NEW YEAR - Same Tom!!

More on my trip to New York City later, but for now I just want you guys to see Sue and me by the big Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.
Some nice tourist asked us to take their picture and they took ours.
But not our camera!!!
Later folks.

Tom

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!!

Well, the trip to New York City was delayed by one week, so I'm in Virginia today and on my way to Scott Hanna's house. Monday we'll be meeting with a bunch of edtors at Marvel and Tuesday is our DC Comics day. I haven't been to New York for this kind of thing since 2003, but it seems fine. I'm not nervous. I know I can do this stuff.
So, we'll see what happens and I'll try to post some pictures from my trip as well when I get back next week.

Later.
Tom

Wow! Hello! New Art from Tom

Hi all. It was a hectic fall quarter (my fourth at SCAD), but it's over and I'm working on some new sample pages to be inked by Scott Hanna. We are going to make another push to get some mainstream work from Marvel or DC. I did the first five pages of issue 170 of ROBIN using a script that Chuck Dixon had sent me.
It's the first time I've had a chance to draw Batman or Robin in quite a long time and I must say I had a great time.
If all goes as planned, I'll be going into New York City with Scott sometime during the week of December 8 to 12.
Here's the first 5 pages - pages 2 and 3 are a double page spread:

Some Old Pencil Art

MUTANT X












Back in 2000 I became the penciler for MUTANT X and got to work again with Howard Mackie, my co-conspirator on SPIDER-MAN. I was generally enjoying the book and definitely enjoying the work, but two things were causing problems at the time. One: my mom had suffered a stroke in June of 2000. She was in the hospital for some time, but when she didn't die some people wondered why I was affected by it. Not my editor, Jason Liebig, but some others. Two: the atmosphere in comics at the time was highly charged because Marvel had fallen on hard financial times and everyone was seeing books get cancelled and artists losing their jobs. I had started drawing with a "got to please the editor" attitude first and foremost in my mind when I had always drawn with a "got to please myself" attitude first for all of my career before that.
In the end, my art suffered because of an atmosphere of fear.
No one can do well with that going on.
That said, here are four pages from issue 23 of MUTANT X. My figure work is good, but I'm skimping on backgrounds BIG TIME in an effort to save time. Not good.
I like the look of these overall. If you want, you can fill in the "X" areas with black as that was what the inker was supposed to do and you'll see that the pages would have worked fine as they are, but they should have and could have been so much better.
What do you guys think?

SEPTEMBER IS HERE!!!
Where did the year go?????

Yet another Memoriam! Too many. Too soon.

IN MEMORIAM - ROBBIE GREENBERGER

BOB GREENBERGER gave me my first work for a major comics company. In late 1987 Bob gave me the new title STARMAN to work on as it's penciler. I designed the character sheets and started to work on the pencils for the actual monthly comic in early 1988 around the time that his son, Robbie, was born.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Robbie and now I never will. Robbie Greenberger was taken from this world, in what I say was, way too early. God had different plans for him.

Leukemia took him from us. Let these types of things remind us all to live our lives to the fullest ... and to fully appreciate friends, family and loved ones while they're here.

I hope that Bob, his wife Deb and their daughter, Katie, can find some peace over this some day. They say time heals. I hope so.

I owe Bob so much and I think that his son and family deserve some kind thoughts, love and energy from us all. I know that I am trying to send that.

Please go to Bob's site and read his touching blog detailing the entire arc of his son's heroic and valiant struggle against leukemia. Bob's website can be found at www.bobgreenberger.com.

I would also encourage any of you that can to register with the bone marrow registry at the address that Bob mentions on his website. bone marrow registry

Please help others.

Here's a note from the family: "In lieu of flowers, contributions in Robbie’s memory may be made to The Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer, Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, 20 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511-3202 (www.tommyfund.org). For information or to offer an online condolence please visit www.spearmillerfuneralhome.com"

God bless you all. God bless you, Robbie.

New ART Pages

Here's four more pages of layouts from CHICKASAW ADVENTURES #5 that I did back in 2006. I did a very tight job on these. The layouts were done at a 6" x 9" size and I blow them up, print them out on bristol board in blue and then ink directly over the layouts instead of doing finished pencils. I try to add more black placement on the finished art than I do here, but I do try to make sure I place a good bit of the black areas even on my layouts.

I even try to work out my perspective (when I have a background that needs more than a horizon line) at this size so that the vanishing points aren't too far out for the page.

Take care.

Tom

More TOM-Foolery!!

Hey! Guess who this manly young man is?

I know, I'm getting to be a pain with all these pictures and stuff. I'm just having fun looking at some stuff from the past.

If you guessed Tom Lyle, you'd be mostly right. I was still "Tommy" at that point ... but don't call me that now. Only my mom could call me that and get away with it.

This is from about the second grade.

I'll put some Tom Lyle art up in a day or two.

Later, Gator!!