Well, it’s that time of year where shopping becomes a priority for many of us, preparing gift giving for the next holiday break this December.
So I thought I would shamelessly point in the direction of my shop. Quite a few things for consideration that possibly make good gifts. If you happen to agree with that, then click the store button in the menu. But wherever you’re shopping, do it with heart.
Working with powerhouse music artist The Sword just remains utterly cool– it keeps on going. The latest development is a BMX bike featuring art elements from the album artwork I did for The Sword’s Apocryphon. It’s a wickedly cool bike. More details through the official band site will come October 17th and over the weekend. Below is an official press release along with some photos and video teaser…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 17, 2014
THE SWORD AND SUBROSA TEAM UP FOR “THE STORMWITCH” BIKE
BIKE UNVEILED AT TEXAS TOAST THIS WEEKEND IN AUSTIN,TX
Following in the footsteps of their branded beers and hot sauce, The Sword is now expanding their brand to the world of extreme sports by partnering with Subrosa for the creation of the “The Stormwitch” bike. Overseen by Sword drummer and longtime BMX rider, Jimmy Vela, “The Stormwitch” features artwork from famed comic book artist J.H Williams who designed the most recent Sword album, Apocryphon. The bike features quality components by Rant and the Shadow Conspiracy. The bike was displayed last month at Interbike in Las Vegas but will have its first public viewing starting today at Texas Toast in Austin.
The bike will be available worldwide. U.S distribution will be handled by Sparkys distribution, info@sparkysdistribution.com. For dealers ex-US go to http://subrosabrand.com/contact/. During Texas Toast, the bike will be on display at the Subrosa tent. It will also be available at Empire BMX in Austin, TX http://empirebmx.com, Dan’s Comp and all Subrosa’s worldwide distributors.
The Sword Website
IMG_5820 (2)
September 6th we’re doing something we’d been thinking about doing for quite some time. A massive retail sale of comics and books I’ve worked on in some form or another, all from my personal cache.
There will be signed hardcover and softcover books, some of them in sets. Such as a few Batwoman five volume trade sets, or Promethea hardcover sets. Signed sets of various series. We’re also doing a bunch of grab bags– 50 random comics for $50 (Guaranteed at least 5 or more signed). There is an amazing array of comics going back to the early parts of my drawing career. Also throwing into this mix are old sketchbooks. There are some interesting surprises and odd things in there. And some packages might even have complete runs of a few things, or a random tpb.
Each Grab bag features a mix of 50 different comics/trades/sketchbooks/variant covers, no duplicates per grab bag.
We’re also offering six signed Promethea 32 poster sets, these are very rare artist proof numbered editions that come with a limited comic sized Promethea covers book signed by author Alan Moore and myself.
Items will start going into the store Saturday September 6th from noon to 1pm PST– we should have everything loaded up within that hour.
Skulking from corner to corner, scrutinizing every shadow. Poking under tables and chairs searching for unseen enemies, always high strung. Coloring of grays, browns, soft tans, and sandy whites. All layered with deep grey-black blocky shapes and stripes. Slightly billowy and lush to the touch, but it gets obsessively compulsively pulled out in clumps that skirt and puff along the wooden floors. A tiny brown reddish nose rimmed with a fine line of black. And two large citrine and lime wide open orbs that stare up at me with an expression full of love, “I love you. I love you. You are mine and I love you” they say to me. He always comes out of nowhere whenever Wendy and I get in the same room, no matter what or when, he arrives with uncanny precise timing, its like he is psychic or something, he always knows. Demanding our undivided attention, exclaiming with a voice that seems to have a hint of desperation as he looks up at us with his beautiful feline eyes that say “You are mine and I love you”.
Sweet Sammy
February 7th 2012
Today was a terrible day, and I feel a bit strange blogging a sad thing when I’ve been extremely inconsistent and neglectful with my blog this past year. But today we lost Sweet Sam after 16+ years of him in our lives. It’s hard to explain just what that feels like– when you lose a dear four legged friend after so long– he is family. I remembered writing about him a couple of years ago during a year long blog experiment, and felt like sharing it above again in honor of him. We first met Sammy when he was a very small kitten on a hot Fourth Of July holiday. A scrawny little greyish thing, and noisy enough to hear over the fireworks. He had been hit by a car in a shopping center parking lot, and his back hip and pelvis were broken. We managed to rescue him, but that injury never healed quite right. That injury caused him some serious trouble in his old age unfortunately, and played a role in what happened to him today. I wish more people had gotten a chance to meet him and see just how much of an oddball cat Sammy truly was. It easily took two hands to count his obsessive compulsions. They always made for amusing stories, such as the singular joy he took in finding and eating cobwebs like they were cotton candy made just for cats, very carefully leaving the spiders alone. Or no matter how docile he was here at home, all of his vet files and charts had giant red caution stickers all over them because he would literally lose his mind whenever going in for a check-up. Or loving to hide inside paper bags pretending that we couldn’t see him, and whenever we showed that we could he would get very annoyed while trying to pretend even harder. So funny and strange. And no matter what we were doing throughout the day he was there, most likely staring at us. He liked to stare at us a lot. As if we were his personal entertainment, waiting for us to jump up suddenly and do something just for him. It’s going to take a very long time for us feel normal without him. We love you Sweet Sam. We were yours.
Chapter 3 has arrived!
Hardcover collection of various Batman work from over the years. I wrote a new short Afterword for this.
I’ll be doing a bit of a short notice signing appearance. Details below…
July 23rd
3pm
Barnes And Noble
Merced Marketplace
1720 West Olive Ave.
Merced, CA 95348
The plan is to have some time for a Q and A along with the signing meet and greet. I’ll be signing whatever is there or what people bring in. The short notice couldn’t be helped, but please come and chat a bit.
Here is an image for the Tales Of The Batman By J H Williams III hardcover book due out next week and we’re hoping to have fresh off the press copies for this…
Recently a cover image was circulated attached to the solicits for Sandman Overture issue 4. But there was a bit of crossed wires information. That image was actually planned to be a variant cover. Below is the proper issue 4 cover, in its virgin and logo versions…
Well. I’ve been typically remiss in keeping the blog current. I suck. But thought I’d finally post the second print cover of Sandman number 1 that was made available a few weeks ago…
Blondie’s Ghosts Of Download album is officially out. So here is a new post featuring more images and design pieces that I did for the release.
First up is the back and front covers to the CD booklet. The back cover gets used again as part of the vinyl inner sleeve that holds the record.
Here is another example of how the lyrics were used for the CD booklet. There are sections of the booklet that use just the handwritten lyrics against an art backdrop. It was a lot of fun creating these more abstract art sections to lay the lyrics over. The lyrics in the booklet transition from red to blue half way through and so this is from the blue half featuring written lyrics by Debbie Harry on the left, and written lyrics by Chris Stein on the right.
Next up is another example of the CD booklet design. This is one of the end credits pages butted up against another page of art. I felt it was best to keep the credits sections simple, and then transition back to art for one last image. This image was originally only seen as the cover to an early promo cd single cover. So I thought it’d be nice to give it more attention here.
This spread below is from an alternate version of the CD booklet being used overseas. The art on the left is grabbed from the CD Trifold Cover here on the US version, but slightly tweaked. The image on the right is grabbed from the back of the CD Trifold Cover as well, but on that I used the song titles, where here I placed ghostly images of the entire band set into the screen.
Next is the first versions of the inner sleeve art for vinyl edition. The red side shows how this was used slightly differently than the CD booklet version. The back of the CD Trifold Cover was used here differently as well, more in a Warhol sort of way. Originally I had placed the album credits here on the screens. Below that shows how it was altered for the final version (shown sideways here for production set up). Ultimately it was best decided to move the very small album credits off the those small screens and onto a insert for the vinyl that I will show in the next post. That allowed to make them larger and easier to read by moving them elsewhere. I replaced those credits with variations of fonts that are G.O.D. repeating, keeping with the Warhol repetitive nature of the design here. Simple but interesting to look at.
The strange orb like thing that I created in some places and the odd spider like creature are based on biological viruses, another blending of the physical and the digital themes the graphics show throughout all of the art for this album.
And yes, the codes say real things!
The art I did for Blondie’s upcoming release Ghosts Of Download can finally be shown. I worked on this mid-last year, so all of the work has been waiting for a release date. That is now here, May 13th 2014, links below on where to order the package, and Blondie’s Facebook page and website. The package design is a unique one, there will be two albums in one package– featuring The Ghosts Of Download album along with another album of Blondie’s greatest hits newly recorded, and a deluxe version with all kinds of extra goodies. I did all of the design work for Ghosts, while the Hits portion was done by someone else. I worked on every visual aspect of this release, from concept, to cover design, to booklet design, and all the same for the Vinyl Double LP. There are different pieces or alterations for the CD versus the Vinyl, and the same situation for some foreign versions of the release– GO COLLECTORS GO! Below I’ve selected some of the art images for your entertainment. I’ll show more over the next couple weeks, but wanted to get a few Key pieces up for everyone to see. The CD booklet will print the lyrics for the songs, and here some of them are shown as example of the art design, but the album will feature all of the lyrics, all done in the band’s own writing, something they’ve not done before. The Vinyl LP will feature the lyrics as well, but very different in configuration, I’ll show that soon. The overall goal of the visual concept was to marry the idea of digital and organic, but done with a graphic sensibility. The first images I’m showing are good for getting that idea across. This mode of thinking brought the idea of the handwritten lyrics being used, so cool we were able to do that.
CD and Vinyl LP Front Cover…
Vinyl LP Back Cover…
Various Pages From The CD Booklet…
Order here…
Special Bundle Package
Deluxe CD
Standard CD
Double Vinyl
Blondie on Facebook
Blondie Site
Back from our Asbury Park New Jersey trip. And from getting to visit with Todd Klein and his lovely wife for a few days. It was a good time all around. The NJ people were so inviting, making Wendy and I feel very welcome. We got to hang out with our good friend Ivan Brandon and Cliff Chiang while there. Also, I was extremely fortunate to have a great but all too brief conversation with the amazing Mister Jim Steranko. His work has been a major inspiration for me in everything I do.
Below is a link to an article about a panel I was on for the convention– moderated by Hannah Means-Shannon, Editor-In-Chief over at Bleeding Cool.
I don’t do very many conventions a year. Usually only one or two, if any at all. There just isn’t enough time to travel and get work done properly in the way I need to focus. Plus sometimes other travel comes up for family stuff. I probably will not be going to SDCC this year. So my only convention this year at this point is Asbury Park in New Jersey this upcoming weekend (12th and 13th), with a short stop along the way to see Todd Klein, Master Of Letters, for a couple days. Todd is attending the show as well. Below is a link, some cool people will be there that I’m eager to meet…
Well, I have been completely neglecting my blog since January now. I’m such a terrible internet host. It seems time has something to do with it. That is my excuse for now. As I work away on this current project, it does seems as if Sandman manages suck away time in ever increasing increments. I’m not sure why that is, really. But I do find it very interesting that this is occurring, since the story itself is sort of dealing with time and how it can move away from events only to circle back around again. There is a very strange sensation I’m having while working on this stuff. I’m a bit off kilter, that is the effect. Every new page posing a creative question in the turmoil of my addled brain. Questions I have yet to know if I’m answering correctly, or thoughtfully enough. I feel as if there is a creative sizzle popping and snapping, eager for a crash of a wall to release its fire.
This is tough for me, it is like all of my creative focus is honed into a blunt object on the project. Time being flattened across an intangible surface. Which means any other project, especially writing ones I had declared getting to, have evaporated into the dark pools recessed in my mind. And there they shall remain until time becomes something I can hold again. Frustrating because I have written a new intro concept story for a new blog feature and have written the first stages of a first act of the second story for this same feature. But I suppose everything happens as it should, when it needs to and not before.
On that note, finally issue 2 of Sandman: Overture is out this week. I’m relieved about this, but also quite nervous. It moves and breathes quite differently than issue 1, yet still feels like a part of the same story. That is a good thing. I’m finding the same is happening with issue 3 so far as well. It’s going to be very different from issue’s one and two.
Also, if any of you are making your way to San Francisco between now and the end of April you will find all of the art for Sandman: Overture issues 1 and 2 on exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum. The painted piece below is there, this is the cover to issue 2 out this Wednesday at all finer comic shops with good taste…
Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is hosting some of my work for gallery display, and we’ll be doing a special event for them Saturday, March 15th. Currently there are a few pieces up for viewing now, including the image above. But we plan on displaying many more. If you can make it out to see us that evening would be wonderful. Details can be found here…
Adding a few items to the store today, but all available for purchase Saturday around noon CA time. Prompted by the surprise arrival of old Promethea related art that was found at one of the DC offices. I had thought these pieces were lost to oblivion. They were done for the ABC sketchbook a long time ago. Also 3 Batwoman covers are going up as well. These are up to issue 24, but the unpublished cover art for issues 25 and 26 will remain in my hands for the time being. Here are the images…
The Sandman painting from the previous post is now on display at Gallery Nucleus in southern California. Hopefully some of you can visit and see all of the amazing art that this piece has the good fortune of sitting next to.
the painting
Nucleus
Here are a couple recent Sandman related pieces. The sketch is the Cartoon Museum in San Francisco, it’ll be seen as some sort of bookplate thing in their catalogue. The color piece is a painting study, and will be shown in some form in the relatively near future. I’ll update when I have more information about these things.
Well, really on Wednesday morning. But I wish we had done a special midnight release this Tuesday night. Here is the cover below. I’m not doing my usual process blogs for these Sandman covers because some of that will be used for the Special Editions versions for each issue. And I’m not doing any thumbnails for composition on these either, so I can’t even show that. I’m letting them dictate to me as I draw and paint what the full compositions will be, letting them be dreamed up as I work, so to speak. This becomes extremely evident for the cover to issue 3 when you see that later.
Here is a list of music that was listened to while drawing pages for Sandman Issue 1…
2013
Apr. 4th-
Chelsea Wolfe: Apokalypsis
Chelsea Wolfe: The Grime and The Glow
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away
Sound City: Real to Reel
May 9th –
David Bowie: The Next Day
Those Poor Bastards: The Plague
Julian Cope: Black Sheep
May 30th –
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Specter At The Feast
Fitz And The Tantrums: More Than Just A Dream
The Twilight Garden: A World We Pretend
June 13th-
Calexico: Spoke
Nellie McKay: Obligatory Villagers
Black Sabbath: 13
June 14th-
The Warlocks: Heavy Deavy Skull Lover
Death In Vegas: Dead Elvis
Stereophonics: b-sides
August 6th-
Gogol Bordello: Pura Vida Conspiracy
Marnie: Crystal World
Julian Cope: Revolutionary Suicide
August 23rd-
Ad Astra: Jewels Of The Nile on vinyl
Joey Ramone: “Ya Know?” on vinyl
Music Inspired By Star Wars And Galactic Funk By Meco on vinyl
Sept 2nd-
Rush: Presto
Rush: Fly By Night
Love and Rockets: Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven
Sept 10th-
Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks
Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks Remixes
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito
Sept 20th-
Love and Rockets: Express
Love and Rockets: Earth Sun Moon
Sept 23rd-
Love and Rockets: Love and Rockets
Love and Rockets: Sorted! The Best of Love and Rockets
Sept 25th-
ELO: No Answer
ELO: ELO II
Sept 30th-
ELO: On the Third Day
ELO: Eldorado
Oct. 1st-
ELO: Face The Music
ELO: A New World Record
ELO: Out of the Blue
Oct. 3rd-
ELO: Discovery
ELO: Time
ELO: Secret Messages
Oct. 5th-
ELO: Balance of Power
ELO: Zoom
Rush: Vapor Trails Remixed
DEVO: Hardcore Volume 1 on vinyl
DEVO: Hardcore Volume 2 on vinyl
The Mission: The Brightest Light
Oct. 6th-
Chelsea Wolfe: Prayer for the Unborn
Chelsea Wolfe: Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs
Chelsea Wolfe: Pain is Beauty on vinyl
The Damned: The Stiff Singles 1976-1977, vinyl 45s
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Proposition- Original Soundtrack
Those Poor Bastards: Songs of Desperation
Those Poor Bastards: Hellfire Hymns
Oct. 7th-
Blondie rarities (homemade compilation #8)
Blondie rarities (homemade compilation #9)
Blondie rarities (homemade compilation #10)
Oct. 8th-
Ghost Dance: Stop The World
Clearing up some confusion as to when our last issue of Batwoman is to be published…
It’s this week in Batwoman issue 24. The big showdown between Batwoman and Batman kicks off this issue. And was going to run into the next 2 issues, a real knockdown heavy hitting battle. This issue was only the first part of it.
I’m depressed over this a bit. And frustratingly the issue will give no arc conclusion, or conclusion to our run. We apologize to you readers for that. It wasn’t what we wanted to happen.
Issue 24 was already written and being drawn by the time fallout came from our decision to leave the title. There had already been an issue 25 written by us and turned in, but at this point I don’t think this will ever be published. Issue 26 was to be the final chapter of the arc and is left unwritten by us currently. So DC isn’t publishing the end of the arc. Or at least not in any way we intended. If there is ever an offering of a conclusion to the last 7 months of storytelling, it most likely will be by the hands of others, and we have no idea how exactly that direction will proceed.
What saddens me about it is that our issue 26 two months from now would have ended in a place that would serve as an adequate end cap to our run in a lot of ways. We knew how we were going to wrap things by issue 26, and felt we would have done so in a satisfying manner, or so we hoped. There was SO much stuff going to happen, some crazy reveals, the reveal of Bones’ past, just how he connects to Kate and Beth Kane, and a confrontation with Jacob Kane and his Murder Of Crows. Batwoman having the final throw-down with Batman. We were going to give large plot points on how Beth became Alice. Bette Kane a.k.a. Hawkfire shocked and horrified by something Alice/Beth does during the rescue mission. Ultimately bring the entire family to some form of a beginning to heal, and how Maggie would fit into all of this. Chase, seeing the horrors of what Director Bones is doing, was going to cause her to make a radical decision that would forever change her life. This was all set up after altering a major plot point to suit DC’s needs. We would’ve been able to end our run at good spot for the next creative team. But that must only be happening in some parallel world. So the first 7 issues of this fourth arc will leave the story in a sort of limbo and not fully resolved, at least by us.
So I guess we have to say goodbye to Batwoman for real now. We love you Kate.
Here is the cover to issue 24…
Ugh. The site is finally back up. And wanted to say a very big thank you to everyone for such positive words of support. We have great respect for you.
Dear Batwoman readers –
From the moment DC asked us to write Batwoman — a dream project for both of us — we were committed to the unofficial tagline “No Status Quo.” We felt that the series and characters should always be moving forward, to keep changing and evolving. In order to live up to our mantra and ensure that each arc took Batwoman in new directions, we carefully planned plotlines and story beats for at least the first five arcs well before we ever wrote a single issue. We’ve been executing on that plan ever since, making changes whenever we’ve come up with a better idea, but in general remaining consistent to our core vision.
Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.
We’ve always understood that, as much as we love the character, Batwoman ultimately belongs to DC. However, the eleventh-hour nature of these changes left us frustrated and angry — because they prevent us from telling the best stories we can. So, after a lot of soul-searching, we’ve decided to leave the book after Issue 26.
We’re both heartbroken over leaving, but we feel strongly that you all deserve stories that push the character and the series forward. We can’t reliably do our best work if our plans are scrapped at the last minute, so we’re stepping aside. We are committed to bringing our run to a satisfying conclusion and we think that Issue 26 will leave a lasting impression.
We are extremely thankful for the opportunity to work on Batwoman. It’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding projects of our careers. We’ll always be grateful to everyone who helped us realize 26 issues: Mike Siglain, who brought us onto the project originally; Greg Rucka for inspirationally setting the stage; our amazing artists Amy Reeder, Trevor McCarthy, Pere Perez, Rob Hunter, Walden Wong, Sandu Florea, Richard Friend, Francesco Francavilla, Guy Major, Dave Stewart, and Todd Klein; Larry Ganem, for listening in tough times; and editors Mike Marts, Harvey Richards, Rickey Purdin, and Darren Shan.
And most of all, a huge thank you to everyone who read the book. Hearing your voices, your reactions, your enthusiasm every month was such a joy, so humbling, so rewarding. You guys rock! Because so many of you embraced the series, we were able to complete four arcs, and your passion for Batwoman encouraged us to push ourselves to do our best work with each and every issue.
Thank you for loving Batwoman as much as we do.
Goodbye for now,
Haden & J H
