Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's blog

The spy and the fat hero.

the Image Comics solicitation for comics shipping in June is up on the net. There, you will finally find the solicitation for the first issue of Casanova, along with the first cover.

Which is this:



Two articles down on the main page (for now, as the internet moves so fast), you'll also find a preview for a comic book called Planetary Brigade, written by Keith Giffen and J.M DeMatteis. It's like their own Justice League. It's published by Boom! Studios.

Oh, and I'm one of the artists in it.

It's the first time I ever drew super heroes outside of my childhood's sketchbooks, and I did it out of curiosity. What would a script from Keith Giffen look like? How would I handle super heroes, action and those strange clothes? Could I do the pages no matter what I thought about the story, about the characters, about the book?

I mostly do my own stories, which means I mostly draw stories I believe in. I tried before to be just the artist and, in most cases, my art suffered a lot just because I didn't quite liked the stories I was drawing. One of the consequences of that was my giving up on trying to do the super heroes I grew up reading. I just didn't like the stories anymore, it all went too stupid and too different from the way I read it as a kid, that I felt I wouldn't like to draw those characters in such idiotic scripts.

Things chance and people grow. I still don't think I'm the kind of artist who can draw every story and make it look awesome, and I'm still pretty sure super heroes are not for me, but I can now work on somebody else's book without a sweat. Smoke and Guns, as much as I enjoyed it, wasn't my story, but I think I did a pretty good job in it. And I did it fast. After Smoke and Guns, I did not have any more problems finishing one page a day, at least. There was a pleasure hidden in working on somebody else's story, a challenge all it's own. "How will I make this work?"

Drawing other people's stories will make you a better artist, for it will make you draw things you wouldn't draw normally, just because you tend to write your stories having in mind what you already know how to draw. When you drawing for others, you have to draw the most unimaginable things.

That's the best part of it.

Planetary Brigade was work for hire. I was paid to do the pages, I received the scripts and I did the pages. I didn't create any characters (except for the monsters with wings, but they all die) and I didn't suggest anything regarding the script. I think the pages turned out okay as well, and it was very strange to see other people coloring my pages and lettering them. I'm very used to being a one-in-all kind of guy, and that was something new (or, at least, something that had not happened since 1999 when I finished Roland).

Here's one page.



You're always learning. You should never stop, or you'll be forgotten. Time waits for no men.

Neither do women. If you're stuck, they'll move on.

Everybody gotta keep dancing.

Let's tell more stories now, shall we?