Hitting the Mid-Week Stride

Just a few odds and ends of the week thus far:

• I caught the season four premiere of "RuPaul's Drag Race" on Logo Monday night. I already have my favorite picked out (loving Sharon Needles) and loved Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, as the guest judge. That woman just doesn't seem to age. I also noticed that RuPaul seems a bit harsher with some comments this year. I'm kinda liking that too.
  
  
• The warm weather this winter has been crazy, but I wont deny I'm enjoying it. I went for a 3.4 mile run yesterday and was actually a bit warm in my long-sleeved tee-shirt.
  
  
• I've been working on the next issue of "Grizzly & The Bear Patrol." I finished the cover last night and am surprisingly pleased with it. I hope to have the issue posted tomorrow.

And how is your week going?

Grizzly & The Bear Patrol #7 - Heart of Stone

It's taken nearly four months, but I finally got this issue done this afternoon. This one has a guest character based on bigsabu. Is he a hero or villain? You will have to read it to find out.

Normally, I wait until morning to post the issue, but I thought I would give the West Coast guys and East Coast night owls first dibs on this issue.

The cover was actually the last thing drawn and caused me the most trouble. I was just not getting any great cover ideas and this was the best I could come up with. I do like how it turned out. I guess now that this is done I can get to folding that mountain of clean laundry I've been neglecting. :D

There are 21 large graphic pages behind the cut, so it might take a while to load. They are all work-safe. There are some odds & ends comic notes at the very end.

• According to my notes, I started writing this story back on October 12, 2011. A big part of the delay has been the holidays. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun drawing this one.
  
  
• The character of Mandusa was one I drew a while back. He was a male Gorgon who turned his cubbish admirers into stone. I'd have posted it with the issue as a bonus poster, but it is definitely not-work-safe.
  
  
• Saber was originally called "Sabu" for bigsabu, but I thought he needed a superhero name. It is based on the idea of a saber-toothed tiger. I like the costume, but for some reason, it makes me think of a wrestling outfit. Not that it's a bad thing. :)
  
  
• This is the first issue without the entire team being involved. Sometimes it is rough to get six characters involved in the storyline, so I thought I would leave a couple of them out for different reasons. I picked to leave out Polar Bear and Center because they are not based on real friends of mine and I think the others enjoy seeing themselves in the book.
  
  
• Since I know you guys like the shirtless bears, I put Red Beard in a position where he'd need to teleport out of his costume. I thought it might be a good way to get him nearly nekkid AND have it be a fun plot point. And the ginger bears are always a crowd pleaser it seems. My only regret is that I had to draw in the red chest fur with Photoshop and it was too much work to add the leg hair too.
  
  
• I tried different angle views this time. I need to work on different page set-ups as there are some really cool page designs out there right now. I'm still the king of minimal backgrounds though.
  
  
• The next issue (whenever I get around to it) will probably be an installment set like the first three issues. This one was actually set up for installments, but once I got started inking, I felt the urge to keep going.

Any questions, comments or critiques, I welcome them all.