Hola, Athos!

The Spanish cover for Athos in America.

And another panel

The story will be in black and white + red colour pencil.

Brian De Palma

Top five Brian De Palma films:
1. Blow Out
2. Dressed to Kill
3. Carlito's Way
4. The Untouchables
5. Mission Impossible

Another panel...

...from the new story. I got about 50 pages in various states of being sketched, penciled and inked. For the moment it looks like it will be around 150-160 pages. So I guess this will be my first graphic novel. That means I'm a... I'm a... graphic novelist! Woo hoo!

Hitchcock

Top five Hitchcock films:
1. North by Northwest
2. Rear Window
3. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 version)
4. Psycho
5. Notorious

Yes, Vertigo is not on the list! I dunno, I just never cared too much about that film...

New artists

One part of growing older is completely losing touch with what is going on in current pop music. I have a vague knowledge of a singer called Lady Gaga, but that's about it. Travis and The Cranberries are new bands for me, and I don't know if they even exist anymore. If I discover new music, it's often by accident. Hearing a tape while sitting in the car of a friend or things like that. So, here's the top five of new artists, meaning artists that have appeared after the year 2000:
1. Iron and Wine
2. Marissa Nadler
3. Jose Gonzales
4. Fleet Foxes
5. Bon Iver

Some comics I've read

Love And Rockets, no. 4 by the Hernandez brothers:
Another great issue, with the continuation and ending of The Love Bunglers, from Jaime Hernandez. It's a real knockout and quite touching for those that have followed the strip and these characters since the eighties. You almost have to remind yourself that, yes, these are characters, not real people! Apparently, nobody told Jaime that the quality of one's work is supposed to go down after working on a strip that long. I look forward to, in twenty years time, reading about a sixty years old Maggie.

Prince Valiant Volume 4, 1943-44 by Hal Foster:
Again, stunning drawings. And quite bloody! Valiant is being tortured, people are killed left and right. There's a strange sequence in the book involving another knight, Tristram, who I don't think has been introduced earlier, that looks like a double of Valiant, but with a mustache! He is killed by a jealous king, but instead of Valiant and Gawain, who are there, seeking vengeance they just ride off. Not quite sure what was going on in Foster's mind there.

Tarzan, The Joe Kubert Years, Volume 3:
I remember the Kubert Tarzan stories from when I was a kid. There were some translations into Norwegian. Kubert was the perfect Tarzan artist, in my mind, his brushstrokes matching the savageness of both Tarzan and the jungle landscape where the stories take place. Still waiting for Volume 1.

Hellboy, The Bride of Hell And Others, The Troll Witch and Others, The Crooked Man And Others:
Usually I find the Hellboy stories not drawn by Mignola less appealing. No matter how good the cartoonists are, it's just not the same. An interesting exception is Richard Corben - his style is almost completely the opposite of Mignola, but somehow it works perfectly for the Hellboy universe. One thing, though: I miss the handlettering by Pat Brosseau from the early books. That handlettering had a lot of character, the square A's and so on, and the computer font from the newer books doesn't fit as well.

Our Little Kat King by Patrick McDonnell:
This is the latest of the yearly Mutts Treasury books. Is Mutts the last good newspaperstrip? It has a Peanuts quality, even if maybe it doesn't reach quite the genius of that strip. It's very inventive in its variations of the recurring setups; the hibernation strips, the singing birds, the squirrel throwing nuts and so on . Sometimes a little too cute-ish, but there are worse crimes.