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Or at least a good swath of them, including my own Secret Teachings of a Comic Book Master.  Dover’s line of smart reprints of little seen or unavailable comics from the past has been a surprising success, and now they are available on comiXology and  Amazon’s Kindle Store. The line-up of available titles includes: A Sailor’s Story by Sam Glanzman […]

I’m happy to announce that The Story I’ll Tell is well on its way to becoming a real, physical book this autumn. I can now share the cover with you (design by Stephanie Bart-Horvath.) And without further ado:

Ta-da! What do you think?

I’ve decided to kick off the countdown to publication with a series of posts about my process and the different steps along the way, from ideas and thumbnails all the way up to final art. There will be some giveaways and freebies as well, so stay tuned for more.

In other news,my  friend and fellow illustrator Alice Ratterree is celebrating the release of a middle-grade book, Lilliput. The cover art is just gorgeous. Congratulations, Alice!

Nancy Tupper Ling (the author of the Story I’ll Tell) has another book to celebrate: Double Happiness was just released and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Does anyone else have any exciting news to share? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Ben Caldwell dazzles us this week with his eye-popping cover art for Catwoman’s Teen Titans GO! variant. In addition to comics, Caldwell has worked as a toy designer, on various animation/video-game projects, and childrens book illustration. He also writes and draws a popular series of “how to” books called Action! Cartooning. It’s nice to see more and more artists like Caldwell bringing their “animation-style” to comics. It makes perfect sense since there’s so much crossover nowadays between comics & the TV/movie industry.

Ben Caldwell is also known for The Dare Detectives! series of graphic novels, The Wizard of Oz All-Action Classics adaptation, and Star Wars Clone War Adventures comics.

Caldwell graduated from the Parsons School of Design for Illustration and currently lives in New York with his family.

You can see the latest sketches and project updates by following Mr. Caldwell on his twitter page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

This week we celebrate the Popeye-obsessed, Metal-warped mind of Tom Neely! His new series The Humans, with his pal Keenan Marshall Keller, has become a sleeper hit for Image Comics and is the perfect vehicle for Neely’s action-packed, skull-rattling artwork!

I first picked up some of Neely’s comics(The Blot, Your Disease Spread Quick, a Melvins comic book) at San Diego Comic Con about 10 years ago and I have to say that his comics career has been one of the most interesting to follow. Tom Neely has shown great range & versatility as an artist, from creating the cult-classic underground series Henry & Glenn Forever with The Igloo Tornado artist collective to his time campaigning for, then drawing for IDW’s new Popeye series(a life long dream of his) and then his recent 228-page graphic novel The Wolf, a beautifully raw, bloody acid trip of a story!

With The Humans comic book Neely has(hopefully)found his long-term happy(biker-ape-loitation)home to stretch his ink brush arm in!

Neely earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the University of Tulsa & Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. He was born in Paris, Texas and now lives in Los Angeles, CA.

His 2007 graphic novel The Blot won him the Ignatz Award that year and was named one of the “Best Graphic Novels of the decade 2000-2010″ by The Comics Journal. He’s done many illustrations and album covers for the music industry including Green Day’s Demolicious, last year.

You can check out more of Tom Neely’s website here, and for fresh updates on The Humans go “like” the official FB page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

Legendary comics artist Walter Simonson gets honors this week, because of his excellent “Joker-shark” variant cover to the latest issue of Aquaman. Simonson helped define one of Marvel’s most popular characters with his run on The Mighty Thor starting with issue #337(1983). From very early on in his career Simonson was a frequent collaborator with fellow comics legend, writer/editor Archie Goodwin on DC comics such as Detective Comics and Manhunter. Simonson’s dynamic style pushes out in bold perspective and influenced many comics illustrators to come after him.

Walter Simonson has worked on many comics with his wife, writer Louise Simonson, including a memorable run on X-Factor, and later on the World of Warcraft comic for Wildstorm.

Simonson received the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, which was presented to him by his wife Louise.

You can catch the latest news/artwork from Mr. Simonson by following him on twitter here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

Small Press comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly just released their 25th Anniversary book and since it features the first new material by cartoonist Joe Matt in years, I figured now would be a good time to celebrate his work! Peepshow, Joe Matt’s long running biographical comic, started back in 1987(the last collection was printed in 2007). It would go on to become one of the seminal works of the 90’s alternative comics scene, along with Clowe’s Eightball, Seth’s Palookaville, and Ware’s ACME Novelty Library.

The 15 new pages featured in D & Q’s 25th Anniversary book are intended for Matt’s next book and are a work in progress.

Joe Matt has been nominated for multiple Eisner Awards and both an Ignatz and Doug Wright Award.

You can find him on Instagram (@joepeepshowmatt) now where he sometimes posts new art or you could find him surfing the web at a random Los Angeles, CA library.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

French illustrator Stephanie Hans has been painting some of the most striking covers of late for Marvel’s version of Neil Gaiman’s character Angela and other titles. Hans first started making a splash at Marvel with some of her Journey Into Mystery covers, that featured famed Thor/Avengers nemesis Loki. You can see the range that Hans has an artist with her interior line-work on the new Marvel Secret Wars crossover, 1602 Witch Hunter Angela. Hans’ strong painting skills and obvious appreciation of classic art is a welcome addition to today’s mainstream comics scene!

You can follow Stephanie Hans on her tumblr site here. There’s a nice painting process post on there, if you scroll down.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

This week we celebrate the great Kyle Baker for Comics Illustrator of the Week! Baker contributed the variant cover to this week’s Bizarro Comics #1. I first saw Kyle Baker’s work gracing the covers of Web of Spider-Man and Marvel Age when I was a kid. The first full interior work I saw by him was DC’s excellent Mature Reader’s version of The Shadow with writer Andy Helfer.

After working as an intern for Marvel Comics during his senior year of high school and then working on art assists for a period of time, Baker started to pick up penciling & inking assignments for The Big 2, including drawing the Howard the Duck movie adaptation for Marvel. Not being satisfied with just doing work that others wanted him to do or drawing in the style that was considered popular & marketable for the time, Baker decided to write & draw his own comics. This led to the publication of The Cowboy Wally Show graphic novel. Although, it was a low-printed indy book, it was enough to get the attention of editors looking for new original voices. So, 2 years later DC Comics published Baker’s next original comic Why I Hate Saturn, which would go on to win an Eisner Award and help solidify Kyle Baker as a creative force in the industry.

During the 1990’s Baker began to branch out, contributing regular comic strips for major magazines & newspapers, as well as work on animation projects, including an animated music-video with KRS-One in 1994.

Kyle Baker, to this day, continues to be a diverse artist, working on films, games, music, comics, illustration, etc. You can see what he’s been working on, including animation storyboards and preview comics pages on his Quality Jollity website here.

Other notable works by Kyle Baker: Nat Turner, Plastic Man, Instant Piano, Deadpool MAX, Justice INC, King David, You Are Here, Special Forces, and Truth: Red, White & Black.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

The Aliens Inc, Chapter Book Series

Try Book 1 for Free

Assumption. I am assuming here that you’ve written a fantastic children’s picture book and the illustrations you’ve done or hired done are amazing. You’ve also assembled an amazing book using InDesign (recommended) or other software. This checklist takes up the process at the point where you have the files ready to upload. The checklist is useful whether you are producing a print book or an ebook, although some items may not apply in one or the other cases.

Double-Check the Book’s Production

Front Cover
Double-check spelling of everything.
Color reproduction of the art.

Back cover
Double-check spelling of everything.
Blurbs, quote or promo copy – do you have all the marketing material on the back cover that is needed? Any recent review quotes to add?

Copyright page
(Assumption: you want to sell this book to school libraries. If you only want to sell it as an ebook, then you only need to check the copyright date, since you probably won’t use an ISBN.)
Copyright date correct?
ISBN correct (if used)?
CIP correct? Are you using Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data, which helps librarians catalog your book?

Interior
Check spelling, grammar and punctuation on every page.
Check position and reproduction of art on every page.
(Why are there 32 pages listed?)

• p. 1____Text _____Art
• p. 2-3____Text _____Art
• p. 4-5____Text _____Art
• p. 6-7____Text _____Art
• p. 8-9____Text _____Art
• p. 10-11____Text _____Art
• p. 12-13____Text _____Art
• p. 14-15____Text _____Art
• p. 16-17____Text _____Art
• p. 18-19____Text _____Art
• p. 20-21____Text _____Art
• p. 22-23____Text _____Art
• p. 24-25____Text _____Art
• p. 26-27____Text _____Art
• p. 28-29____Text _____Art
• p. 30-31____Text _____Art
• p. 32____Text _____Art

Marketing and Metadata Materials

Before you upload files, you’ll need your marketing material ready. I usually create a one-page Sell Sheet that includes the following information.

Exact Title:
Subtitle:
Series Name and Volume of this book:
ISBN, ASIN, and price for each format:

Description
The description is the time to hook your reader. The first 50 characters should give enough information to interest a reader in your book. Limited html is allowed on many platforms, so I often prepare two versions, one plain text and one marked up for html. For Kindle, you have 4000 characters–which is a lot. Use a word processor that counts the number of characters and use all of this valuable real estate.

Categories
Depending on the platform used, you may be asked to provide two or three categories. You can refer to the BISAC categories as a guidelines, but each platform may have its own quirks for this.

1.
2.
3.

Keywords
To help the book buyer find your book, most platforms allow you to insert from 5-7 keywords. You should have these ready; see Amazon’s advice on keywords.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Age Levels
Often a platform will allow you to specify the age range for the book’s audience. Don’t try to cover every age (ages 1-15). Instead, choose a 3-4 year range. Typical ranges are ages 4-8, ages 5-8, ages 6-8, ages 8-12, ages 9-12, ages 12-15, and so on.

File Size
If you plan to publish the ebook on Kindle, you should know the file size. Full color children’s picture books are often 4-8 MGs of data. Because Kindle charges a delivery fee of $0.15 in the US, you’ll want to know this to decide on pricing.

Price for Different Formats
If you upload to multiple platforms, you’ll likely want to be sure to keep the data the same across them. It helps to write out your prices; be sure to update this data whenever you change it on one platform.

Cover Files
While I’m preparing marketing materials, I also like to create multiple versions of my cover files. I label them with the size and the resolution, so it’s easy to find later. Here are typical sizes I create for a square picture book cover, 8.5″ x 8.5″ It’s simple to create multiple files when the Photoshop program is already open, and saves me time later. Usually, I create jpeg files, but sometimes, I’ll repeat for .png files.

• Cover-2500×2500-300.jpg (This means the cover is 2500 px by 2500 px at 300 dpi.)
• Cover-2500×2500-150.jpg (This means the cover is 2500 px by 2500 px at 150 dpi. Some like to also prepare files at 96 dpi or 72 dpi for use on the web.)
• Cover-1000×1000-300.jpg
• Cover-1000×1000-150.jpg
• Cover-500×500-300.jpg
• Cover-500×500-150.jpg
• Cover-250×250-300.jpg
• Cover-250×250-150.jpg

With the Sell Sheet complete, and the books cover and interior files ready to go, it’s time to upload. Good luck with your book!

Paul Pope is one of the indy comics/small press stars to emerge from the 1990’s. Premiering in 1994, his self-published comic THB is the futuristic story of a girl living on Mars with her super-powered, inflatable bodyguard. It’s hard to categorize Paul Pope’s work. I see that THB often gets lumped in with other genre indy comics of that era, like Jeff Smith’s Bone and James A. Owen’s Starchild. I see his work fitting better in the alternative/small press sphere, at least stylistically speaking. Maybe that’s just a testament to the uniqueness of Pope’s work; his fluid line work and stark sense of design.

Paul Pope has been living and working in New York City for most of his career. He’s created comics for many of the major comics publishers, including the multi-Eisner winner Batman 100 for DC Comics.

Recently, Paul Pope created the graphic novel Battling Boy for First Second, with the follow-up titled The Rise of Aurora West.

You can keep up with all things Paul Pope on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

I was turned onto artist Enrique Alcatena’s work by my friend Jon Vinson(DUB Comics). Alcatena is well known in his native country of Argentina and has garnered international respect for his dark surrealist art. There are many comics by Alcatena still unpublished and untranslated here in the States. Hopefully some independent(or major) publisher picks up the slack soon and gives us some English language editions of his work.

In the meantime, you can still track down some of his earlier work in back issue bins, such as Predator vs. Judge Dredd and various Batman comics, including The Batman of Arkham Elseworlds Special with writer Alan Grant.

You can read more about the art of Enrique Alcatena in a recent article The Comics Exotic by the aforementioned Jon Vinson.

You can find Enrique Alcatena’s Art & Comics Facebook page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

Comics artist Steve “The Dude” Rude(note: he was The Dude before Jeff Bridges’ infamous character was..) graduated from the Milwaukee School of Art and Design, before co-creating one of the 80’s most iconic independent sci-fi/fantasy comics Nexus. Rude drew most of the 100 or so issues of the Mike Baron written series, which spanned from 1981 to 2009. Rude has proven himself to be one of the modern masters of comics illustration and I hope to see his work in a future “indy” comic, although for what he can make drawing popular comic book characters, he doesn’t really need to do that.

Steve Rude has also worked for many of the major comics publishers including a Batman/Superman World’s Finest mini series in 1990 for DC and Spider-Man: Lifeline mini series for Marvel, just to name a couple.

Rude won the Russ Manning Outstanding Newcomer Award in 1984 and is a rare recipient of all 3 of the following awards: an Eisner, a Kirby, and a Harvey for Best Artist.

You can get the latest updates and see more of Steve Rude’s artwork on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

I’m having trouble finding background information on Stacey Lee, so I’m mainly going to be sharing links to her social media presence. She’s new to me, but I think her work on the new Marvel series Silk is exceptional, so I thought I’d share some of her work here. Lee is from Boston, currently lives in New York, and specializes in graphic design and illustration. I hope her run on Silk is a long and memorable one; she’s doing great things with that character!

Stacey Lee’s website.

Her art blog and twitter.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

George Bletsis provided this week’s stunning Adventure Time cover, so he gets Comics Illustrator of the Week honors! Bletsis brings his carefully constructed drawings to life with rich, bold colors and seems to have a real knack for field of depth & space in his work. Working and living in Southern England as a freelance illustrator for print media and as an artist for the film/video game industry, Bletsis has collected quite an impressive list of clients thus far including Jamie Oliver, BBC, Penguin, and The Royal Academy of Dance, to name a few.

You can find more art by George Bletsis, including some pages of his own comic strip, on his blog here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

I’m so impressed with artist Dan Mora’s work on Michael Alan Nelson’s Hexed, that I had to share a sampling of it here with all of you! The little bit that I can find out about Dan Mora on the web is that he lives in Costa Rica, he’s done graphic design work & many illustrations for numerous print/online publications, and loads of concept art/character design work, as well. In it’s previous incarnation, Hexed introduced the great artist Emma Rios to the world, and now it’s Dan Mora’s turn to find legions of new fans.

Hexed, published by Boom Studios, is up to issue 9 now; it will be interesting to see if Mora sticks with that series a while longer or if one of the “Big 2″ scoops him up. Either way, I’ll be following for the good arts!

You can find more of Mora’s artwork, and see many revealing artist process posts, on his “Behance” site here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

A couple years ago, Chris Samnee was in the unenviable position of having to replace artists Paolo Rivera & Marcos Martin on Marvel’s Daredevil, as regular series artist. Now, 40, or so issues later, that memorable run on Daredevil(which is still going) will now be remembered by most folks as the “classic Samnee/Waid Daredevil run” thanks to Samnee stepping up to the plate artistically! Chris’ stunning visuals match Waid’s character driven scripts perfectly! Studying the great comics artists he grew up with in the 1980’s, and working hard at his craft since he was kid(he got his first professional comics credit when he was 15!), Samnee has become one of the most respected artists working in comics, today.

Chris Samnee won an Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker for his work on the The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom, and a Harvey Award for Most Promising Newcomer for 2011’s Capote in Kansas, published by ONI Press.

You can follow the steady stream of updated Chris Samnee art on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

Babs Tarr is a core member of the new Batgirl creative team that has been making waves, lately, with their new interpretation of the character, and fresh, modern approach to superhero mythology. She works as the interior artist on the book, while artist Cameron Stewart provides story breakdowns, and cover art. Babs Tarr has drawn a number of dynamic comic book covers herself, like this week’s variant cover to another trailblazing book, Gotham Academy.

Babs Tarr is an accomplished painter, video game concept artist, and all around versatile freelance illustrator. Her many clients include Hasbro, Disney, DC Comics, Boom! Comics, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe. Tarr received her BFA in Illustration from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.

You can catch up with Babs Tarr’s convention schedule, and more artwork on her website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

It’s interesting to me how some ideas take time to marinate, while others click right away. The Halloween Circus concept came late last year after the Quest For The Ore Crystals. The story concept was entirely different at the time. After a while, the project went to the back burner until recently. Out of nowhere the genie hit me on the head and I scripted the first draft of Halloween Circus.

One of the fun parts for me is the creation of the cover of a new project. Who knows if this cover will stick or not, but it was enjoyable to work on. Check out the time-lapse video below and let me know your thoughts. Ciao.

Here’s the final image from this session:

Amy Reeder is the co-creator, and artist of Rocket Girl, published by Image Comics(issue #6 hits the stands on May 6th). The other creator on the series, writer Brandon Montclare, was an early supporter of Reeder’s, helping her get her first gig at DC/Vertigo drawing Madame Xanadu. The two also collaborated on the original comics series, Halloween Eve.

Amy Reeder first cut her comics teeth with the original English language manga series Fool’s Gold from Tokypop.

Other credits include a collaboration with artist JH Williams on Batwoman, and various cover work, including a memorable run on Supergirl.

Interestingly, Reeder has gone from drawing digitally, to now drawing 100% by hand(minus the coloring). She decided to make the switch to traditional media, because she feels more in control, and says she can better see the “bigger picture” of her work.

You can learn a lot more about Reeder’s art, and benefit from some great tutorials like”Perspective in Storytelling” on her blog here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

Post by Jeanine

I fell completely in love with the gorgeous work of illustrator and hand-lettering artist Kate Forrester as soon as I stumbled upon it. Her striking and versatile style has earned her an extensive list of international clients and diverse projects, including book jackets, packaging, greeting cards, advertisements, billboards, and much more. Kate combines dynamic hand-lettering with lovely illustrations to create flowing, organic images and often explores new & exciting mediums including wood, chocolates, tattoos, laser-cut paper illustrations—and even wedding cake!

Kate is based in the UK and her impressive list of clients includes Tiffany NYC, Victoria’s Secret, Random House, Penguin Books, Crate and Barrel, The Guardian, Little Brown, Walker Books, Moonstruck Chocolates and many more.

See more of Kate’s work here: Portfolio | Blog

Michael Golden is part of an elite class to emerge out of comics Bronze Age(1970-85), along with other legends like Mike Zeck, Frank Miller, and John Byrne. He worked briefly at DC in the late 70’s, before making a name for himself over at Marvel with his dynamic, detailed drawing style on the miniature superhero team, The Micronauts. Golden would go onto create one of the most popular Uncanny X-Men characters, Rogue, with writer Chris Claremont, and enjoyed critical success with his work on The ‘Nam(a war comic written & edited by Vietnam War veterans Doug Murray & Larry Hama).

Michael Golden is also an accomplished advertising, and commercial design artist, but he still finds time to create covers for some of the biggest titles in comics, including The Fantastic Four, and The Walking Dead.

You can listen to a recent podcast with Michael Golden talking about his early days in comics at Panel Borders here.

For the latest news, and art images from Mr. Golden, you can follow his facebook page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

Here is project I worked on a few months back--the cover for Highlights' HighFive's March '14 cover! It's presently out and about (I saw it in a local magazine shop a few days ago). Below is a photo I took of the final, printed cover, then the actual illustration, sans copy, etc., as well as a close-up of the kids. Below that are some of the rough cover concepts I submitted. My thanks to Highlights for letting me be a part of making their magazine a fun read for kids!

Well, here we are at the tail-end of February, with March (along with spring!) coming up in a few days. So I wanted to share the project I worked on a few months back–the cover for Highlights’ HighFive’s March ’14 cover! It’s presently out and about (I saw it in a local magazine shop a few days ago). Below is a photo I took of the final, printed cover, then the actual illustration, sans copy, etc., as well as a close-up of the kids. Below that are some of the rough cover concepts I submitted. My thanks to Highlights for letting me be a part of making their magazine a fun read for kids!

(c) Highlights for Children

THE SECRET DIAMOND SISTERS COVER REVEAL Savannah. Courtney. Peyton. The three sisters grew up not knowing their father and not quite catching a break. But it looks like their luck is about to change when they find out the secret identity of their long-lost dad—a billionaire Las Vegas hotel owner who wants them to come live in a gorgeous penthouse hotel suite. Suddenly the Strip's most exclusive clubs are all-access, and with an unlimited credit card each, it should be easier than ever...

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