Creator Roundup

Every Thursday we take a closer look at what’s going on in the world of comic creators. this week, Dan Hipp has a new artwork, Warren Ellis gets his friends to do the work for him, Ben Templesmith is going to a convention, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon put on a show, Jim Rugg draws something in colour, Brian K Vaughan talks to somebody, JH Williams III talks Batwoman and Craig Thompson has a new graphic novel.



- Dan Hipp has a new artwork:

- Warren Ellis had a ‘Guest Informant’ for every day this week - Matthew Sheret, Collen Nika (twice), Jess Nevins and Jan Chipchase. He also shares his reflections of the past UK summer.

- Ben Templesmith added his commissions pricing for the upcoming NYCC and this watercolour:



- Gabriel Ba reports the new Casanova series as well as an exhibition of casanova pages at the Floating Wall in Portland. There work is also on display in China with the IllustriaBrazil Exhibition.

- Jim Rugg will be at the university of Maryland this Friday the 9th as part of a roundtable discussion called Bleeding the Narrative: Comics in Art and Culture. He also contributed this artwork to DC fifty-TOO!:



- Over at Multiversity comics, Brian K Vaughn discusses his new series SAGA. here’s an extract:

“In January, we had an interview with Eric Stephenson (Image's publisher) in which we asked who would he want to work with if he could work with one person. His answer was a simple "Brian K. Vaughan." Was SAGA already in the works back then? How did the decision to release this through Image come together?

BKV: Saga was definitely in the seedling stage back then, but I hadn't started thinking about potential publishers yet, though Eric and Robert Kirkman had both been very inviting over the years. After I pitched the basic concept of the series to Fiona, I mentioned that I wanted to try something new, and she was really enthusiastic about doing this a little more independently. We worked up a quick proposal for the Image guys, and they greenlit it on impact. The whole experience has been great so far.


For those that do not know (and who apparently do not like press releases), what can you tell us about the concept of SAGA?

BKV: Well, the series isn't launching until next year, so I'm hoping to keep as much of the story under wraps as possible. Sorry, I blame my time with Bad Robot! But I can say that Saga is a far-out sci-fi/fantasy about the all-too-real experience of starting a family in a time of never-ending war. And the artwork is breathtaking.”

- JH Williams III shared this artwork and and this interview he did with Frontiers about Batwoman. here’s an extract:
“What’s the biggest difference between this new Batwoman series and her initial Detective Comics run?
The type of story we’re leading off with. Her last stint was boiled down to her origin and the basic superhero versus ultimate nemesis sort of thing. We wanted to expand on that because she needs a pantheon of villains, so we set out to do that in ways that are fun. We do it in the art a lot, mixing styles, and we brought that into the writing, too. The lead story deviates in that way—even though it’s very much a continuation of what came before and what’s motivating her now, the foe she faces is a very different one [from last time]. The first arc is a very much supernatural horror story and what that’s like for a costumed or uniformed vigilante who doesn’t have superpowers per se. It’s pretty intriguing, but it’s just one piece of a bigger picture we are going to expand upon over the first three arcs.”



- Blankets author Craig Thompson discusses his upcoming Graphic novel habibi with Publisher’s Weekly:
“PWCW: Throughout the book you obviously reference stories of the Bible and the Quran, but in the notes in the back I noticed you also drew on many other texts in the background art throughout. How much research went into this book?
 
CT: Well I spent two years on the entire writing process before I actually dove into the drawing, the final drawing. So during those two years I sort of wandered off on many tangents in the same way that the book does. So the research and the writing were very integrated. But the sort of skeleton of the book sort of emerged right from the start subconsciously, and then was filled in by research.
 
PWCW: So after two years writing, how long did the art take?
 
CT: I got really bogged down and lost in the writing process. I finished the first draft in a year but then spent another year wrestling with it and editing it and finally just resolved to start drawing the pages even though I didn’t know how the book would end. So in the Fall of 2006 I sat down to draw the final art and then finished in fall of 2010. And so this last year has been the production and design and all the technical details of getting the book off to press.”