Until next year.

Christmas is right around the corner, and so is the new year. Some of my various jobs entered their breaks, leaving me with a lot more time to do comics.

That's what I'll do, then. I'll be disappearing from the face of the earth (or from this blog, at least), for the next three weeks, to focus only in making comics. Since I noticed visitation to be quite slow, most won't even notice I'm gone. When the time comes, I'll be back. I suppose I'll be writing a lot, there are new stories brewing in our bakery, but that's all "next year" talk.

See you all next year.

Dancing in the dark.

Sometimes I wonder what should I write around here. At the same time, I try to guess who reads this, what this person (or people) is (are) after and if, by peaking at my very deranged train of thought, they leave satisfied.

Actually, I just want this to be the first step towards comics. For me, it would be my never-ending first step toward making them; for you, it would be the first step toward getting to know what those comics are about, what is cool about it and where do you start reading.

But enough of making questions (that's when you notice you just wrote two paragraphs with no question marks). It's also good not to know too much in advance what lies ahead. The mystery turn the journey much more interesting, so you should always enjoy the mystery you'll run into, be it by living, by working or by creating stories filled with mystery and uncertainty.

With every new story, you meet new people. They'll take you to places you never thought you would go. Maybe you've dreamed about it before, and somehow it all seems strangely familiar. Maybe you've read about all that in a book, in a comic or maybe you just waited your entire life for something like that to happen.

Or maybe I talk too much when I should be back at my board making my comics look better.

Do you think you know me?

I'm sure you think you know me by now. How different can I be from the others? In fact, aren't we all the same to you? Just a pair of pretty legs, a pair of pretty eyes, a pretty smile...

But, if we're all the same, why are you here? With me? Why aren't you somewhere else, with someone else? Why did you choose me?

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you didn't choose me? That it was I that chose you?

Do you still think you know me now?

Not someone to be messed with.

or just a picture of pretty things to come


I bet she wear red lipstick. I bet she smokes, in a "old hollywood" kind of way, with grace, charm and attitude. Yes, she smokes, without guilt or worries. And that's also how she lives.

No guilt.

No worries.

Just fun.

I can't deny she can get in trouble from time to time. I could go to the point where it would be safe to assume she attracts it. Well, she's a pretty girl, and those (the pretty girls) are always the ones trouble goes after.

Next year, we have an appointment. If I were to be romantic, and I have this tendency of being a romantic fool, I could say that next year, we have a date.

She'll be wearing her red lipstick, of course.

And she'll be smoking.

It lives!

It lives in every and each one of us. In our memories and in our hearts. It's there every day and every night, and we need it to stay that way.

Comics.

Everybody who is involved with comics, in any way one can get involved with comics, is in love. Or was, or will be. Comics is an experience that forever changes you, like falling in love for someone. It doesn't mean you'll stay together forever, but you'll always remember with kindness what you had.

the reader.

The reader is in love with the stories he or she reads. The characters, their lives, their problems. It doesn't need a regular person to tell the story about how to solve problems. Even super heroes have to solve problems, and they're made of paper. If they can do it, so can we. All we gotta do is try. When we read a story where people, no matter how ordinary or extraordinary, have the strength and courage to try, we discover that we also can try to do whatever we want to do. We may fail, as many will, but we can always learn from it, as we do by following, month after month, the adventures of our heroes.

the writer.

The writer is in love with the stories he has to tell, 'cause he's in love with the world. He is fascinated with life, with death, with people. For the writer, comics will be the window he found to show what is the world we live. You may recognize it from your own experiences, you may be surprised by what he shows you, but he's there for that: to show that we are here, we exist, and we are all worth living the stories we tell, as we are as interesting as any character we can create. The writer writes about us, for us and so we won't be forgotten.

the artist.

The artist is in love with an idea. A dream, a fantasy, a hope that anything is possible. If we are to see the matter of poetry, it would be by the hands of a comic book artist. The comic book artist is an invisible man, a creator of images that will only reach parts f your brain, of your soul and of your heart, parts that will command the other parts of your body to react to what he's showing you. The story you will remember, in case the artist succeeds, exists only in your mind, between the panels, as one continuous memory you've grown found of, one which can have the most remarkable images be ones you did not even draw.

We are all in love. Comic book is our passion. nothing is easy and simple in life, but for us, touched by comics, how can we fight love? How can we fight passion?

Comics have created a monster in all of us, and it's alive.

Attitude.
and a bit of memory loss.

If the previous strips were based on some of my girl friends' experiences, this one was entirely mine. Sometimes, you're asked flat out about something and, suddenly, you forget the answer that you always knew. If you're at work and your boss asks you something you know but just can remember right there on the spot, it can cost your job. If you're at a bar, it can cost you the girl you saw.

Doing comics is a serious matter.



I guess yesterday was a serious day. The "I get a new book out" day. As such, we decided to try and look serious. It was the least we could do, and our best shot at being taken seriously at our new book's party. We do comic books, after all, and there's a limit to how serious we can get. But we try.

You went and made a joke and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Okay, that's that for being serious. Now I'm back to trying to come up with girl situations. I'm not much of a words on a t-shirt kinda guy, I preffer my tees flat, but I'm always trying to figure what the person wearing the t-shirt is really saying.

Or maybe what each one reads.

This is not realy something related to comics and it is not something you will enjoy at the most, but we have changed our website 2 weeks ago and there are lot's of interesting things about us and our work there.

What;s the problem, then? Well, the site is in portuguese. There is ONE page in english where we point people the way to end up here.

My point is, even if you don't understand the words, there are a lot of nice images and we put some effort on the design and usage of the site, so if you have the chance, go there and take a look.

Free time.

What are you going to do with all your free time? You can rest, for your day must have been hard. You can go out and have a good time with your friends. You like them and they like you. I'm sure you're all busy people and always wish you had more time to spend with each other. You can find yourself a hobby for your free time and spend quality time improving your body and soul.

That's right, there's a lot of things you can do with your free time.

You go and enjoy it.

If you want to become a comic book artist, when you get some free time, you'll always be drawing. Or writing, if you have any dream about becoming an writer. You can do both, of course, I sure do try, but you only have so much free time and you'll have to squeeze everything in it in order to work (free) time enough so someone will be interested in looking at your work.

"If I do my comics on my free time, am I working for free?", the smart ones may ask. Yes, you are. And you'll probably work a lot for free before someone hires you. Try to see it as practice. We all need to practice. The comic book artist needs to do comic book pages in order to learn how to be a comic book artist. No sketchbook, no illustration work, no story-boards, no other drawing job, nothing teaches you how to do comics the way you learn when you do comics, so you'll need to practice doing comics. Those ones, you'll most likely will do for free and there's a good chance they'll suck.

We have to do several bad comics before we can do a good one.

Next week, my new brazilian book comes out. It's a collection of short stories I've been working on with my brother for the past three years. This book is the result of a lot of well spent free time. Here is the cover.

I like it.

What single women think.

I've been playing here with this ideas for comic strips about girls. Not always funny, they were made so that I could explore more female characters, trying to find more about the way girls think, the way they behave and how interesting they can be.

And just so nobody starts thinking otherwise ('cause I read his blog regularly and wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings), I have nothing against gays. Two of my best friends are gay. But I also have a lot of female friends complaining about the lack of men in their lives. That's how this strip started. When I showed this strip to my gay friend, he just said that he was having trouble finding gay man as well.

In the absence of men, I suddenly found myself in a Vertigo book. I better go look for my monkey.

Weekend girls.

My favorite subject, as an artist, is without a doubt the woman. I just love drawing women.

When you stop to think about the super heroes, you'll see that the guys, in their tights and uniforms, are made of shapes. Muscles and more muscles define the super guy. The girls, on the other hand, are made of lines. The line of her hair, the line we trace from the top of her neck to the bottom of her back; their shoulders, delicate yet strong; their lips, drawing a smile from which we ourselves can't resist and follow. When I'm drawing a guy, I'm building. When I'm drawing a girl, I'm following a line.

I guess that's why I don't see myself as a big super-hero artist. When it comes to drawing the strong guy who can break a wall, I prefer drawing a girl who can break your heart.

Ursula.

In Brasil, there's a lot of love for Ursula. Some say it's their favorite story (from the ones we made, that is). It's great to have it published in english as well so we can continue spreading the love for Ursula.

We already sold more than a thousand copies of Ursula in english.

I'm happy.

Work in progress.



Even one panel (this one is from a new story) is several at once. It's the panel you imagine when you write the story,it's the doodle you make on your thumbnail, it's the panel on the actual page once you pencil it and it's the same one, again, when you ink it.

You better like what you do in order to stand seeing your work over and over before it even gets out to the reader.

Another review on URSULA and the first bad one, for that matter. Reviews are always a good thing and they show us that different people like different things.

To read the review, click here.

The best teacher.



If you really want to do comic books, and you want to draw them, you must know Will Eisner's work. I'm not telling you that you probably know who he is and what he did, I'm saying that you have an obligation of knowing how he did - and still does - some of the most innovative and atemporal comic book pages of our times. He's the kind of artist that, if you look at his work over and over, there will always be something new for you to learn from it.

Eisner always put the reader inside the story, making a world we all believed in. His background showed us people lived there. His characters had the best body language you'll ever find in a comic book, and his style was everything at once: modern, classic, classy, bold, expressionist, minimal, poetic and sincere. He would do whatever it took to tell his stories. And he told them well.

Go buy yourself a Will Eisner book. NOW!

While doing the Smoke and Guns pages, I picture how would this particular page be if it were drawn by Will Eisner. I know my version will look different, but just the sensation to be working on the kind of story you can image Will Eisner doing always makes my day.

Good Luck today.

or
Meanwhile in Iraq...

The colors of war.



this is a pin up Ba did for a comic book here in Brasil. I think it looks great, but I'm a suspect on this particular matter.

It's funny how it relates events that happened here, but it could easily be about the civil war in the US.

Another weekend.

Enjoy your weekend. May it bring that special look from someone you love, or from someone you're dying to meet, there at night, staring from across the room. Happy halloween for all with another one of my old zine covers, which remains to this day one of my favorites.


May of 1997.

She shot me down.



Smoke and Guns sketch. The character, however, is feeling kinda sad in this one, and she is everything but sad. She's the girl with an attitude, the one you look and know right away she's not not to messed with.

Do you want to dance?



The comic book artist should be like a dancer, with attitude, confidence and initiative. The dancer walks across the floor and asks the girl to dance with him, he does not wait for somebody to discover him, to ask him, to lead.

You are the storyteller. Your story is up to you.

Silence, you fool!

Doing comics has a lot to do with talking. When you're working with someone else, be it the writer you're drawing the story for or the artist you're writing for, you have to tell the other exactly what you want, what you have in mind and what don't like. You can tell what you like as well, but that is more or less obvious if the other looks at the stuff you've already done.

Don't think anyone will think you're stupid if you don't understand what's the writer hidden purposes for a certain scene. Always ask away every single question you might come up with while reading the script. Remember that everything you don't know the answer for (and that needs an answer for the story to be told) won't be rightfully portrayed if you don't know what's the story you're telling.

I talk a lot with my brother about our comics. Maybe we talk too much, but it seems to help our work, so we just keep on talking. Sometimes, we argue, we fight and shout at each other.

Some answers just won't come quietly.

Just a little something else...

People are now talking about the new DEMO, which I believe is already issue 11. Another great cover in what I believe will be a series of really well crafted covers that will enter the history of comics, right there with the Watchmen covers and the Sandman covers.

I just had a conversation about covers during my coffee break (yes, I take coffee breaks, I'm human and brazilian coffee is delicious) with an artist friend of mine, in which we were talking about how different covers are from the interior art, not necessarily in style, but in weight and in the amount of density it needs to sell the book. Great covers will tell a story on it's own, a little tale curious enough to make everybody feel that need to open the book and start reading it.

Fish.

The bell ringed at the studio and I answered.

"Hi, is this the place where I can find Fabio Moon or Gabriel Ba?", said the voice of a man who certainly wasn't from the city.

"Who may I say is asking?", I replied, suspiciously.

"I'm a cartoonist and I wanted to talk to them about the market and to show my work."

Market? Does he think I'm selling fish over here?

As I opened the door and let the guy in, I noticed he didn't smell nice at all, reinforcing the image of a fish market in my mind.

I prayed for rain.