MARCH MARVEL MADNESS. X-MEN PARADE.

When this started, I figured it would be a one or a two day thing, but the more I dig, the more I realize, I have an avalanche of images for Marvel projects.  And I haven’t even gotten to any of my Underoos or Candy Apples work yet!  Today, a clearance-style parade of the X-Men video and DVD box covers you haven’t seen yet!  Heck, some of these, I’ve never seen.

You’ll notice that all these covers have the wrong title, or often the same title (Deadly Reunions), even when they’re clearly telling the PHOENIX SAGA (those images of Jean crashing a Space Shuttle and flying away from the ocean are a bit of a giveaway).  That’s not a sign that the producers of the show just plumb ran out of titles, it’s that I started including suggestions for the title placement when I sent in the artwork (so we wouldn’t have any more of Wolverine’s arms covered up), and the only title copy I had available was from the first of the video boxes that I’d scanned.  So that title became the title of ALL the series (more or less) from a certain point on, when I was laying out the covers.

Look down this column a little bit, and you’ll see what is probably my favorite of this series…starring Wolverine and Alpha Flight all in one cover?  This Canadian boy was happy to play with THOSE toys for the day when this one came in.  Towards the end of the series, they were doubling up the episodes in each box, so that you could get twice as much mutant action per tape, and the covers were asked to be “split” images from that point forward.  It made for more challenges, as it’s hard to design a striking cover with a big f***ing line down the middle.

Just as I’d gotten used to doing TWO images per video box, suddenly for this next cover, they went for THREE episodes in one tape, and asked “could I include the following characters in the cover:  EVERYBODY in the Imperial Guard, and everyone in the X-Men?.  And the New York Yankees if you can fit them in…” I got out the triple zero brush for inking this one.

This was for a store poster, that ended up being printed something like seven feet tall.  I actually saw one in a video store, this GIANT thing…and I asked the store if I could have a copy of the poster when the promotion was done, as I’d drawn it and they wouldn’t send me a seven foot poster.  The guy in the store said he wanted it for himself, and asked me to sign it.  Which I did.  So THAT guy has a version of this poster, and I don’t.  Hmmmph.

That’s it for today’s Marvel Madness Parade. Next up are a set of images for some Marvel Card series that no one, I mean NO ONE has seen outside the industry, and it’s not because they didn’t print up lots, and didn’t distribute them…it’s because…wait that would be telling.   See you later, Marvel Zombies.

Ty the Guy

Upcoming Appearances

As mentioned before, Ty will be a Special Guest at the upcoming Toronto Comic Con…and he’s just confirmed that he will be signing and sketching at the Wizard booth on the Friday and Saturday (as will Cameron Stewart, Phil Jimenez, Adi Granov and others). Check out the schedule…

The rest of the time, Ty will be at his table; when we find out the number, I’ll get that posted. (Well, some of the time he’ll be running around trying to find retailers with Dollar Bins.)

Keiren

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Ah, ’tis true.  I’m a sucker for the dollar bins.  Last convention, I got a TON of comics by Greg Land, from Ultimate FF to CrossGen stuff…all for a BUCK!  There was some Adam Kubert, Stuart Immonen, and other great comics in there, too.  Who wouldn’t go running around.

Ty the Guy

MORE UNKNOWN MARVEL, and some UNKNOWN WRITING

Because I’m penciling and inking some stuff for Marvel at the moment, all last week we devoted this blog to unseen artwork I’ve done for Marvel comics in my career.   I still have a million more things to show you in that area, but today, I thought I’d spend a little space talking about some WRITING for Marvel that a lot of people don’t know I did, simply because it was for the Marvel younger readers line, and the average fan simply IGNORES them. It’s a pity, because some of the creators who worked for that line were deserving of more attention.  Graham Nolan, Norm Breyfogle, and Tom Grummett worked on some of the issues before and after my brief run, just to name a few.  And of course, Jeff Parker (now doing well with Hulk office gigs) wrote a SLEW of the Marvel Adventures Avengers books before I got to ‘em.  But here’s the three I wrote:

The premise for the issues, as asked for by the editor, was to tell stories about Avengers that were NOT part of the regular team…new members joining, or old members showing up for a visit….as a way of introducing the newer readers to these characters.    If anyone recalls a post from a couple of weeks ago, I consider the ROY THOMAS/JOHN BUSCEMA Avengers period in the late sixties/early seventies the pinnacle of comics excellence from that period.  Silver Age Marvel is Roy and John to me, even SLIGHTLY more so than Stan and Jack, or Stan and Steve, simply because it got inside my brain first.   So when given a second chance at these Avengers characters, I went right back to that well of inspiration again and went for the characters originally from that era.  Quicksilver, Hercules, and of course THE VISION. Amusingly enough, they ran the stories in the opposite order from which I wrote them.

The Quicksilver story was a fun script.   Quicksilver has been kidnapped and forced (in a roundabout way) to betray the Avengers to a super-villainess, the creator (in this continuity) of the Super-Adaptoid.  The art was by my good friend Stephen Molnar, with whom I’d later do my STAR TREK GRAPHIC NOVEL.

I’d had the idea for the Hercules issue in my head for years:  If Hercules was immortal, why hasn’t he been part of human history?  Where was he during World War 2, or the American Revolution.  Or heck, ANYWHERE in  history?  It didn’t make sense to me that so outgoing a character would have stayed hidden for centuries.  But what if he had no choice?  What if he’d been imprisoned for a few thousand years…buried in lava rock beneath the streets of Pompeii?  Perhaps his cousin, Pluto, sent the lava from the center of the Earth JUST to mess with the demi-god.  Sucks to be from Pompeii and get stuck in the middle of it, but from there it was easy to extrapolate a story.

For the last story, this lazy, unscrupulous, thieving bastard went after Roy and John’s original Vision two parter AGAIN!  Last time (in Avengers United) I re-worked the second part, where the team figures out what to do with the killer android in their midst, so this time, I reworked part one of the original story, and set the killer android against the Avengers for the first time.  But instead of ULTRON creating him, this time he’s a creation of Pym’s robotics, Stark’s security tech, and the life force from a bolt of lightning from Ororro/Storm.  (Thor was my first choice for the lightning bolt, obviously, but he wasn’t on the team at the time).  I’m very happy with how this issue turned out, and would love to re-visit this version of our red and green robot pal, but the series eventually ran out of steam and  finished up.  Sigh.

Still a GREAT gig for a few months.  And dig those crazy Grummett covers!

One last image for the lost Marvel today.  It’s an ad I drew for HEROCLIX last year.  Heroclix is sort of a game, sort of an action figure, sort of a desert topping.  Obviously, with Ultimates Cap and Ultimates Iron Man, standing next to Classis 616 Hawkeye and Wasp, with the Simonson Thor tossed in with the Witch and the Seventies Wonder Man, this Avengers team exists only for this ad…but wouldn’t that be a fun team?  Like much of the lost Marvel stuff, I’ve never seen where this ad ran, or what it looked like in colour.  If anyone has a copy in colour, I’d die to see it.  ALSO:  Since last week, I have been told there are Spanish X-Men comics with my art on the covers, taken from the many video covers, and have been promised scans .

Oh, this reminds me…I have a Heroclix story of EPIC scope that I’ll post later this week.  It has to do with my eldest son, and a mini-series I wrote that I NEVER thought they’d make Heroclix for.

Ty the Guy

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BIG PS:  As a lifelong Vision freak, I was excited and elated last week to receive an email from Vision artist RICHARD  HOWELL, who bought a page or two of Mike Parobeck Elongated Man stuff off me.  Richard wanted to know if I’d remembered him…?  Like I would ever forget anyone who worked on the Vision miniseries?  This fangeek is as fangeek as they come!  Here’s one of Richard’s covers below.  Thanks for the email, Richard, and best of luck with your current work at CLAYPOOL COMICS.

Thus endeth the shout-out.

Ty

Monday Marvel March Madness Merchandise

Spider-Man Human Torch “I’m with Stupid”

Issue 3, page 21, pencils by Ty Templeton, inks by Tom Palmer

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Ty decided to fill up the shelves in the Art Store a bit today…and found some more of his Spidey/Human Torch pages (from I’m with Stupid). Each issue was drawn in a different style to represent a different era of Spidey (something a lot of reviewers didn’t quite figure out…even after two or three issues!  Every comment about how “old-fashioned the art looks” triggered some bombast around these parts!)

Ty and writer Dan Slott still muse about the possibility of a second mini (if Dan could fit it in–Marvel is keeping him a busy, busy writer-boy). Right now, they’re working on a little something together…but for now, here’s some more from one of their previous projects.

A couple of today’s pages (the one at the top of the page, for starters) were inked by one of Ty’s inking heroes–Tom Palmer. Ty was thrilled to hear that Tom was doing ‘em–more thrilled when he saw the final pages. I’m sure he’ll have something to say about that when he posts later today.

Keiren

Spider-Man Human Torch, “I’m with Stupid”

Issue 5, page 19, pencils by Ty Templeton, inks by Drew Geraci

More March Marvel Madness. Hoverboy Friday Below! (scroll down!)

I promised myself I was going to post my “unseen Marvel” work this week, but I’ve started to realize that I have a LOT of unseen Marvel, and there’s no way to get through it all without just dumping it on the site like a fish bucket spilled onto a baby’s change table.    I still have pajamas designs, t-shirts, Christmas party invitations, video and DVD covers, Bullpen portrait cards, TV guide ads, toys and an avalanche of this mess to get through.  But digging through it all is kind of fun, so here’s more of the rock slide. I promise, I’ll stop before Monday.  Marvel Madness comes but once a year, and it’s best not to push your luck.

Up above is the rarest of all my Marvel work…though strictly speaking, I did it for the THE HERO INITIATIVE.  It’s a one-off.  Only one comic like this as the cover was drawn on the comic with pen and watercolour dyes and auctioned off (for a few thousand dollars, if I recall, which shocked me senseless!) to raise money for our cartooning brethren and sistren who need a hand.  I’ve never met the guy who dropped the couple of grand on this, but bless his generous heart.

Here’s a couple more of the X-Men video boxes.  The Magneto cover was featured in adverts that appeared on the back of national magazines, and even the back of some DC comics!  The one with Bishop and Wolverine used Marvel artist (of the New Warriors at  the time),  RICHARD PACE as a model for Bishop’s face.  It still looks like him, even though Richard has long since had his facial tattoo removed, and gotten that haircut properly attended to.

This spoof version of Amazing Fantasy #15 was done for for Wizard Magazine, covering the launch of the Spider-Man animated series, SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, which was the most bizarre ripoff of Batman Beyond and lasted only one horrendous season.  According to that show, to improve on Spider-Man, you send him to counter-Earth, have him fight the High Evolutionary and the armor plated Ani-Men, and write MJ out of the series.   This art was a supposed to be for a Wizard cover alt (back when Wizard did two covers for every issue) but since I’ve never seen a printed copy, I’m not sure they ran it.  I tossed Kirby’s name in there, just as a tip of the hat.

And now, a couple of the many collector’s cards I’ve done over the years for Upper Deck.  There’s probably twenty or thirty of these all told and there’s not enough room to come near putting them all up.  But I think I might force you guys to sit through about six of ‘em in total.  I like the inking on the Radioactive Man card to the left, and I like the big goofy fun of the H.E.R.B.I.E. card below.  Considering that H.E.R.B.I.E. represents the last Fantastic Four character that Lee and Kirby created together (for an animated series, rather than a comic, replacing the already licensed-to-someone-else Human Torch to make a foursome), I couldn’t help but enjoy working on his card.

I’ll leave this post with more of that mysterious X-Men comic book giveaway art that I worked on sixteen years ago, that I can’t remember where it got used but it might have been for Pizza Hut.   Dana Morsehead, (former head of the department at Marvel for which most of this stuff was done) thinks it might have been for a PITCH to land an account, rather than an account itself.  What?  Ah, all that Don Draper stuff is above my pay grade.  I was just happy to have a few months drawing up them X-People, and working with the lovely and talented Mr. Morsehead.

Keep scrolling down for the feature Hoverboy Fridays!.  We now return you to it, as regularly scheduled.

Ty the Guy

Upcoming appearances

Ty the Guy

DIGITAL HOVERBOY FRIDAY

Here we go again, fellow Float Fans!  It’s that day of the week, and time for the greatest bucket wearing hero of the twentieth century (and 2nd greatest bucket wearing hero of all time!) HOVERBOY!   This week:  Hoverboy goes DIGITAL!

We start with the Hoverboy: FLOATING FIGHTER video game of 1982, manufactured in the EXCITE-O-VISION format from Softie Games.  This unique format promised to be the first home-system 3-d graphics on the market, with an effect that was described by the designers as “graphics floating in front of your very eyes”.  Naturally with a slogan like that, they set their sites on the leading floating character in the super-hero market to launch their fledgling game company.

When Superman turned down Softie Games, they tried to get the license for Captain Marvel, and then Hawkman, followed by Dr. Fate, Ghost Woman, Sky-Man: The Helium Filled Detective, Thor, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Blimp (from the Inferior Five), The Specter, Dr. Strange, Dr. Druid, Flight Boy, and a character I’ve never heard of elsewhere called “FLOATY: Clown Chimp of the Stratosphere”.

Eventually Softie settled on Hoverboy, and the rest is long forgotten history.

The first impediment to success was the design of the basic game.  Though the three-dimensional graphics of the EXCITE-O-VISION format were quite spectacular, the simple geometric figures and low-pixel backgrounds made the game seem dreadfully old fashioned for the sophisticated gamers of the eighties.   To top it all off, HOVERBOY: FLOATING FIGHTER was originally test marketed only in  the poorer counties of Louisiana and Georgia, a population made up mostly of low income African-American families, who had little or no awareness of Hoverboy, or indeed computer games for the home at that time.

The test-market scores for the game were exceedingly low, and the two phrases most often spontaneously given in written reviews were “Can I get my money now?” and “What the hell?  Who would do this for FUN?”

HOVERBOY: FLOATING FIGHTER was never released, and the money spent in developing it was lost.  Softie Games president, Lionel Jackson, was devastated by the adventure and swore off the game industry forever to his family and friends, mere moments before he was hit by a bus.

Another tragic loss, blamed on the HOVERBOY curse, by those too uneducated to know better.  Blamed on a drunken bus driver named Clement McManus, by the coroner for the city of San Fransisco, where the accident happened.

Next up:

Above is one of the more public tributes given to Hoverboy in recent years.  For fans of the movie “THE INCREDIBLES” there’s a moment near the beginning of the film, when Mr. Incredible heads up to his attic retreat, to wax nostalgic for his heroic past.   Eagle eyed Hoverboy fans like myself instantly noticed the clear nod to the Battlin’ Bucket on the top shelf to the right of the door.  Is that a HOVERBOY helmet up there?  It looks like the late sixties version, though it’s hard to say, considering how often the design changed from show to show, or even comic to comic.  At any rate, Incredibles Director, Brad Bird, is a well known Hoverboy fan, and has mentioned him in many interviews, so the familiar helmet isn’t all that unexpected.  Hoverboy references abound in Bird’s work, including The Simpsons, Iron Giant and Ratatouille (look for ‘em yourself, once you know they’re there, they’re easy to spot!)

As always, head on over to the nearly abandoned HOVERBOY MUSEUM for more about the history and future of this amazing and popular character from the world of Superheroes.

Coming up:  More Marvel March Madness as soon as I scan the Spidey Stuff.

Ty the Guy

MARVEL MADNESS CONTINUES WITH NEPOTISM THURDAYS: VALENTINES ATE MY BRAIN!!

This Lost Marvel March Madness stuff is really too much to put up all at once, or even over the space of one little week, so I might have to post TWICE today, just to get half of the Spider-Man pieces out.

But to start today… Valentine’s Day–a day of love and affection and tension that nearly disrupts a young marriage.  (I should have put these up two weeks ago ON Valentine’s Day, but that’s my daughter’s birthday, and we spend Valentine’s Day differently around here.)

Anyway…this set of Valentine’s Day cards (loosely based on the look of the Spider-Man animated series of the day, though in truth, it’s a little more Batman Animated than it should have been) were to be the first colour job for my wife for Mighty Marvel.  She’s got a great eye for colour, and as I’m a control freak (this comes up later in the story)

MARCH MARVEL MADNESS CONTINUES!

As I mentioned yesterday, aside from my regular teaching gig this week, I’m at the pencil and inking boards working on a few pages for a Marvel job, and so, I’m hauling out some odd, obscure and lost things I’d done for Marvel over the years (mostly in the 90’s and early aughts).  I never did anything for the actual comic book, but did quite a bit of work for the X-Men office through the licensing department.  (I know, who thinks of me as an X-Men guy?!?!?)  The cover above, is a fairly large painting (original is 12×18) , used (I think) for the cover of a fast food chain giveaway comic book.  My brain says Pizza Hut, but I can’t find it online.  Anyway…the basic layout wasn’t mine, I was sent a layout drawing from the license dept. (clearly used again for the cover of the video box to the right, either before or after I did mine, I don’t know which artist rendered that other version…) that I final penciled and painted.  It’s really “drawing in colour” rather than actual painting, as I didn’t really understand the basic techniques at the time.  I’ve since done a half dozen other paintings, and have learned a thing or two about colour, mostly that I’m better off doing it in Photoshop.

The interior page to the left is from the same project.  Again, I don’t have a copy, and it was at least fifteen years ago, so your guess is as good as mine as to what the hell is happening in the story.  I do recall that the tower of X-Men happily posing just below, is the back cover and I have a few other interior pages in the box.  Beyond that, anyone ever see this in print at a Burger King somewhere?

There are something like twenty of the video boxes, Mike Parobeck did four or five, and I did the rest.  I’ll include more here today and tomorrow, but I don’t have colour versions of all of them, as I was never sent a set of the boxes.  ( I have found them at stores, and bought copies, but don’t have the full set.  Sigh…you can see there was never a strong duty to send artists their printed work for 3 dimensional objects anywhere near as much as their comic art.  The licensing team is on their own to find the stuff in the real world.)

Pogs.  Ah, pogs.

Those useless frauds perpetrated against kids in the nineties?  Well, I participated in the crime.  These are some of the X-Men pog sheets we created for the craze.  These sheets were impossible to pose, as all the heads had to line up neatly in the cut-out areas, while still drawing some sort of group shot.  Ech.  I’m not embarrassed by the drawing, but the gig itself isn’t one to tell mom about.   I can’t recall how many of these pog sheets I did, but these are the only two I could find in the basement in a box.  If the craze ever comes back, I’m all set to rule.

The Avengers cover above is the first paying gig I ever had at Marvel.  It’s inks over a lovely cover by Sam Kieth,creator of THE MAXX, ZERO GIRL, and star-illustrator of WOLVERINE fame, amongst so much else.  Sam and I started out in the biz somewhat together, and worked in a few indy projects before hitting Marvel and DC.  In fact, I introduced Sam to his first DC editor, which got him a Secret Origins gig.  When Sam was given his first Marvel cover, he asked me to ink it saying “I would make his exotic looking figures look more Marvel Style”.   I LOVE Sam’s exotic looking figures, but did as asked.  The end result is an odd mixture of both of us at once.  Much like the time I inked Mignola…it doesn’t alway work.  But it did lead to my first cheque from the House of Ideas.

Above is some pages I did for Moon Knight.  There was a lot of comparison between Moon Knight and Batman (deservedly so) and editor-at-the-time Joey Cavalieri decided to really play that up for a while, asking noted Batman artists to do a dimension -hopping story where Moony ended up in the Miller-Verse, the Infantino-Verse, the Kelley Jones-verse, etc.  in MOON KNIGHT #42 (1990’s, probably about ‘95?) I stepped in to do the Sprang-Verse pages (about seven in total) as the real Dick Sprang wasn’t well at the time.    The silly Pool Shark cover came from an annual printed later that year.

So much Lost Marvel work, I still haven’t scratched the surface, but I’ll leave you with this one for today…the cover of “SALES TO ASTONISH“, a Marvel giveaway to retailers to promote their 2099 line…which didn’t seem to help.  I’m not sure why I was asked to do the cover, as I had nothing to do with the line itself…except at one point had been offered Ravage 2099 as a penciling gig, and was too busy to say yes.  Escaped with my life on that one.

Tomorrow, Nepotism Thursdays strike again, with my WIFE’S first work for Marvel (and some of my many “lost” Spider-Man pieces!)

Ty the Guy

MARVEL ARTWORK YOU’VE NEVER SEEN

In honour of the fact that I’m doing some comics illustratin’ for Marvel at the moment (no telling you what it is yet, but it’s fun, fun, fun!), I figured I’d dig through the library all this week, to find some Marvel work I’ve done, that you guys have likely NEVER seen.  I’m not talking about comics  (Spidey-Torch, Mad Dog, Avengers, Ren & Stimpy and others) but things I’ve done for their toy department, licenses, special projects and other sundry items that fill an illustrator’s time.  All Marvel, All Week!  Collect them ALL!

Up above is the cover to a Fantastic Four DVD that collected up episodes of their cartoon from the mid-nineties, I think it only came out in Europe, as I’ve never been sent a copy, nor seen a colour version of the artwork.   Nevertheless, it was my first time drawing the famous first family (professionally, I mean…I must have drawn the Thing a zillion times as a child) and it was a little disappointing that I couldn’t draw Ben in his more familiar Kirby design…but the client wanted him “on model” for the look of the series.

Next , the first of MANY X-Men video boxes I did for the animated show that ran on FOX TV in the nineties.  I was a little ticked that they threw the title card over top of Wolverine’s arm for the first one, which mucked up the image a bit in my opinion (you’ll notice I figured out to work around it on the next two…), but I couldn’t have been happier with the colours that Paul Mounts put overtop of all three.  Somewhere in the house, I have Paul’s original colour pieces for these, done in gorgeous dyes, with a real airbrush!  Oh, the labour we artists had to put in, back in the primitive 20th Century!  Paul was nice enough to trade me all the colour art for one of the black and white pieces.  Hell of a trade on my end.

As I said, I did tons of art for the X-Men series, including designing the official jackets for the cast, with a fairly cool Wolverine patch on the back (that you can see a bit of in the corner of the video boxes, that little Wolvie is from the patch).  I may not be able to find the original art for that, but worst-case-scenario, I’ll find someone to model the jacket for ya.

Doing these covers was a lovely stretching exercise for my art brain, as I was doing them at the same time as Batman Adventures stuff in the late nineties.  Some days it took a few hours to shake the Bruce Timm out of my hands, and try to channel the more illustrative look of the Marvel house style.  At first I expected they wanted me to make the covers resemble the show designs, but they insisted I do nothing of the sort, and said “Draw it in your own style”.  Something I’m not sure I have any more.  But these are close to it, I suppose.

Tune in tomorrow for some Marvel 2099 artwork you’re not expecting, a couple of Moon Knight pages you’ve never seen, and plenty more X-Men…and then on Nepotism Thursday, my wife’s first ever coloring job for Marvel…and how it nearly ended the marriage!   And yes, it was all my fault, dear.  (She’s reading this, gotta be cool, gotta be cool…)

Ty the Guy

Doing these covers was a lovely stretching exercise for my art brain, as I was doing them at the same time