The "game changer" part III

More art from my secret project.






Required reading, if you haven't seen the posts already.
Part I
Part II

best,
Mike

The "game changer" PT. II

Before reading this, you may want to catch up on part one of The "game changer"

"You don't want to read about it fool, you want to feel it..."
Brother Ali

Years ago I attended the prestigious Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts. My room mate was a classically trained Opera singer, and he was amazing. We got to be pretty good friends. He was a happy go lucky, goofy, & lovely human being. I couldn't imagine him taking anything seriously, which to me was what being an artist was about. Taking shit really seriously. So, I went to one of his performances one night to see him in action. I was blown away. This boy sung like a dream.

That would have been memorable enough, but then another thing happened that changed my attitude towards art for years to come. I was totally enthralled with the performance, but then something in the crowd caught my attention. A few girls, all students and artists, were openly weeping. They were so moved by this guy's incredible performance that they just cried at the beauty of it. And even through the tears they never stopped listening, never took their eyes off of him.

I swore then and there that some day, God knows when, I would make an image that would move people they way this song had. I would make something so pure that the viewer would forget the artistry behind it, the technique, the draughtsmanship, and just experience it on an emotional level. I would take this task very, very seriously. Because I was a serious artist.

I failed for years. So many years in fact that I forgot about the goal, forgot about adding pure soul to art, and focused more and more on the technique.

Then I sent some pages from The "game changer" book I'm pouring my heart into to a cartoonist friend I respect to get his input, and he typed back something stunning. He said the pages made him "tear up".

I was floored. This guy is not the crying type. He's been through some shit in his short life that would break the strongest amongst us. I mean, real pain and struggle. The kind that either crushes you, or hardens you into diamonds. This dude did the latter.

And I made him tear up with some comic book pages.

My mind went back to that night in that Opera hall and I'll be damned, I finally figured it out. My Opera singer friend didn't TRY to move people. He just stood up on a stage, forgot we were all there, and sung from the soul.

When that shit happens, you can FEEL it.

I think, God help me, I think that is happening here with this book. I'm holding my heart while I draw this thing, and hopefully you will not only read this book...you'll FEEL this book.







Thank you.

Best,
Mike

Drawing for Fun - Queen and Country

Hey everyone,

Ok, here's another piece I'm doing. It features characters from a book I actually worked on, Queen & Country. This one is a VERY rare commission piece (rare because I RARELY do commissions!) for a gentleman who has bought a few pieces of art from be and been incredibly patient with me too :)

I actually LOVED Q&C long before I even drew it. When Oni had first started putting some of my work out I made it clear I really wanted to work on the series eventually, and they were kind enough to have me on.

Q&C is a bit of a disappointment for me though. Mostly because I just rushed through it more than I would have liked. The book had been gradually coming out later and later, and the Oni folks really needed someone to try and get it back on track. So, I hustled like hell to get it moving, even going so far as to ink 11 pages in 2 days on the last issue. (I was also penciling a book called RUULE, which became a bit of a time issue later in the series. But not a real big one as the scripts were rarely overlapped and caused a real issue in scheduling.)

In retrospect, this was terrible a idea. I should have just focused on one book, and should have definately spent more time on Q&C. I take being timely and professional VERY seriously (ask anyone who's ever worked with me) but I should have talked it over with everyone and not tried to catch the book up ENTIRELY on my shift. I should have just passed at least part of it on, but I'm kind of hard headed and have trouble turning down a challenge.

In the end, I'm VERY proud of the book. I just feel that it was a special series, and I wish I could have lavished the thing with attention instead of just rushing along the love affair.

Best,
Mike

Drawing for fun - DREDD!

I couldn't sleep last night, and got up around 4am (don't ask) so I took the extra time to chill out and draw FOR FUN! Almost never happens anymore.

Here's one of three things I started. I'll share more over the weekend. I have this not-so-secret desire to draw a DREDD story for 2000 AD someday, and couldn't resist trying my hand at Mr. Iyamdalaw himself.

DREDD is easily the most fun I've had drawing a character in a while. All that chunky armor, the cool helmut, and that crazy face. The folks at 2000 AD have decided to allow DREDD to age in real time with the series (unlike Batman or Wolverine who never age, ever!) which I think is a great idea. It allows me to give DREDD a grizzled, Clint-like feel.

Also, apparently I have a blue period. Who knew?

Anyway, enjoy.

mike

SALEM pt.II

Did I say I'd post more of these "next week"? I meant "tomorrow" :)

Seeing as Halloween is this weekend, doesn't make sense to post these horror pages AFTER the day has passed. So, here's the second half.







Enjoy!

Mike

SALEM pt.I

So, I was looking through my past work to find some cool Halloween related art to post for you folks. Then I remembered SALEM, a short horror comic I did a couple years back with screen writers Chris Morgan (WANTED, Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift) and Kevin Walsh.

These fellas hired me on to illustrate an issue zero to premier at Comic Con in San Diego. They were new to comics, but really talented and eager to do this thing right. We hit it off immediately, and had tons of fun working on this short 11 page comic.

In the end the series went to BOOM! Studios, with Wilfredo Torres as the new artist. I was busy with a ton of new books and regretfully couldn't stay on, but after a really pleasant conversation with Mark Waid I agreed to let them use the first 11 pages as a spring board for the first issue. Wilfredo took it to new heights from there.

Anyway, here are the pencils for the first half of the comic. Stay tuned for the second half early next week.







Comments are always welcomed.

best,
Mike

Wolverine

I never draw this kind of stuff, but after JOE I wanted to try my hand at a superhero style using the color modeling I had for ORIGINS. Here's a Wolverine drawing I was going to color, but just never got to it. Too much to do, and no time to do little side pieces. I still hope to color this before too long, but who knows when? Anyway, here's the line art. Hope you like it.

mike

Inked Redcrow

Hey everyone. I finally inked that Lincoln Red Crow piece I drew last week. Hope you dig it.

best,
Mike

This art is available for purchase here.

Hey new followers!

Just wanted to say HI to all the folks following the blog. I appreciate it, and will try not to disappoint ;)

mike

Fear Agent on Newsarama.com

Check out the interview on Newsarama.com with Rick and Tony about the new Fear Agent arc.

And, since they showed the inked versions on there I may as well show the pencil versions on here.





Mike

Shifters - The One that got away

The Scalped sketch got me thinking of a book I was gonna do years ago with the amazing Mark Ricketts. A bad ass, insanely cool, hero comic called Shifters. I won't get into the details of why we didn't do it, but it was to launch with Image's old hero's line that they were starting way back when. INVINCIBLE and FIRE BREATHER came out of that line.

Anyway, it sucks cause it many ways Mark was really onto something. It had a crime element and was set in a Native American reservation and casino, much like SCALPED (not implying that Jason swiped it, as of course we NEVER made our book.). It also featured these normal folks who discover they have odd powers, WAY before HEROES came along (again, no way to swipe our idea as no one knew of it).

So, yeah, apparently I'm a dumb ass. We'd be RICH now, I tell you! RICH!...

Anyway, before I break down in regretful sobs let me show the original pitch art. Bare in mind this stuff is YEARS old, and predates Un-men, Machine Teen, G.I. JOE, even One Man Gang. So it's a little rough around the edges.








More on the amazing Mr. Ricketts.

Best,
Mike

Shifters - Copyright and Trademark 2009 Mark Ricketts & Mike Hawthorne.

I blame Chris Samnee

After drawing some layouts and a page and a half of comics, what do I do to relax? I F-ING draw some more!! Christ almighty I got it bad...

Anyway, I blame artist Chris Samnee for this. He drew this amazing piece of art that put the bug in my ear to draw some more before calling it a night.

Chris drew a character from my favorite comic, SCALPED. Now, I don't buy many comics. Especially since, you know, I get so many for free. But SCALPED is the exception. It's so crazy good. I haven't liked a comic like this since 100 BULLETS, CASANOVA, or SLEEPER.

But don't none of you tell Aaron or Guera I said this! I'm sure they got big enough heads already!

My favorite character from the series is Lincoln Red Crow, and after Chris' drawing I couldn't get the urge to draw him out of my head. SO, here you go.

I guess I gotta ink this now...

Mike

Fear Agent sneak peek PT2

Rick posted this on his Twitter feed, so I guess it's safe to share. Kind of a give-a-way spoiler on it, but what the hell...

Enjoy, and look for more news on Fear Agent's relaunch soon.

Mike

The chill out spot

So, you may remember an early post about York city - where I currently live. My new book takes place here, and I've been roaming around my old neighborhoods taking reference pictures.

The more I work on this book, the happier I am to have set part of the book here. This City is really ugly, crazy, and full of character. It's old, in that way that all Pennsylvanian cities are, but still trying to find it's way.

While out taking pictures I found this little "chill out spot" just a few blocks from downtown. It was just this old sofa thrown in this small, bricked in enclave. You'll notice an empty beer bottle is on the sofa. I can just see someone, or some people, sitting there getting bloody and just hanging out.

I found out later that there was a shoot out in this neighborhood where a young man died earlier that same morning.

I also ran into a guy that I grew up with, and found out his brother killed him self recently.

So, yeah...fucking York City. I love ya', but I wish you could be happier. :(

Mike

Fear Agent sneak peek

Fear Agent is coming along nicely. I have an issue in the can, and a good start on the second. Unfortunately, we're going so insanely balls out with this thing that I can't show any pages. Seriously, EVERY page has a major spoiler of SOME sort on it. I mean MAJOR. Fans of the series are gonna get their worlds turned up side down with what Rick is coming up with. This thing is gonna be the grand finale to beat all grand finales!

Technically, even this panel is kind of a spoiler but you won't be able to figure out with out the rest of the page.

Check out Dark Horse's page for more info on the series.

More soon...

Mike

My Magnificent Failure Pt.I

So, I'm knee deep in my current cartooning project (see previous post) and I can't help but keep thinking about my last venture as a cartoonist. Hysteria: One Man Gang.





OMG came out of two things. The desire to build on the Hysteria series I had started my career with and to give myself a huge artistic challenge. Namely, to make a one hundred page action scene that still built upon the characters. It actually proved to be a lot easier then I had expected, and at one point I even considered bumping it up to two hundred pages. I also found I could tell readers more about a characer by showing their decisions while in action then I could have with talking heads.



OMG was originally to be published as a graphic novel by Oni Press, where it wasn't a great fit. If I'm not mistaken this was before Scott Pilgrim, and Oni wasn't known for this kind of fight comic type of material. I later jumped to Image, where it worked less. I won't go into details now, but I'm mentioning it now because I want to set the stage for some of these images I'm sharing. You'll see some of them have publishing information, and knowing the history will make it easy to follow the article.



I'm going to talk first about how we tried to promote this book. I know it's an odd place to begin an article about a creative work, but I feel it's fitting because SO much art and thought went into trying to get this book off the ground. I felt, and still feel, that this book had huge potential if I could build an audience for it. Hysteria had failed as a self published series, and the first volume at Oni had done OK, but not Good. For this to work, we needed support. To gain that, I needed to give fans something special. Something that DESERVED their support.



When we started to do some grass roots marketing for this book I had already started the book it's self. I had been working on the book when it was at Oni, and when I switched to Image I already had a good bit of the book done and was ready to switch over to doing some promo work. I went all out with this stuff. You have to understand, I loved this book and wanted to show it to the world. Doing these promo pieces was like taking kid's photos. I wanted to make comic fans fall for this book.




My partner Erik Swanson ( who lettered, and toned the book) and I tried like hell to sell this book. I designed a series of mailers that I sent to retailers, as well as free promotional posters. Erik even went from store to store in LA and dropped off promo material with store owners, as well as discussing the book with them. I did the same here in Pennsylvania and New York. We showed these folks advanced previews of the books too. Anything to get them excited about the new series.





I also made the rounds at conventions and handed out promo cards and free mini posters. I handed out a thousand posters, and a couple of thousand promo cards. Everyone that saw this thing loved it, but in the end the orders were very low. In the areas of the country we reached out to the orders were stronger then the areas we couldn't. I still believe if we could have reached farther, we could have made this work.



I was also lucky enough to have friends willing to run ads in their books for Hysteria. Here's one that ran in a few Image books.



I'm going to end Pt.I here. Stay tuned for more on my Magnificent Failure in a week.

Best,
Mike

"I do it Ror da Hood."

I was out the other day taking reference photos of my old neighborhood in York City and ran into this. Somehow it's fitting of the book I'm working on, and I wanted to share.

I'm honestly not showing this to make fun of the bad spelling, or the person who wrote it. To me, this is a great snap shot of the City and it kind of shows it's "soul". I took an instant liking this mystery person who's trying to run this low budget car wash for his neighborhood.

I blurred out his number so none of you jokes call it to to tease him/her. ;)

More photos of York soon.

Best,
Mike

Comix Creator Cookout SUCCESS!!

The 2nd Annual Comix Creator Cookout was a huge success! We had a great turn out, fed lots of folks, got to shoot the breeze with friends and fans, but most importantly we filled a big barrel full of food donations as well as raising some real cash money for the Central PA Foodbank!

I want to send out a sincere thank you to everyone that came out and helped make this even so great, and help support the food bank. You all warmed my heart, and for that I thank you!!

For lots more Photos of the event, go here.

Can't wait for next year!

Best,
Mike

Hey everyone,

The second annual Comix Creator Cookout is this weekend. I'll be there grilling like hell, so swing by and grab a bite to eat for a good cause!

More info, from the Comix Connection website.

"THIS SATURDAY AT COMIX CONNECTION - MECHANICSBURG!
On Saturday, September 12th from 12 noon until 2PM, Comix Connection - Mechanicsburg will be hosting our 2nd Annual Creators Cookout! We'll be offering free hot dogs & hamburgers with a side order of a few special guests:
Marvel/Vertigo/Image/IDW and all-around swell artist, who is currently wowing us with his pencils on G.I. Joe Origins, MIKE HAWTHORNE!

Two time Bram Stoker Award Winner, 2004 Shocker Award Winner for non-fiction, and writer of Marvel Comics' Dead of Night: Devil-Slayer , acclaimed horror and crime author BRIAN KEENE!

Author of several acclaimed novels of terror and suspense, including Clickers I & Clickers II, and over sixty other short stories, J.F. GONZALEZ!

Last year our Creator Cookout raised a sizable donation for the Hero Initiative, but with this year's event we chose to focus on a cause that's immediate to the mid-state, so we are seeking to collect charitable donations for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. A donation barrel for non-perishable food items will be available in our store starting on Friday, September 4th, 2009. Cash donations may also be made during the cookout event on Saturday. All donations will be collected by the Central PA Food Bank on September 14th. So please as you come in to our store next week, make a donation if you can of a food item, or if you're joining us for our festivities on Saturday make a donation then! Folks in our area are really depending on the Central PA Food Bank now more than ever."

Best,
Mike

The "game changer"

I don't know how many of you have followed my career since the beginning, but if you have you know that I started out as a cartoonist (Which I define as a person who creates their comics on their own). Lately I see folks using the term Writer/artist, which I'm not fond of as it defines it's self by this separation duties that is uniquely the creation of an editor.

After being a good father, and person, being a cartoonist is my dream. I hire myself out as an illustrator because it allows me to do what I love while providing for my family. But it's not my end goal. Although I respect what he's accomplished as an artist and businessman, I have no aspirations of being the next Jim Lee. I always wanted to be the next Wil Eisner.

However, somewhere along this path I went astray. I focused more and more on doing work for other folks and less on my own projects. It wasn't planned, but with three children to provide for I had to be more practical then I would have liked. I'm not ashamed of that, but it wasn't my plan.

I always balanced my work-for-hire comics with my creator owned comics. For every 'Queen & Country', there was an 'UMBRA'. For every 'Machine Teen' there was a 'Hysteria'. For every 'UN-MEN' there was a 'Sturgeon River'. But I still wasn't always"cartooning". And when I was, as in the case of Hysteria, the projects often failed because I couldn't really and truly focus on them. So I decided to change that.

I had the opportunity to pitch a book to my long time editor Jon Vankin at Vertigo, and after more then a year of writing and rewriting, laying out re-laying out, I've started the principal pages of my new book with them. This new book marks my return to cartooning, something I 'm so excited about I could burst.

This one is a game changer for me, much like self published Hysteria of 1998/99 which started my career and body of work.

I can't give you any details yet, other then to say it follows a family's history much like One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Brief and the Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao. The story's scale is big, but intimately told through this family - specifically it's flawed Matriarch and her equally as flawed son.

I can tease, but I can't give you full pages. So, enjoy and be ready to get your socks knocked off in a year or so ;)

Best,
mike