101

although WW has been an out-of-control success, i thought it would be nice to return to the roots of this blog for a moment. you know, challenging myself (well, WW was certainly that, but you know what i mean...)

i posted a to-do list last year, but there a few things i left off of it. one was the project below. i always joke that any comic that could appeal to both 13 year old girls AND 18 year old boys would be unstoppable.

it would also be almost impossible... which is of course what makes it a challenge.

so on the plane home from SDCC, i returned to this one project with a few doodles. it involves a high school full of supernatural mishaps. these focus more on the high school side of it, at some point i will have more pics of the crazy stuff. some of these are designs for specific characters, others are general school types (not stereotypes). none of the boys sparkle, but some of them are real purty. teen-movie deal, here i come!

WW2 annotations...

i doubt anyone cares, but the notes for page 2 are up, page 3 notes should be up tonight, then on to notes 4 to catch up...
(i actually did 2 and most of 3 at SDCC, just no internet access...)

http://web.me.com/bencaldwellart/bencaldwellart/wwannot2.html

also working on the general notes/art, some of that at least will be up tomorrow...

WEDNESDAY COMICS #2

just got some copies... all the stories look even better this week, although i think my favorites have to be pope's strange and demon/catwoman.

am i allowed to say that?

the WW page reads much better than last time, some of that is probably because the colors are slightly less acidic and weird, partly because this has always been one of my favorite pages in terms of layout etc.

woo woo!

hi all!

if anyone is interested in seeing the WW page at a larger size and with its original coloring:
http://web.me.com/bencaldwellart/bencaldwellart/PROJECTSww0.html

and notes related to the first page:
http://web.me.com/bencaldwellart/bencaldwellart/wwannot1.html

it will be updated weekly

SWEET!

wednesday comics #1 comes out today! woo woo!

MREOW!

still debating whether cheetah will have the same outfit in later run-ins. that is, she'll always look like cheetah, and have the spots, but a spoiled socialite might want to change up the details. burberry in london? what about corto maltese? we shall see.





and some VERY rough ideas for the bukharastan scenes:



hope you like it! if not, i return your hatred with hugs. hug me, angry boy! hug!

ladies night

more from paradise island.
it will not end up in the actual story.


cliffs, for a deleted scene in which hippolyta laments that diana never knew their ancient homeland.


training gear, based on the fact that the amazons were originally nomads (related to the sarmatians and other tribes in the azov/colchis region), and would have been comfortable with the ubiquitous wide pants of the steppes.

and the super-cartoony ww doodles were just that, so no need to get all weepy.


more random designs. the colchians lived on the eastern shore of the black sea -- this was the kingdom of the golden fleece, visited by jason and the argonauts. from ancient times until the 16th century the inhabitants were distinctly "east african" (dark skin, curled hair, tall and slender), and in fact there was a long tradition that they were descended from the army of pharoah sesostris, who invaded the region (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesostris -- although the article is incorrect; several contemporary egyptian artifacts HAVE been found in asia minor and the black sea coast whose presence might be explained
in various ways, but which undermine the article's smug dismissal of sesostris's northern campaigns).


more steppes-influenced designs, and notes on resources available on paradise island and the larger region (i was surprised to find how many mineral resources were available).


various amazon body types. to be perfectly blunt, it irks me that so many people insist that amazon=strength=bulky muscles. amazons are warriors, and raw strength is less important than fighting ability -- bruce lee could've easily flattened andre the giant. or in a more WW-centric example, hippolyta defeated heracles even though he was stronger. (or, in "the iliad" achilles, diometes -- who beat the crap out of ares -- and even hector were better warriors than super-strong ajax.) in fact, the modern obsession with tank-like might is the sort of machoism that amazons oppose. and of course, any one with common sense and a pair of eyes should know that, regardless of diet and exercise, different women (and men) are just born with different body types.

don't point guns...

...at the angry lady amazon.

shangri-la

BFFs in the himalayas

cryptically titled post

with enigmatic text

toby

visited CBR recently.
big mistake.




anyhoo...drew this a few weeks ago,
lost it, refound it. yay! now i just need
to find some also-awol "kula kola" girl
drawings (if you have my sketchbooks,
you might remember her...)

separately, i lost the little notebook that
had work for WW and DD2. it' not too bad --
lots of WW ref, but i still have the original
sources, or memorized it. ditto for the plot
notes (although there is now someone, some-
where in mid-long island, who knows all of
the spoilers).
i miss the DD notes more. most of them i
remember, but of course sometimes there
are unknowns that you know, and unknowns
you don't know, if you know what i mean.
especially lots of stuff about the gang's
mannerisms, body language etc -- things
that i'm always fascinated to see in real
people, and want to bring more into my art.


ps - finding toby made me all nostalgic for DD2... here are a few thumbs from the beginning, showing how i work. a lot of times i have the scene running in my head like a film, even a lot of the dialogue. these are actual size(about 2" square each), i like to put an entire scene on a single page if possible, so i can check how it all hangs together. in an odd way, the much much larger WW comic pages/scenes work the same way.

you can't tell here, but if you could see the whole page, you'd see that i start on the right side and work leftward (because i'm left-handed, i suppose).

aphrodite's grove

because i am a nerd, i drew up tons of stuff for amazons and paradise island. maps, architecture, dinner menus, the usual junk. anyhoo, this is one doodle i particularly like, a small grove in the island's northern mangrove swamps. the hanging chains are the ones used by herakles, kept here as a reminder of the past. i could write more about it, but who cares?

you know you want it...

huh. looks like someone went and got themselves an invisible jet.

ay, que lindo!

in honor of cinco de mayo...

cheetah

for the 99.9% of you who don't know, cheetah is one of WWs oldest foes. the "original" cheetah wore a head-to-toe cheetah outfit with ears and a tail, the newer cheetah is basically a sexy (or creepy, depending on your point of view) were-cat. obviously i didn't go either route, opting for a look that might be favored by a villain who wasn't actually a cartoon or a porn star. cheetah is a wealthy, ruthless socialite who engages in sensational crimes for thrills.* but this time her crimes might be bigger than she realized....

i had more to write about cheetah, but then i realized most people probably don't care. and i am sleepy.





*sound familiar?

irony

the doctor is in

hi all! insanely busy with WW... this may sound surprising, but drawing 50 panels per page is actually a lot of work. anyway, i'm very happy with everything so far, and i think the editor is too, so yay! here are a few glimpses of what the final art looks like:







now, a lot of people on message boards have fussed that WW isn't wearing her "real" costume in any of my sketches, so FYI, this is not her costume but her training gear from paradise island. her final costume is just like usual, although there will be transforming laser-swords!

howdy!

i haven't posted lately because all my work is WW-related, and i don't want to ruin ALL of the fun! although i will probably post a few snippets of final art eventually. anyhoo... it has occurred to me that the three people who actually look at this blog might not be members of the DB or my cartooning forum, so i though i'd repost some recent work from there, daily doodles:







i can't say that i like the WW one, but she looks nothing like that in my comic, so no worries...

acid wash

one of my goals is to destroy your senses. yes, all six of them.

...

and finally...






ps - the creepy bag ladies below are the graea, similar to the fates. you might remember them as "the stygian witches" (a made-up name) in "clash of the titans.