Raw pencils, hot off the press:



Yeah that's right, there is a faint heartbeat.

COMICS!

For like... forever now.. I've been wanting to recommend some good comics, so I'm taking a moment to do so.

CASANOVA just wrapped it's second arc. And though I thought the big twist was a little skeevy at first, I think it very smartly accomplishes what Cass/Matt set out to do. It makes it all mean something. Very meta-textual, but it also worked well in regard to the characters and gave the whole bloody mess that's been the last few issues some consequence. Very easily could have been just some out of left field plot twist, but it serves the story well. The last three issues have probably been Moon's best efforts and the last cover by Ba is my favorite of the series. I even liked the Pynchon joke. Good work fellas.

THE DAMNED-Prodigial Sons #1 was a really solid first issue. Bunn and Hurtt pull of this really nutty/cool fight/chase scene that made the whole issue for me. I really hope this series is getting the following it deserves.

SCALPEDcontinues to be rock solid, though I'm an issue behind. SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER was just flat out great. Those "kids" drawing '76 keep gettin' better and better despite the company they keep :).

I tried the first issue of YOUNG LIARS and liked it well enough, it's not STRAY BULLETS but I'll probably give it a chance. Same with RASL though it seems paced for trades, so that's where I'm going to follow it (I know it'll get one).

Even though I have no clue what it's going to be about, I'm actually looking forward to FINAL CRISIS. I'm sure that puts me in the minority (or not). I just have faith in Morrison and I was a big fan of he and JG Jones' run on MARVEL BOY back in the day. Other than ALLSTAR SUPERMAN that's about all I'm reading superhero wise. Though I broke out a bunch of old comics the other day, just a crap ton of X-FACTOR and that old X-spin off X-TERMINATORS. I haven't been reading them so much as just flipping through and reminiscing/gleaning what I can from the art. Man Jon Bogandove was kind of a beast. Whatever happened to him? I know he was doing Superman forever, but then poof!

Anyways... anybody got any good recommendations?

-J La

Some brush pen drawings. A couple from life and the rest I wish were:)



In other news, lemon poppy seed muffins are deadly interlopers. They call out to you early in the "morning" as you're wiping sleep from your widdle eyes. A squeaky cartoon voice that says "hey I mean you no harm, I'm just a breakfast food. I taste like love rainbows". But then they totally get in your stomach and wreck all kinds of fat shop on your ass just like some CAKEZ with a sledgehammer!

INTERLOPER! I'MMA EAT YOUR FAMILY!

-J La

A lil' somethin' from the story I'm currently working on:



Snowed under with work and a bit behind. I'll pop in later to babble.

-J La

-J La

With this post I think I've run through the recent life drawing. Gives me a good excuse to go out and do some more!




And with that... I think that's what I might go do. Later skaterz.

-J La

Sorry for the lack of updates this week but I've been fighting my computer for over a day now. And LORDY even though I won in the end I don't know if it was worth the fight or not.("lordy"? What am I a 60-year-old woman? Want some SWEET TEA, honey bun? yes, SWEET TEA is always capitalized where I'm from), Then again I'm at least a full generation forward in a variety of applications and in my OS. So yeah, probably worth it.

I uploaded these a while back but for some reason they never got posted:



Those are life drawings I did of people on the beach in Mexico. Which actually made "laying out" fun (if that's what you call being bundled up in towels and the largest hat you have so that your sensitive irish skin won't blister and peel and generally make you feel like youv'e been sliced to the core by UV radiation torture).

Anyways, I have pics of sketches I did at FCBD on my camera. But I can't find my the drive to get them off. If you received one and want to shoot a scan my way just email me at jaslatour@gmail.com and I'll be sure to post it here.

Anyways, just wanted to drop in. Back to work...

-J La

Some long overdue life drawing. Done from photos of old 60's Playboy models (I believe):



I tried to push myself some here and do these as contour drawings, doing the forms from observing the surface. It's always astoundingly hard to gauge weight from a photo. Occupying the same space as a subject seems to be a lot more natural and I'm able to gauge things a little better. But for an exercise I guess it works.

IRON MAN

Shawn Crystal, Chris Schwiezer and I went and saw IRON MAN Friday night and though I tried to remain guardedly optimistic I was having trouble fighting the fact that I had a good feeling about it. In the lobby prior we saw a trailer for WANTED and I turned to Shawn and said "If there is slow motion like that in this movie I'm walking out".

I didn't walk out. In fact it was pretty great. The cast was excellent, the direction tops, the script had some weight, wit and a brain. It was the best popcorn movie I've seen in ages. Robert Downey Jr. powers this thing onscreen, but the master stroke? (well besides no slow motion) was Jeff Bridges. He took was is EASILY the thinnest character of the bunch and gives him a presence and at least the appearance of subtlety when in other hands he'd have been Snidely Whiplash. I could go on forever but I'll stop myself. Lets just say my fickle ass recommends it.

I'll try and post some FCBD stuff from HEROES this week. Thanks to all of you who came out and supported the event. It was really great, maybe the best year ever and a whole lot of fun. Hope you guys all had similar experiences...

-J JLa

PLEASE! I had no expectations for IRON MAN up until a month ago and now I'm thinking it's going to be very good. So stop telling me it's awesome. Because if I go in there and it's just "mehz", I will shoot you all full blast with the hate ray beams which doth emanate from my trophy Hitler skull!

Shawn "Jungle Bird" Crystal is in town for FCBD and we may have to hit that up tonight post BBQ.

Here is a con sketch I finally finished up at Planet con:



FCBD
Again I will be at HEROES AREN'T HARD TO FIND tomorrow from 1-5 sketching for FREE. I should have some sketchbooks with me for sale as well. So if you're in the area stop by and listen to me babble about Bio mechanics or the NFL off season or why Cheerios is (are?) the messiest cereal.

EL CORAZON ONE MORE 'GIN

Click the link if you missed the FREE COMICS I posted yesterday:


Mañana!

-J La

Click the link if you missed the FREE COMICS I posted yesterday:


Thanks to all of you who left such kind words. The response was pretty good considering I just kind of dropped it out of the blue. I got quite a bit of email, which was actually nice. In fact my bandwidth seems to be acting up at the moment, so that's probably a good sign, no? Maybe it was a mistake posting this so soon but hopefully it stands alone okay, and I get so little instant gratification I decided to say screw it and roll with it.

For those of you left a little confused or wondering where it's going, I hope you'll hang in there for the day that Clay and I get to get this book off the ground or at the very least thought it was fun to look at. We've really hammered it out pretty well and it should be a fun, ambitious ride into the land of superfolks. Between this and the forthcoming All-Mighty I think that might scratch my itch, I guess we'll see, superheroes are like the mafia... just when I think I'm done...


Gear Shift

Shifting gears back to things left undone. Here is a little sneak at something in progress:





If you think you know what that is, and maybe it spoils something for you... I would think again.

Anyways. I've been up all night. Time to crash. See you mañana.

-J La

In honor of FREE COMIC BOOK DAY here is a very, very, very early look at the STEEL CITY HAWK mythos. As some of you know SCHawk is a book B. Clay Moore (Hawaiian Dick, Superman Confidential) and I have really been hammering away at for some time. Hopefully in the next year or so, the stars will align and permit us the chance to make it one hell of a ride .

But in the meantime here is the 12 page prelude by yours truly. I hope you enjoy:

DOWNLOAD PDF: http://www.jasonlatour.com/FREE/ELCORAZON-01.pdf















I hope that whets some appetites. Feel free to pass the link around, it's FREE after all.

If anyone would like a print copy you can purchase it in my new sketchbook: NEUTRON BOMB OF AWESOME available at select Cons this summer.



OR contact me at jaslatour@gmail.com in order to pick one up through the mail. $10 US (plus shipping) with over 60 pages worth of assorted comics, art and process material.

-J La

-PS-Thanks to Ivan Brandon and Traci Redmond for helping with the translation stuff. Though if shit is wrong it's my fault not theirs.

Sometimes screwing up is kinda fun. It's not often I completely give up on something but above are a RAZORBACK drawing I got bored halfway through and a MACHINE MAN con sketch that I totally screwed the pooch on. (Yeah I often start inking and coloring them before they're done in pencil. I dunno why. I only seem to do that with con sketches).

FCBD
This weekend I'll be at HEROES AREN'T HARD TO FIND in Charlotte for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. I attend this event every year and sketch for free. This year I got to them a little late and hence my exclusion from the flyer. But I will be there so if you wanna come hear me ramble or request a drawing of Razorback or some such other D-Lister then come say hi.

More info here: http://www.heroesonline.com/blog.html

EL CORAZON

Speaking of FCBD. I'm going to post that EL CORAZON short here in honor of it. So either tomorrow or Thursday I think so that I don't lose people in the shuffle of the weekend.

I'll also try and figure out some sort of Pay Pal store system for the NBA sketchbooks. Let you guys know soon.

-J La

Myself, Mike Freiheit, his girlfriend Michelle and Andrew Robinson go into a bar in the East Village (the Greengrass Tavern?). A few pints later Andrew has broken out the sharpies and pitt pens and is doodling on the already vandalized table. Making something awesome out of crap.



Then Mikey chipped in with a Dapper Chap:



And then I had to do my dream character... that's right Razorback, sucka! :



Apologies to Michelle, who did something too but it was really small and my crappy cellphone couldn't make heads or tails of it amidst the other stuff.

As we were just getting our steam we were not so politely asked to quit drawing on the table tops by some random woman who may or may not have worked there, but spoke with enough school teacher like authority to scare us off.

On the way out I caught an image that owned us all.



Well played, Dino-Walrus. Well played.

-J La

And it was a great deal of fun. I saw a TON of folks and still missed a whole bunch of people I really wanted to see. So if I missed you, I really am sorry. It was a madhouse.

I found a photo of a con sketch I did featuring Holden from "SLEEPER" vs the werewolf guy in a bar. I was literally racing to get this one done...



Not the best photo, I'll have to see if I can score a better scan. But thanks for the biz, Max and I'm glad you made your bus.

Anyways, more later in the week maybe. I'm still in NY/NJ at the moment, but back to the Carolinas tomorrow. So 'till then...

-J La

Back dat thing up...




All done. Now it's just a question as to whether or not this crappy internet connection will allow me to send the file off today. IF (god please) that happens, I should have my books by at least Saturday. And therefore will not be the lamest guy at NY Comic Con.

Cross your fingers. In the meantime... I'm going swimming.

-J La

I leave for a trip to Mexico in the morning. Unless things go sideways I'll be back in the states on Friday for the New York Comicon with these in hand :



Aprox 64 pages. Over 15 pages of comics (including EL CORAZON). One giant headache to put together.

If I have internet access in Mexico or get a chance before I leave I'll post EL CORAZON.

Back to my desperate labors...

-J La

Literally ONE panel left to ink on EL CORAZON. Of course then I have to letter and finish the tones. But things are promising. I wasn't lying when I said I was going to try to post more. So here are some "pencils":



Thank you Grant Morrison...

And Frank Quitely, for deepening my love of comics with ALLSTAR SUPERMAN #10:




For sometime now I've been trumpeting this book, I know that's nothing new or special. But I think it's possibly the best "mainstream" effort Grant Morrison's produced (and that's saying something). And Quitely, whoa boy...there are actually people who think this guy can't draw? the way he handles this story is just... well it's nothing short of masterful.

Really I'm just happy that this book is living up to the expectations I had for it. I always hear folks saying "oh it's just so crazy, he's throwing all the 50's Superman stuff against the wall"... and well.. yes that is in there for sure. But moreover I think it's just that for the first time in maybe EVER Superman has had an a truly relateable emotional core. The simple idea of exploring "the Death of Superman" in a way that is a real story is just so very nice to see. A hopeful and positive exploration of what this character would mean, that even when it homages the past doesn't trip on those same old worn out tropes.

Leave it to Morrison to take the same concept that seemed to have nearly crippled comics decades ago and use it to sort of heal a psychic rift. (And if you think I'm off my rocker with the connection to that, I'd point to his use of Doomsday early on).Fun, SMART, emotional comics that actually mean something and use a character to go forward. And executed so deftly... so well handled that if you want to read it on the toilet and escape ten minutes of your day or if you want to really sit down and examine it to death, you're going to get an equal amount of enjoyment out of it. It's really science fiction at it's finest.

And the kicker in this issue... Superman created our world? Is that what the whole Q'wewq thing suggest?(Which, BTW, was just such a nice carry over from his other work)

I think so. Man this book...I'm such a geek for this book.

Anyways, I'm off to Kansas city tonight and I'll be tagging along down to St. Louis with Clay Moore and Jeremy Haun for a lecture they're giving. So I might not be around this weekend. If so I'll catch everyone soon and again... look for that EL CORAZON comic soon. Have a great one...

-J La

I've been a bit spotty with the blog updates of late. I'll be traveling a lot here in the next few weeks but I'm going to try and make an effort to post more. So with that in mind, I took a half day yesterday and did some life drawing:



-MUSIC-

-It's been a while since I've talked about new music. It took me a bit to get to it but lately I've been spinning the living hell out of the new RADIOHEAD album, IN RAINBOWS. Honestly, waaaay more than I expected. I noticed yesterday that they've got a contest on iTunes to remix the new single:"Nude". Basically for like 6 bucks you can download all the stems (guitar, vocals,beat) and take it into Garage Band to "legally" remix as you will. I guess you then can resubmit it for some sort of prize. I'm half tempted to try it. I wish I had the time.

-Lots of drawing always means lots of BOB DYLAN for me, which has in turn got me thinking of posting my "ultimate Bob Dylan play list" for sometime now (the play list that NO ONE demanded!). The problem is that I think it's impossible. I'm just waaay too into the library, and it shifts and changes on me so much that I can't possibly rank his work in any real way, be it personal or objectively. So instead I think I will do a little assortment of songs from lesser known albums that I think people should track down and lend an ear to. With that in mind, here is today's recommendation:

STREET LEGAL
After 1976's DESIRE (which flaws and all may be my personal favorite Dylan album... it's certainly in the cluster that pushed me over the edge into rabid fandom) begins what a lot of people consider to be Dylan's "slow period". Basically he finds "God" and for the most part his work really falls off. While I can't argue that it's not his typical "genius", I think the biggest problem lies in comparing this period to his other work. There are no doubt amazing songs in this time frame, that tend to be lost in the pursuit other ambitions. A perfect example of an album buried by time is 1978's STREET LEGAL.



-While most of it's critics get caught up in the album's "slickness" and lack of cohesion, I have actually seen it on a few critical lists as a "lost gem". I'm obviously in the latter camp, feeling that at points STREET LEGAL features some of his densest and most layered writing. I can't deny that there are Christian/Biblical undercurrents to the album and at time the bigger band threatens to overwhelm the music. It's certainly even arguable that it's the album where he began to clearly shift toward full blown "born again" mode. But that said, I think that like with some of his other best work (see his current work), these things serve to flesh out and enhance the the music and whatever potential messages lie within it rather than to drown it out.

For example CHANGING OF THE GUARD is a song that is a worthy descendant to songs like TANGLED UP IN BLUE. It's a shifting, seemingly amorphous kind of track that balances a constantly evolving storytelling style against seemingly biblical archetypes to tell a very human tale about shifting morality, change, growth and the abuse of power (among other things). DARK EYES and SENOR are great "Love" and "loss" tracks (both of which were covered amazingly by IRON AND WINE and WILLIE NELSON on the I'M NOT THERE soundtrack.) And NEW PONY is a rollicking almost surly track about sex and lust. Of course with all Dylan these songs are a lot more complex than that and offer up a level of interpretation that is both focused and intentionally open enough to both reaffirm and challenge the ideologies of an attentive listener. To put it simply, like most of his better stuff you get out of it what you put into it.

I'd recommend the whole album, but if you're not into that here are the key ones in my current ranking:

ESSENTIAL
1.New Pony
2.Dark Eyes
3.Changing of the Guard
4.Senor

You can give them a quick listen here:
http://www.bobdylan.com/albums/street.html

-Aight, back to work. EL CORAZON soon...

-J La

If you live in KC, I'll be in your town this weekend for Planet con. Which is bad enough news, but to make matters worse I'll be a little peeved because I didn't finish compiling my new sketchbook for the show.

Basically I damn near killed myself trying to finish this EL CORAZON story over the weekend, and when push came to shove I wasn't willing to crap the sketchbook out just for one show. It sucks, it really does.

Anyways, I've decided that I'm going to run this story online for free, just cause that's how I roll. Probably next week so I can make sure it's all as good as it's gonna get. It'll hopefully be a nice little intro to the world that is/or will be that of the STEEL CITY HAWK.

Here's a tease. Apologies if the pages are a little dark, I'm still tweaking. Always tweaking...





It's been a weird little style experiment. I combined a LOT of different techniques and shifted a lot of gears doing this, hopefully it doesn't read like a mess. I think ultimately it's one of those stepping stone projects that'll lead some more fruitful results down the road. There are lots of little things that bother me, like that transition from panel 1 to 2 on page 3, which doesn't technically throw things into a free floating mess blocking wise but could have been much smoother. I dunno, no one's perfect... just hopin' that my flaws and mistakes are the the endearing kind.

More soon.
-J La

Now that I'm readjusting this story to go into a much smaller format I feel a little freer to go with some fat lines for "speed"s sake:



It's definitely really cartoony, but I think in the end it'll lend something neat to the story. I mean who doesn't want to see a guy get torn apart by Disney characters?

From time to time I fall in love with weird pens or brushes. I've discovered that I"m getting a lot of mileage out of this fat no. 1 micron. Maybe it's just this pen but I'm getting this weird amount of control out of the tip and and it's lending to some interesting brush effects. Then again I'll probably look at it later and want to puke.

More soon. Chugging along. And maaaaaaaybe next week the whole story for FREE! Anyone interested in that?

-J La

PS- If ANYONE out there speaks fluent spanish I may need your help translating. Maybe repaid in art?

Well for reasons beyond my control, I've learned the short story I've been dinking away at, "El Corazon" probably won't make it out this summer... at least not in the AR anthology.

SO I decided I'm going to fold it into my new sketchbook. Which will put those up to about 62 pages. Good news for the interested consumer. Bad news for me... as I have to basically finish the thing by Friday. I should be able to, but I wish I'd known it was coming to this otherwise I wouldn't have set it aside for a couple of weeks to do other things.

The real pain is going to be tracking down someone to translate the spanish properly.

Anyways, here is a panel from it. I'm debating doing the background in Photoshop:



Anyways. I'll make a more concrete post about sketchbooks soon (with the revised cover). The inclusion of "El Corazon" should make them into kind of a neat little comics/artbook hybrid (there are a few more strips in there too). I'm going to try to work out a way to put them up for sale online this time, so that the ten of you interested can scoop one.

I'm shooting to have them for a little show in KC (Planetcon) at the beginning of next month. Which would mean I'll have them for NYCC, Seattle, Heroes and SD (my in stone con dates). And possibly MoCCA, Baltimore and SPX (and/or maybe Toronto?).

Busy. Busy. Busy.

-J La