Blame Matthew Carpenter -- he asked me to post some of my stuff.

This has all seen the light of day over on the JBF in the Sketchbook thread, so for those of you familiar with that thread, there's nothing new here. These are some vignettes of my characters Sir Chuck and Fritz the Mysterious (the guys in my avatar). I've been drawing these guys since 1983, and am gearing up to do a web comic with them soon.

First up, a quick piece to show character dynamics:




Next, a little lesson on why it's nice to have a sorceror as a friend:






Finally, a piece that explains just why effective communication skills are necessary:






Phil Foglio once told me I should never, under any circumstances, letter my own work -- a critique I agree with wholeheartedly. This is why I love my Comiccraft fonts and Adobe Illustrator.

If anyone wants to take a crack at coloring these pages, I'd be interested to see the results. Justin -- the young squire -- has light brown hair, a lavender tunic with gold (or yellow) trim, black (or dark grey) pants and light brown boots. Fritz's gloves and pants are also light brown, and his boots are dark brown like Chuck's. I've been meaning to try coloring these pages myself, but frankly my coloring sucks nearly as much as my lettering does.

Nice work, John! It's got a real Foglio-esque feel to it!

Good stuff John. You have a nice flair for comedy, love the expressions.

Thanks. I've always considered Phil Foglio one of my biggesty influences artistically, and I was often accused by classmates at some school I've allegedly attended of being just a Foglio clone. When he himself looked at my portfolio (Portfoglio?), he said that while he saw the influence, he felt my work was strong enough to stand on its own, and that he liked what he saw and wanted to see more. Made my day, let me tell you.

Good luck on the webcomic, let us know when you get it going!

Will do! At the moment, all sirchuck.com has is a placeholder graphic, but soon, baby... soon... (the first strip is drawn and a few others have been written and I've laid them out in my head).

Very cool stuff, John. I missed those in the Sketchbook thread. I look forward to the webcomic. I'll probably take a shot at coloring these for fun, but don't expect a lot. I'm a mediocre colorist, at best.

Thanks John for posting some stuff here. I really love the stuff you've done and thought some other folks would like to see it here.

I never really looked at the sketchbook thread. Now I am going to have to go check it out, not just for your talent but to see what else I hve been missing out on. Its exciting and funny all at the same time. Well done!

Good lookin' stuff, JM.

Here's a couple of pages I did as part of my attempt to get The Adventures of Sir Chuck published (circa 1989 -- terrible timing on my part, trying to get a black and white humor comic sold right when the b&w humor boom had collapsed and everyone wanted to do the next Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen):

Holy shit! Mietus, you're a genius!

Love the storytelling in those last two pages, John. Really crisp, clear and concise. Your choice as to when and where to use the floating panels on the second page was a really good one.

Thanks, guys. Joe Kubert praised me for my storytelling and layout, which is as high praise as I can possibly imagine from anyone.

I agree - your storytelling is rock-solid!

Brad Anderson, a colourist I used to work with back at Digital Chameleon, attended the Kubert school (I'm just not exactly sure when) - I'm just curious if he was there when you were attending, John.

If he was, Ian, he was in a class other than mine -- I didn't know very many people in the years before me (Tom Raney being the exception -- he was in the class of '88, I was in the class of '89, but Gina Going -- later Gina Going-Raney -- was in my class, so I knew him by osmosis), and those in the two years after me who I knew (including Steve "Whiteout" Leiber and Andy "Klaw" Smith) I knew simply because I was their R.A.

Lovely sense of balance between the black and white areas.

i like you. and i like your drawings.

Love it. Fantastic.

I love your work, John. I agree, it's got a lot of Phil Foglio, and also a little bit of Bill Willingham (at least when he was doing Dragon Magazine). I love that cartoony feel and the energy that flows panel to panel.

Nice chops. Those eyes are awesome!

Thanks for the kind words, folks. I'll see if I can't find some more to post soon. In the meantime, here's a page that was intended to be a prologue to a prolonged comic storyline involving these guys. And yes, I was playing around with the idea of Gollum and setting it a bit on its ear...