I always talk about how busy I am around here, creating fine comic book based entertainment for the masses with all those crazy knucklehead characters I get to write and draw….
Like my wildly hysterical script for Avenging Spider-Man #8, (cover by Shane Davis, interiors by Matt Clark), due in stores in just eleven weeks! Silver Sable and Doc Strange Guest Star! Order yours today!
…but my wife has been doing so much colouring work around the funnybook biz lately that this month, she’s got more to read out there than I do.
So, because you should love her as much as I, I’m showing off some pages from her most recent work, with links to where you can read it online. Who says my home in Toronto isn’t the House of Ideas? Oh, this Cease and Desist order from Marvel does. Well, OTHER than this legal restraint? Who? Who?
First up: A few teaser pages from a HEROES OF THE NORTH story about their characters Nordik and Eightball, available as an online comic book before the print edition comes out later (from Ardden Entertainment; the first omnibus collection sold out, so grab the second one as soon as you see it!-kts). Read it while it’s free, fans, it just went online a few days ago.
I LOVE the blues she chose. The pencil and ink artwork is by my friend David J. Cutler, who did the fun-but-hard-to-find-a-copy-of Johnny Canuck and the Northern Guard comic book with me last year. I just can’t seem to quit David J., but one look at these pages and you can see why I’m a fan.
The lesson of this tale seems to be: Ladies, dress warmly for cold weather. Either that or it’s a thrilling murder mystery with cool action sequences and gunfights and stuff, like a good comic book should be. All in glorious colour for LESS than a dime! Beat that!
I dig the first panel on this page!
So click on over and read this story and show our Canadian comic book creators a little love. It’s even better with the word balloons, though it covers up the pretty drawings and the pretty colours.
Keiren also just finished colouring a project called “Taking Flight” for writer Stephen Sutherland and artist Garry McLaughlin, who hail from Glasgow, a town with even more foreboding weather than Toronto.
If you're getting a "Frank Quitely" vibe, you're not alone.
This is the just the first three pages. It’s available for pre-order at Laser Age Comics, but it won’t be printed up until April 9, so you’ll have to pace and bite at your nails until then. I really like the colour work my one-and-only did on these pages. The sense of quiet and peace as this character learns what it’s like to fly is really brought across by the palette she chose.
Here’s a page from a YMCA comic book project Keiren finished a few weeks ago…
The Adventures of Y Guy, written by another Holmes Inc. alumnus Kathleen Gallagher
Pencil art by Christopher Yao this time around…an alumnus of the Holmes Incorporated comic books I put out every year with the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop. You can read the story here, and pick up the comics at local YMCAs in the Toronto area.
Just so you don’t think I’m a completely lazy sod, I have an issue or two of Ultimate Spider-Man Adventures coming up that I’ve done script and art chores for a story, as well as an issue of the Simpsons I wrote and drew, due in stores any time. And my OWN Heroes of the North 12 pager in the pipeline for early summer. Oh, and don’t forget tasty, tasty BACON!! (more on this as it crisps and develops).
But you guys get enough of me around here.
Check out the work of my own personal comic book colourist (her deviantART site), and let her know she’s pretty good at this gig.
Ty the Guy OUT!
Here now, your Keiren Templeton-Smith Bun Toon Bonus Moment:
One of Keiren's first appearances as a bunny in a Bun Toon from the early 90s!
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 