Five Day Art Challenge, Day 4: Enter Amazing Arizona Comics!

Fellow mini-comic artist Eric Mengel (interviewed in the latest episode of KaraokeFanboy Podcast!) challenged me to the Five Day Art Challenge on Facebook, which, from what I can gather, is a call to post five pieces of art every day for five days.  Since I'm working tirelessly to finish Amazing Arizona Comics #10 by Amazing Arizona Comic Con this weekend, I thought to use the challenge as a look back at my comics-making career, from childhood to this very week!

When I moved back to Arizona in 2010, I continued my self-publishing efforts as KaraokeFanboy Press (obviously), but I sought a project that explored my love of superheroes and the intrigue of the politics, pop culture, and history of my home state.  Enter Amazing Arizona Comics!  With almost ten issues complete, not to mention countless one-shots, exclusive on-line comics, and strips in other zines, I have a lot of preliminary sketches and unused pages.  This post represents a small fraction from that stash, including a peek at some characters appearing in Amazing Arizona Comics #10!

Snowbird has made several "first appearances in strips that have never seen the light of day, including here, where Sam Brero and Dust Devil spot her cooling off a hot cup of coffee.  An alternate version of Snowy appeared in issue #8, but her first Arizona Prime appearance will be in Amazing Arizona Comics #10!

McGruff appeared in a strip all his own on this very date last year, and in this rejected panel from the 2014 Free Comic Book Day special, he gets the better of Archiewawa.  Look out for McGruff as a member of America's Super Secret Service in Amazing Arizona Comics #10.

Damion Mailer is a cyberwizard-in-training.  Here he faces Hash Tag, from Speed Cameron's California Adventure, but watch out for his first real appearance in (you guessed it) Amazing Arizona Comics #10!

Preliminary sketches of Ana Sazi.

Cover rough for Amazing Arizona Comics #11!

Five Day Art Challenge, Day 3: KaraokeFanboy Press Begins!

Fellow mini-comic artist Eric Mengel (interviewed in the latest episode of KaraokeFanboy Podcast!) challenged me to the Five Day Art Challenge on Facebook, which, from what I can gather, is a call to post five pieces of art every day for five days.  Since I'm working tirelessly to finish Amazing Arizona Comics #10 by Amazing Arizona Comic Con this weekend, I thought to use the challenge as a look back at my comics-making career, from childhood to this very week!

In college, I continued to create original characters, most notably with my friend Brent Otey as K.O. Comix.  I think a K.O. Comix retrospective on this blog is way overdue, especially since some of those old characters will appear in the upcoming Amazing Arizona Comics #10, but I digress.  My solo efforts in my late teens/early 20s included stabs at slice-of-life strips, and, since a big part of my life was singing karaoke, these pages from my sketchbook are heavily inspired by that.

At one point, I tried to develop a series featuring "the Karma Chameleon," a wandering singer that adapted the traits of whatever '80s pop tune he crooned.  (I didn't know then that Boy George shared a birthday with Sheriff Joe Arpaio!  I was already drawing the Agents of F.L.A.G. Day!) That turned into this:

Carrie O'Key, the adventuring bartendress that eventually appeared in Karaoke Comics #2!  (Joe was my barber from Yorba Linda, California, who claimed to cut Richard Nixon's hair when the former Prez was just a kid!)

This page features real people, most notably one of my best buddies Konrad, one of my favorite karaoke jockeys Bill (from the Kopa Room in Anaheim), and some other characters I met there over the years.

Eventually, I began dabbling in drawing my perspectives on current events, and while I was still the center of attention, you can see the seeds of Amazing Arizona Comics starting to bloom:

To be continued!

Five Day Art Challenge, Day 2: R.J. Cartoons

Fellow mini-comic artist Eric Mengel (interviewed in the latest episode of KaraokeFanboy Podcast!) challenged me to the Five Day Art Challenge on Facebook, which, from what I can gather, is a call to post five pieces of art every day for five days.  Since I'm working tirelessly to finish Amazing Arizona Comics #10 by Amazing Arizona Comic Con this weekend, I thought to use the challenge as a look back at my comics-making career, from childhood to this very week!

In my early adolescence, heavily inspired by Image Comics, I began creating my own comics under the banner "R.J. Cartoons."  The first page is a typical escapist fantasy of me, fighting crime in Peoria, Arizona as Robin, and the images following are original character designs.  You can see the breadth of my imagination.  Spike had a spike on his head.  Flagg was a patriot that fought with flags.  When Rash touched people, they got a paralyzing rash.  Other characters included Disc, Grenade, and Lens, who threw discs, lobbed grenades, and shot light blasts with powerful lenses, respectively.  The last sketch is the most interesting, though.  Undated but undoubtedly from this era, I found "Sombrero Boy," complete with burritorang and Sombrero Mobile.  I never knew, twenty years later, I would create Sam Brero, a hero prominently featured in my current comic series, Amazing Arizona Comics #10.  Just goes to show that the better ideas have more sticking power -- just like a burritorang.

Five Day Art Challenge, Day 1: Masters of the Universe

Fellow mini-comic artist Eric Mengel (interviewed in the latest episode of KaraokeFanboy Podcast!) challenged me to the Five Day Art Challenge on Facebook, which, from what I can gather, is a call to post five pieces of art every day for five days.  Since I'm working tirelessly to finish Amazing Arizona Comics #10 by Amazing Arizona Comic Con this weekend, I thought to use the challenge as a look back at my comics-making career, from childhood to this very week!

When I was a kid, between five to ten years old, a majority of my drawings were fan art.  Basically, I drew He-Man a lot.  I recently found this mini-comic among my old report cards and class pictures, and, clocking in at half-sheet size, it's clearly my first self-published mini-comic ever!  Drawn on the backs of folded worksheets, with a cardboard cover because I was classy, I present: