Moon Prince Page 97: Only a Lad

This week, Max gets dissed.

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Moon Prince Page 96: The Moon Pirates

This week, the Moon Pirates manifest themselves!

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Bat People on the Moon?

While we're waiting for this Friday's action packed installment of the Moon Prince, I thought it might be fun to show you a few of my influences in writing this part of the story. The idea to have bat-people on the Moon actually goes back all the way to 1835, to a famous hoax published in the old New York Sun that claimed astronomers had spotted creatures on the lunar surface using an enormous new telescope. Wonderful drawings of these bat-men were published and caused a huge stir at the time. Here are a few of them:

You can read a fascinating article about the Great Moon Hoax here.

And my list of influences for this part of the story wouldn't be complete without mentioning Jack Kirby's great comics series Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth, which I devoured as a kid. The ninth issue of the story featured bat people battling astronauts in a balloon! Here's the cover (you can click on any of these images for larger versions):

Moon Prince Page 95: We Don't Stand a Chance!

This week, things get scarier than ever!

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Moon Prince Page 94: Careful, Molly!

This week, all sorts of stuff happens!

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Buy the Book!

I've got a few extra copies of a promotional Moon Prince comic book I had printed up to show at conventions. It's the first chapter of the story - pages 1 to 29 - and it's in really nice full color. If you want one, you can buy it for $5.95 here (and I'll sign every copy sold).

Moon Prince Page 93: The Bat-man Speaks!

This week, we hear from the bat-man. But what are we hearing???

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Moon Prince Page 92: Angry Pirates!

This week: those are some mad pirates!

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- and Merry Christmas from Kevin, Melissa, Max and Molly!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a video I wrote and co-directed many years ago for the Crash Test Dummies - it's their version of "The First Noel". We shot it in a pizza joint in Niagara Falls, Canada in a single day - then had to go shoot another video for them (for their cover of "Androgynous" by the Replacements) at a nearby amusement park for the following two days! 

If you look closely, Brad (the lead singer) is holding a "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug, which I asked the props person to go buy somewhere. The next day, on the set, I looked closely at the mug and realized he'd drawn it on in magic marker, having been unable to find one in a store! He did a good job, too.

When the camera pans over to Ellen Reid sitting at the piano it's a deliberate nod to the opening credits for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Merry Christmas!

Moon Prince Page 91: Ahoy, Bat-men!

This week: more violence!

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My Ugly Thumbnails

Many cartoonists create beautiful little pages of preparatory drawings for their comics called "thumbnail" pages. My friend Bishakh Som, who is a wonderful cartoonist (you can see his work here) posted some of his thumbnail pages on Facebook last week that were just gorgeous, and suggested to me that I post some for The Moon Prince.

I'm sort of torn about this, because my thumbnail pages are very loose and scribbly. I use them to write the dialogue and plan the sequence, design and layout of the drawings, but the drawings themselves sure aren't much to look at. On the other hand, I guess it's sort of fun to see to see the process that goes into making comics like these, and I like to give visitors to this site something to look at while they're waiting for new pages of comics (stay tuned for more piracy and warfare on the Moon this Friday!).

So, without further ado, here are some of my ugly thumbnails, followed by the finished black and white drawings for the page they're from and the final colored page, with all the water and spooky fog. 

Moon Prince Page 90: Kitko's Revenge!

This week: Kitiko don't play like that!

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