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.

A Veena is a music instrument among other things.

You learn many things when you publish a comic called Veena. First is that when put the title thru Google it show you a music instrument called the Veena. The tourism bureau of India probably doesn't like me much, because for a long time my comic came up first in searches, instead of information on the music instrument that is actually the official music instrument of India.The ranking has changed a little since then...



It look like something Jim Woodring would come up with...Veena is also a name for women all over Asia. And women of Asian origin in England and the States.
Once in a while I get orders for copies of Veena solely on the basis of the title. Who doesn't put his own name in Google to see what will come up?
Recently, I got a letter from a Veena. She said she liked my comic and offered to send me her photo. Curious to see her, I accepted even if I thought it might be a joke. Like a friend sending me a photo of a porn star with hair like my character...
But she's real and is from England. Her parents were born in Mauritius so they speak French. It's an interesting connection for a comic produced in Quebec where we speak both French and English.



Maybe I could make it a regular thing on the site and have a collection of readers whose name is Veena. What do you guys and gals think?

Veena at the Time Travelers Convention.

You find the strangest thing on the internet....There is actually a live, real "Time travelers" convention being organised right now. Info here. Time Travel does not exist yet, but the point is that if it's ever invented you need only one convention for all of eternity, not one every year. As long as the travelers have heard about it, they will make the travel back in time to the con. So, if you look at a photo of a con now, it may be empty, but look at it in a year, you may see Dr. Who or Veena. That's a paradox, time is very fluid and can be affected retroactively. Yes, I'm telling you all this because Veena time travel and may go one day.
In the meantime, NBC is supposed to cover the event. I'm not making this up....

"Batman Begins" is ending for us.

I didn't do much updating these last weeks because I'm busy on other things, mainly inking work on the backgrounds of the comic adaptation of the "Batman Begins" movie. Serge Lapointe and I still have one week to go and then it will be shipped to the printer.
After that I'm not sure what's on my list of commercial work, so I'll go back to drawing pages of "John Star". Oh, and I forgot, I have another cover or 2 to do for the porn magazine "Screw".

That's about it.

By the way, all the problems with email and folders are resolved.

Inking backgrounds on the Batman Begins comic book.

Yep! That's what i'm doing this week thanks to Serge Lapointe! As I may have said a few times in the "News" section, I do share a studio with Serge, Yanick Paquette, Michel Lacombe, Frefon and Mylene Henry. We all do comic book and illustration work for a living. Once in a while, one of us is trapped in a deadline crunch and we do help each others. So that's what I do right now.
Batman Begins is written by Scott Beatty (BATGIRL: YEAR ONE), the art is by Kilian Plunkett (SUPERMAN: RED SON) & Serge LaPointe is doing the inking.

The previous work I did in mainstream comics was helping Michel on Star Wars Tales #21 and 23. That last one isn't out yet. I helped on the background pencils and some inks.

Vote for Veena at Buzzcomix, here's why.

As the title says, I'd like you to vote for Veena in the Buzzcomix toplist. I'm listed there and pretty much nobody votes so my listing is pretty low. I'm trying to see if a good rating will translate into readers.
That's where you can help me: go to my page and vote by clicking on the Buzzcomixs Icon and I'll reward you with a special picture.
Last fall I did the cover for SCREW. It's a porn magazine and it's available in the New York area. But the funny thing is that they like cartoons. So I offered my art and they took it.
Vote and be rewarded.
How is that for hitting below the belt?

A review of Veena at "Journey into History"

Journey into History is a web site that does review of webcomics, but the funny thing is that it does it in comic strip form. Simple and effective, you got two characters that interact and chat about a given webcomic. Veena got it's turn on February 28. You can read it here. I believe it is a positive one. You can also chat with Bob Stevenson, the webmaster and artist of the strip. He also does a comic called More Fun with Roger Lagridge.

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I also traded links with Miss Dynamite from Sirkowski, a friend who publish in MensuHell (a Montreal zine where I occasionally contribute) . Boy, did my hits go up! I did not know he was this popular!

A new comic story on sale in Safarir

In the february issue of Safarir, a Mad-type humour magazine available in Quebec, I have a 3 pages story. It's called Roland Galaxie. It's actually a sort of parody of my own character John Star.
The story is by Steve Requin, I did the art and Fred Jourdain did the colors. It's available in most corner store, so you should a least go look at it.
Here is a picture: