Craig Zablo’s Zone

Archive for January, 2010

Derek Fridolfs offers a free headsketch with every sketchbook purchased through his website. I own three pieces by Derek and am looking forward to more. I picked up Derek’s take on Sly as Cosmo Carboni from “Paradise Alley” at last year’s Heroes Con.

You can check out Derek’s work here.

I was diggin’ through the ZONE vault today and came across this Howard Chaykin sketch of American Flagg that appeared in an old FIRST COMICS newsletter probably over 25 years ago.  Hope ya dig it as much as I do.

A couple of days ago I posted how cool I thought that “From Paris with Love” would be.  Multiply that by about 5 and you’ll get the approximate value of how fun I think that “The Losers” will be.

Don’t believe me?  Check out this trailer.  See, I wasn’t kidding.

The more I see about “From Paris With Love” the more I think I’m gonna really enjoy it.

Patrick Sauriol at Coming Attractions has posted an exclusive review of Frank Darabont’s pilot script for AMC’s “The Walking Dead”.  Darabont, who will also be directing the pilot is perhaps best known for his work as the screenwriter/director of “The Shawshank Redepmption”, “The Green Mile” and “The Mist”.

Saurol’s review is extremely positive and the following paragraph gives the best indication of why he thinks “The Walking Dead” will be a great series:

Contained in Darabont’s 60-page pilot script are all the elements to make the show a success. There’s plenty of horror that happens in those 60 pages. The director’s script covers the broad range of the zombie horror emotional spectrum, such as giving us moments of extreme gore (hey, any zombie TV show wouldn’t be a zombie show if it didn’t have folks being munched on!), moments of shock value (hey, you didn’t think that there was a zombie hiding behind that car, did you?) and the moments that I believe are the best indicator that The Walking Dead TV series has what it takes to transcend the boundaries of being simply labelled a horror show, the psychological horror scenes. Those scenes are the hammers that you’re going to remember and the ones that are going to propel this show to be viewed as something more important than just a scary show.

You can read the full piece by clicking here.

As a long-time fan of “The Walking Dead” comic series, I’m psyched as the television adaption moves closer and closer to my tv screen.

Dick Giordano, the comics legend is back! During his fifty plus years in the biz he’s done everything from ink all the greats (including himself) to serve as Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics, to co-founding his own comic company.

I had the good fortune to pick up six model sheet headsketches of Sly that Mr. Giodano did before starting work on DC Comics adaptation of “Demolition Man”. This is the sixth. To see all of the other headsketches, click here.

I’ve always liked this drawing of Batman.  It was pencilled by Mike Nasser [aka Mike Netzer] and inked by Joe Rubinstein with colors by Cory Adams.  The art appeared as a panel in a comic story written by David V. Reed called “Hang the Batman” which was part of Batman Spectacular, Summer 1978.

As a kid, I loved those big comic anthologies.  You always got more bang for your buck!  The Batman Spectacular, Summer 1978 also featured a Marshall Rogers cover; “I Now Pronounce You Batman and Wife” comic story written by Denny O’Neil with art by Michael Golden, and a prose story by Denny O’Neil called “Death Strikes at Midnight and Three” with spot illustrations by Marshall Rogers.

At any rate, I’ve always liked this drawing of Batman.  I hope you do as well.

Less than a week ago, I wrote about a neat idea that Dave Wachter had to encourage folks to make a donation to aid the people of Haiti.  Dave was doing a raffle for free drawings to anyone who donated to Doctors Without Borders to aide earthquake victims in Haiti.  Several people took Dave up on his offer and some of the raffle winners’ art has started to show up on his blog.

Today Haiti was hit with another devastating earthquake.  They’re going to need help more than ever so Dave decided to make a new offer to those considering a donation to help the Haiti relief effort:

NEW DEAL: No more raffle, everyone gets a sketch

That’s right EVERYONE who makes a donation to Doctors Without Borders and sends a copy of the receipt to Dave will get a FREE SKETCH CARD.  Click HERE to read Dave’s post.

It’s a cliche that the worst times bring out the best in people.  It’s also true.  If you can spare a few bucks or more, why not send some to help the folks in Haiti?   You’ll feel good and get a great drawing for your troubles.  And if you believe in karma, you’ll earn some points… you know Dave should surely have some good mojo heading his way!

I was shocked to read the news this morning that Robert B. Parker had passed away yesterday.  Although Parker was 77, his death was unexpected.  He seemed to be in good health and as prolific as ever, writing as many as three books a year.  The cause of death has been determined to have been a heart attack.  Parker died at his desk working on his next novel.

My grandfather was a prolific reader and I can remember the evening that he told me about this new author, Robert B. Parker, and this wise-cracking detective that Parker had created.  Grandpa thought that I’d enjoy the novel and passed me The Godwulf Manuscript.  I was hooked.  And I wasn’t the only one.  Parker’s detective, Spenser, would return in 36 other novels as well as a television series and made for tv movies.  Parker is said to have influenced a new generation of writers.  Perhaps best-selling novelist Harlon Coben said it best: “When it comes to detective novels, 90 percent of us admit he’s an influence, and the rest of us lie about it.”

Parker eventually branched out to write other series characters [Jessie Stone - a small town sheriff; Sunny Randall - a female detective; a Western trilogy featuring a couple of gunfighters that many called wild west versions of Spenser and Hawk] as well as some stand alone novels.  But it was always the new Spenser novel that I wanted to read as soon as it became available.   I’ve written many times on my blog that each new Spenser novel is like meeting up with an old friend.  I’m going to miss meeting up with Spenser.

I already miss Robert B. Parker.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, friends, and fans.