DCartoons: Dan Christensen's Comics & Sketches

RDSS #5: The Black Panther & a pony

Administrator — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:26:43 +0000

Here’s the last one for awhile (until it rains again, anyway), a couple pages of Black Panther drawings:

I don’t know about you, but I really dig the Black Panther. Especially the way Jack Kirby used to draw him. For Christmas this year I’ve decided to ask Santa for a 150-page BP graphic novel, with original, never-before-seen stories written and drawn by Kirby,Will Eisner and Alex Toth. That would be the greatest Christmas present EVER.

No, wait. That would be the second greatest Christmas present ever.

The first , of course, would be a pony.

RDSS #4: The Badger (& Batman)

Administrator — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:03:35 +0000

Here are two drawings of my favorite martial-arts superhero of them all, Mike Baron’s The Badger, with a quick Batman sketch thrown in for fun.

Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, one of my favorite comics was First Comics’ The Badger. What I liked most about Badger comics was the fact that there was little or no soul-searching and whiny angst, ( “Why, oh why do I have all these powers and I still can’t pay the rent and/or save my one-armed grandma, boo hoo”) and LOTS & LOTS OF KUNG FU. Instead of endless soap-opera intrigues, Badger comics were about beating up rednecks, demons, and evil karate masters, which to me was pretty entertaining for $1.25. Many great artists worked on the different incarnations of the character, like George Freeman, Jill Thompson, Steve Rude, Michael Oeming, Mitch O’Connell and the Pander Brothers (just to name a few), and the genre-spanning stories ranged from Bruce Lee-style martial arts tournaments to cameos in Mike Baron’s Nexus comics, with the occasional H.P Lovecraft/Cthulhu parody thrown in for good measure* . Just goes to show all the fun things one can do with a mentally-disturbed Vietnam vet with multiple personalities who masters “obscure, esoteric, arcane (not to mention abstruse) martial arts”.**

Anyway… this first picture is a brush-pen sketch, cleaned up and colored in Photoshop, and the second was done in pencil and watercolors.

*My favorite issue ever, drawn by the excellent George Freeman. Issue #68, just in case you’re interested in tracking it down…

**Excerpt from The Badger’s character description from the inside cover

The Watchmen movie trailer

Administrator — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:56:21 +0000

The 1980’s was a great time to be reading comics. There were lots of great books on the shelves, like Matt Wagner’s Mage and Grendel, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Bill Willingham’s The Elementals and the Hernandez Brothers’ Mister X.

Oh yeah, and there was also Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterpiece, The Watchmen.

Although it wasn’t the book that influenced me the most, The Watchmen remains one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. My comic nerd friends, older brother Dave (who is also a nerd) and I read it so many times we I could almost quote it from memory.

So when my wife told me yesterday, “Hey, come take a look at this,” I got goosebumps. No kidding.

I can’t wait to see this.

RDSS #3: Maleficent & The Black Widow

Administrator — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:14:15 +0000

Have you ever wondered what Maleficent (the evil fairy queen from Sleeping Beauty with a thing for spinning wheels) looked like after she got stabbed by the Prince and fell off the bridge at the end?

Well, according to my three-year-old son, she’d look something like this:

Actually I’m reading into this a little bit. When I asked him what he had painted, he just shouted out “Maleficent, mwa ha ha!!” (he digs Maleficent and does this great imitation of her evil laugh)…so if this were hanging in an art gallery somewhere, the little paper underneath it would read:

“Maleficent, mwa ha ha”
Watercolor on Canson paper
July 2008

And in closing, here’s a few sketches of the Black Widow.

RDSS #2: The Sinister Six & Iron Man

Administrator — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:21:23 +0000

Here is a drawing of Spider-Man VS. The Sinister Six, taken from the new Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon. It hasn’t come to French television yet (unfortunately), but from what I’ve seen on YouTube, it’s easily the coolest Spider-Man cartoon to hit TV since the one I grew up watching, back in the late 70’s. (You know, the one with the “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can” theme song? Yeah, that one) The new cartoon is, well… Spectacular. In keeping with Spider-Man-related adjectives, the character design is Amazing, and was done, I believe, by the very talented Sean Galloway. Anyway, we’re all fans of the show, and my son in particular, so he drew his version of the team: from left to right, we have Sandman, Kraven the Hunter* (replacing Rhino, who “wasn’t in the original Sinister Six”, I’m told), Electro, Dr. Octopus, the Vulture and Scorpion (replacing the Shocker for reasons unknown).

And this here is Iron Man, drawn with my handy Pentel brush-pen and colored in Photoshop. I still haven’t seen the movie, by the way… is it any good?

*formerly of the Village People

Rainy Day Sketchbook Sessions #1: The X-Men

Administrator — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:36:25 +0000

On rainy days, when we can’t go outside to play in the park or go to the beach, my boys and I have this unofficial tradition of sitting down at the kitchen table and drawing. My oldest is more of a “superheroes with markers” kid, while the youngest is more of a “surrealism with watercolors” kind of kid. The fact that he’s three may explain this.

Me, I’m more of a “use whatever is on the table to draw in my sketchbook” type. So, to shorten the wait in-between Paranormal pages, I’ll be posting some of the better sketches from the Rainy Day Sketchbook Sessions, or (RDSS in order to cut back on the excessive use of syllables).

Here’s the first two: The Silver Age X-Men (my favorite incarnation of the team, and my favorite superhero team of all time, followed closely by the Doom Patrol, the original Avengers and Justice League; but that’s another story for another time).

I sketched these up fast and inked them with a Pentel brush marker, then grabbed some supermarket-issue colored pencils to throw down some color. These are a lot sketchier than what I usually like to post, but I hope you dig them anyway.

Better Late Than Never…(II)

Administrator — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:30:25 +0000

Had me a Twilight Zone moment last night. Back on June 26th I’d posted the following drawrings, but last night, while nuking some spam messages*, I noticed that the post had magically disappeared. Spoo-oo-ooky.

Yeah, so I’m posting it again. Ahem: “Here’s a coupla colored pages from the last volume of my Paranormal trilogy”:

Page 3

Page 25

Enjoy! I’ll be back soon with more pages!

*Thanks a mill to all the [insert insulting adjective and noun combination here] who attempt to put spam posts on my blog; no, really, I DO APPRECIATE IT. REALLY. Now run along and go get yourselves a real job. I hear McDonald’s is hiring, with competitive wages.