Cleopatra in Spaaace!

Less than three days until Cleo begins! Are you as excited as she is?

Khensu’s been absent from the comic over the past couple of weeks, so hopefully these little drawings of him I doodled during a meeting today will hold you over till he shows up again. :)

Just a quick sketch today. Drawing these is starting to make me look forward to meetings!

With all the heavy action taking place in the comic right now, I thought it’d be nice to depict Cleo a little more relaxed; sans space outfit and awesome guns.

Check out this AMAZING Cleo fan art I just got from good buddy and annual Megacon table neighbor, Joshua Smeaton.

Click for a larger image.

Seriously. That space background is the best thing ever. Great take on Khensu too! Josh’s first graphic novel, Haunted, just hit stores a couple of weeks ago. I’d track it down and buy it I were you. It’s good stuff. He updates Haunted online every week as well!

My favorite convention of the year, HeroesCon, is fast approaching. And for the first time ever I’ll be a guest there this year situated somewhere in the coolness of Indy Island.  I’m pretty excited, which lead to me drawing up this promo artwork for the show:

Now here’s the rad news: There will be a signed & numbered limited edition print run of this artwork (printed on a high quality watercolor stock- different from the usual gloss stock for my regular prints) of 15 at the show! 14 will be for sale at my table. The first numbered one along with the original b&w artwork will be  donated to Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find’s annual art auction, which helps fund the show and maintain it’s awesomeness.

Also, for those wondering, yes- I will have some Cleo books with me as along with my usual table full of stuff. I really hope to see a lot of you there! All signs are pointing towards this being the best year ever. June 4-6, Charlotte Convention Center.

Well, it’s my birthday today so I decided to celebrate by drawing this picture of Khensu (with special guest appearance by Anthony Clark’s–aka: Nedroid’s–Party Cat)!

Wouldn’t it be great to land on a planet where everyone was forced to party? And these cute little kitty cats would bounce around putting party hats on everything. Yeah. That would be pretty sweet.

Let’s make it a Khensu day! Not only does he get some star treatment on this week’s page, but here are a couple of awesome fan arts dedicated to everyone’s favorite space kitty.

First up, a pin-up for the new Cleo book (debuting at SDCC!) by my good friend and excellent draftsman, Dan Boyd!

The linework on that is impeccable. I just love it. Dan draws some amazing stuff, which you can check out on his blog. but what I really want to point you to is these Reginald Crabapple comics which were drawn like a page an hour. And they are SUPER GOOD. That is crazy. Dan is crazy.

And Eric White surprised me today with this colorful Khensu sketchcard:

So cute! Who doesn’t want to drift though though the beauty of the cosmos on their own personal asteroid? Check out more of Eric’s work on his DeviantArt page!

I thought it’d be nice to share with you the cover for the Cleopatra in Spaaace! book all that guest art I’ve been posting for the past month is for.

Still waiting for the final product to arrive at my door, but the books will be 48 pgs and contain all of chapter 1, some extra stuff like sketches and processes, and of course a giant guest art gallery. It’ll debut at the San Diego Comic-Con (where I’ll be hiding behind table N-05 in the Small Press section). I’m pretty excited!

I also made this little process flash animation of the cover. You can view it HERE.

Sorry for the lack of posts on here! Here’s a little Cleo illustration I drew this morning to hopefully make up for it.

Some updates:

• Yes, my son was born (a little over three weeks ago). Oliver Prime Maihack was born on October 13th at 7 lbs, 10z, 20″ and he’s pretty much the best baby ever. But those of you following me elsewhere know this already since there’s been a gazillion pics of him online already (mostly posted by my wife).
• The plan is still to continue Cleopatra in Space in January. Although my pace on the comic has slowed down a bit (see above bullet point).
• I have plans to give a you a bit of a bonus comic before then. More details later!
• There’s also some uh… other Cleopatra in Space stuff going on. Maybe more on that later, maybe not. We’ll see what happens. Regardless, I’m staying busy!

I really appreciate everyone’s patience while I figure out this new life schedule I’m on and work ahead to make sure chapter 3 is updated regularly. Seriously can’t wait to start sharing  this comic with everyone again!

Guest strips aside, it’s been a while since I’ve received any drawn fan art. But I have received some three-dimensional fan art recently!

First up this awesome Khensu plush toy sewed together by the talented Dee Pirko:

Aint he cute? You can see more of Dee’s custom made plushies in her Etsy shop. I’m pretty sure she takes commissions!

Second, my coworker (a HUGE ray gun aficionado if there ever was one) took it upon himself to build this life-sized replica of Cleo’s ray gun:

How cool is that? I’m thinking he and I should mass produce those suckers. They could make excellent laser pointers.