#space joe

[halehollowell]

good.

[halehollowell]

thinking of how this will work just incase wings . but he probably won’t have any for SPACE AU.

Thoughts about him having wings/no wings in space AU??

[halehollowell]

Thanks for the inspiration with your black butterfly jumpsuit, Elvis. Also Space Dandy and B-movies about space And mortal kombat for the vest

[donsparrow]

UPD = A-OK!

Hello, friend! This is a long overdue note about a very cool project in which I had the great privilege to take part. Local rockers Ultimate Power Duo put together a very ambitious project, a combination of a concept album and a graphic novel. Each chapter of the comic book adaptation would cover a different track on the album.

I was hired to deliver some pages, along with other greats of the Canadian comics scene like Riley Rossmo, Elaine Will, Scott Kowalchuk, Ken Davis, Nathen Wahl and a whole bunch more. My section had the neat challenge of illustrating not only the main character, Space Joe, but also coming up with a design for his female counterpart, Space Jane, from an alternate, gender-swapped Earth. I got to script my own section, based on the story beats dictated by my section’s song, and while the job was a bit rushed, I was happy to be a part of it. You can see the finished pages, on this very site. And yes, I did base Space Joe off of former Blue Jays catcher (and all around nice guy) JP Arencibia.

It was also really thrilling to finally read everyone else’s stories, and see how they all fit together. In the end, the story is pretty exciting, and very moving, especially the ending.

Since then, the coverage has blown up, as media outlets have picked up on the uniqueness of the project, and the quality of the record and comic. Here are some examples of the coverage:

Here’s the entry on the album on CBC music’s site.

A clipping from Verb Magazine

Coverage from Planet S Magazine

There was even a motion-comic made locally, and I got to voice one of the characters, Space Joe’s dad. I based my performance off of Lee Majors, in case anyone’s wondering. Here’s a link.

And, lucky for me, the UPD have been using a drawing they commissioned from me as their official press photo for the project, so my work has now been seen in some pretty cool places, along with some acclaim for the project:

Here’s the article that ran on day one of the Calgary Expo in the Calgary Herald.

Here’s the Vice Music article on the project.

In the end, the project was nominated for a Joe Shuster Award (though our contributions were only listed as “various”) in the Best Self-Published Graphic Novel category.

It’s been really gratifying since the UPD have been such great people to work with, and genuine lovers of the comics genre. I’d work with them in a heartbeat, so if they ever cook up some cool ideas (I’d love to draw Space Jane again) I’d be on board.

Thanks for reading, I love you!