Last Boy at St Edith's by Lee Gjertsen Malone

The cover I did for Lee Gjertsen Malone's debut YA novel, The Last Boy At St. Edith's, has just been revealed and I'm excited to finally post about it! As the cover shows, the story is about a young boy stuck in an all-girls school, and his adventurous attempts to get himself expelled.

It was great fun to illustrate this long crowd of characters wrapping around the entire jacket, and to letter the title by hand. I'm also really pleased with the palette and limited color.

Here's a look at the original drawing. All line-work is drawn by hand, though I did make numerous digital tweaks afterwards and redid the type several times till we had it right.

Thanks again to the awesome folks at Simon & Schuster, especially Art Director Laura DiSiena, and Lee Gjertsen Malone for her great story! Now we have to wait till the book comes out in February of 2016!

Cover for 11 Freunde magazine

 A very exciting project I've worked on is no published and I can talk about it: I did the cover for the 150th issue of the German soccer magazine 11 Freunde. The cover story is about the current "super-coaches" in European soccer, and they were inspired by my BEHOLDER comics to draw them in an old-school Marvel way as comic heroes. I also did a few interior illustrations of more coaches.

After some sketching we actually ended up using a direct reference of a picture in Journey Into Misery 5, just replacing my "Mighty Protectors" with the aforementioned super-coaches. The final is printed with two spot-colors which will make the art-work pop nicely, and is also similar to the 2-3 color designs I create for my own comics covers. I can't wait to see it in person!

Thanks so much to Sabine Kornbrust and the entire editorial team of 11 Freunde for a dream project! Get your copy now!

Carlo Ancelotti and Diego Pablo Simeone for the interiors.

The original page from Journey Into Misery 5 that the cover was inspired by.

Spring Arts Cover for Washington City Paper

The Washington City Papers does an annual Spring Arts Preview, and this time around it'll feature a section cover of yours truly. (Click to enlarge)

As you see to the left, there was very little change from sketch to finish. Just the type took us a while to figure out. Many thanks to Art Director JD Rothstein!

Tales To Behold #3 for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is this weekend, and here is what I hope  Tales To Behold #3 will look like. If all goes well…

Tales To Behold 3 Cover, to debut at Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest

This is the inked cover for my latest comic, Tales To Behold #3, featuring the return of Armagedda (last seen in Tales To Behold #1).

Thankfully hurricane Sandy left me unharmed, alas my paper-supplier in Chelsea wasn't as lucky, so the production of my latest gem in time for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival could be tricky.

In any case, I'll be at the festival on November 1oth, with all my other wares, such as Casual Comics, Beholder comics and children's books, I hope to see you there!

Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival
November 10, 2012 12- 7 pm
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church
275 North 8th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Village Voice Cover

Today, my cover for the Village Voice came out, it's very exciting to see it in print! When you follow the link, you can read the full story that goes with the illustration, about a cop having an affair. It's a juicy one!
Many thanks to art director John Dixon!

Cell Phone Girl

This is a brand-new piece I did just for fun, and I liked how it turned out so it's now the new home-page image on my website.

I've been recently thinking about how to bring some of the stylistics of my personal comics (especially the BEHOLDER books) into my editorial illustration work. The character is directly taken from my Journey Into Misery stories.

Can I See Your ID? – Blue Cover

With any book in the publishing industry, the cover is always very important and a lot of things are tried out before reaching the final result. So it's not unusual that we made a last minute change to the cover for Chris Barton's Can I See Your ID?, coming out in April from Dial Books for Young Readers

Reverting to the initial version that I suggested, we changed the color scheme to a blue one. I liked the red version, but then I think the new one is a bit more ominous rather than aggressive. I kind of like them both, so I'm glad that Dial made the final call.

Thanks again to Designer Jasmin Rubero for working so hard with me on it. The book is now available for pre-order from Amazon, and IndieBound and will be in stores April 2010!

Cover for New York Observer

Finished the illustration yesterday, and today it's already on the newsstand, that's part of the excitement of doing editorial illustration. It was a little hard to find a copy here in Greenpoint though… The topic of this illustration is Emily Smith, who'll be heading the famous gossip column Page Six at the New York Post.

Idea & Art Direction by Shelley Camhi, many thanks for the great collaboration!

Sacramento News & Review

I did a cover illustration and a number of portraits for SN&R recently, for a story about their local elections. This is the main illustration, it was used for both the cover and the feature page. Don Button designed the type.

Below are some of the portraits. You can read the descriptions about the candidates here. Thanks to Art Directors David Jayne and Don Button!

New Comics debuting at MoCCA Festival

The MoCCA Festival is this weekend, and this time around I'll have not one, but two brand-new mini-comics with me at the Rabid Rabbit table: Journey Into Misery 1+2. Both stories are pretty much wacky homages to the US comicbooks I grew up with, plus other weird influences. But most of all they were a lot of fun to make. They are hand-made, the covers are on metallic paper with rubberstamping.

Also I'll have my two children's books with me plus some older handmade goodies, and of course we'll have the new Rabid Rabbit with us (Issue 11), all of our back issues and my colleagues will also have new goodies with them.


So come by, it'll be fun!
Saturday and Sunday
April 10 & 11, 2010
11 AM - 6 PM

69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY
Mocca-Website

Cover for Isthmus

I had the pleasure to do this week's cover for Isthmus, celebrating the 11th annual Wisconsin Film Festival. I had a blast, incorporating characters from various indie movies, and mixing them with all those typical movie goers that all of us have encountered at some point. Thanks to AD Carolyn Fath!

Here is a key of all the characters (click to enlarge)

Also Known As Harper

This is a cover for a young adult novel coming out from Henry Holt. I enjoyed the story a lot, and it was really fun to come up with this image, including the handmade type. Unfortunately, the piece got killed in favor of a photgraphic solution. At least it was a fun project – thanks to Reka Simonson and the lovely folks at Holt.