Incredibles on Disney Publishing Twitter page...

This is neat. Disney Publishing is using art from the current issue of The Incredibles for a background on their Twitter page.

http://twitter.com/DISNEYcomics



Well, it's neat to me.

Recreating Mr. Camera.

Some years ago, I stumbled across a little known Batman villain named Mr. Camera. I'm a big fan of weird theme villains. And so for years, bringing back Mr. Camera has been a big plan of mine.

Here's a how he originally appeared:



He wears a camera on his head and he's got the creepiest eyes in the history of Batman villains. So, as soon as Eric and I landed our Batman book, petitioning for this characters return was my number one priority. I really wanted to pull this character out of limbo and show what a great Batman villain he could be. Luckily, my editor on this book trusts me (for some reason) and I wrote the script for issue 14 of Batman: the Brave and the Bold last August.

Now, one of the things I like to do is have action figures handy of characters I am writing. It just helps me visualize things. But Mr. Camera had not appeared anywhere for almost 60 years. One 6 page comic that he was barely even in. That was it.

So I made my own Mr. Camera figure. As seen here:



And here:



The character in my head gave every appearance of being harmless and goofy. But if you live in a world where theme villains run the streets every day, what better way to be underestimated than to appear a simple theme villain. Furthermore, in the time since Mr. Camera debuted, Camera's have become a much more dominant part of our lives. So imagining a more sinister motivation and a more dangerous approach to the villain was easy.

Subsequently, this was what we created:



Keep in mind, we work months in advance. This book was finished quite some time ago. And in that time, I have eagerly awaited being responsible for the first ever appearance of Mr. Camera in almost 60 years.

Then Mr. Camera appeared as a background villain in the cartoon my comic is based on. The character is in limbo for 59 years and then, only a couple of weeks before my book comes out...  I guess the positive thing to take from this is that Eric and I are coming from a very similar position as the developers of the show.

Here's an image from Mr. Camera' s recent television appearance.



Ah well. I'm glad they kept his crazy eyes.

Two new books out - and lunch!

I'm a day late in posting this, but my laptop exploded recently and I'm still recovering. Anyway, I have two new books out as of yesterday. Issue 5 of The Incredibles, written by Mark Waid and myself, with art by Marcio Takara, and issue 14 of Batman:The Brave and the Bold, written by me and drawn by Eric Jones.



It's the first time I've had two books out in one day (minus collected editions). So me and a few friends went out to celebrate.



That's Traci, Branwyn, Damon and Tyler. Most of them I rarely see outside of things like Facebook. Lunch with all of them was long overdue.

I would have taken more pictures, but right about the time the above was taken, I remembered that I needed to pay the parking meter. If you saw crazy looking person running through downtown Berkeley yesterday, that was me. I got to my car just as the meter maid was finishing writing my ticket. Ah well.

Incredibles #5 Preview

Here's a preview of issue "The Incredibles" # 5 of by me, Mark Waid and Marcio Takara.



This issue comes out on Wednesday February 17th, as does Batman: The Brave and the Bold issue 14, by Eric Jones and myself.

Sexcapism

Here's another article I wrote. This time on using hyper-sexual video game characters.

Talk to me live...

I will be a guest on the SLG Radio Program this Thursday at 2:00 PM Pacific (That's 5:00 PM Eastern, I think), to talk about Supergirl Cosmic Adventures, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and The Incredibles. Call in. Ask difficult questions. Demand difficult answers.

More info can be found here.