Every Right

We help the CBLDF every chance we get, to make sure people have freedom of speech so they can express themselves if they're artists, and so they can help spread the word created by others if they're publishers, retailers, bookstores or libraries.
We create stories to talk about subjects we think should be discussed. Most of the time, they're works of fiction.
Every now and then, they talk about our times.

Last week, we saw our city (São Paulo) become what looked like a war zone, with the extreme violent police response to a public manifestation. Violence calls for more violence, and by the end of a very long thursday night many people were hurt for no good reason, wrongly arrested and terrorized by the police force. Add many acts of vandalism to the mix and suddenly you've lost sight of what people were there for in the first place: for their right to complain and express their opinions.

A new manifestation will happen this monday. My brother and I will be there as part of those who believe in peaceful, reasonable gathering. We believe in people's right to have an opinion and we've turned our opinions, as usually happens, in stories.

Cycles

We still didn't have time to write down the incredible experiences we had in our trip to Portland  - you can have a glimpse of it in this report from Craig Thompson - but I wanted to put this picture of our white board in here to mark the end of a cycle and the beginning of the next one. It takes a long time to make comics, and a lot of planning is required, and the artist just hopes there's no loss of quality when you have to worry about deadlines and schedules. We feel we reached the end of one cycle as our BPRD-Vampire mini-series is done, and as Bá finished all his six KillJoys covers, and as we just delivered our short story for the American Vampire anthology. We're starting a lot of new projects right now, and it's an exciting time, maybe the most exciting time in every project, when we watch these ideas as they are born and start to take shape. This initial energy will feed us for the next days, months and years as we work on these stories.
Back to the drawing board.

Killjoys cover 3

We're back from Portland, where we saw good friends and talked a lot about comics. I've already done two new covers and have yet another to do, but first I can show my alternate cover for the third issue of "The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys", crazy new series written by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, with fabulous art by Becky Cloonan, due to come out in June by Dark Horse.

We'll write more about our inspiring week in Portland on the next post.

Portland week!

We've been super busy here at the studio. After finally finishing the last pages of BPRD-Vampire (check out the detail from the last page on the image above), we're still hard at work on our short story for the recently announced American Vampire anthology. If that's not enough, there are two covers on our plate this month, a KillJoys one and a yet secret one, and we're trying to finish as much as we can before we travel to the US for our Portland week next week.
Portland week?
Yep.

We were invited to Portland to be part of this year's edition of the International Comic Arts Forum (check out the sweet Mike Allred poster) and we gladly accepted, as we love to talk about comics and how great it is to create and read them, and as Portland has so many awesome comic related people, from authors like Craig Thompson and Joe Sacco, to great artists like Allred himself, to publishers like our beloved Dark horse, and also some amazing mainstream writers like Matt Fraction and Brian Bendis.

Last time I went to Portland, this, this, this and this happened. Who knows what can happen this time?

Some of the things that will happen we know. Here's our to-do list:

-Wednesday, May 22th - from 7pm till 10pm- TFAW signing/party - we'll be signing at the Portland Things From Another World (2916 NE Broadway Street), in a very relaxed meet and talk get together where we'll sign your comics for you. Attendees will enjoy free food and beer (those 21+ with valid I.D.) and receive raffle tickets to win an original sketch I did for the event poster (pictured below). It was supposed to be a fast sketch, but I got a little carried away.

- Friday, May 24th, from 2pm to 3:15pm- Roundtable: Beyond Auteurism - Creativity and Collaboration in Comics. With Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Charles Hatfield, Ben Saunders, Qiana Whitted. (part of ICAF, at the University of Oregon, White Stag Building 70 NW Couch Street)

- Friday, May 24th, from 7pm to 8:30pm :An Evening With Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon. Moderated by Matt Fraction. We'll talk about our love of comics, and how we choose and create our projects, and we'll show some pretty pretty pictures to help with our presentation. And Matt will keep things funny. (part of ICAF, at the University of Oregon, White Stag Building 70 NW Couch Street)

Both ICAf events are free for the public, as is the signing at the store, but for the ICAF talks they ask that you register online. All the information can be found here. I hope a lot of people come, and we'll be ready for all sorts of questions, even if we have to squeeze them out of the audience.

KILLJOYS 2

One of my most challenging occupations these days is making up variant covers for "The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys", crazy new series written by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, with amazing art by Becky Cloonan, due to come out in June, after a quick appearance on FCBD in the coming weeks.
There're lots of characters, crazy places and lot's of stuff going on. It's been a pleasure being part of this adventure, being able to see where the story is going and help marking the way.

So here's my cover for the second issue, that should be out in July.