PARANORMAL: DEATH STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT

 

PARANORMAL. 

The word itself conjures up images of abandoned mansions at the end of lonely roads, unexplained noises in the dark of night, restless spirits with sinister intentions. Dictionaries define the word as “that which is not scientifically explainable; supernatural.” 

Indeed, in the world of PARANORMAL, the presence of the supernatural is undeniable. Shadowy apparitions prowl in the darkness; beings possessing frightening, unexplainable abilities walk among us. The impatient man standing in line at the bank can turn air to ice with a single word. The smiling woman at the coffee shop can kill with a touch of her finger. How is this possible? Is it dark magic? A scientific experiment gone dreadfully wrong? A curse from beyond the stars? The echo of a half-remembered nightmare come to life? No one knows. Or if they do, they aren’t telling.

Or are no longer able to.

But whatever their origins—and they may be legion—in the world of PARANORMAL, only two things are certain: nothing is ever as it truly seems, and danger lurks in every shadow. 

You’ve been warned.

Los Angeles, present day. Henry Wade Johnson, the Paranormal criminal known as The Ogre, has just been released from prison. When one of his former accomplices, Rat Face, murders several police officers and vanishes with a cocaine shipment belonging to the city's deadliest Paranormal crime lord, Henry Wade finds himself drawn back into the life he had sworn to leave behind.

Well, it's official: after many years of trying to find a good home for PARANORMAL, it has finally happened. The original trilogy, which was first published in France, then partially, briefly self-published by me on different webcomic sites and online shops, will now be published by Canadian publisher Black Eye Books in just a little over a month from now.

 PARANORMAL: DEATH STRIKES AT MIDNIGHT has now launched on Kickstarter, and is already over 100% funded. Please feel free to join us and help make this enhanced, remastered, definitive version of PARANORMAL come to life by checking out and sharing the above link. Thanks a million!

Artist's residency in Iceland

Last year, from October 28 through November 16, 2020, I participated in an artist's residency in the beautiful city of Reykjavik, sponsored by the Centre Intermondes, the Maison des Écritures de La Rochelle, and the Alliance Française de Reykjavik. 

For three weeks, I stayed at the magnificent Gunnarshús, the home of the Writers' Union of Iceland, and was able to make a great deal of progress on one of my future projects, a daily black and white comic strip, like those that began appearing in American newspapers towards the end of the 19th century (such as Peanuts, Terry & the Pirates, The Phantom, etc.). Thanks to this residency, I was able to develop and refine the script, define the final format of the project, and finalize the characters.

I also had the pleasure of teaching a week-long workshop on the theme of character creation at the Visual Arts School of Reykjavik, (Myndlistaskólinn í Reykjavík). Each student produced detailed character sheets (descriptions, preparatory sketches, final drawings) of his or her character, as well as two short, four-panel comic strips featuring an important aspect of the character's personality. The workshop allowed me to discuss different drawing techniques with the students, as well as different techniques of comic book narration. Every country, every culture has a unique way of telling visual stories, a unique voice of its own, and Iceland is no exception; I sometimes felt like I was learning as much as I was teaching.

I had the opportunity of exhibiting a series of my original comic book pages at the Alliance Française, where I also taught two drawing workshops for children aged 11 to 15, in addition to giving two conferences (on Zoom) for Icelandic students taking French lessons. These exchanges were particularly meaningful for me, because it was an essay contest sponsored by the Alliance Française in 1995 that allowed me to come study comics in France, to deepen my knowledge of the French language, and to immerse myself in this culture that I love so much.

Here is a link to the guided tour of the exhibition at the Alliance Française:

I was honored to be interviewed for the Morgunbladid, Reykjavik's morning newspaper, during my residency. Here is a link to the article, which appeared on November 7:

Due to the current health crisis, the tourism industry in Iceland has pretty much come to a complete standstill; as a result, I wasn't able to go sightseeing and discover the country's wonderful, unique landscapes. That didn't stop me from walking through the streets of Reykjavik and go running along the coast (in -2° C weather!) several times.

I would like to thank everyone who made this residence possible and so enjoyable, and for all the Icelanders and French folks who were so kind and welcoming; it was an unforgettable experience and particularly beneficial for my projects. I look forward to going back when the conditions are better.

In the meantime, I've been working on a (top secret) short story, which I will be publishing online very soon. News to follow!

INKTOBER 2019

After spending several weeks on the fence, I finally decided to participate in this year's Inktober art challenge: 31 days, 31 ink drawings, posted on social media with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober2019.

For the past year or so (ever since I finished drawing Archer Coe and the Way to Dusty Death, in fact), and despite having tons of ideas for projects and stories, I've had a particularly difficult time getting back to drawing comics. I felt that maybe, just maybe, this year's Inktober might be what I needed to get me motivated to draw comics again.

And it was.

I've never followed the official Inktober prompt list, and I wasn't in the mood to draw a different comic book character every day (as I had done in my previous Inktobers), so this year, I opted to tell a story. I'd been itching to draw a daily newspaper strip for a long time, and thought that this might be my chance to practice telling a story in that format.  I had a few false starts, but eventually came up with the idea of an action/adventure story starring Black Jack, one of the characters from my PARANORMAL comic book trilogy.

As I drew the comic, I tried not to think ahead about what was going to happen next, and just let the story unfold, from panel to panel, before my eyes. It was both a challenging and exciting experience.  Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and sent along good vibes and kind words, I managed to finish a drawing every day (even though I ended up posting one or two of them a couple of hours after the daily deadline, because sometimes, there just aren't enough hours in a day).

I was recently accepted to be a contributing cartoonist on the French webcomics site GrandPapier, and have posted the entire 31-page story over there if you want to go check it out, (instead of reading it by scrolling up and down my Instagram page).

I hope you enjoy reading The Delivery as much as I did drawing it! Here's hoping I'll have some more comic book news to report soon. Stay tuned :)

RUN

A few years ago I had the pleasure of writing and drawing RUN, a wordless, 21-page comic book story in issue 5 of David Lloyd's comic art magazine Aces Weekly (see original blog post here). 

The story is still available in Aces Weekly, but I've decided to offer it as a pay-what-you-want PDF download on my Gumroad shop as well:

RUN

RUN will be available this Friday (June 7th) at the stroke of midnight, but you can pre-order it this very second if you feel so inclined. A seven-page preview episode is also available on Webtoon. Feel free to go take a look.

Thanks for your continued support and for stopping by. Hope you enjoy RUN!

Archer Coe & the Way to Dusty Death - on sale NOW!

Just a quick reminder to letcha know that Archer Coe & the Way to Dusty Death, written by Jamie S. Rich and drawn by me, is now on sale in bookstores via Simon & Schuster, and tomorrow (Wednesday) will be available at comic shops worldwide via Diamond.
To locate a shop near you, try findacomicshop.com or
comicshoplocator.com. The book will also be available on the Oni Press Shopify and order links for major bookstores are all located on the Simon & Schuster page, using the keyword: Archer Coe V2.

Also, as anyone following me on Instagram has probably noticed, I'm hard at work on some new Paranormal-related projects. Feel free to head over there to check out some more sketches, but in the meantime, here are a few to give you an idea of what I've been up to since I finished Archer Coe vol.2 a couple of months ago.

Thank you for stopping by. Stay tuned for more updates!

Okay, 2017, You Win.

As 2017 comes to a close, I thought I’d take a minute to update the blog and post some recent drawings. I don’t update much, I know. I almost get the feeling there’s a weird echo around here, like when you walk into an abandoned building and say “is anyone there?”

I went through all the links in the sidebar the other day, and discovered that a lot of them were obsolete or no longer worked, so I did some necessary cleaning. It made me kind of nostalgic, to tell you the truth. At one point, I even considered deleting the blog, since I’m not even sure anyone even comes around here, or if comic book artists even keep blogs anymore, now that Instagram and Tumblr are so popular, and allow us to show our work to so many people on the internet.

For now, I’ve decided to keep the blog up and running, but we’ll see what the future brings. In the meantime, feel free to track me down and follow me on Instagram and/or Twitter, as I post art there a lot more often than I do here. I also have a Facebook page, but only use it to keep in touch with friends (people I actually know) or artists and colleagues whose work I admire, so please don't feel offended if you send me a friend request and I never reply. It's not personal, believe me.

Anyway, 2017 was far from being the easiest year of my entire life. My family situation changed. I moved. Some terrible things happened. Some wonderful things happened. I worked on some amazing new translation projects (for Ankama Editions, in particular), attended the Malta Comic Con, accomplished some things I never thought I was capable of, didn't sleep much, and despite all that, managed to finish several chapters of...

Archer Coe & The Way To Dusty Death

I’ve nearly finished Archer Coe vol.2 (only 18 pages left! Woo hoo!), and the book is scheduled for release by Oni Press in 2018.  I’m working hard to meet my deadline, and hope to finish the art before the end of January.

Paranormal 

I'm afraid Paranormal is on the back burner for now, but as soon as I’ve finished Archer Coe, I’ll be getting back to work on it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks of what’s to come, once I get time to work on all the stories I have for the Paranormal “universe” (daily comic strips, that espionage story I keep talking about, origin stories for Rat Face, Black Jack, and Dr. Eclipse, among other stories, including the return of the Ogre, and a short one-shot featuring The Snake).

Thank you all for stopping by, and for your continued support. I wish all of you a safe and happy New Year’s, and hope to see you around here soon. Take care.

Making progress... (4)

Archer Coe & The Way To Dusty Death (vol.2):

Only four chapters left! Stay tuned...

Making progress... (3)

Archer Coe & The Way To Dusty Death (vol.2):

The book is halfway done! 

 Stay tuned...

News (2)

If you’re into comics, you’re most likely already aware that today is Free Comic Book Day, and my good friend Charlie Harris, owner of Charlie’s Comic Books in Tucson, Arizona, is celebrating it by holding a charity event in his store. He asked some local artists to contribute an original drawing for a silent auction, with all proceeds going to the Primavera Foundation. This year's theme was "Arch Enemies", so I dediced to draw the final battle between Matt Wagner's Grendel and his nemesis, Argent the Wolf.

If you’re interested in buying the drawing (and if you’re in Tucson today), feel free to stop by Charlie's store! As always, the winning bidder also gets a hi-res,  color copy of the drawing.

RIPOSTE:
Riposte was released in France in late January, and I’m pleased to announce that as of this writing, the distributor AND publisher have both sold out of the 1st printing. The book has received excellent reviews, which can be read here: (if you read French, that is)

citédelaBD.org
sceneario.com
bedepolar.blogspot.fr
planetebd.com
leslecturesdares.over-blog.com
fumetti.over-blog.com
DBD.com
www.senscritique.com
bdgest.com

Chris Thompson, from London’s Orbital Comics, was kind enough to interview me about Riposte and my other projects last January during the Angoulême comic book festival. The podcast can be found here: (my interview starts around 38:00)

Riposte will be going back to the printers soon, and the new edition is scheduled for release in late summer/early fall, as I understand it. Until then, you can still find the book at French comic shops, and even on the internet.

The book has been warmly received by local French bookstores, and I’ve had the opportunity of doing some signings at some great shops, including Gréfine (La Rochelle), BD FLASH (Chartres), and Bulles en Cavale (Rochefort), among others. I don’t have any more signings scheduled until Fall, when the French comic book convention season starts (St. Malo, Creil, Rochefort, Angoulême, etc.) so in the meantime, I’ll be hard at work on…

ARCHER COE & THE WAY TO DUSTY DEATH:

Chapter 4 (A.K.A. “the horse-filled chapter that still gives me nightmares when I think about it”) is finished, and I’m currently working on Chapter 5. I'm making slow (but steady) progress. More sneak peeks to come soon!

Thanks for stopping by!