Merry Christmas! Allen Bellman and Captain America! Project: New Man 2:15! Humants 1:14! Friday’s Comics’ Blog
Friday, December 24th, 2010Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!
The Holiday Season is upon us! It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone but here we are at Christmas 2010! We here at MegaComicsGroup.com hope each and every person reading this blog has the best Holidays ever!
Who’s the guys in front of the Marvel Painting? The gentleman’s name is Allen Bellman. Mr. Bellman’s is one of the great cartoonists from the Golden Age of Comics and in particular Timely/Marvel Comics. From his web site:
Allen Bellman was born in Manhattan and studied at the High School of Industrial Arts. He eventually became a staff artist at Timely during the Golden Age of Comics. While still a teenager, he did the backgrounds for Syd Shores’ Captain America in 1942, and eventually worked on titles such as: The Patriot, The Destroyer, The Human Torch, Jap Buster Johnson and Jet Dixon of the Space Squadron, All Winners Comics, Marvel Mystery, Sub Mariner Comics, Young Allies and so much more.”
Mark Poe, our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and Black Friday Comics contest winner got an early Christmas gift in the form of an original pencil sketch from Mr. Bellman. Thanks to Michael D. Hamersky and Make It So Marketing, Mark won the Grand Prize on the Black Friday Comics event the day after Thanksgiving on Facebook. Mr. Bellman promised a “…a tight graphite pencil sketch, 9×12 of Cappy (Captain America), belting Hitler, or any other villain of that period. I will put all but the kitchen sink into it. This one could have a value of $195.” True to his word, he delivered at Mark’s request of “Cap punching out the Red Skull with Hitler in the background.” Click the image to the right for a larger viewing in a new window.
Find out all about Mr. Bellman and his commission sketches on his web site: www.AllenBellman.com, where you can contact him.
Coming up in 2011, Allen Bellman is scheduled to be at: Tampa Bay Comic Con, MegaCon, Texas Comic Con, and the Florida SuperCon! You’ll find dates and times at these links.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I hope you get more than you asked for! 😉 I sure did! As you read above I am now the proud owner of a bit of Golden Age Treasure. I’d like to thank Allen Bellman for the great job he did. It turned out even better than I imagined and will have a reserved place of honor on my office wall as soon as the mailman delivers it. Also a big “Thank you!” to Michael D. Hamersky at Make It So Marketing for putting on Black Friday Comics and giving me the opportunity to enter for the Grand Prize.
Also on a related note of gratitude…. Thanks to each and every reader who have diligently and patiently followed this MCG blog since we started it back in 2008. This year, as has been reported, has not gone at all as planned and we’ve had a lot of distractions and delays on our publications along the way. But we’re still here and we’re making progress toward our goals. Most of that progress of late has been behind the scenes as we have been bringing to a close our old Art Service business in favor of expanding our Art Production business including our new comics publications. Hopefully, we’ll be able to give you a full report soon and get all our comics projects back to full production mode. So thanks for sticking with us and Happy Holidays!
Any questions or comments? All are welcome.
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Archives Spotlight
We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man #2 and Humants #1! Stay tuned to this section every Friday for more of our archived titles.
Project: New Man #2 – Page 15 – An offer he could not refuse! What would you do? The guy is on death row, slated to die anyway. So here he has an opportunity to live, IF he can survive being a guinea pig!
Mark’s Remarks: My layouts are better on this page… but the proportions are a bit off. Of course I’ve seen other books with the same type of mistakes published by the big two in times past. The thing about production art where deadlines are always looming, the art is often rushed. It’s not as obvious these days especially with larger staffs and the use of PhotoShop and like programs which allow for much more editing and adjustments. Maybe someday I’ll go back and redo some or all these pages, who knows?
Humants #1 – Page 14 – And so the first meeting of The Humants team is done. A chapter ends and a new one begins… on the next post! Be here! …uh, that is, if you want to… and we sure hope you do! 😉
Mark’s Remarks: Freazie covers a lot of ground on this page setting up the story for the action to come. More than that, even though it’s basically talking heads, Mr. White manages to keep it interesting with his layout and art. Freazie has been criticized before concerning his use of shadows. Maybe he does get carried away some with his light sources but I recall other artists who used abstract shadow casting for dramatic effect. One of my favorite cartoonists is Jack Kirby, as you might have guessed by now. 😉 Kirby could get more use out of dramatic, abstract shadows than just about anyone I’ve ever studied. Yeah, sure, Freazie’s art may not be prefect, but whose is? He can tell a story with his pictures and perfect or not there has always been something about Freazie’s art which is appealing. Exactly what that bit of charm is I don’t know, but I like it! 🙂
Any questions or comments? All are welcome.
CU Next Friday!