Well this week was fairly lean for DC comics I didn’t pick up one, usually there are at least one or two but this week it is an all Marvel affair:
The Invincible Iron Man #7
I don’t remember if this series is supposed to be part of the normal Marvel universe or not, I had a feeling it wasn’t but this does reference Civil War so I don’t know anymore. Â Doesn’t really matter I suppose. Â This is the first one on one team up between Iron Man and Spider-Man since the Civil War days, I can’t really say I was hanging for it. Â I’m such a huge Iron Man fan but I’m so close to dropping all my non-Ultimates Iron Man related comics, I don’t like the art and the storyline is not to my taste, I rather him in charge of Stark Enterprises rather than ruling the world.
The last page in this though is pretty sweet.
Iron Man: The End
Now this is more like it. The story deals with Tony Stark at the end of his Iron Man career, if I look half as good as Stark at 75 then I’ll be pretty happy. Â This actually feels more like an Iron Man story to me than the current monthly Iron Man series. Â It’s actually interesting look at such a driven character having to give up his super hero mantle and pass it on to a new generation. Â I was surprised by who he was married to, for some reason I always see him ending up with Spider Woman…?? Â I dunno how I got there, probably from their ForceWorks days (that’s right I remember the good old days!!!). Â Cool art and I love this version of the Iron Man suit.
Marvel Zombies 3 #2
Yawn. Â I love Marvel Zombies but all I’ve got to work with her is Machine Man (I think that’s his name) some other robot woman and Kingpin. Â Whatever. Â The story seems stupid, the characters are supporting characters at best. Â The art is pretty cool though, the movie poster inspired cover is pretty cool. Â The only thing was that Kingpin has a novel way to keep the zombies fed and his own secret that he keeps from the other zombies.
Punisher War Journal Annual
Yay, white boots, white gloves, it’s classic Frank Castle.
Very interesting story too if you like your Punisher in high concept storylines. Â Most of the narrative is told from the Punisher’s hallucinogenic generated point of view, complete with My Little Ponies and smiley face stars. Â Seeing the Punisher shoot a cute pony in the leg to make it talk is quite the novelty. Â I’m really looking forward to the new Punisher series.
Ultimatum #1
The Ultimate Marvel universe is awesome, the writers can do whatever they like and no one can complain about tradition or history and because the universe stands alone they can have Magneto kill millions of people including several prominent super hero characters. Â Doom is particularly cool in this as he realises what is happening, I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series!
I’ve become quite the fan of Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics especially The Ultimates and Ultimate Iron Man (actually I really love Ultimate Spider-Man too). Â I’m not 100% convinced but I almost like the Ultimate version of Iron Man more than his mainstream version.
So I had an idea for a sketch showing Iron Man in the sky with some jets and I was trying to decide which version to use - my favourite the original mark 2 armour never looks right in the air - well it does but it wouldn’t in this drawing. Â I’m not the biggest fan of the current armour (it looks awesome and all but it definately isn’t my favourite).
So as I said I’ve been really into the Ultimate Marvel universe so that made the decision for me.
I start off with a pencil sketch, generally I’ve been using a 5h or 6h lead pencil which is really light but bloody awful to erase so if you make a mistake you have to work the image or just erase as best you can. Â On this one I used just a cheap mechanical pencil (HB) because of laziness and even though it’s a darker pencil it erases neatly.
I draw out a letterbox frame to draw within of 150 mm x 250 mm.
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I didn’t think about scanning until I had already started colouring but it still gives a good idea of what I start off. Â A couple of things about the image, Iron Man is a lot larger than I originally intended, or at least a lot more on the page. Â I wanted more space for the jet and after I finished the outline for Iron Man realised that the jets had become more implied and off page.
When I start to colour I don’t erase the pencil lines any more, I used to use the black ink first to cover the pencil lines and then erase the unused or corrected sections. Â With markers, they pick up the black to easily even when the line art has dried so I’ve started colouring first. Â The pencil lines will generally show through but will be covered by the black ink later. Â I did mess up around his head though and you can see the pencil line near his neck piece on the chest plate. Â Adds character I suppose
I generally start with the main colour which in this case was the red (scarlett), even though I use ‘old wine’ as the red’s deeper colours I still cover it completely with the base colour and then touch up over the top of that base. Â The darker wine colour was probably deeper than I hoped, I could have simply used a grey over the top to achieve the darker shades.
I then black ink using the marker over the top of the pencil lines that I can still see. Â Up till now that would have been all that she wrote but I wanted to try something a little different this time and after letting the markers dry I have added light reflection using a white pigment watercolour.
The added highlights will now become a standard for these marker pics as they’ve really helped the image come along. Â The larger pic can be found here.
I hope someone out there found it interesting - I’m always looking for character suggestions.
Up until two days ago I have never even heard of Marvel Ruins until Rol made reference to it the other day. I really love the What If type stories that have our favourite heroes facing their darkest hours and then everything actually going wrong for them.
This is exactly what Marvel Ruins explores, what if everything in the Marvel universe went wrong? The Hulk instead of turning into the green behemoth turns into a mix of tumours and is hidden away in an underground bunker.
What if the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker didn’t give him super powers but poisoned him?
These are wonderful ideas but I don’t know if they are executed that well in Ruins, the artwork is moody and looks great but I don’t feel it is clear enough to convey the story, I probably would have liked a style that was more in line with the normal comics though I understand the desire to reflect that of the series Marvels.
During the comic series we touch only lightly on the characters that inhabit the Marvel universe, in fact the Punisher is killed in the street at one stage and is seen in one panel bullet ridden. Of course the story doesn’t focus on this character but I would at least have liked to focus on some of the bigger characters such as Captain America, Iron Man or Spider-Man. The character we do focus on, just like in Marvels is Phil Sheldon who lightly touches on what has happened in this dystopia and has little more than brushes with the Marvel characters.
As I mentioned at the start I love a good dystopia story set in either DC or Marvel universes. My favourite being the What If version of Galactic Storm, where the Earth is destroyed and Avengers are executed and the last of the humans draw together to defeat the Kree. There is an awesome scene where Tony Stark realises that he only has the armour keeping him alive and without the Earth he is going to die. He then sacrifices himself to give Captain America enough time to change the course of the war.
I think in Ruins Stark dies when the last Quinjet is shot down, there is a cool image of him though.
Ruins is an interesting enough diversion, I enjoyed it.
Before you guys start waving various protestations at me, when I say you people I don’t mean YOU people, I’m talking about the general public.
I know people say this all the time, I liked “blah blah” before everyone else made it popular but I really stuck with the Iron Man character for years. Almost as long as I collected Batman comics (Batman being my first love in the comic book world).
So seeing people jumping on the bandwagon now and being big experts on Tony Stark and on the various Iron Man armours really tears me down the middle. Where were you people three years ago? Five years? Ten..? (you get the idea).
Just take a look at that footage above to see that they’ve done the character justice - I read that the director was adamant about making it believable and I can honestly say I never imagined what it would be like trying to fly as Iron Man the first couple of times but that really captures it!
It’s fantastic to see the character treated as I’ve always known he should be and it doesn’t get better than seeing him on the big screen in all of his Shell-head glory! Shell-head; that’s his nickname in the Marvel universe you know, Golden Avenger is another name (someone suggested he was also known as the Crimson Avenger but I doubt this as this is a DC character and I don’t recall him ever being called this).
So I want the film to do really really really well (I can’t wait to see War Machine in the sequel - yes I’m talking sequels already!) but I do wish to hang on to my snobbery at the same time.
Ahhhh what do I care as long as they continue to bring out kick ass toys (which I may add I put pretty much all of them on lay-by the other day thank you very much)!
Oh and I can’t wait to get my hands on the Iron Man game either:
The other morning I was giving some thought to the character of Spider-Man, which in itself is not that unusual, I tend to ponder comic books at all times of the day. Spider-Man though is not generally a character I often think about.
He’s just not a character I find I enjoy.
He is however probably the most iconic comic book character at least in the Marvel universe (the DC big three are probably bigger icons - but only just). This is probably the only reason why I sometimes find him interesting to draw. I don’t really like the current version of him , he’s too one liner cracking’ish but still extraordinarily iconic.
The thought I had or rather: the question is why he was originally called Spider-Man (yes I get the spider bit - please!), why not Spider-Boy?
Now I’m almost 100% sure that Stan Lee has talked about that somewhere in an interview I’ve seen and some of the spidey fans with better memories will probably remember better than I.
The reason why I wonder is that he was a teenager of smallish stature when he became Spider-Man. I mean I know the story behind the name, the wrestling name etc but even there I wonder why that character wouldn’t have used Spider-Boy or even Lad?
Perhaps it’s a sidekick thing as I can only think of sidekicks using boy or lad. The lead in a comic book can’t be a boy/lad. Of course there was also Invisible Girl who later became The Invisible Woman. Maybe Spidey just hasn’t grown up? I mean he obviously has despite the wise cracks.
I again wonder (for someone who doesn’t pay the character much thought I’m thinking an awful lot!) what the turning point was for Spider-Man, his coming of age? Was it Gwen Stacey’s death or his marriage to Mary Jane? Maybe it was even as late as revealing his secret identity during Civil War? I don’t read the Spider-Man books so I couldn’t say if much has changed, actually now that I think about it I don’t even know if they’ve rebooted his secret identity. I think it would be weird for him not to have the secret as I think it was such a large part of the character. The same goes for Iron Man and I hope the new series coming out returns him to pre Civil War rather than just expanding the current series.
Iron Man: The End
Marvel Zombies 3 #2
Punisher War Journal Annual
Ultimatum #1
 
The added highlights will now become a standard for these marker pics as they’ve really helped the image come along. Â 
Up until two days ago I have never even heard of Marvel Ruins until 
As I mentioned at the start I love a good dystopia story set in either DC or Marvel universes. My favourite being the What If version of Galactic Storm, where the Earth is destroyed and Avengers are executed and the last of the humans draw together to defeat the Kree. There is an awesome scene where Tony Stark realises that he only has the armour keeping him alive and without the Earth he is going to die. He then sacrifices himself to give Captain America enough time to change the course of the war.
The reason why I wonder is that he was a teenager of smallish stature when he became Spider-Man. I mean I know the story behind the name, the wrestling name etc but even there I wonder why that character wouldn’t have used Spider-Boy or even Lad?
