Doc SAVAGE

Pulp icon Doc Savage returns with his own series right out of the recent pages of First Wave. Many may not know who exactly Doc Savage is, but this could be the place to start, especially because this book has one thing that many books are lacking now-a-days, blimps.
The Good They don't call him "The Man of Bronze" because he has some sort of metallic like skin. Doc Savage is an incredibly smart and insanely rich man with no super-powers. He's like me or you, with a tan and a better haircut. I love how he interacts with the people he's saving. There's no ego, and he never shows any inkling that he feels he's better than them. He's a normal guy, trying to save the world... and he's got a blimp. Writer Paul Malmont makes this feel like a pulp book with updated art. There's a decent enough of exposition going on, but not enough to make you really take notice. There's a great cliffhanger ending that gets me pumped for the next issue.
The Bad As much as I liked this book, there's a bit more bad than good. If you don't know who Doc Savage is, check out his ComicVine page and read up a little because this book doesn't offer much of an explanation of who he is or what he can do. This caters to mainly the Doc Savage fans out there. My major problem with the main story, because there is also a Justice, Inc back-up, is the eyes. They're anime-huge, and it's very distracting. I also wish the WHOLE issue could have been about Doc Savage because the back-up was something I did not like at all. I have no clue what Justice Inc is, and the art bored me. Doc Savage is an action-packed story, and the back-up was a bunch of people hanging out and talking. If Justice Inc wants to be a back-up, do it somewhere else. It's too hard to read after you just witnessed Doc Savage saving people and jumping out of a blimp.
The Verdict If you like Doc Savage, you'll love this book. If you've never heard of him, I say give this book a chance, but skip the Justice Inc in the back. The 20 pages of Doc Savage are great, action-packed, and it is a pretty quick read. The back-up story is just not anything that interesting at the moment. It's hard to grade a first issue of a series. It's the one that's going to draw people into the book, but I feel they may have dropped the ball on getting new people into Doc Savage. I'll make my final verdict on this book by issue #3.

Tim Sale

Tim Sale was born on May 1, 1956[1] in Ithaca, New York, but spent most of his early life in Seattle, Washington. (He moved there with his family at age six.)[2] He attended the University of Washington for two years before moving to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts as well as the comics workshop run by artist John Buscema. Before he graduated from SVA, Sale returned to Seattle. He began doing art for the series Myth Adventures in 1983, and was soon working on Thieves' World. After meeting Matt Wagner and Diana Schutz (who were then creating and working for Comico Comics) and Barbara Randall of DC Comics at the San Diego Comicon, Sale's career began in earnest.
The body of Sale's comics work has been with collaborator Jeph Loeb. The duo, credited in their comics as 'storytellers', produced popular work such as Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Dark Victory, and the so-called 'color' books for Marvel Comics starring characters such as Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Hulk.
Tim Sale is currently working on artwork for the television program Heroes.[3] His artwork appears in the show as the work of the precognitive artist Isaac Mendez as well as other artists on the show. Mendez' work in the 9th Wonders! comic book on the show is also the work of Sale. Additionally, the font used throughout the show in the various captions and credits was created by Sale and is based on his handwriting style.[4] Sale's frequent collaborator Jeph Loeb was a writer and producer on the show.[5]
Tim Sale has two dogs, Hotspur and Shelby. Sale is a lifelong soccer fan.[6]

Tommy Patterson: Bringing Farscape to Life for Boom

Sometimes, the third time really is a charm.For comics artist Tommy Patterson, tenacity paid off. Not only did he stick with his dream of being an artist for more than 10 years, but it took him three tries to finally get the job as penciler on Farscape, the comic book based on the Sci-Fi television show. "I'm a newcomer to the industry, but I've been on the message boards and all that for going on 10 years now," Patterson said. "There are a lot of artists that I kind of 'grew up' with on the boards who have gotten jobs, so that kept faith alive. I'm 31, so I'm kind of a late bloomer, but I kept at it because I feel like it's what I'm made to do.With the help of his friend, Marvel artist Ryan Stegman, Patterson got an agent and a chance to show his work to Boom! Studios as they were looking for someone to work on Farscape. "I tried out for Farscape, and there were a few things they wanted me to work on, so I did," Patterson said. "And I tried out again. Then there were still a few things they wanted me to work on, so I kept working on it. And finally, I tried out one more time, and they liked what they saw and said I got the job."

Farscape #1, page 6
The first thing Patterson did was study episodes of the Farscape TV show. "I'd watched the show a few times here and there, but I wouldn't have considered myself a fan until after I got the job and got caught up on the series," he said. "I've got two people I worked with at the print shop where I used to work, and they were really big-time Farscape fans. So as soon as I got the job, I went to them and got all their DVDs and stuff like that. And I started getting versed in the universe."The artist said he quickly understood why the show has such a cult following. "I think it's the characters. They're all really likable," he said. "I like Rygel the best. He cracks me up. Crichton's your typical smart-aleck American dude. And then you have Aeryn, who's kind of the exotic female. But I like Rygel."

Farscape #1, page 7
Now that he's into drawing the comic, Patterson said he's starting to really enjoy the Hynerians, as the comic explores their world in more detail. "They have a lot more Hynerians in [the comic] because there are no budget constraints," he said. "So you get to learn about those people a little bit more. The way they talk, which you see a lot in issue #2, they have a really funny beat to the way they talk."Patterson has also gotten the chance to design some of the characters. "I'm so busy right now that it's kind of hard to soak it in and appreciate what I'm getting to do," he said. "Like the planet of Hyneria has never been seen before, and the first page of Issue #2 is a big splash of the Hynerian city. And I got to make all that up. And pretty much all I had to go on for that was looking at Rygel's sled that he scoots around on. And from that, I figured out what the city might look like. And I went with art deco with sci-fi tech in it. And his sled has a lot of hieroglyphic things in it, so I sprinkled that throughout the city too. And of course, water, because they're like frog creatures."

Farscape #1, page 8
The fact that the Hynerians are portrayed by puppets on the show gave the artist a bit of a challenge translating that as beings who could be taken seriously in a two-dimensional portrayal, Patterson said. "There were probably a few corrections on the first issue because there were things they wanted to tweak. Rygel's eyes, I drew really animated, with huge, open eyes. They thought it looked too cat-like, so I had to address that and make those smaller," he said.The other big challenge for Patterson has been to mimic the movements of the actors' faces while maintaining their likenesses -- something important for a comic book that continues the story of a television show with the same characters."It's a little tedious. I don't mind it too much because it's going to make me a stronger artist in the end," he said. "I'll be honest with you: Faces are probably my biggest weakness. That should be one of the first thing that artists are good at, so this has really challenged me. And that's a good thing. When you see issue #3, you'll really see the improvement. My best face in issue #1 is my worst face in issue #3, if that makes any sense."

Farscape #1, page 9
Patterson listed the biggest influences on his style as Michael Golden, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Frank Frazetta, and Rob Liefeld, although he said he had to alter his style for the realistic look of Farscape."They really wanted the likenesses to match with the TV series. I consider myself more of a traditional superhero comic book artist, so I'm having to fight that quite a bit to keep the guys from getting too buff and the females from having huge comic book eyes and stuff like that," he laughed. After Patterson's four issues of Farscape are released to complete the first volume of the series, his work will be seen next on the third volume of the title. "They'll start the next story arc with another artist," Patterson said, "then I'm going to come back and do another four issues. There's going to be about a month off after I finish issue #4, then I'll jump in to issues #9-12."Patterson said the jump ahead to work on future issues will help alleviate the delays the comic experienced at first -- something the artist doesn't think will be a problem anymore. "The first issue got delayed a month because I was a bit of a rookie getting thrown into the fire, but I'm working at it. And the guy who's starting after me is already working on his," he said. "After that, it should be monthly. So the schedule should get on track now."Now that he's well into the series, the artist hopes to continue to grow and give Farscape the type of art the franchise deserves. "Even though it's my first book, I'm taking it seriously, and I'm not treating it as a stepping stone or anything like that," Patterson said. "I want the book to be all it can be. I consider this first four issues a little rocky here and there. That's all me, though, because Keith's scripts are great, and the characters are just like the TV show. The Hynerians crack me up; he's got their humor down. "But while this has been a bit of a rocky start for me, I'm working really hard to make sure I do the best I can for this series," he added. "When I come back for the next four issues, I'm going to take it up even another notch now that I'm past fighting to get the likenesses down, fighting crazy deadlines and gathering up references. I'll have all that in place, and the art will reflect it. Now I'll just get to draw a kick-butt comic book."

Humberto Ramos a genius designs

In the early 1990s Ramos learned comic book art from Mexican comic book artist Oscar González Guerrero and his son, Oscar González Loyo. The pair later invited him to comic book conventions in the United States.

Ramos was discovered in 1993 at the San Diego Comic-Con, the comic book industry's largest annual convention, where comic legend Walt Simonson brought him to the attention of the founders of Milestone Media, where he did his first work in American comics in 1994, before being hired by DC Comics as the regular penciller for their new Flash spin-off Impulse, which launched in March 1995. Written by Mark Waid, the superhero/teen comedy series focused on young speedster Bart Allen, the grandson of the second Flash, Barry Allen, and his struggles with growing up in an alienated Alabama suburb.
In 1998, Ramos co-founded the imprint Cliffhanger with comic book artists Joe Madureira and J. Scott Campbell. They created the imprint, housed by Jim Lee's Image Comics division Wildstorm, to publish their creator-owned comic books outside the mainstream superhero genre. Both Campbell and Madureira had already built large fanbases with their previous work on Gen¹³ and Uncanny X-Men respectively, and were two of the most popular comic book artists at the time. Ramos, on the other hand, was not as popular and his inclusion on the imprint was perceived as second choice, after fan-favorite Michael Turner declined because he was still under contract at Top Cow. However, while Campbell's Danger Girl and Madureira's Battle Chasers soon ran into problems with both creators frequently missing deadlines and long delays between single issues, Ramos' Crimson—although not selling as many copies as the other two—stayed on schedule, missed hardly any shipping dates, and became the longest-running title of the imprint, even as more artists joined the imprint in the early 2000s.
Crimson wrapped, after 24 issues and two one-shots, in February 2001, and was followed by Ramos' second Cliffhanger title, the fantasy/mystery series Out There, a mere three months later. Along with the start of Out There, Ramos also began illustrating the covers of Peter Parker: Spider-Man with issue #30 and—beginning with May 2002's Peter Parker: Spider-Man #44—additionally did the interior artwork on the four-issue story arc "A Death in the Family" (later collected as Spider-Man: Return of the Goblin; ISBN 0-7851-1019-4), written by Paul Jenkins.
After his Cliffhanger contract ran out and Out There was concluded after 18 issues in early 2003, he left the imprint (apparently not on the best terms.and launched a new Spider-Man title, The Spectacular Spider-Man. The book reunited Ramos with Peter Parker: Spider-Man writer Paul Jenkins and earned him a 2005 Harvey Award nomination as Best Cover Artist. While Ramos worked on Spectacular Spider-Man, another book created by him (although illustrated by Francisco Herrera), the six-issue miniseries Kamikaze, which had originally been planned for 2001,was published by WildStorm under the Cliffhanger imprint.
In 2005, Ramos' creator-owned six-issue miniseries Revelations began publication at Dark Horse Comics. The series, once again written by Jenkins, was originally supposed to be published by Cliffhanger in 2001, but delayed for unknown reasons.
Following Revelations, Ramos returned to Marvel Comics, joining writer Marc Guggenheim as the new creative team on Wolverine, beginning with issue #42 in March 2006. The same month also saw the release of the first volume of the space opera K, a series of three 46-page comic albums Ramos is illustrating for French comic publisher Soleil Productions, written by the popular French comic book creator Crisse.Ramos is currently working with writer Terry Moore on Runaways in 2008.

remember Ringo!

Mike Wieringo was born in Italy and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, USA, graduating with a degree in Fashion Illustration, and broke into comics as a penciler with the Millennium Publications series Pat Savage and Doc Savage: Doom Dynasty in 1991. Two years later, he penciled the cover of the anthology comic book Negative Burn #1 (1993), from Caliber Press.
Wieringo broke into mainstream publisher DC Comics penciling the cover and co-penciling (with Lee Moder) the 30-page Justice League International lead story in Justice League Quarterly #11 (Summer 1993). Wieringo then penciled a 13-page backup feature starring the superheroines Doctor Light and Ice in Justice League Quarterly #12 (Autumn 1993). In a late 1990s interview, Wieringo recalled that
“
Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story, the guys at Gaijin Studios ... lined the [Millennium] job up for me, because I had met them at [comics conventions] over the years and showed them my work. They got some of my samples and sent them to the guy and [he] liked them and gave me the job. ... From there, it was dry for a while, and I did some more samples and took them to [Comic-Con International in] San Diego in 1992, and about October that year, I got a call from Ruben Diaz, who was an assistant editor at DC at the time, [who] asked me to do a Justice League Quarterly story. When I started doing that, they asked me to do another one, and while I was in the process of finishing the second one, they asked me if I'd be interested in taking over The Flash because the artist had just left.

JERSEY GODS #1

Glen Brunswick and Dan McDaid's superhero epic enters into a second printing coinciding with the second issue's release!
The superhero epic JERSEY GODS by writer Glen Brunswick and artist Dan McDaid returns for a second printing after a stellar sellout just in time for this week's second issue! "Dan and I are just thrilled to death with the sell-out," Brunswick said. "We put our heart and soul into JERSEY GODS. It's a very personal project. We're elated to find that so many people are feeling passionate about it as well." JERSEY GODS, the story of a superpowered god meeting a small-town girl amidst an apocalyptic battle, gained instant notoriety after its unique blend of superheroics and slice of life situations was featured in mainstream press including CBS Evening News, New York 1, The Courier Post, The Bergen Record and even the front-page of the Star Ledger. The impressive debut resulted in a near-instant sellout at the distribution level, with artists Mike and Laura Allred stepping in for an alternate version of their original cover. This will coincide with the second issue, featuring the fallout of the debut's shocking battle and the romance JERSEY GODS will be driven by for years to come.

'Savage Dragon #145'-Savage Dragon goes back to his roots!

story, art & cover by ERIK LARSEN 32 PAGES, FC, $3.50 “BACK IN BLUE” Savage Dragon goes back to his roots! Nearly 12 years after walking off the job as a law enforcement officer Savage Dragon rejoins the Chicago Police Department. It's a great jumping on point for new readers and old, and it helps pave the way for IMAGE UNITED. The Vicious Circle is reborn and Captain Frank Darling turns to the one man he knows can get the job done: The Dragon! It's history in the making, boys and girls! This issue of SAVAGE DRAGON comes with our highest possible recommendation! Featuring an appearance by, and an alternate cover featuring, President Barack Obama.