Veena et les Spectres du Temps: plus que 13 jours !

Je devrais recevoir mes copies personnelles de mon livre lundi prochain. J'ai bien hâte de le tenir entre mes mains !
Autrement, il devrait être disponibles pour vous tous le 14 octobre en librairies au Québec et en novembre en Europe. Je discute aussi avec Planète Bd la librairie de la rue St-Denis à Montréal pour un lancement dans cette période.

**

Comme amuse-gueule, je vous met ici un petit dessin qui devait être dans l'album et qui a été retiré à la dernière minute par manque de pages...C'est un peu comme les "special features" du "DVD Box set".

Impro-Bd: En ville sans ma voiture ! Résumé des épisodes précédents...

Jack Ruttan a produit une excellente présentation-photo et blog de notre prestation de mardi dernier. Je vous invite sur son blog a voir les photos et commentaires, ici.

Denis Giguere a aussi écrit un article sur l'évènement pour le site Français Actuabd.

(Photo de Jack Ruttan)

Impro-Bd à l’événement "En ville sans ma voiture !"

Siris (Pierre Sirois), Bruno Rouyère, Jack Ruttan et moi-même, Éric Thériault participerons à une impro-bd en public sur le thème « Une ville sans voiture ».

Info officielles ici.

Extraits des communiqués de presse :

En ville sans ma voiture !

Le 22 septembre 2009, une septième édition à Montréal.

La septième édition de la journée En ville sans ma voiture ! aura lieu le mardi 22 septembre prochain sous le thème « Bienvenue dans la ville sans voitures ».

En pensant à la ville de l’avenir, on revoit avec amusement cette vision cinématographique passée où des voitures volent autour des gratte-ciel. Dans cette fiction, les hommes-robots repartent le soir venu vers leur banlieue lointaine en soucoupes volantes. Ce rêve de métal est pourtant à contre-courant d’un mouvement déjà amorcé de l’évolution des métropoles vers une dimension plus humaine.

Montréal a déjà fait son choix et s’inscrit dans ce mouvement en participant avec succès depuis sept ans à la journée En ville sans ma voiture ! Montréal, la plus petite des grandes métropoles du monde, peut gagner ce pari de sensibilisation populaire. En s’offrant une ville sans voitures, l’espace d’un jour, la population active du centre-ville entre dans le rêve d’une ville d’avenir éco-responsable.

Les détails:

QUAND: De 9 h 30 à 15 h 30

OÙ : Côté nord de la rue Sainte-Catherine entre McGill College et University.

QUOI : Les visiteurs de la ville sans voitures en apprendront davantage sur les solutions d'avenir pour un transport actif et collectif. Des bédéistes connus (Éric Thériault, Bruno Rouyère, Jack Ruttan et Pierre Sirois) seront sur place pour créer une bande dessinée en direct sur des thèmes proposés.

L'artiste Roadsworth, artiste de rue bien connu, viendra peindre une immense toile dans le cadre du concours "Cocktail transport -Créatifs et engagés pour le climat" d'Équiterre.

Montreal Comic Con: September 19th-20th, 2009

I will be at the Montreal Comic Con this week-end. I'll be there saturday and maybe sunday. The guests and info is here. I'll be glad to see you there. Come and chat!

Lots of my present and past studiomates (and studio "satellites") will be there as guests: Kate 'Red' Bradley, Serge Lapointe, MiniKim, Karl Kerschl, Benoit Godbout, Michel Lacombe, Yanick Champoux, Wes Craig. A big push seem to have been done to make this a big event; there are a lot more Montreal artists than usual (Gabriel Morrissette, Stephen Molnar, Jose Holder, Sirkowski, Bernie Mireault, Salgood Sam, Geof Isherwood; some even a bit unusual in that type of convention (Zviane, Michèle Laframboise, Jimmy Beaulieu, Simon Banville, etc). And there are a few out of town guests that i'm curious to meet and/or chat a bit: Big Bang Comics, Mike Allred, Dale Eaglesham, Herb Trimpe (the artist of Hulk when I was a kid!) and Darwyn Cooke.

9-11: Emergency Relief

Today is the anniversary of "September 11". 8 years ago, I contributed to a book on the 9-11 events called "9-11: Emergency Relief". There is an interesting comment on that (and other) book on these tragic events. You can read it here. My story can be read here.

Veena et Les Spectres du Temps, l'album.

Voila, voila ! J'ai enfin fini le travail sur Veena et les Spectres du Temps ! Un an et demi après qu'on m'ait offert de faire l'album, c'est prêt.
Je n'en ai pas fait l'annonce officielle sur ce blog, en partie parce que je voulais attendre d'être sur que ça allait se faire, puis ensuite j'ai été tellement dans le jus pour finir à temps que j'ai tout poussé devant moi tout ce qui n'était pas le lettrage et la coloration...
Donc, les détails: La maison d'édition 400 Coups, par l'entremise de Michel Viau et Jimmy Beaulieu m'a offert de rééditer le comic book anglais de Veena, réalisé en 1999-2001, pour la nouvelle collection Rotor. Rotor représente le pendant "série de genre" pour balancer l'orientation "autobio/art comic" de Mécanique Générale. Au départ, VST (Veena et les Spectres du Temps) devait être publié en trio avec L'Academie des Chasseurs de Primes de Ben Godbout et Conte d'Outre-tombe de Jacques Lamontagne. Mais comme je voulais ajouter une nouvelle histoire inédite pour rafraichir le matériel et ne pas avoir l'impression que de servir du réchauffé, ça ne pouvait se faire dans la même période. Au départ, je ne voyais pas VST comme un livre en couleur, puisque l'aspect noir et blanc du dessin était prédominant. À la limite je voyais une forme de bichromie. Mais éventuellement pour mieux intégrer VST dans la collection, il devenait important de mettre le livre en couleur, et aujourd'hui, je ne le regrette pas. Le livre deviens beaucoup plus classe avec sa couverture dure et ses effets glacé-mat de la couverture !
Ça a donc fait 70 pages de bd à colorer dans un laps de temps assez court vu mes autres engagements d'illustration et de bd. J'ai fini tout juste au deadline final pour aller à l'imprimerie. Le livre est prévu pour sortir en octobre au Québec et en novembre en Europe. Le distributeur européen est Le Seuil.

Plus de détails sur le site de Rotor.

Veena was a punk rocker.

Je viens tout juste de recevoir ce joli "fan-art" de Veena de la part d'Arnaud Hilmarcher. Il m'en avait parlé y'a déjà un bout, mais enfin, le voila !
Ça me plaît beaucoup et le voici donc !

Pour les curieux, j'ai connu Arnaud y'a presque 10 ans quand il a fait un séjour à Montréal. Ici, il a publié dans MensuHell et en France dans Picsou magazine et Pif Gadget. Trois magazine d'égale importance !

Sa page Deviant est ici.

Une critique de Coeur de Glace.

"Au Québec, les dessinateurs (bédéistes comme on dit là-bas), c'est un peu comme les chanteurs, quand il percent, ils atteignent des sommets dans leur art ! (...) On appréciera beaucoup le graphisme très sobre et un brin rétro d'Eric Thériault (...)"
Tony Larivière rédacteur-en-chef du zine Belge L'Inédit nous fait le plaisir d'une chronique sur le collectif Coeur de Glace (Rotor/400 Coups) auquel j'ai participé avec Les Hiss. On peut la lire ici.
Je signale par la même occasion que L'Inédit avait un spécial Québec l'an dernier et qu'on pouvait y voir de généreux portefolios de Thierry Labrosse, Michel Falardeau, Clément Sauvé, Yanick Paquette, Louis Lachance, Voro, François Miville-Deschesnes, Niko Henrichon, Jimmy Beaulieu, Jacques Lamontagne, Djief et moi-même.
On peut le commander ici.

L'image du jour / Picture of the day : The Terminator War

I'm still working on a schoolbook for Quebec publisher Lidec. Once again, it's for the new program Ethic and Religious Culture. It's a bold new program replacing the old religion/morality course that was there before. The goal is to show an integrated view of various cultures and religions, alongside our everyday pop culture references. So, you get an unusual mix of things to illustrate: Indu gods, points of view about what's freedom, gods of Babylon, the origins of species, Adam and Eve and...as shown today: The Terminator War. It's there to illustrate the concept of "end of the world" very common to many cultures.

L'image du jour / Picture of the day

Illustration for a schoolbook. The theme is gender roles.

Illustration pour un manuel scolaire. Le theme est les roles masculins/féminins.

Ménage de printemps : BD et Comics de ma bibliotheque à vendre !

A vendre.
Il y a un peu de tout...J'ai fait du ménage et j'ai trouvé des choses connues et moins connues. Mes livres sont généralement en très bon état.
Les prix sont à discuter, mais toute bonne offre sera accepté ! Contactez-moi par l'adresse email
mistertheriault@gmail.com


US
Grendel Batman : Devils Dance par Matt Wagner (2 volumes)
Wahoo Morris #1 par Craig A. Taillefer
Thief of Time #0 par Mike Manley (promo)
Black Diamond Detective Agency par Eddie Campbell
Drywall: Unzipped (Scud World spin off)
1963 vol 1-2 écrit par Alan Moore , dessin Veitch, Bisette
Omaha the cat dancer vol 2 #2 par Waller et Worley
El Diablo #3 (Vertigo) par Azzarello et Zezelj
Genus #11 (Comix porno)
Preacher, Gone to Texas (TPB) Ennis et Dillon
Unknown Soldier Dc Comic (TPB) Ennis et Plunkett
Invaders 1-2-3-4 par Roy Thomas et Hoover (Marvel 1993)
Splat #2 (anthology alternative)
Ciderella on Fire par Kevin Thomas (Caliber Press 1994)
Renfield par Garret et Showman (Caliber Press 1994)
Max Burger P.I par Bill Byrne

The extended dream of Mr.D par Max #1-2 (Drawn and Quarterly)

Japon
Ghost in the Shell (Laser card Sticker)

France/Belgique
Spirou Hebdo 2618, 2619
Blondin et Cirage, Le negre Blanc par Jijé
Croisade vol 1 par Dufaux et Xavier (Le Lombard)
Asterix et les Indiens (adaptation dessin animé)
Le Destin de Monique par Claire Brétécher (format poche)
Idées Noires de Franquin (format poche)
Wayne Shelton vol 7 La lance de Longinus par Denayer et Cailleteau chez Dargaud
La Smala vol 1,2,8 par Marco Paulo et Robberecht chez Dargaud 2007
Prince Lao vol 2 par Philippe Gauckler
Makabi vol 4 par Neuray et Brunschwig
Ian vol 4 par Meyer et Vehlmann
Charly vol 13 par Magda et Lapiere

Québec
Nil1 Nilot (mini-comic québécois)
C’est selon (zine québécois 2005)
Sex Wrou (comix français mais réalisé par la québécoise Nataly Nato 2004)
Les aventures de Néciphore_ Iles de la Madeleine (2003) gaudet et Poirier

Romans avec illustration
Le gouffre de la Lune par Abraham Merritt (roman) illustré par Caza
The Bulls and The Bees illustré par N.M. Bodecker
Young Folks’ companion (livre illustré 1898, tres belles gravures)
Jolly Days for Girls (livre illustré 1939, tres belles gravures)

Romans sans illustration
Cannibales par Jacques Bissonnette (polar)
Le tour du sein par Jeanne Painchaud

Revues
Art et Décoration 119, 123 (1966)

Update:
Et voici ce qui reste maintenant:

US
Grendel Batman : Devils Dance par Matt Wagner (2 volumes)
Wahoo Morris #1 par Craig A. Taillefer
Thief of Time #0 par Mike Manley (promo)
Black Diamond Detective Agency par Eddie Campbell
Drywall: Unzipped (Scud World spin off)
Omaha the cat dancer vol 2 #2 par Waller et Worley
El Diablo #3 (Vertigo) par Azzarello et Zezelj
Genus #11 (Comix porno)
Preacher, Gone to Texas (TPB) Ennis et Dillon
Invaders 1-2-3-4 par Roy Thomas et Hoover (Marvel 1993)
Splat #2 (anthology alternative)
Ciderella on Fire par Kevin Thomas (Caliber Press 1994)
Renfield par Garret et Showman (Caliber Press 1994)
Max Burger P.I par Bill Byrne

Japon
Ghost in the Shell (Laser card Sticker)

France/Belgique
Croisade vol 1 par Dufaux et Xavier (Le Lombard)
Asterix et les Indiens (adaptation dessin animé)
Le Destin de Monique par Claire Brétécher (format poche)
Idées Noires de Franquin (format poche)

Québec
Les aventures de Néciphore_ Iles de la Madeleine (2003) gaudet et Poirier

Romans avec illustration
Le gouffre de la Lune par Abraham Merritt (roman) illustré par Caza
Young Folks’ companion (livre illustré 1898, tres belles gravures)
Jolly Days for Girls (livre illustré 1939, tres belles gravures)

Romans sans illustration
Cannibales par Jacques Bissonnette (polar)
Le tour du sein par Jeanne Painchaud

Coeur de Glace publié par Rotor ( Les 400 Coups)

Un nouveau livre ou j'ai une histoire ! Yé ! C'est "Les Hiss", une histoire se déroulant dans le monde de John Star, avec les grosses bêtes de la planète Uranus...Le livre a été dirigé par Michel Viau, mon ancien rédacteur en chef du temps de Safarir, et un bon copain depuis. Il rassemble la crème de ce qui s'est fait en fait de récits complet en science-fiction au Québec. Rotor est un label des éditions Les 400 Coups, et qui est spécialisé dans la littérature "de genre" (sf, polar, fantastique, aventure, etc...). L'autre label est Mécanique Générale spécialisé dans la bd d'auteur. C'est le début d'une belle collaboration pour moi avec Les 400 Coups ! J'avais déjà publié une histoire dans Plan Cartésien (dirigé par Jimmy Beaulieu), mais ce coup-ci c'est plus durable parce que suivra bientôt l'édition intégrale en français de Veena. Cet automne...

Pour d'autres nouvelles, Rotor a une page Facebook ici.

Coeur de glace et autres histoires de demain
par Jean-François Bergeron, Grégoire Bouchard, François Brisson, Simon Dupuis, Forg, Louis Lachance, Daniel Lafrance, François Miville-Deschênes, Gabriel Morrissette, Robert Rivard, Denis Rodier, Paul Roux, Éric Thériault et Elisabeth Vonarburg
120 pages, noir + blanc
Parution : Avril 2009 (Qc) - Juin 2009 (Fr).

Translation of the last John Star page.

For those who are sick of waiting for me to translate the last page of the Veena webcomic, here's something:

Panel 2:
Commander, we have a lot of work ahead of us...
Panel 6:
Emissary Thornston !
Panel 7:
-Mission accomplished !
-Has the teaty been signed ?

Early influences : Mark S. Fisher

I just found the website of an artist that I've been trying to find for a long time: Mark s. Fisher. I read his stories in Heavy Metal magazine in the early to mid '80s. His stuff was surreal and new wavish, not what you'd expect to find in there. They where the kind that I could scrutinize for a long time, some sort of parallel new wave/retro/sci-fi world. I found no trace of him outside of HM for a very long time, no interview, no work that I could see outside of comics...until the advent of blogs, where every one can post online easily. His blog, here. There's not a lot of info in there but lot's of art.
At the time, there were sexy women in HM, sure, but not the tacky big-breasts fetish that Kevin Eastman has imposed there after he bought the magazine. You could find a lot of surreal, ligne claire, Memphis style, new wave, film noir aesthetic, most of it translated from European magazines like Métal Hurlant, Charlie, Écho des Savanes, El Vibora, Frigidaire and others. There was also some american works that were very new and interesting. That's where I discovered Charles Burns, Lou Stathis, Drew Friedman, Rod Kierkegaard, Paul Kirchner and...Mark Fisher!
The was an alternative vein in there. It's true that Raw magazine was not that far away...

Betty Page leaves for pin-up heaven.

News here.

Since Veena has an obvious visual link to Betty Page, I guess I should post this here too.

It's a sad news. I "discovered" her in 1981 while reading Metal Hurlant. Her likeness was used for a character in Bois Willy, the serie that Denis Sire wrote and drew back then. That was way before Dave Stevens's Rocketeer. I guess Sire and Dionnet, his editor, knew of her appeal before most of the planet remembered her in the 90's.

Betty Page seen thru the eye of Denis Sire has probably been a strong influence for me. I'm actually working on a Veena story where Betty Page is not seen but has a big importance.

So her presence will be with me for a long while...

***

I had an earlier post with some picture I did of her here.

Live modeling at Dr. Sketchy with Chastity Chevy

On saturday (november 22nd), I was at the Dr.Sketchy's session of live drawing. The model was Chastity Chevy.

Expozine 2008

Comme à tous les ans depuis les débuts d'Expozine en 2002, j'y aurai ma place, partagée cette fois-ci avec Richard Gagnon. Ça fait depuis les débuts que je vend Veena 1 à 4, puis d'autres trucs comme Johnny Dollar et CandyAppleBlack, et puis je me disais que cette fois j'allais passer mon tour pour une fois puisque j'avais rien de neuf à vendre....
Et tout d'un coup, on a des copies de Typhon, l'anthologie monté par Danny Hellman disponible, et si tout va bien, on aura aussi What the F...? #8. C'est le premier numéro que Richard Gagnon a produit depuis 3 ans. "Comme à l'habitude", y'a des comics jam souvent commencé au Montreal Comix Jam et fini en groupe serré par Gagnon, Marr, Shane Simmons, Jack Ruttan, Tim Moerman, Jeff Leblanc et moi-meme. Entre autres.
J'aurai surement quelques autres trucs, peut-etre les derniers tirages restants de l'an dernier; des illustrations couleurs de Bouddha et les dragons, BattleHymn ou les TMNT. Demandez- moi les s'ils ne sont pas sur la table.

Fan Service For Obama : the bribe to win !

Yes, it's here now !
Obama won in the U.S., the Conservatives are still a minority government in Canada so i'll follow my promise and post the cheesecake !
Just click the picture !
And for the one that Sirkowski promised on the Miss Dynamite site, just go here. He has 3 color pages that will be there for a few days only !!

Your comments are welcome cause i'm a bit jalous that people are only posting on Sirk blog ! By the way, i'm open to commissions, just write me.

Update: Veena, Miss Dynamite and Blackie for Obama.

Last tuesday in canadian elections, the Conservatives (read as Reform Party of Canada) won a minority gouvernment. Their position is actually a bit stronger than before, but still, the first part of our bribe is met.
So, we only need to have the Democrats win the White House on november 4th to have a few naughty drawings.

If you're curious to see how I do cheesecake, the picture in this post is a drawing I did for Keenlace, an annual thing that ComicGenesis does to promote it's webcomics once a year. "Keenlace is a collection of comic characters (male/female/whatever) in their nightwear, underthings or otherwise in dishabille. Pictures range from tame to tempestuous, funny to fell, sweet to sultry..." Since it's a trio, there should be a lot more skin.

Election bribery : Eva and Blackie naked, frenching ( with Veena ?)

Read this here.
Sirkowski is offering to draw his female characters naked frenching, if that somehow can help Obama to win in the US by bribing apathetic american into voting.

Here is my contribution to his comments:

"This is Theriault, the artist of Veena, here.
If Obama win and the Conservative are a minority in Canada, I raise your bet: I will draw a trio with Veena, Blackie and Miss Dynamite !
There!"

Rappel : Lancement de Typhon ce soir chez Monastiraki

Petit rappel pour ceux qui ont oublié :
Y'a lancement ce soir de l'anthologie de BD Typhon monté par Danny Hellman de New York (qui sera là ce soir). En conjonction avec le lancement, il y a une expo d'originaux des auteurs publié dans Typhon. Le thème est libre et j'y ai 4 planches couleur d'une histoire de John Star. J'y sera donc sur place en compagnie de
Richard Gagnon
Rick Trembles
Rupert Bottenberg
Jeff Leblanc
Henriette Valium
Billy Mavreas

Comme l'expo est déja accroché, le lancement représente la fin de l'expo qui sera bientôt décrochée. C'est votre dernière chance !

Le lancement aura lieu de 19h à 22h.

Monastiraki
5478, boul. St-Laurent, Montreal

"New" page on the Veena webcomic.

Yep. I posted a corrected version of this page last week here but I forgot to mention it here. I corrected some things here and there. You might notice.

It's not moving much on the webcomic page for a few reasons: I'm pretty busy with freelance illustration work : i've mostly been doing schoolbooks illustrations for the new "Ethic and religion" program that the Quebec Government is putting into place. It might sound boring but the subjects to draw are actually fun to do. I have to draw stuff that show the variety of culture and religions that the world had. So, I drew Ishtar, goddess of fertility, a werewolf, an amazon, Gilgamesh, Enkidu and a group of Hindu gods. Sort of "the official handbook of the Marvel Universe", but with world mythology.
I also worked for the Cirque Du Soleil visualising pre-production idea for a new show. But as is usual with these things, I signed a non-disclosure agreement. So i'll stay silent.

But as far as comics go, i'm not doing much with the webcomic because I have a book deal with 400 Coups. We'll be putting out "The Complete Veena" in french all in one book, with color and, a new story ! I'm happy about that since it's something that was missing: i'm living in Quebec where there is a good bande-dessinée culture going around, some publishers, a few festivals and book fairs, etc. And because Veena was done in english with an eye on the bigger english language readers, it's not that well known here. That book might change that. I hope.

Hopefully, the book should be out for spring 2009. Until then, I have to rescan everything, translate, color and do a new story. Lots of work.

I have done about 10 more pages of the John Star story that is "running" now , so i'll post them during that same period. Thanks for staying around !

******

And Gabe Puratekuta:
In the comment section below, plug your webcomic !

Montreal comic convention

I'll be there on saturday.

Studio 3265: " Spiderman Brand new day - Extra ! "

Y'a quelques semaines déjà est sorti le numéro spécial de " Spiderman Brand new day - Extra ! ". Il contiens 3 récits complets. L'un d'eux est une histoire dessinée par Pat Oliffe qui a un style entre Romita Jr et Ron Frenz. Du genre efficace, sans être vraiment original. Serge Lapointe a eu l'occasion d'en faire l'encrage des personnages et moi des décors.

La même semaine est sorti le Cable presqu'entièrement dessiné par Michel Lacombe. Voir ici.

Et comme on ne prend pas les superhéros au sérieux, dans le Safarir d'octobre prochain, la serie Stats que je dessine sur des scénario de Kurt Beaulieu se moquera des fan de comic books !

Iggy Pop au Comic Jam de Montréal !

Voici l'événement tel qu'il m'a été décrit pas Richard Gagnon: durant le Comic Jam régulier, comme c'est l'habitude tous les dernier jeudi du mois, les réguliers et irréguliers des Jam se pointent au Bar des Pins et jasent, boivent et sont concentrés sur leurs papiers à dessiner... Il faut savoir que le Bar des Pins est une brasserie des plus banales avec des tables simples (mais très bonne pour dessiner), des TV au murs diffusant généralement des sports populaires comme le soccer et le hockey, et au haut-parleurs, des vieux hits rock entendus milles fois. La place n'est pas hip, mais elle fait sa fonction de façon utile tout en ajoutant un coté un peu kitch et ridicule avec ses vieux monsieurs qui sentent le fond de tonne et qui nous regardent avec curiosité...Richard Gagnon voit entrer un monsieur un peu agé entrer accompagné de deux autres types. Il a des cheveux long blond. Il s'avance un peu comme s'il cherchait quelqu'un. Regarde autour de lui et Richard s'écrie: "Hey, there's Iggy!". Après un petit moment, l'homme se retourne et ils repartent. Rick retourne à feuilleter la section musicale du Montreal Mirror puis après un moment me dit: "c'était bien Iggy Pop. Il est entré et est ressorti ". Et justement le Mirror disait qu'il était à Montréal pour un show et c'était bien lui en photo dans l'article...Rick préviens quelques gens autour qui ont vu le "monsieur" eux aussi, mais seul Kurt Beaulieu l'avait aussi reconnu.
Oui, on a vu Iggy Pop en visite au Comic jam de Montréal ! Et c'était gratuit !

Extrait d'un article de CTV.ca:

lean, sober Iggy Pop still has lust for life
Updated Sat. Aug. 2 2008 10:32 AM ET
The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- Punk pioneer Iggy Pop is legendary for his live shows - a frenetic explosion of energy in which his wiry, half-naked frame shoots across the stage and back again, with an occasional trip to the edge of the stage to berate a lethargic onlooker.

But Pop, now 61, says the unbridled frenzy of his youth has been tamed with sobriety and age. Despite that, the veteran rocker, along with his band the Stooges, heads to Canada this weekend for a couple of shows in Montreal and Toronto with promises he'll offer more than most performers half his years can muster.

Hommages à Stéphane Peru et autres illustrations.

J'ai beau essayer, j'y arrive pas vraiment: j'arrive pas à bloguer. Je suis pas capable de m'asseoir à tous les jours et à donner des nouvelles de ce qui se passe dans ma vie ou dans ma carrière. Une fois de temps en temps, oui, mais jamais assez pour que lire ces "news" donnent une image claire de mon activité puisqu'il manque toujours des bouts...J'arrive pas à trouver que les détails de ma vie privée ont de l'importance si ce n'est relié à mon dessin d'une façon ou d'une autre. Pour ça, je garde généralement ma fiction et mon écriture d'histoires pour transmettre ce que je ressens et mes idées. Peut-être que c'est des façons simplement différentes de voir l'écriture. Il y a des types qui écrivent des blogs et d'autres qui écrivent des fictions...

Mais bon, quand même, je vais essayer de garder mes nouvelles à jour. Voici donc.

***

Au Québec en ce moment, probablement le mois dernier en France et ailleurs, est sorti en kiosque le numéro 18 de Fathom (mai 2008) édité en français par Delcourt. Dans la section des invités vers la fin, j'y ai un dessin de Aspen Matthews dont voici une petite version. J'ai essayé de me ré-approprier le personnage un peu et le résultat, du moins au niveau de la composition, me semble plus proche de Mike Mignola que de Michael Turner, le créateur de Aspen. J'avais le choix et j'aurais aussi pu faire Spawn, mais comme on dit "fais ce que tu connais", j'ai préféré faire une jolie fille plutôt qu'un gros gars hargneux avec des chaînes ! On y aussi retrouve d'autres artistes dont Tiphaine, Geyser (Omnopolis) et Anthony Dugenest (Bayou Girl, Studio Makma).

Ce numéro m'est aussi assez spécial pour une raison assez personnelle mais qui touche aussi plein d'autres personnes. C'est un numéro hommage oû plein d'artistes qui ont connu Stéphane Péru y font un dessin ou un petit texte à sa mémoire. Stéphane est décédé en février dernier a l'âge de 26 ans d'un problème au coeur. De façon totalement subite. Stéphane était coloriste avec nous au Studio 3265 depuis 2 ans et était devenu plus qu'un confrère de travail, un ami. Les photos de mon mariage en septembre 2007 ont pris une touche encore plus spéciale quand je pense que Stéphane y était et son plaisir et son enthousiasme pour cet événement était palpable. En dessous de son blabla de célibataire qui ne veut pas trop s'attacher, je crois qu'il était touché par nos voeux et il nous a montré a quel point il était un grand sensible alors qu'il nous aidait à monter nos bagages à nos chambres...
Thierry Mornet de Delcourt a donc organisé une section hommage auquel j'ai participé en compagnie d'autres de ses amis et confrères en France, ou il a démarré sa carrière avec son frère Olivier. On peut y voir du Patrick Lesparre (Quentin le Seul), Reed Man (Strange, Reptile), Patrick Dumas, Chris Malgrain, Anne Rouvin, Didier Tarquin (Lanfeust de Troy), Louis et Sebastien Lamirand (Tessa).

Panini, qui traduit X-Men en France y est aussi allé d'une page souvenir dans le Astonishing X-Men 35, le tout organisé par Olivier Jalabert des éditions Soleil. Voici mon dessin pour l'occasion. Les autres ayants participés sont Yanick Paquette (Young X-Men), encré par Serge Lapointe (Teen Titan year one) et coloré par Richard Isanove (Wolverine: Origin), Aleksi Briclot et Louis (Tessa, 42).

***

Dans un autre ordre d'idée, j'ai aussi eu une autre illustration dans le numéro anniversaire des 20 ans de Sortez la Chienne, le zine de la ville de Lille publié par Jean-Jacques Tachdjian (dit El Rotringo). Tachdjian a édité ce zine dans les années 80-90 et c'est un retour qu'il fait depuis quelques années. SLC a été depuis ses débuts dans les années '80, un des premiers graphzines underground mélangeant bd, art et graffiti oû tout l'underground mondial a fait une apparition y compris les québécois comme Valium et Siris. Siris est d'ailleur de nouveau de la partie avec une illustration. Alors donc, ne vous surprenez pas si ça n'a visuellement pas grand rapport avec les paragraphes précédents oû je parle de Marvel, Panini, Soleil et Fathom (en cherchant bien y'a un vague lien entre Soleil et SLC puisque Jean Wacquet, directeur chez Soleil a participé à SLC dans les années 80 avant de partir sa propre librairie Dangereuses Visions.)

***

Voila, dans mon prochain post, je pourrai sûrement donner quelques détails sur le projet en gestation chez 400 Coups...

Tripping The Rift

 

Six.
I heard that there was some possibility of a job with something related to Tripping The Rift, the cartoon show on Teletoon, here in Quebec. So, to show the client and also for fun, I did a pin-up of Six, just to show them what I could do with it.
***
For more pin-up and cheesecake art, view my gallery.

The Abominable Charles Christopher and other updates.

I've made some update and improvement to the webcomic page in the last month, trying to find a way to make it look a bit more lively.
One of the thing that were there, then removed because the company went out of business, and then but back in was the chatterbox. You may have noticed it. I hope you like the possibility of commenting on the webcomic. But maybe people will "chatter" a bit more once we get to the new pages of the John Star storyline.

I've also added a new "associate webcomic". It's called The Abominable Charles Christopher. It's written and drawn by Karl Kerchl. Karl is one of the guys I share the 3265 Studio with. While Karl is physically in Montreal working with us, he's mentally unfaithful to us with another group of cartoonists in Toronto. The group is called Transmission X and they do various comic and illustration work for big and small companies while still being masters of their own destinies by doing and posting to the world nine different webcomics. Great work that you should check out.
A bit more about Karl ? From the Transmission X site:

KARL KERSCHL :

Karl has been drawing comics for 14 years. He has worked on Superman, The Flash, Robin and the Teen Titans, among other heroic things, and recently self-published a graphic novella for the band Ragni, which he wrote and drew. He is currently working on an original graphic novel and producing weekly webcomics with his pals in Toronto.He has two very demanding and overweight cats, both of whom are French-Canadian.

While i've never met his cats, I can attest to the fact that french-canadian cats are not all overweight. Mine is not. There.
And about Tranmission X:

Transmission-X is a web-comics anthology created by a collective of illustrators and writers based out of Toronto, Canada. Featuring the work of acclaimed industry veteran Karl Kerschl (Superman, Teen Titans: Year One), Andy Belanger, Michael Cho, Claudia Davila, Scott Hepburn, Brian Mclachlan, Ramon Pérez and Eisner Award nominees Cameron Stewart (The Other SIde, Catwoman, Seaguy) and Arthur Dela Cruz (Kissing Chaos). Transmission-X is updated daily with free, original content.

John Star is now a Facebook Group.

Yes, I'm getting into the facebook thing like everyone else ! I've had a Facebook page since last year, but mostly I use it with my friends and want to keep it personal. But I used the Group function to create a page about John Star. It can help gather readers from the Facebook network and keep them posted about new work being published on the webcomic.
So if you are on Facebook, it's an invitation: come join the group !

***

In the meantime, the Veena webcomic is still in rerun of the "The Expanding Spiral" story. After that, the rerun will be of the John Star storyline. At that point new material never seen anywhere will be posted.
To celebrate that, i'll do a redesign of the page.

Order of The Solar Temple ! For your childrens !

Yes, that's my current job. I'm working on a schoolbook where comics are used to help teenagers to understand hot topics like gangs, religious activities like shamanism or civil rights. In this case the topic is the dangers of cults or "religious" sects. The particular cult they are covering is the OTS, the Order of The Solar Temple, very active in Quebec and other french speaking countries during the 1980s and 90s.
It's a 28 pages story and here is the first finished colored page. I'm doing the pencils and the inks and I have 2 colorists.
More details soon.

A new chatterbox called Shoutbox !

I have added a new "chatterbox" on the Veena webcomic page. The old one was gone because the Chatterbox company that made it, somehow went kaput. I haven't really ressearched the reasons and simply decided to remove it. It made the webpage look defective...
Months have gone by. I was too busy with illustrations and paying comic work, the Veena webcomic went into re-runs. The John Star story left hanging there...
But now, even in re-runs we get closer to the John Star story and i'll have new pages to add in a few months.
So, i'll make a few changes to the network of webpages that I have...(on ComicGenesis, Videotron, ComicSpace, My Space, etc...) and try to recenter things a little bit. I may have to remove the french section for a little while.

So, what am I working on ? The story of the Order of The Solar Temple ! It's a 28 pages story, all in color for a schoolbook in Quebec high schools. As strange as it may seem, they want to use the OTS story as a warning on cults for the Ethic And Religion program.
So, very busy with that for a month yet.

Des tirés à part à l'Expozine - Update

Lors de l'Expozine 2007, qui se tiendra la fin de semaine prochaine, Éric Thériault offrira en exclusivité trois tirés à part en couleurs, numérotés et signés.

L'éditeur de ces pièces est La Grande Ourse, organisateur du festival d'Andenne et éditeur de L'Inédit, le magazine belge spécialisé dans le portefolio de planches et d'illustrations inédites (d'où le nom!).

© BDQuébec.

******

Update:

Expozine a très bien été ! Les ventes ont été bonnes et il y avait plein de gens en visite pour la journée ou j'étais là. J'y ai été samedi mais pas dimanche. A coté de moi, y'avait mon scénariste de la chronique Stats dans Safarir, Kurt Beaulieu qui vendait sa musique concrète sur CD et son nouveau mini-comic; Nicolas Plamondon et son nouveau zine "La mort, cette retardataire" ; Blonk; Francis Hervieux et MensuHell et, bien sur, Sirkowski et ses rats vendant Miss Dynamite.
Tiens, Jack Ruttan a pris plusieures photo qu'il nous montre sur sa page de Flicker. Il y a aussi Veronique qui en a prises quelques unes. Si d'autres gens ont des liens a ajouter ou des commentaires pour Expozine, signalez-les moi.
Jack: Jour 1
Jack: Jour 2
Jack: les rats de Sirkowski.
Veronique: Ici

Reactor Girl #6

Tom Spurgeon talked about an old anthology I contributed to in 1991. Here.

WWW.4x6-ART.COM

Here.

And my art here.

Safarir 225, juillet 2007

Kurt Beaulieu et moi continuons de faire la chronique illustrée des Stats. Depuis 3 mois déja, Kurt m'écrit le scénario et j'illustre à la ligne avec tons de gris. Comme le nom l'indique, c'est une série de gags basés sur les statistiques venant de Léger et Léger, Ipsos et autres irritants des sondages téléphoniques... Malgré mes peurs, l'humour de Kurt passe assez bien la transition à la formule du gag traditionnel de Saf. Et on réussi meme à y faire des références bédé: Sabine, personnage fétiche de Kurt y fait une apparition et on a réussi à glisser Le Père Lacloche (Pete the tramp) dans le role d'un clochard de Montréal. Le personnage de Clarence D. Russell créé en 1932 réussi assez bien la transition ! Faut dire que la pauvreté continue d'etre d'actualité...
La couverture, visible ici, montre bien sûr les Tetes à Claques. Saf s'accroche à leur 15 minutes de gloire, ce qui a tres bien marché la derniere fois qu'ils étaient en couverture.

Betty Page art

The drawing in this post is a special "commission". I was asked to give some art for a charity. I must admit that I did not understand all the details, the original message was in Italian but I did get that they were trying to sell artwork to help fund an african charity, in Tanzania. An italian penpal gave my name and I wound up in the company of Milo Manara, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Gabriel of the eight, Giuseppe of Bernardo, Corrado Mastantuono, Fabrizio Fiorentino and Stefano Raffaele. I'm impressed that Manara is in there...Anyway, since these artists are in the "good girl" style, I decided to use an idea for a future project and explore it a bit in this context. Plus, Betty Page is easily recognisable. So if you want to buy my artwork, you should get in touch with Roberto Riccio here and here.

Chatterbox problems....

If your reading this news from the Veena webcomics page, you can look right next to this news box and you'll see a Chatterbox. Right now it doesn't look like much because it seems that Flooble, the company that manage the code, lost something to make it work...I have no idea how to fix this. I might have to install a new account, or simply to forget about the whole thing. If you think it's useful, just write me !It's kinda bad. I think we lost a lot of messages...among them all those from Michele Laframboise and her boyfriend who posted regularly, and even recently that guy who was a fan of Alphaville and saw Lemmy Caution in the look of one character in this story....

Also, you may have noticed that there is no longer a link to the Forum page. It's because I decided that it wasn't really what I needed. Initially, the forum was shared between 2 webcomics: Veena and The Eight. Since it's writer, Steve Requin, was the main moderator and not me, when he stopped updating his comic in 2005, he stopped maintaining it on a regular basis, ad ware began to post junk and I could not do much about it. These problems lead to disuse of the forum, among other things .It's too bad because it was useful to make people know about each other's webcomics...A form of cross pollination. Maybe I could try to do a similar thing with Miss Dynamite where a lot of my readers link from, or a could maybe open a Comicgenesis forum account ...

Montréal Comic Con - Sunday April 22nd

I always forget to mention those things... I talk about my trip to Toronto but never mention it when it's a convention from home...
I've been invited to the Montréal Comic Con next Sunday. Other guests will include David Finch, Serge Lapointe, Clément Sauvé and Sirkowski.

The details:

Sunday 22nd April
From 10am to 5pm
DIRECTIONS: PALAIS DES CONGRES
By Metro: Take the metro (subway) to the PLACE-D'ARMES station, located under the Palais, and follow the signs.
Walking: The building of the Palais takes the whole block surrounded by Viger Ave. (North), Saint-Antoine Street (South), Saint-Urbain Street (East), and Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle (West), an extension of De Bleury Street.

See you there!

Deja Voodoo !

Somewhere in the late 80's, there was a band called Deja Voodoo. I was a huge fan of their sludgeabilly swamp music. Every time they played in Montreal, I was there. They were Gerard Van Herk and Tony Dewald and played a very stripped down type of rockabilly.They dressed very simply; short hair, suits and bow ties or maybe a plastic spider instead of a tie ? At some point Van Herk decided to publish a comic book with short stories about music. When I heard about it I jumped on the opportunity. That was my first "comic book".
Here's a Youtube where you can hear them play.
They were my favorite band from my arrival in Montreal at 17 up to when they stopped playing in the very early 90s, so that little thing is my tribute to them for the fun they gave me and for publishing me.
Eventually, i'll put a scan of the cover of this comic.They have a MySpace page here.

Attack of the 5' 6" woman !

That's the name of a very short story I did for Femforce #138. That happened unexpectedly: a pen pal from Italy was supposed to have a 2 page story we did published in an Italian magazine. That could not be done, so he sent it to AC Comics for use in Femzine. That's how I got in touch with them, just to get my artist comp copies.

They liked my art, and were in a rush to finish Femforce 138, where the theme is GTS, i.e. Giant Women, a bit like seen in the movie Attack of the 50 foot woman. I proposed my own take on it, a reversal of the theme. They agreed. So the title is Attack of the 5' 6" woman !
I did the plot and the pencils and the final script and the inks are by Mark Heike.
AC Comics are known as one of the 4 companies that started the Direct Sale market . The other being Pacific, First and Eclipse. They are well known for their dedication at reprinting the art of the golden age of comic book.

Update : March 4th
The Femforce message board has a review by Paul here.
An excerpt:
"In the next story, “Attack of the 5'6" Woman,” newcomer to AC, Eric Theriault, with assists by the Heikes, delivers a fun story that plays with the Giant Woman conventions a little bit. It’s well-paced and I liked that the reader knows what’s going on but the protagonist does not. It’s a mix of cheesecake and the old “Land of the Giants” tv series (and, if you’re old enough to remember that I guess I just gave away the surprise).


****

By the way, if you are here because you typed " feet stuck in glue ", maybe you should write me privately...

I'm interviewed on Bedeka.

I'd like to make an invitation to everyone who can read french to read an interview that Eric Lamiot did with me last summer on the Bedeka web site, but has only recently been posted on the site.
I'm pointing it because, em..it's an interview with me, but also because the updates on the news section of that site are pretty irregular these days and maybe nobody see them anymore.
It's here.


Questions cover my coloring on "Quentin le seul" a serie by Patrice Lesparre done for Pif Gadget (Pif is a kid magazine published for France's market), work published by Delcourt and Bamboo translating comic books originally done for the american indy market (Battle Hymn, The Goon, Grounded) and some news on my webcomic Veena, where John Star is now being serialised.

Ciao!

The end of the world !!

While surfing, I found a page on the Montreal Mirror site that had art I did nearly 8 years ago ! That was when 1999 was synonymous with the end of the world, or at least with the Millenium Bug.
It's here.
Once a year, the Montreal Mirror asked editor Rupert Bottenberg to built a whole issue full of cartoons, so that the journalists could take a vacation during the Christmas time. That was a good idea and they should bring it back !
My style was a bit simpler back then...

My Comic Space

By now everyone has a My Space page. I'm not sure what's the use really...I did not care about it very much until I was invited by the OnlineComic administrator (where you can subscribe to get updates about the veena webcomic) to a sort of My Space dedicated to comic creators. I registered, so now I have a ComicSpace page under my name. And, why the hell not, I made one for Veena on My Space.
Here are the adresses.
ComicSpace: Theriault
My Space: Veena

Hopefully, we'll be able to post updates on our pages there that could be a form of broadcast.

Lots of guests art and a brand new Archive section !

On Comicgenesis message board here, I recently made an offer to trade guest art for a link and some good word of mouth in the news section. The only requirement is that it be about Veena or any character or situation from the webcomic.

I was happy with the result. 4 very good artists answered the call and a few more made promises. You may already have noticed that the last 2 weeks of strips were fill-in. The first one was from Roman Wunderlich, artist of B-Movie Comic. He actually did 3 different pieces, all done with a great sense of humour and great colors. This week's piece is called Veena Yaoi but should be called John Star Yaoi, making fun of the friendship of John and Paul-Hitler-Dixon, and at the same time turning on it's head the nastiness of the nazi look.That was one invitation I was making : I want artist with styles that are different from mine. I want to see how they interpret the characters, especially the manga style. That's what I got from G.L. Gillen, the artist of Squid Ninja. But his style is so round and cute that it seem to be from beyond manga and maybe more from old Warner Brother cartoons.
Next week will be the one by Nathan Birch of Zoology. He just did a pose of Veena herself and he really got the attitude right. Even the clothing is perfect down to the panties animal patterns !

I'll be back with more comments from 2 others after that.

******
You may have noticed that I did a few changes on the Veena webcomic page. By popular demand I added an archive page. So you have one now. You might say it's in beta version cause it's full of bugs. But it'll get you where you want. I've done it in a "summary" style cause unless you are doing a daily humour strip, i think the calandar style is pretty useless. It doesn't tell you anything about what you might want to read. So I hope that adding that will help to read more than just the early strips or the most recent ones.

Interviewed for Adventures Into Digital Comics

Last year, I was interviewed by Sebastien Dumesnil for his new movie Adventures Into Digital Comics. It took a while to be ready, but the movie is now finished and has begun to travel to cinema festival worldwide. The interview is not actually in the movie but served to frame some informations about comics. It's now online here.

This is how their website describe the movie:
"What is a comic book? How has the use of computers changed the creation process of print comics? Should webcomics be created in such a way that they cannot be sold as books? When does a webcomic stop being a comic and enter the realm of animation? Can webartists live from their work? These are some of the questions we try to answer in Adventures Into Digital Comics, a documentary film analyzing the events that changed the comic book industry and art form over the last decade. Investigating the work and ideas of established and up and coming comic artists, director Sébastien Dumesnil offers the audience a vision of the future of a rapidly evolving medium. The film opens a window onto the dynamic renaissance of the comic taking place today on the web, exploring the obsessions and passions, not to mention the ever present struggle to survive, of the artists behind the images. Official Selection Icon 2006!"

Rebooting the webcomic ?

I need your input on what to do. The story going on right now in the Veena webcomic has about 15 pages to go before the end of the John Star adventure. But since I'm working on a lot of other stuff, I won't really be able to put a lot of time on it.As I've said before, i'm now working on a 7 pages Turtle story and will soon begin to do more schoolbook illustrations.

Would you be pissed off if I rebooted to the beginning while I finish the story ? Then at least, new visitors would have something to read on a regular basis instead of feeling that this webcomic is dead.
You can vote and comment on this here.

Updates on my new work : Turtles !

I have now finished working on the pitch for the French publishers. The 5 pages are done and lettered. After little tweaks here and there, my writer will be able to go and meet the publishers personally (he's in Paris). I'm crossing my finger that this is my next project.

In the meantime, i've got more to do: a 7 pages Turtle story to be published in Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ! I have the script in hand and i'm already working on it. I guess that should be out next spring. I'm glad they got back to me since I have not done any work for them since last year when I did 2 illustrations for Tales of TMNT.

Yé !

Back from the Toronto Comics Convention

I'’m back from the Toronto comic con (whose official name is Fan Expo Canada 2006). I was there for the 3 days and I traveled with Sirkowski (artist on Miss Dynamite).

It was my 3rd year there and it will be my last. Unless something really drastic change. I usually go there with copies of my Veena comic book and some of my art hoping to make some sales and get in touch with some readers. Unfortunately, it seem the con is not designed to work that way. I was there as a Guest. It mean I do not pay to get there and depending on where you are on the totem pole, some or all of your expenses are paid. If you are a tv or movie actor, even a voice actor, you get a fee to even be there. If you work for Marvel or DC on a popular book, travel and lodging is cared for. Otherwise, if like me you are defined as an “"indie artist"”, you're left alone. I'’m not really complaining here that I'’m not famous and all that shit. I'’m just annoyed that the whole con has taken the route of adding so much diversions like toys, movie, and multimedia that just being a real live artist willing to chat and meet readers is not interesting enough. In fact, most of the foot traffic does not even seem to be made of comic readers.
Eventually, I think I should go to other cons like Paradise or that one I'’m told that the Beguiling is organizing. I'’m a bit removed from all the turf wars that apparently happened between HobbyStar and Paradise, but it'’s probable that all the comic readers and interesting artists moved there. Gone are the nice artists I met like Kean or the Flight crew, and gone are the studios like Dreamwave or Mirage. That last studio I met last year, and that'’s how I got the Turtle art gig. Some of that art attracted attention when people were looking thru my portfolio. That underline even more the fact that it'’s a very mainstream, commercial convention, and that you need to work on a recognizable franchise to be noticed.

Good points: some of the artists I met like Ghastly from Ghastly Comic , Paul D. Storrie, Sulley Fattah, Larry Handcock, Michael Chan of Anime Iku and a few others !

A cool Tiki !

I just re-did the index page of this site. So now, instead of a photography of me that does nothing to inform that it's a site about my art, you get a cool tiki. I like tiki, that, i'm sure you could guess...It remind me of those old Elvis movies where he sang on a beach with cute girls and a dune buggy. Anyone know which movie it is? It also remind me of old Kirby monsters stories. Go figure....
The old blue photo is still on the biography page. My fiancée, Harmelle, took it.

The forum is alive once again !

As the title says, yes, it's back on. For a while, this forum that I share with Steve Requin's The Eight got locked to everyone not registered because some robots were posting junk and nonsense...That was the only way to stop that for a while. Then Steve had "life" get in the way of his involvement with his webcomic and things stuck at that point.
Now he's back, the forum is now unlocked to all. The Eight even has new pages that will be posted on a new site soon.

As to why Veena doesn't have her own forum, even if she should : Here is the reason. All the webcomics I see do seem to have their own forum. What happen is that if every one has one, then nobody goes to one. If I stay on my forum waiting to have people come, and Acid Keg's fans do the same, then nobody is discovering new comics and all webcomics become little incestuous cliques. To broaden the readership you have to go and meet. That's what I do when I go to many message boards of webcomics like Comic Genesis, Buzzcomix, Café Salé, The Comic journal, Comicon, BD Québec, Bédéka and others. It's about networking.
So come and chat about Veena and about anything you want. You can even come and promote yourself. We'll listen.

Art of the Day : 2

I just got a Wacom Tablet for my birthday and this is my first try at color with it. It's really fun and a big improvement on the mouse ..! It's for an History book and this is a chapter on Imperialism in the 19-20th century.

Carle Bacha and Bernie Mireault

Only one day left before the start of the new story, so I should mention a few things about the guest art. That last piece was done by Carle Bacha, inked and colored by Bernie Mireault.

Years before Veena was a webcomic, it was a comic book, and before that, a mini-comic distributed by mail thru promotion in a small press magazine called Factsheet Five. It was done on a few folded pieces of paper, photocopied, hand stapled and mailed for a few quarters. That'’s how it was done in those far away times before the Internet, where as now everything is free and available making everyone happy!
I'’m not sure how that drawing came about. My fuzzy memory says it might have been done during a "“NovaCon"”, a sort of mini convention taking place at the Nova bookshop (in Montreal, Canada) in the early '‘90s. Could be seen there were the local underground cartoonists, and a few mainstream ones. There might have been a comic jam taking place where Carle Bacha did a drawing of Veena. And Bernie Mireault took a big marker and inked it. I liked it enough to put it in the mini-comic.
Years later, when I reprinted part of the pages in the comic book version, I remembered about that page and asked Bernie if he wanted to color it for the back cover of #2.

What happened with those guys? Well, Bernie Mireault is now doing coloring for the Revolution on the Planet of the Apes comic book as well as working on a graphic novel, now halfway done. He has a web site here.


And Carle is still at it doing animation. Here are a few links on Newgrounds for his latest shorts. They are very cool !

A B C D

The ones with Dr. Wigglepecker are done in collaboration with Rupert Bottenberg. Rupert is also one that has done a few comic pages in the early Veena mini-comics. He has no page to showcase his work that I know of, but he should ! He'’s now a music editor at the Montreal Mirror.

Music on those shorts is by The Unireverse, a fun psychedelic Moog rock band.

Art of the day : 1

This is a cover illustration for a schoolbook. It's for reading French.

In stores: ABC : A to Z #3

It's been a while but I have a few new works in comic books, from now to the next few months.
First, the one that is available in the stores right now:
ABC : A to Z #3
That's a spin off of Terra Obscura, that serie written by Peter Hogan and based on Alan Moore's concepts, drawn by Yanick Paquette with various inkers, among them Karl Story and Serge Lapointe. You might remember that I did a few flashback pages to help Yanick get that "golden age" flavor. Well, the new book by Wildstorm recap everything and is a sort of "Official Handbook".



The second is, ta-dah , Tales of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle # 21. It will be in stores in March. I have a frontspiece page introducing this issues theme : cowboys and cows. That is the first of a few project that I have with Mirage Studios. Another frontspiece page will be published later this year and I also have a full story waiting for the approval of Mr. Peter Laird (one of the famous creators).If everything goes well this one should be written and drawn by me and starring Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo in the New York subway and meeting ghosts. I know its one of my regular theme but....Well, they always say that you should write about what you know....

Beside that, I have helped once again Michel Lacombe on more Star Wars comics (it's becoming more and more regular for Michel !) But due to my time being used on school books illustrations, I could not help him much. Only a panel here and there. But that should be in Star Wars Rebellion #0 (in march) and #3.

Cy-Boar, Veena and guest art.

Artist Lou Graziani and I have done some exchange of guest art for our webcomics. But we could not synchronize it to be put in between stories at the same time and do some cross promo. So my art, a version of his Jill the sexy hillbilly girl- was on his site last month here.
And his version of Veena is here. So it's an exchange of cheesecake !
Cy-Boar has also a ton of guest art that you should check out. I have a little less guest art, but the next one should be by Bernie Mireault, the artist of The Jam.

We hope you'll check out the stories that goes with the guest art.
Cy-Boar is the story of a cyborg human-boar that has many adventure against the army or groups of super-villains. It remind me of an old Hulk comic from the '70s. I also like the coloring. I think Lou has a gift for it.
And Veena is...well, you already know if you're here.

Stephane Peru, our new colorist.

You guys already know that I share studio space with other cartoonists? ( Yes, I've mentioned this a few times already....) Early this November, one French guy from France phoned us saying he heard about our studio from Wes Craig and he wanted to know if he could work with us. We learned his name is Stephane Peru and he's a colorist for albums on the European French market for publishers like Soleil, Delcourt and Semic among others. We like to have talented people like that so the next day, he brought his Mac and began to work !
Stephane is a very upbeat nice guy and he bring his coloring experience to us. It's a valuable thing since we did not have that expertise inside the studio. Serge Lapointe sometimes work with Blond, Michel Lacombe, Frefon and I color our own work but it's different.
Stephane worked with his brother Olivier on a 3 part serie called Shaman for Soleil.You should try to find it. It's worth it.

Webcomics of the week

There are a few webcomics that I promised to highlight recently.

Liriel has put me as a "link of the week" on her BadBlood webcomic main page. That was the second time in a year so I promised I would do the same. Better late than never, so here it is! Here is how it's described on the Online Comics directory:

BadBlood by Liriel McMahon
Chance? Fate? ...or pawn? Jared fights to keep his soul, find redemption, and challenge an evil as old as civilization. A mature vampire tale set in Seattle and updated every Thursday!

It's been online for the last 3 years so there are a lot of pages to read, enough to lose yourself in it for a while. Liriel is also an active participant on Buzzcomix and other forums about webcomics.

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I'd also like to mention that AcidKeg is back with a new story. It's been out of circulation for the last 6-8 months and was missed by all the fans of retro-cool art.
If you like Veena, you're likely to like it too.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!!

There is one thing I did not mention from my last convention trip in Toronto.
I usually use the time I'm there to go and show my portfolio to various studios and artists. After all, I'm a freelancer, so I have to be seen to be hired...One of those studios was the Mirage Studio, publisher of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had the opportunity to chat with Peter Laird, one of the original creators. Seem he liked my art enough to recommend me to his producer...So two weeks ago, they get back to me to do a try-out for some art to be published in "Tales of the TMNT". You can see in the portfolio folder, the Leonardo drawings I've done as a test. They liked it, so soon you'll see some of my comic art there.
It's about time I did more pencils in a comic book. I think the last time I did my own pencil and art AND was credited was the Johnny Dollar book.

Upgrade to the website

I've made some upgrades to this site and the webcomic site.
The portfolio has a better presentation. There, you'll now be able to see part of the art I did for Quebec's schoolbooks in the course of the last year. These books were mostly about the history of the Americas from the early days to the 16th century. You'll also see some of the art I did for Safarir.
The links have been moved from the webcomics page to the main site, with all the others. That way the webcomic will avoid the cluttered look.

I've also repaired the store. For a while there was a problem with ordering with Paypal. That should be okay now. By the way, if you are a reader of the webcomic, did you know that the present story is reprinted from the comic book? So if you want to own these stories, you can without copying the art to your computer disk. And you can learn what happens before the other online readers!

Neal Adams, Toronto and Star Wars

My visit to Toronto, you ask?

It went modestly well. I was there as a guest, so I had a table for my art and stuff. What I do usually, is to put on the table my portfolio usually used to show potential editors, and I add next to it a sampling of my various self-published books or mostly solo jobs. These day, I have Veena 1 to 4, some CandyAppleBlack and Johnny Dollar.
My dream of course would be to sell tons of those and make some money at the same time as I reach new readers. Unfortunately, it seems that our reason to be there is actually a little more confuse: we're there to chat with the con goers and mostly to do drawings for them. If you're well known enough I guess they ask for drawings of your characters. But mostly, they ask for heroes from Marvel or Dc. Or some sexual fetish (long story here...). Or some drawing tips (but no storytelling tips...) So after my initial reluctance of last year, I began to draw what they asked. I did Death (the one from Vertigo with the small tits, not to be confused with Lady Death the one with the big tits), a panel for a comic jam, a lady with her feet stuck in glue (that's the sexual fetish ! ), a Batman, etc, etc...
The comic jam panel was for 4 Koma to be used on the Anime London web site. What I was asked was a variation on the usual cadavre exquis technique. The subject was taboo and the other artists were Ryan Miller, Janet Heatherington and Benjamin Rivers.
Another jam was done with Michel Lacombe who sat next to me. In fact, part of our studio was there, since we went with Yanick Paquette and his girlfriend, Marie-Pier Elie.
We also went to the lunch paid by Diamond on the Saturday night. Mostly people from Marvel and Dc, so I was not in a territory too familiar. The only fun thing is that Neal Adams sat close to me on a table at an angle from me. I was told who I was looking at, and he saw me looking at him, so he saluted me. Of course, he had absolutely no idea who I was, but he probably did not want to be impolite. The next morning, I also had a nice breakfast with Dale Eaglesham and his lovely wife. I met them a few months earlier at a con in Montreal. Dale was recently drawing Villains United.

And that's about it.


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By the way, Star Wars : Empire # 34 should be out soon. Michel Lacombe did all the pencils and I helped on a good deal of the backgrounds and high tech ships and vehicles. All the art is pencil only, meaning that it's colored without being inked.
You can see samples here.

Toronto : I'll be at the Comic Book Expo.

Yes, i'll be there. The Con is the last weekend of august, so from the 26th to the 28. I'm a guest, my name is even in the brochure! I'll bring my portfolio, so if you come and chat with me, i'll show you the originals on what I worked on in the last year: the covers for Screw magazine, art for Safarir magazine, maybe some Star Wars and Batman begins pages where I worked on the background art and many other things. I'll also bring copies of all the Veena issues and some copies of CandyAppleBlack, the comic I inked last year.
I'll be happy to chat with you all!

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By the way, you can now notice that my scanner is back on and i've begin posting new webcomics.

Pencilling Star Wars : Empire

It's funny, I seem to be working on comics that are related to fashionable movies: I helped Serge Lapointe on the inking of Batman Begins, and now I'm helping Michel Lacombe on the pencils of Star Wars : Empire. Now I'm doing some backgrounds with spaceships and environments. This issue is a fill-in in the middle of a longer storyline and we have only a few weeks to do the full book. That's a bit more work than on Star Wars Tales # 21 and 23 where it was only one short story. Here the pencils are not inked and will be colored directly. So I have to fake Michel's style more closely. We'll see how it goes.

By the way, Star Wars Tales 23 is out in store right now. Michel has shown a page he did here.