philip Jones featuring his character Nightlinger fighting The Batman.

I wanted to share the piece in general, but it also nicely dovetails with my current offer of accepting commissions online for sketches and illustrations. This is a nice example of a full illustration commission, as is the Doctor Doom piece below. They’re both drawn in ink on 11″x17″  bristol art paper. You can read more about ordering a commission piece from me here.

“Check Please!” says it all…

I just told this story in responding to a comment on another post and I thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience.

I remember one of my earliest conventions at which I had a table as an artist – it was before I’d “broken in” to do work for DC Comics or any other major publisher. I had displayed a Batman drawing I’d done on the wall behind me – it was my response to a lot of Batman art I’d seen that didn’t strike me as having a lot of mood or atmosphere. My piece was a black and white ink drawing that was 90% black with just a moon and just enough edge-lighting in white to make out the shape of Batman’s cowl and cape.

This young kid was walking buy my table and the sight of that Batman drawing stopped him in his tracks. He looked up at the drawing and his eyes got big. “Do you… draw Batman?” he asked me.

“I drew that Batman, if that’s what you’re asking, but I haven’t worked on the comic book yet, no.”

“Oh,” the kid matter-of-factly replied, and walked away without saying another word.

This is NOT the Batman drawing from the story…

I thought it was pretty funny at the time, and I *still* think it says something about fans and conventions – but don’t ask me exactly what that is!

A classic comic book Grundy

Grundy as seen in The Batman

The De Niro Frankenstein monster

I wish the effect of Batman caught in the beam of the flashlight hadn’t been colored with such a sharply-defined cone of light coming from the flashlight. It’s not a realistic effect and it detracts from the effect of the area caught in the beam popping out from a background that’s otherwise in silhouette.

And while it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Title Page, I can’t blog about this issue without including my favorite page from the issue, and one of my favorite from the entire series.

In The Batman Strikes! #17, Chief Angel Rojas was still the top cop in Gotham City. By issue #18, Police Commissioner James Gordon has arrived on the scene, and with him his daughter Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl!

While not appearing in this scene, the villain of the issue was Poison Ivy, and given the title of the story, I tried to give the title logo a decorative, floral approach. I like how it turned out.

I’ll have more installments of Title Pages soon, but until then you can check out previous installments! As always, questions and comments are welcome!

The Batman Strikes! #17 featured a title page that was the payoff of a 2-page sequence with Gotham City Police Chief Angel Rojas and Detective Ellen Yin reacting to a message being projected into the sky via searchlight beam by The Riddler. What the heck kind of smog does Gotham City produce that they have such dense, concentrated cloud layers that you can project PRINT onto them without it diffusing into illegibility?

 
Both of these characters were fun to draw. Chief Rojas was the top cop in the first season of The Batman animated series for which this was was the tie-in comic series. Both Rojas and Ellen Yin were new characters created for The Batman, and brought some needed ethnic diversity to the pantheon of Batman characters. Rojas was unfriendly to the bat-garbed vigilante who had recently appeared in Gotham, especially in contrast to Commissioner Gordon who largely replaced him in the second season. I never heard if there was any reason to invent this character and not use Gordon in the first season other than trying to diversify the cast (a worthy enough goal). I wish they would have done more with him after Gordon came in, but the character kind of faded away. Yin also largely was pushed aside to make way for other supporting characters as Batgirl and Robin were added in later seasons.

On page 2 we see the payoff of this sequence as Batman swoops in front of the searchlight, foreshadowing the Bat-Signal. The story title and credits appear in this panel, and I made the “Q” into a question mark to reference The Riddler as the villain of this story.

 
Sadly I don’t have the inks-only versions of these pages in digital form to include in this post, but you can see how the pencils compare to the finished pages. I’d really love for DC to make digital editions of all the issues of this series available, as the lower-quality paper used on this title combined with the deep, saturated colors that were frequently used could make the pages look dark and muddy, and a lot of the contrast I was trying to create in the line art was diminished. I bet most of these pages would look MUCH better in purely digital form as opposed to what you see  here, which are scans of the printed comic.

I’ll have more installments of Title Pages soon (I promise), but until then you can check out previous installments! As always, questions and comments are welcome!

Page 1 – The Corwin O’Dooley Show!

Page 2 – The Obligatory Monologue

Page 3 – Enter: The JOKER!

Russell Lissau was one of the writers contributing scripts for The Batman Strikes and I met him and was chatting with him at Wizard World Chicago. He mentioned that he’d wanted to do a story with the Joker but hadn’t been able to think of a Joker plot that could be told within the kid-friendly confines of the Strikes title. I mentioned an idea I’d had to tell a story from the point of view of someone under the influence of the Joker’s nerve-toxin, since in this continuity is was a paralytic rather than instantly deadly. The whole story would be about The Joker and Batman playing hot-potato with the victim while they were a helpless, paralyzed observer. Russell loved the idea and offered to co-write it with me, which lead to issue #35.

The concept got watered down a bit. I would have loved to tell the story literally from the victim’s POV – seeing it through their eyes, but I wasn’t surprised when it was deemed too  high-concept for an animation tie-in title. I’d hoped that we could at least limit our story POV to that character – only seeing and hearing what they would be personally aware of. But even that was considered to be a little too much.

Still, the story was a ton of fun. It introduced the show’s version of Harley Quinn into the comic, and centered on a late-night talk show host who earns the Joker’s ire when he is dubbed “The Clown Prince of Late Night” by a Gotham magazine. The character was deliberately a cross between David Letterman and Conan Obrian.

That opening page took forever to draw, but I really wanted that big shot looking from behind our host out at his studio audience – letting us share the view he would have walking onstage. I think this was one of the pages I apologized for when handing it off to inker Terry Beatty. I wanted the sequence to feel like you were seeing it from the stage floor of the studio, not from the POV of the audience or the cameras, so that meant a few more busy shots of the studio audience in the opening pages, until the action eventually led us to a chase outside the studio confines.

Page 5 – Harley Quinn’s big entrance.

Page 6 – Bruce & Dick sneak away.

Page 7 – The helpless host.

And here’s a look at how some of these pages looked in print, with inks by Terry Beatty and colors by Heroic Age.

Atomic Batteries to Power…

I posted this one before but I thought I’d include it again here, if only to point out that if you click on the image to see the full-scale version you’ll see that I’ve cast Tor Johnson as a 1960s-era Bane. A neat trick given that the character wasn’t created until the early 90s.

“I do know when we need him, and we need him NOW!”

I’m a huge fan of the Adam West Batman series and decided I wanted the Bat Signal image from the end credits as my Facebook Timeline image, but the image wasn’t wide enough and didn’t crop well, so I rebuilt the thing and extended it horizontally to the correct size. Feel free to use this on Facebook yourself, but if you do give me some credit and link to my Blog and/or my Facebook page, won’t you?

And finally, I’m not a huge Chuck Norris fan, so this is likely my one and only contribution to the whole Chuck Norris meme zeitgeist, but for what it’s worth, here it is…

“C.I.A.!” Get it? GET IT???