Counting down and looking ahead.

This past weekend, surrounded by the dearest of friends in the comic world, we talked about our work and what drives us forward. Our little circle was surrounded by a bigger circle, of interested fans, and during two hours we were in a bubble of greatness.

I left certain I'm on the right path, and that I'm not alone in believing in what I do.

This year's countdown has begun, and soon we shall celebrate another year well spent, working hard and opening doors. We've been working more and more, as we should, and the work never felt more gratifying. If this is what my life will be, working in comics 24/7, writing and drawing and creating and putting out great stuff, than I look forward to the future. If the future is like now, it will be glorious, but we should always aim a little higher, so I expect the future to be even brighter. And so should you.

It seems like ages ago since the last issue of Casanova hit the stands (even more since I finished drawing it). It also seems like forever since we finished PIXU. Bá finished the first Umbrella series almost one year ago, and the new series just started one weeks ago. This notion of never-ending work leaves little room in our lives for our work to breathe and exist, as we very fast have to turn to the next project. And then, when we're working on several projects at once, the ones recently finished have to vanish from our routine as fast as we have to keep producing pages. Some projects come back to mind every once in a while, and those are the ones I think are not over yet. Those are the stories I think are still incomplete, and sometime in the future these stories shall continue.

We are still searching for our place in this medium, telling our stories and drawing other's, and our quest has taken us to very interesting places. The future points to new and exciting ones, and some familiar ground.

Back to work, and thanks for reading.

New Umbrella Academy series starts TODAY!

The first issue of the new Umbrella Academy series hits the stands today.
I've been working on it since May and it will finally be seen. There's a lot of crazy stuff on this series, much more than the first one.
Go grab your copy NOW.



And take a look at the most amazing thing Paper Action Figure Man sent me:



And while you're at it, what about pre-ordering the PVC Figure Set, due to hit the stores on April 2009?

Umbrella won!

Umbrella Academy just won the Harvey Award of Best New Series.

Vasilis won for Best New Talent!



To see the full list of nominees and winners, click here (Thanks Heidi).

Finally, original art for sale!

Ever since we started working on high profile projects like Casanova, Umbrella Academy and Sugar Shock, we've been getting mail about selling original art. Since we live in Brazil and it's not an easy task to deal with shipping and money transactions, we only have done this sort of thing personally when we go to San Diego.

Well, we're very glad to announce that we have some pages available for sale with the nice folks from Beguiling, in Toronto. They have some pages and art cover from all the projects above. If we like how this goes, maybe it's the way to make everyone happy after all.

For pages of Gabriel Ba:
http://www.beguiling.com/artproductlist.asp?ID=79

For pages of Fabio Moon:
http://www.beguiling.com/artproductlist.asp?ID=80
 

It's coming.

Have you pre-ordered PIXU 2 already? You should. The story unfolds, the characters interact, everything comes together and the story ends. It's coming and when it arrives nothing will ever be the same.

In case you're not following us on twitter, here's the latest:

-Finishing an issue of Umbrella Academy tonight (which means inking several pages), and doing a cover tomorrow.
-Working on Daytripper script over the weekend, and going back to drawing pages during the week.
-Reading the BPRD 1947 script. Read it once already, and it's good.
-Thumbnailing the "one page a month" story we do for a brazilian magazine so we can draw it tomorrow.
- We started a weekly comic strip in one of Brazil's biggest newspapers and the first was published today.

And you know what? That's just the beginning.

Why Comics? - part 2

Why Comics?

answers by:
Gerard Way (Eisner Award winner, writer of The Umbrella Academy);
Gabriel Bá (Multiple Eisner Award winner, brazilian storyteller, author of De:Tales, 5 and PIXU , artist of The Umbrella Academy and Casanova);
Dave Stewart (Multiple Eisner Award winner colorist of BPRD, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cut, Hellboy, Lobster Johnson, The Umbrella Academy (Dark Horse); The Spirit (DC))

The kid inside of me likes toys!

Every kid likes toys. Some of these kids like characters so much they grow up to become storytellers who will create more characters. Some of them will become comicbook creators. And all of them would love to see their characters become little toys.

As noticed on the site TOYSREVIL's I like Toys, there have been spotted at this year San Diego Comic Con prototype PVC figures of Dark Horse's UMBRELLA ACADEMY.



I've been following and aproving every step on the process of making this set and we're all very happy with the results. Soon, all of us will be able to have a litlle set on our shelves at home.





Soon, the little kid inside of me will be a very happy kid.

Umbrella is back.

This November, The Umbrella Academy will return in another 6 issues mini-series. Bá is already drawing it, the first issue is ready and now he's taking over the cover chores. For a bigger version of the cover, click here.

The first issue is bigger and better. 32 pages of story. To celebrate the series return, the first issue will feature a variant cover as well as a regular one, and the variant's artist is no other than Jim Lee, who is a very easy going nice guy. HIs wraparound cover is this:



Doing covers is very different than drawing stories and pages, so Bá is going to try different things on the covers.

Back to work now.

Why comics - the preview

Today, we finished the breakdown of one issue of Daytripper. Bá is already moving on his Umbrella chapter, and we're trying to get as many PIXU pages done as we can before things get crazy once the BPRD 1947 arrives and we have to do it all at the same time.

When we're this busy, working like crazy, staying awake around the clock, we sometimes wonder "why comics?" Why do we have this need? What drives us? What drives anyone to go out there and do comics, out of all things?

We started thinking.

And then we started asking around.

Vote for the Harvey Awards!

Dear Comics Professionals,

Deadlines for voting for the Harvey Awards are due to August 15th.

The ballot is available as an Adobe PDF document or text from www.harveyawards.org.

The detailed links for the ballots are :
PDF: http://www.harveyawards.org/2008ballot/Harvey_2008_final_ballot.pdf
Text: http://www.harveyawards.org/2008ballot/Harvey_2008_final_ballot.txt

Email ballots, using the text file, can be emailed to pjcjmc3@sbcglobal.net. Paper ballots can also be mailed via US Postal Service or sent by FAX to those without Internet access - please call the Baltimore Comic-Con, host of the awards banquet and ceremony, at 410-526-7410 to make a request.

Final ballots are due by midnight, Friday, August 15, 2008.

We got 3 nominations for the Harvey Awards 2008.

BEST ARTIST
Gabriel Ba, Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES
Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

BEST NEW SERIES
Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

You can see the full list on http://www.harveyawards.org/. Winners will be announced at the Baltimore Comic-con, September 27.

Eisner Award Winners!

We won for best Anthology with 5. AWESOME!
We won for best limmited series with Umbrella Academy.
We won for best digital comic with Sugarshock.

Thank you all.

We love comics and we love you.

One day, lotta work! Off to the Comic Con!

Last day of work before leaving for San Diego. We're all set.
- We're gonna sell original pages of Umbrella, Casanova, Sugar Shock;
- We have PIXU!!
- We also have CASANOVA vol.1 softcover, CASANOVA vol. 2 set(issues 8-14), Ursula, Rock'n'Roll, the Eisner nominated 5 and the Eisner nominated De:TALES.

we'll be on booth 2729, from Wednesday 'till Sunday.

We'll be signing at:
Thursday - Dark Horse - Fábio and Bá - 1pm-2pm
Saturday - Dark Horse - Umbrella Academy - 4pm-5:30pm
and at CBLDF at some point.

And now here's a video of my last day of work, penciling 2 and a half pages and inking 5, in order to travel to San Diego in peace.

Original art for sale at SDCC - UMBRELLA.

Do you like The Umbrella Academy and have this inner desire to have an original page from the series? Hey, this is your chance as we'll be bringing original pages from the first series to San Diego for SDCC. We won't have EVERY SINGLE PAGE at the con, so if you have a favorite, please let us know as soon as possible, because we leave on Monday.

And if you need a reminder of how great this series was, click on the images below for bigger versions:



We all loved Dave Stewart's colors on the series because he's the best, but this pages are just phenomenal in black and white.



By each issue, the art was getting better, moodier, more graceful.



Bá loves the Kraken because he can play on the most iconic super hero themes, like being mysterious like batman or athletic like Daredevil. And the last issue was just phenomenally out of this world.

Yes, Bá will bring the original art from the TP cover.

Drop us an email if you like a particular page, or if have any questions about the artwork and, if you're going to San Diego, I'll probably see less than a week.

Original pages at the Comic-Con - first call

So, ever since we started doing high-profile projects as Casanova and Umbrella Academy, from time to time we get emails asking if we sell original pages. Since we live in Brazil and we don't want to deal with international shipping and paypal and stuff (not right now), the only time we actually get to sell our pages is when we go to San Diego for the Comic Con International.

If you're going and you're interested, now is your chance to let us know.

Well, the convention is 2 weeks away and we will be bringing original pages to sell. Next week we'll post a page with all the pages we'll bring (yeah, it's impossible to bring a year's worth of pages of 2 monthly series).

Stay tuned.

New online Umbrella

Click here and read the brand new Umbrella Academy short story "Anywhere but here".

Harvey Awards 2008!

We just got 3 nominations for the Harvey Awards 2008.

BEST ARTIST
Gabriel Bá, Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES
Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

BEST NEW SERIES
Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics

You can see the full list on http://www.harveyawards.org/. Winners will be announced at the Baltimore Comic-con, September 27.

Special shout for our own Vasilis Lolos for his nomination as Best new Talent and Best Cartoonist!!

Interview! Eisner! Voting!

There's a new interview with Bá about his work on Umbrella Academy. It has been on the Dark Horse site for over a month, but we just noticed it now. Check out for some insights on Bá's impressions on the series.



Also, the voting for the Eisner Awards have begun, so if you're a professional in the industry elligible to vote, and you might have liked Umbrella Academy as best mini series, Sugarshock as best online comic or 5 as best anthology, go ahead and place your vote at http://eisnervote.com/.

Pixu thumbnails

In an independent project like PIXU, you have to establish your own deadlines, and than break these deadlines into smaller deadlines. This way, you won't get behind on your self-imposed schedule and you'll be able to balance doing it at the same time as your other projects.

Since we did 5 last year, we have been talking about what to do next, and we seriously decided to do another ensemble comic around january.

We'll be set up at the Image big booth in San Diego, just like last year. As soon as we decided to do another book, we knew we would need a booth, because our strong independent sales were always done directly with the reader, so we needed a place to tell the reader "this is where you'll find us and buy our book".

We spent at least two months working out the script part, talking in the internet with each other, some times from three different continents. The fact that a project like this is only possible because of the internet is an understatement.

Right now, we're doing the thumbnails. Becky is always the fastest one and, since Bá is already drawing more Umbrella Academy pages, I'm second on the thumbnail count.

Here are two pages from my thumbnails:

nominations for the Eisner Awards

Today is a really special day. They've just released the list of Eisner Awards nominees and Fábio and I have been nominated for a couple of awards.

Best Limited Series - Umbrella Academy (Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá)
Best Online Comic - Sugar Shock (Joss Whedon and Fábio Moon)
Best Anthology - 5 (Becky Cloonan, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Grampá and Vasilis Lolos)



If you haven't seen 5 yet, you can order it online from Khepri, or look for Becky and Vasilis at the upcoming NYCC.
Congratulations for all the other nominees, including Ivan Brandon and his 24seven (also running for best anthology), Dave Stewart for best coloring, Matt Fraction and the crew of The Immortal Iron Fist (best new series) and Sensational Spider-Man Annual (best single issue), Brian Wood (best writer) and Chuck BB (special recognition).

Also on the nomination news, Umbrella Academy has just been nominated for 2 Eagle Awards, as Favourite new comic and Favourite Cover (for issue #1).

He speaks!

As most of you may already have noticed, Fábio does most of the talking – writing – around here. Not that he's the bright one or he's the one who knows how to speak in english, but the fact is that he's been trying harder to enchant the american public with our ideas than I have.

I think I've been too busy drawing comics – monthly comics for that matter – that I didn't feel the need to write so often. Also, for being so busy drawing, I didn't have lots to say other than what I was putting on paper, which was, on most cases, a secret until it went to press. So as much as I wanted to talk about what I was working on, I felt I could not.

But now that last year is gone and most of The Umbrella Academy has been published already, I can talk a little about some of my ideas and my worries and what I care about when it comes to comicbooks.

I think it's fair to start with Umbrella, since it has called so much attention and it took so much of my time last year (and, yes, it will take some of my time this year also). I gave up super-hero comics for a while now because I thought it was all too worn off and it was just a part of the big machine of selling comics, toys, T-shirts and making movies and it was not about the stories anymore. So from the first script of Umbrella when the kids are fighting the Eiffel Tower and "flying towards camera" and stuff like that, I had cold feet and feared to have had made the wrong choice about taking on The Umbrella Academy. When I got to issue #3 I was very worried, because it's almost all action. The parts I enjoyed the most were when Vanya appeared, because they were the pages with more emotion and depth.




But you know what? Since I was one of the skeptics of this series (maybe the most skeptical of all), I'm now also one of its biggest admirers, because I have to give it to Gerard that he told a great story, created some instant-liking characters and gave this worn-off genre a very fresh tale.

I'm kinda sad to confess this, but i've made the best pages of my life for The Umbrella Academy. It's just sad because I'm a storyteller and I like – and I WANT – to tell stories of my own and I wish I was drawing my own stories right now, or at least more of that and not only stories someone else has written, even if it's a good story. The fact that I liked the Umbrella story helped me a big deal when coming up with the pages, because as the story was taking shape in front of me, first on the layouts and then on the actual pages, I instantly knew I was doing something good, worth reading, something that was not like all other super-hero comics on the stands. And that's the main reason I want to work on new comics, just to make something different from everything else.



But you know, we have lots of new stuff cooking and in 2008 I'll be able to fulfill my need to tell stories, as well as drawing and working with other authors. Too bad we can't talk about any of these things right now. But that's the fun of it, right?



Changing the subject a little, or entirely, I'd like to say why I don't really write as much here as, let's say, on our blog in portuguese we keep for our readers in Brazil. Yes, as you may know, we are from Brazil and we've been making comics in Brazil a little longer than in the U.S. We have almost 10 books published and lots of independent work, some awards and some recognition, but the market in Brazil is much different from the american one, much smaller, so I feel the need to speak to the audience at large and tell them why comics are so great, why we must be taken seriously and what is possible with comicbooks. It's a never ending struggle to pass it along to the newcomers, readers and the majority who doesn't even read comics thinking it's silly things just for kids.



Four years ago, we have created this blog (in english) in order to do the same thing with our american readers (or anyone in the world who could read in english actually), because no one knew us then. But we have been working so much, specially on monthly series, that this audience can see our work on a regular basis and get acquaintanced with it a lot easier than our brazilian audience, who gets a new book year year or so. Books that are kinda hard to find, also, as in the U.S. the public already know where to get his favorite comic every month.

So I really whish i could have a mix of the two markets, produce as much as I do for the U.S., with big print runs, and still be able to write in portuguese, the most beautiful language in the world. Well, that's what I have to aim for and keep reaching, right?

All my friends say I work too much, I don't have time to go out. They ask me if I wanna change the world. Well, I do. And I believe it can be done with comicbooks and that's what I'm gonna keep doing: telling stories that can change the world of someone who's lucky enough to read it.