It’s time for me to do a little catching up here at Story Studios! I just spent much of Friday through Monday helping Benita set up her local, annual Dye Day event. It was a smashing success again this year, but it’s going to take a few days for us to get back into top form. Lot’s of sore muscles and a bit of sun burn! Still, I don’t think I easily can express how much fun this was, and the high level of ambient creative energy that goes on there. For full details, and lots of pictures, follow this link to Benita’s website.

I’ve also got my two covers wrapped up, one for Nifty Comics, and one for Coscom Entertainment. Both publishers are featured in my “friends of Johnny Saturn” blog roll over on the side of the site. As an illustrator, I cannot even begin to express my admiration and love for all things Photoshop! I’ve been exploring this incredible application for years, and I never cease in discovering new and outstanding features and tricks.

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In the Johnny Saturn comic strip itself, issue eight has begun with a bang, and there’s lots of super-heroic action on the way—I just love drawing things explode and crash! I’m working on a new tag line to tell people what the strip is about when I’m at conventions, or on forums. One that I’ve been considering is “Johnny Saturn is about superheroes who live like rock stars, and the super villians who get all the good lines.”

I like this line, but I don’t feel it’s done. Our superheroes are as fallible as are almost all big media favorites, and having super powers and fighting crime only makes their lives even more complicated and unmanageable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all our heroes are the equivalent of TV child stars that grow up to become tabloid embarrassments, but there is an element of that in Spire City.

On the flip side of the equation, I’ve seen that our villains tend to be more self-aware, more effective in their schemes, and they seem to win more often and keep one step ahead of the good guys. The villains are just as messed up as the heroes, really, but their jobs are easier—it’s always easier to break things than fix them. It’s superheroes’ job to maintain the status quo, and it’s the villains’ job to disrupt that status quo.

So, maybe our new sales pitch should be “Johnny Saturn is about superheroes who live like rock stars, and the super villains who love to foil them.”

That’s a little better. What are your ideas on this?

Scott.

Today, for your enjoyment (and horror), a recent book cover I did for Coscom Entertainment. The book is an anthology titled “Dead Science.” Warning—this is not for the timid at heart!

This picture is pretty typical of the type of digital paintings I do, although I jumped a bunch of stylistic and technological hurdles on this one and got more sophisticated than I normally do. I’m not into zombies or gore, but I believe I outdid myself on this one.

I’m hard at work on another Coscom Entertainment cover, this one centered on werewolves.