This was for a remake/remodel challenge on the Whitechapel forum for “The Goddam Couture Batman”

Bruce Wayne realises his relentless crusade against the superstitious and cowardly criminal classes has left him totally bankrupt. Luckily he’s spent 30 years creating outrageously fetishy costumes for his own use, and has hence accidentally become the world’s foremost sartorial designer.

Once upon a time he fell down a hole, saw a bat, blubbed like a baby, then decided to go kick ass while sporting pointy ears. Now he’s going to rebuild his fortune on the catwalks of Milan using the same winged-rat, utility-belted, caped-bondage-goon vibe in his amazing frou-frou couture ensembles.

You will bring the Fashion. You will bring me the mighty centrepiece of the Brüs/W?n Studio Collection, and god help the poor model stuck inside the thing if he/she can’t move well enough to beat up some criminals while sashaying.

Last year I participated in a challenge to re-invent the vampire, in reaction to such half-assed “updates” as the sparkly emo stalkers of Twilight.

You will design for me a Creature who can live Among Us. We want a fiend who preys on the community in as creepy and unconventional a way as possible. Avoid obviousness – this isn’t a guzzler-of-flesh, but a Stealer Of Power. Does it eat laughter? Ideas? Screams? Sexuality? What role in society would it take: this thinner-of-the-human herd?

I came up with this:

My late friend Jens Altman did a strip called “Made of Fail“, which featured crudely drawn characters in darkly comedic situations.  He challenged his friends to draw the characters from that strip in the style of Rob Liefeld.  I chose his character Amy:

I can’t draw like Liefeld, and I mean that as a sincere backhanded complement. He uses techniques (e.g. crosshatching) that I’ve never gotten the hang of, so I’m not going to try to duplicate them. Besides, the assignment here was more about design than rendering, right?

So here is Amy as Mr. Liefeld might have conceived her to appear, with a blend of his drawing ideosyncracies and my own. (Fair enough, I hope?)

I chose Amy because I could immediately picture Liefeld’s approach to her hair. And I have to confess that as I referred to a few actual Liefeld pieces while drawing this, I could see that I was overdoing it; I was caricaturing his characters. To fix this, I had to reduce the size of her breasts. Twice.

Back in 2011, there were rumors that DC Comics was going to reboot its superhero universe. Again. So I thought it would be fun to get the jump on them and do a couple myself.

Here’s the new Supergirl. My concept was a simple one: that Supergirl would be a superhero for girls. So cut out the lapdancer costume approach, and skip over the schoolgirl fanservice style too. Just a girl. Who’s really strong, and can fly, and do other fun stuff.

The other one I never finished. It was kinda fannish what-if-ness.

In the overhauled Justice League drawing that DC released, Batman looks older than Superman, implying *he* was the DCU’s first superhero instead of Supes. Which means (among other things) that he’d no longer be the logical inspiration for the Legion of Super-Heroes. So I’d revamp that series as Batboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, an elite corps of teens drawn from the member worlds of the 31st century’s United Planets. Founded by Knightlightning Lad (with dark electrical powers), Shuriken Girl (who mentally controls throwing-stars), and Dark Matter Boy (named after the 21st century’s latest cool sci-fi concept), they go back in time to recruit young Bruce Wayne to spend time with them in the future, where they patrol the dark passages between the stars.

Young Batboy didn’t have Superman’s costume to emulate, so he doesn’t wear a cape, instead going with a more batlike design. Likewise, the Legion follow his lead, so instead of brightly-colored leotards like Superboy’s, they generally wear darker colors, head-covering masks, and of course scallops on the arms are the standard hero fashion.

A little creative challenge I came up with myself:

Inspired by the popularity of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a comics publisher with Hollywood connections (aren’t they all) has asked you to pitch a mashup of the historic/classic and… well, it doesn’t have to be horror; any popular genre will do: western, sci-fi, fantasy, sex comedy, explosion fest, superhero, etc.  Take a historical figure or a novel in the public domain, and fuse something onto it that will get people who hate period costume dramas to pull out their credit cards. Bonus points if the title is a bad pun.

So it’s Alice of Wonderland, but on the Lost island, with a motley cast of castaways: Gilligan, Robinson Crusoe, Wendy Darling, Richard and Emmeline of The Blue Lagoon, and Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland. In the background we have the Wonderland/Looking-Glass characters in the background, including the Cheshire Smoke Monster.

A little silly Photoshop punning….

Geddit?

Just a little graphic design doodle I did a while ago of a logo for Gay Batman.  Fairly obvious, I admit.

Another remake/remodel for the Whitechapel forum, this one a tie-in to Crossed, a comic (published by the hosts of the forum) about a virus that turns people into sociopaths.

I want you to imagine you’re stuck in Beverly Hills during the first 48 hours of the Crossed outbreak. I want you to draw me the Crossed actor, musician, or worthless celebrity skinwaste of your choice. I want to see Charlie Sheen bludgeoning Ashton Kutcher to death with a crackpipe. I want Crossed Oprah using her back-fat to suffocate babies. I want Crossed Arnie and Sly working together to snap anorexic actresses in half over their knees, while Crossed Leonard Nimoy uses his pointy costume-ears to pluck out Shatner’s goggly eyes.

Just for one week, let’s be shameless. Let’s be excessive and ridiculous and dark. Let’s be gloriously NSFW. Call it a holiday from art, a festival of debauchery, a Saturnalia of sadism.

I did exactly as instructed, but apparently it was too much for the moderator, so he required me to censor it for the forum. Here’s the full version, in which born-again homophobe Kirk Cameron is fisted by his former “Growing Pains” co-star Leo DiCaprio (remember that?), while sodomizing everyone’s favorite should-be catamite Justin Bieber.

From time to time I like to participate in little creative exercises, such as the “remake/remodel” challenges on the Whitechapel forum, which taken an existing (usually public domain) character and invite artists to redesign them.

The current one:

“Restored to life through Dr. Slade’s vita-ray, Mystico, a seer of ancient Egypt, has placed his magic powers at the service of humanity.” Now, based out of a club, he works with the American and British governments to protect freedom. He receives psychic messages from the old gods, he has magic-based telekinesis (to the degree that he can use skyscrapers as javelins), and he has various other plot-device powers, although creatures from pre-historic times, like the monstrous Amphisaur that sinks various naval ships, are immune to his powers. Mystico fights invisible gangsters and giant gangsters, insane would-be world tyrants and their man-ape sidekicks, Dr. Slade (a skull-face Mad Scientist plotting against America), Dr. Nevins (a long-time student of witchcraft who summons harpies from the distant past in order to conquer the world), and Zarbu, a Turkish sorcerer released from entombment who plans to conquer America. Mystico appears in stories with titles like “The Element of Fear,” “Nick Wolve and the Dinosaur Egg,” and “Ottmar Lutz’s Meteor Magnet.”

I figure that an Egyptian character without gratuitous Egyptian iconography is no Egyptian character at all: