Marvel Flipside

Namor versus Shagreen

This started as a sketch of Namor the Sub-Mariner, as I wondered why not try to see if he could get a costume change simply by giving him pants instead of a speedo. But it seemed like his pose was telling me he was punching someone. So obviously I had to add a villain at the end of his Imperious fists. But who to choose? Something nautical, of course. I immediately flashed to Shagreen the Sorcerer, a villain from another dimension that was visited by Nightcrawler in his limited series in the mid-80s. Shagreen has an obviously cartoony appearance with a giant misshapen head that turned out to be impossible to sketch from the angle I chose, so a sketch that started as something I was proud of turned out to be quite crappy IMO. But that's the random kind of thing that happens when I'm sketching after dinner.

And, hey, it's just in time to be a Friday Night Fight picture! Since it's actually more easy to sketch my own Friday Night Fights rather than to scour the back issues to find things to turn into blog posts, this might be the start of a trend... Sorry to Spacebooger.com and all the regular participants. I hope you enjoy the sketches instead!

Aquenos

I called it! (See?)

I thought it would be a unique combination of genre and one of those "only in a comic book!" situations to have underwater vampires! So what can you find in the latest Namor series from Marvel? The Aquenos, or underwater vampires!

To be fair, I had thought of it in terms of a super-villain team-up with Nagala the Serpent Witch. I would have made something like a Elder Gods or beastly ancient mythos kind of story. These are eons-old magics, right?

But I regret to say that I doubt I could have come up with as great an idea as this:

Namor: The First Mutant #1 (2010) by Stuart Moore and Ariel Olivetti

Vampire Monster Squid.

Comics are cool.

(But if you want me to do an Art Critique on this issue… whoo boy. It needs one!)