Friday, September 30, 2005

Kari That Weight

Wow. What a turn for the better. Since my post about Mike Dunham leading the way to the Thrasher's first win of the preseason, Atlanta has managed to win 2 more! That makes 3 wins in a row and an overall preseason record of 3-4. And, to make things even more exciting for us Thrasher fans, the win last night was Kari Lehtonen's first action after hurting his groin. He made 35 saves and was first star in their 4-2 win over Nashville.

Still no word on Kovalchuk. It's looking pretty grim. Sigh.

I know... I know......I'll talk comics in my next post, I swear.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

No Time This Time


No time for a real update ....... so you get a picture of Ken Dryden.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Comeeks!

I got my shipment of comics from Discount Comic Book Service (DCBS) today! I love this service. I've been toying with the idea of buying all my comics through DCBS. Truth is, I hate going to my comic shop here in Vancouver. Their lack of indie comic support, their US$ to CAN$ price gouging on said indie comics, and their overall disinterest in customer service have been bugging me for quite some time. The only reason I go to it is because it's conveniently located near my workplace. But as I purchase more comics through DCBS, the more I realize that I can live without the weekly trips to the comic store. Plus, the discounts that I can get through DCBS are excellent! Here's what was in this shipment:
  • ELK'S RUN #3
  • WESTERN TALES OF TERROR #5
  • TED NOODLEMAN: BYCYCLE DELIVERY BOY TP
  • SAMURAI EXECUTIONER VOL2
  • SAMURAI EXECUTIONER VOL3
  • LONE WOLF AND CUB VOL17
  • LONE WOLF AND CUB VOL18
  • LONE WOLF AND CUB VOL21
  • LONE WOLF AND CUB VOL22
  • AVENGERS: KREE SKRULL WAR TP
  • FRAGILE TP
  • METABARONS VOL 1 TP
  • ULTIMATES VOL HC
  • SHAOLIN COWBOY #3

That finishes off my Lone Wolf and Cub collection. Now I've got to find some time to sit and read them all!

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Brother, Can You Spare a Channel?


The start of the 2005-2006 NHL season is fast approaching and I'm very happy about that. The loss of a full season was something I knew was going to happen when the whole lockout situation reared it's ugly head. Truth be told, I thought the lockout was going to drag into this season, as well. Luckily, the NHLPA and NHL pulled their collective heads out of their collective asses and got a collective bargining agreement done! Now comes the hard part....... Watching hockey on tv.

Jackie and I don't have cable. We can get a few channels with our rabbit ears, one of them being the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It's the only channel we get that broadcasts NHL hockey. But this year, the CBC has it's own lockout situation going on. The CFL has already pulled most of their games from the CBC due to very poor coverage. Can the NHL be far behind? I've heard a few rumours that the lockout will end before the NHL season starts but I wouldn't bet on it. Without the CBC, I won't get to watch hockey. I guess since I've already waited a year to see NHL hockey, I can make it till the CBC lockout is resolved....... But, I just won't like it.

Monday, September 26, 2005

2 steps forward.....

And 1 step back.

My scanner died on me last night. Right in the middle of scanning a page of Empty Chamber the power cord gave out the back. "No biggie," I thought to myself, " I'll just put it back in and reboot." Apparently, my scanner had other thoughts. I plugged it back in and rebooted. The light on the scanner never game back on. Forever lightless. Dead. It had died right there, right in front of my own 2 eyes.

"Oh, HP Scanjet 4400c, we hardly knew ye!" I cried to the heavens.

Screw it. I wanted a large format scanner, anyway. So I'm putting in for one! A bright and shiny new Mustek ScanExpress A3! Now, I'll be able to scan a whole comic page in one go. No more piecing 2 scans together like a barbarian!

The first of 2 steps forward......?

(I was going to add a picture of the Mustek ScanExpress A3 to this blog entry but it seems Blogger won't let me......)

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Mike Dunham.......








The Thrashers are no longer winless in the preseason (1-4-0-0)! They managed to pay back Carolina in full for the loss that they handed them, a few nights ago. Again, Atlanta tried to give Carolina the chance to crawl back into the game by giving them a 2 man advantage in the last 3 minutes of the game. Thankfully, Mike Dunham was up to the task of preserving the win. Dunham made 37 saves and was named the game's first star!

Ok Ok.... I'm going back to drawing EMPTY CHAMBER...... sheesh

Rock and/or Roll

I'm a huge music fan. In fact, this blog is named after a song (Bonus points to the person naming it without Googling!).

I'm always listening to something, whether it's around the house, in the car, on the bus, at work(when I can) and most definitely when I am drawing. It's funny, I've got a pretty big collection of CD's but I tend to have a small number of albums in rotation at one time. My current CD rotation list looks like this:

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

0 and 3


The Thrashers have started the preseason with back to back to back loses. They almost made tonights' game against Carolina go to extra time until Shane Hnidy took a holding penalty with less than 2 minutes left in the 3rd period. On the ensuing powerplay, Josef Vasicek scored his second of the game and handed Atlanta it's third straight loss.

I know. I know. It's only the preseason but come on, boys. Throw me a frickin' bone here!

(pictured above is Atlanta Thrasher goalie, Pasi Nurminen...... cool mask, eh?)

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

In Honour of Michael May



From Michael May's blog:
This month is supposed to be Michael May month in IDW's prose back-up stories. They're publishing my short story "Completely Cold." I'm not sure if they'll run it in all their books or just the horror ones, but George Romero's Land Of The Dead #1 comes out on Wednesday and I'm betting it's in there.

So, in honour (spelled the Canadian way, eh) of Michael's most excellent news, I'm throwing up a zombie drawing I did a while back. I don't draw zombies very often but it was fun to do. Kid zombies are scary.......
Congratulations, Michael!

Monday, September 19, 2005

My Pile of Comics


I love comics.

Yeah, I know, not a huge revelation. But it needed to be said. Every week I make my traditional trek down to my Local Comic Shop. Of all the titles that I buy, few of them are monthly titles. Walking Dead, Captain America, Ex Machina, Young Avengers, Strangers in Paradise and Firestorm are what make the cut. Most of these titles I read in 3-4 issue chunks. You see, every Wednesday I come home and place my newly acquired treasures on "THE PILE". I'll do this until the structure of "THE PILE" becomes a hazard to their Near Mint condition. Once that critical mass of sequential goodness has been reached, I sort them into their proper individual runs and dig in. It was time for that sorting phase, let me tell you.

Sometimes during the sorting, I come across a comic that I forgot I bought. Like tonight. I dug up the DC/Humanoids book OLYMPUS. Written by Geoff Johns & Kris Grimminger, Artwork by Butch Guice and Color by Dan Brown.

Now, I'm a sucker for Greek Mythology stories ( It dates back to my Grade 7 oral presentation I gave about Herakles (Hercules) and his 12 Labors) and I like Guice's work (One of my favorite non-Simonson Thor issues (#356) was the one where Guice penciled a fill-in about who was stronger, Thor or Hercules.) so this was a pretty easy sell. I was happy to discover that I LOVED this book! The story was great but it was the art that stole the show. Guice has taken his skills to a whole new level. He also inked it, so maybe that's why it really sang.

Anyway, OLYMPUS delivered big time and I would heartily recommend getting it while you can...... who knows what will happen to the Humanoid catalogue when it breaks from DC.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Time to Get This Thing Going!

There never seems to be time to update my actual website so I'm going to jump into this blogging thing. I imagine I will update this on a fairly regular basis (fingers crossed). You know, to tell you guys about what I'm up to, whether it's about comics, hockey or life.

Speaking of hockey, the NHL is going to start up in a few weeks and I am stoked! Man, it's been waaaaay too long since the puck was dropped. My team, the Atlanta Thrashers, have gone through some interesting (saddening?) changes in the off season. The loss of Heately is big. I mean BIG. Sure Hossa is a great player, but come on, Danny Heately is going to be a franchise player for many years to come. But, I understand his personal need to get away from Atlanta. It would be hard on anybody to be constantly reminded of the events that unfolded there. Plus, playing hockey in your home country is also a reasonable desire. So I hold no ill feelings, Danny. I wish you much success in *cough* Ottawa *cough*.

The non signing of Ilya Kovalchuk is very disheartening. I'm sure Don Waddell (Thrasher GM) has tried to get him back in uniform, but I can't help feel that this could have been avoided. Waddell must have seen this coming.......

The Thrashers have made some great moves, though. They grabbed Bobby Holik as the CBA was still drying. The addition of Modry, Havelid and de Vries has given them a solid top 4 on defense. The signing of Mike Dunham as backup/mentor for Kari Lehtonen. And, I just read on TSN.ca that they have signed Peter Bondra (for next to nothing, too). So all is not lost!

On the comics front, I'm working on EMPTY CHAMBER, the espionage book written by A. David Lewis (of Mortal Coils and Lone and Level Sands fame). Things are moving along nicely. I'll try and give you sneak peeks at it as time goes on....... I've also got a anthology of Monster vs Robot stories shaping up. Good friends Alex Ness and Michael May are in on the action, writing the stories that I will draw. I may even have room for more....... time will tell.

Well, that's it for now.
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