First thing, just had my birthday this past weekend. It was a good time with good friends, good beer and good food. Pretty good, I'd say. If you find yourself in Long Island City (not Long Island), check out the LIC Beer Project and John Brown's BBQ. Both worth your time and money.
Beyond that, we've got some other good news: I have finished inking "Metal Revenant," which is a big milestone for me personally. I will once again say I think it's one of the best things I've ever done, and I'm really proud of it. Now I just gotta color the dang thing (well, two thirds of it anyway; I had already colored the first of the three chapters). But that'll come along nicely, I think.
The first step of the coloring process is what's referred to as "flatting" where you mark out the boundaries of each item/figure/location with a basic color that you then use to add more detail later. In this stage, it doesn't even really matter what the color actually is because it's just basically a marker or placeholder. For example, here's what I used for flats for a page in chapter 2:
So each of those colors is going to change, but it's useful in the first step to just quickly get those down before moving forward. I'll go over that part some other time.
And next we turn to another installment of what I'm reading:
Highlights this month include IDW's Star Trek: The Next Generation -- Mirror Universe Collection. IDW has set up sort of an ongoing series of stories taking place in Star Trek's Mirror Universe where humans are evil, greedy scumbags running a violent empire instead of a peaceful Federation. The original Star Trek TV series introduced the Mirror Universe in the 1960s, and Deep Space Nine returned to it several times in the 90s, Star Trek: Enterprise took a jaunt there in 2005, and we saw it again most recently in Star Trek: Discovery. But none of those series ever explored what (most of) the "Next Generation" crew under Captain Picard were up to in that universe (though there is a fantastic novel by Diane Duane from the 90s that did).
The series starts out as a bit of a heist caper as Picard gathers his crew to steal the new USS Enterprise to go on a mission of plunder against the combined Klingon/Cardassian empires. The art in the first story is painted by JK Woodward, and is a really interesting presentation that Trek comics don't normally get:
The fun here is largely in seeing the familiar TNG crew all hate each other and try to stab each other in the back as pirates instead of noble, enlightened heroes.
Elsewhere, Marvel's new "Planet of the Apes" series is interesting but I'm not entirely certain that it's as successful as the "Predator" series. For POTA, the series takes place between "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and deals with several characters trying to stop radical terrorists from killing off the planet's simian population even as humanity is succumbing to the deadly pandemic introduced at the end of that first film. The problem is that... with the average monthly comic you get about 22 pages to tell a story, and there's so many flashbacks happening that the main plot hasn't really moved forward at all in 3 issues. The art is good, the premise is sound, the world is interesting... but not enough is really happening, so I may not stick with it.
"Northern Blood" on the other hand, is a 4-issue miniseries from Blood Moon Comics that is a ton of fun with a simple premise: During World War II, Nazis dig up ancient viking treasure and the Vikings come back as an army of undead warriors to slaughter them. An American soldier and some local resistance fighters get caught in between and are trying to escape. It's great fun, with good art that very satisfyingly portrays the Nazis getting what they absolutely deserve. Check that one out if you can.
I may have mentioned last month that there's also a new 007 adventure, "For King and Country," in which James Bond is disavowed and hunted by MI6 as the world's intelligence agencies come under the heel of a nefarious private corporation. I've struggled with Bond comics in the past; even when they were well written, the art seemed to lag. But here, it's all good and I've really enjoyed the two issues out so far. Looking forward to seeing more of that one.
If you're not tired of hearing about Star Trek comics, I make a brief cameo in this blog post from Rich Handley, perhaps the world's foremost expert in Trek comics.
Anyway I think that's all I've got for you this month. Don't forget to keep checking out Landline here on Zestworld, as we barrel toward the end of Season 2. Of course that mean's Season 3 will be starting up sometime in July, too. Talk to you then!