dan-sch

Among the cooler things that have ever happened to me, here's this: as you may have heard elsewhere on the internet this week, I am the penciler/inker on Dynamite Comics' WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT. I'm in for a twelve issue arc, written by Matt Wagner and colored by my good pal Brennan Wagner, who put my name in the ring in the first place. 

The words "Spirit" and "the" alone make this an honor. Add in the chance to work with Matt Wagner, one of my all-time biggest heroes and inspirations, and to be colored by a friend who I really creatively click with, and you've got an amazing gig going. But then there the story Matt's written for this. This is more than just another Matt Wagner Dynamite pulp book, like Green Hornet or Shadow (years one, both, and excellent comics). It's more than just another Spirit reboot (although big ups to Darwyn Cooke, Sergio Argones, and Moritat, et all). It's bigger. It's different... well, it's all there in the headline that opens the story: WHO KILLED THE SPIRIT?

Holy hell. That pushes this over the top. This is now a dream job. I'm wrapping up the first issue this week, and I'm going right into the second issue from there. I could probably take a couple days off, but nuts to that. I'm too excited to see the story finished on the page. 

WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT #1 drops July 1st. For now, enjoy some character designs. And don't worry -- I promise I've gotten better at drawing everybody since I did these. 









Over to you guys. 

Hey, everybody -- been away for a couple years, and now I'm not.

Last night, I went back and looked at the many hundreds of posts I'd made over the decade that connects now to when I first opened up a dA page, and remembered what a remarkable creative community I'd been lucky enough to be a part of. I still get emails from fans of the old work I posted here. I still get well-wishes on my birthday. This place is great. 

I'm going to start posting up here again. For commissions, sketches, and the odd page, it's hard to beat this place as a catalogue of ongoing art. I'll keep y'all in the loop about developments in my creator-owned work, like SAN HANNIBAL, and when this company book I'm working on hits the shelves I'll begin posting some of the original art for that, too.

Most of all, I'll be soliciting criticism and advice on my developing ability to create dynamic, thoughtful, exciting comics -- just like you all did when I was fifteen and couldn't draw feet. 

Looking forward to renewing our acquaintance!

Dan

Oh, hey! Didn't see you there.

I'm up to a couple things. Most visibly, I'm helping make a pair of comics over at The Committee Building (dot com). Supervillain sci-fi farcical morality jam STOP AND GO, and a property my deviantArt followers should have passing familiarity with, THE FOWL -- with more comics to come. Check it out: www.thecommitteebuilding.com .

This new Fowl series is plotted in conjunction with Jesse Snavlin, writer and creator of Stop and Go, who both letters and writes the scripts for me to pencil and ink from. It updates on friday and monday in eight-page segments, each starting on the first friday of the month. We're halfway into the second segment right now. These things crank out fast. It's sketchy and dirty and fun. And murder on my hand, but whatever. I've got another.

These stories find us in a bayou-style Parris City, where police Detective Madeline Cross is still feeling out the balance between the narrow life of a good cop and her illicit partnership with a far younger and poorer avian vigilante, still in the first year of his peculiar line of work. This book is less interested in being a spooky superhero story than being a horror/crime book with a masked man who just happens to be in it -- and not even the star, really. It'll be a shift, but you'll get used to it soon enough. Believe me, these are the comics I wished I was doing the whole time I was drawing the initial run of the comic.

New stories, new continuity, new terrors and human monstrosities that no one could possibly deliver you from -- save, perhaps, for a masked man who might as well be nobody at all. Read on: www.thecommitteebuilding.com/t… .

How's things with you? Sound off.

I've been getting into trouble, mostly.

The world's WAY bigger than I'd thought it to be. By which I mean, there's spots in it that're bigger than the actual space they take up. Hotels with one more floor than they are tall. Hidden streets. You've seen this, if you think back hard enough. There's whole promenades in between the backs of businesses, entire communities you'll just blink and miss rolling down the 5 South. It's like the brain, storing its processing power in those roadmap wrinkles. The world's bigger on the inside, is what I'm getting at. It's all full of stuff. Predominantly good stuff, in my estimation. Keeping the bad stuff to a minimum, that's down to all of us.

My main online presence these days is my tumblr, which can be reached here: danschkade.tumblr.com/ .

How's things with you all?

So yes, it is my twenty-first birthday. I'm working hard to finish a thing for a thing (not Avery-related, but just as cool in its own way) while eating a Big Town Hero sandwich with roast beef and no cheese and later Justin Gordon and I will go out and drink various somethings that'll make our eyes hurt tomorrow morning.

Big thanks to everyone who's wished me well, and please know that I reciprocate your sentiments five-fold and ten.

Blog update this weekend, now that there's finally something to say. averyworkblog.blogspot.com/

Ta.