Back to the GN after a refreshing superheroine and polar bear-related break. Nowt much else going on, but then it is sunday. The heating oil ran out in the flat - oh what drama! - and buggeration, but it is a devil drawing when you have to sit on your fingers every so often to stop them going numb.
Pft. So much for global warming.

Watching:

One of those ideas so simple it's genius, Turtles Forever is the movie-length epilogue to the most recent Ninja Turtles tv show, a series that was actually pretty good, but typically hard to follow on terrestrial television.
The 'movie' sees the stars of the original 1980s Fred Wolf-produced cartoon series thrown across time and space to team up with the current versions to fight the original Shredder, who has revived the current Shredder from his intergalactic tomb so he can seek out and destroy the original Ninja Turtles from the 1980s comic book before they can become popular enough to spawn the Turtles franchise that will in turn spread out across a multiverse of infinite possibilities to create realities where the Turtles are real and thwart the Shredder at every turn. We see glimpses of these realities, and pretty much every version is in there, from the videogames, the CGI movie, the UK comic strip based on the cartoon show, the live-action movies, the live-action tv show - it's a nice little metatextual nod, but not unprecedented given that the show this movie bookends had an episode where one of the Turtles teamed up with Jack Kirby.

It's good fun, with the initial impression that the 80s cartoon Turtles are jobbing to their 2000s counterparts defused with the scene where the comic book versions refer to them as sell-outs (and the 1980s versions as "the fat ones"), and plenty of humour that suggest the makers know exactly what level they're pitching at, but still manage to put in humour you don't see coming, like the appearance of the 1980s Splinter, which made me laugh even though I'm well aware this is a show about jellyfish in robot suits fighting ninja turtles across time - he just looks fucking ridiculous even in that context - and I somehow didn't see "but first we have to save April!" coming, either.

Just having a wee doodle in among my thumbnailing jiggery-pokery as it's that time of year again when I have to come up with a cover for TKT - well, actually it was that time of year again several months ago, but I got busy. Now me and my good friend Vista will just load up some blank pages so I can get started on my real work thumbnailing that graphic--

GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL VISTA.
GOD DAMN YOU TO THE HELL THAT SPAWNED YOU.

...And then there was that time Leatherface gave up on the whole serial murder thing and became a pro wrestler

A totally for reals promotional flyer for one of our local wrestling promotions. I'm pretty sure Leatherface won't be making an appearance on the night, but damn if I ain't gettin' drunk and showing up anyway.

Just finishing off the Shako story for Zarjaz. The money shot is the titular main character conquering an arctic camp full of scientists, so he has to look a bit like Conan, because Conan The Bear is absolutely a comic I would buy - though obviously I'd be settling for the comic on account of there not being a movie. Because comics are inferior to movies.

Sweet Jeebus, but Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is bad stuff - Alec Baldwin is even worse at being Batman than he is at being a father. I actually stopped watching 15 minutes in to watch this again just to revive my flagging awesomeness levels to the degree I consider sufficient while watching something with Batman in it. "Stop all engines. REPEL BOARDERS."
JL:CoTE has animation on a par with the cartoon series but not much better (not that this is a criticism), and the fights are okay, it's just that on their own they can't carry an entire movie and the thing as whole is pretty average in isolation while the pedigree of the creatives makes me expect better: written by Dwayne McDuffie, starring Nolan North, Gina Torres, James Woods - I mean James Woods plays a character who's barely hostile at all. What? What the hell, man? It's James Woods - the guy can't order a burger without someone calling the cops, such is his intense aura of inappropriate hostility that he exhudes at all times, and here he's cast as a quiet and measured schemer. Illiterate cats the internet over have a word for this: FAIL.

Damn you, anatomy. You win this round.

Watching:
Life Unexpected - the first four episodes of this Oregon-based family drama veers wildly between what it wants to be and what it actually is - or at least what's within the abilities of the creative team to produce. It wants to be a lot grittier than it is, but it fails no matter how many allusions to foster home abuses, underage sex and drug usage it slips into the dialogue. It's a schmaltzy drama and a decent time-killer if you're watching it via iTunes while getting on with work, but I can't see it setting the world on fire with those who choose to do their televisual watching on an actual television. For me the main sticking-point is that the thirtysomething mother is played by one of the teens off of Roswell High, which was knocked off the programming schedules because Smallville came along and was much, much worse and naturally everyone watched it instead in much the same way that viewers chose One Tree Hill over the slightly less terrible The OC - kind of like choosing to be raped in the mouth rather than the arse. Anyway - the actress may actually be the age she's playing - if not older - but I'm buggered if I'm taking the notion seriously.
The Deep End - shallow, nihilistic shit. I see it being a success if scheduled properly. I do find myself going "oh, that's her off of Veronica Mars", "Oh, that's the best Lex Luthor" and "oh, that's not actually Billy Zane but I don't care what character he's playing the actor exhudes a deeply untrustworthy air of hostility so I'm gonna go ahead and assume he's the bad dude in any given situation" and I'm right about that. It's okay as these things go, but not essential viewing.

Watching: Home and Away, Gidget, Blue Mountain State, Futurama, Life Unexpected

Sketching, thumbnailing, and little else today. God I'm tired.

Watching: Iplayer catch-up, Youtube amateur singer/songwriters

Fucking pen tool. Bastard thing's a crutch I need to ditch. Soonish.

Watching:
Blue Mountain State
Smackdown
My Life As Liz
Star Trek

Listening:
Terranaomi - Say It's Possible
Iron Maiden - Number of the beast
Poison - Every Rose Has It's Thorns
Warrant - Cherry Pie
Tori Amos - Time
Johnny Cash - The Beast In Me
Simon and Garfunkel - Only Living Boy in New York
Ramones - Theme from Spider-Man
T Rex - Metal Guru

Watching: Good Wife, Greek, Cleveland Show, WWE RAW, ATHF

It's tuesday, and that means it's time for Saucy Monday, and another vague stab at getting Google hits by putting deeply inappropriate tags on posts featuring nothing approaching the level of charmless smut you'd probably hope for after searching for 'sexy librarian'. Mind you, there's enough troubling smut featuring Batgirl out there that that might be what gets me hits, even though most of it seems centered around bondage, which is an odd thing to take away from the old 1960s show when you have the damn saucy Yvonne Craig knocking around in a skintight costume, pointy bra, and flexing her legs in all directions. okay, it's kinky, but it's seriously down the list of stuff about that show that was utterly brilliant - the Joker and Batman having a surf-off is the epitome of awesome and quite possibly proves the terrorists will never win.

I'd have researched a better pose for the Batusi, but I'm buggered if I'm wading through yet another gif compilation of Cracked.com skits of Batman freaking out to Chaccaron Maccaron just to see what he was doing with his feet at the time, so I just did the eyes thingy that showed up in Pulp Fiction. Yvonne Craig's likeness isn't much cop, and possibly there should be more or less cleavage, I'm not entirely sure, but it doesn't seem too seedy as it is and that's good enough for me.
Anyways, back to drawing the GN...

Watching: Leverage
Listening: Chaccaron Maccaron

Watching: Eastwick, Family Guy, Simpsons, Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
I'm liking Spartacus so far, though that's probably because I stopped looking for comparisons to the Stanley Kubrick original around about the same time the show launched into its first slo-mo massacre to the strains of an electric guitar while wine-coloured globules of computer-generated blood splashed about the place. It's not big or clever, but it is capable eye-candy, and someone who watches 90210 and CSI can't really go complaining about logic and characters and stuff that makes stories make sense away from visual gimmicks. The story departs greatly from the movie, novel, and presumably also the original slave revolt, and probably doesn't bear that much resemblance to the Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea cartoon, either, but we can't have everything. It's good fun, but not expecting it to resemble the movie is an essential component of viewing, I think.

Watching: Smallville, Cougar Town, My Life As Liz (is not very good), Star Trek TOS

Watching:
Blue Mountain State - like Secret Girlfriend, I find it funny, but I get the feeling I shouldn't on account of the kind of female characters that inhabit the show. Feminists and those without ADHD and increasingly troubling memory problems can probably make a literate and compelling case as to why the chicks in these shows don't come off well, but even I - a man who tries every monday to draw something that sexually objectifies women and then post it on the internet with tags attached to it specifically so it'll show up in the average pervert's Google search - would describe the shallow, life-sucking voids (© Dave Sim) in this series as a deeply scary depiction of women, if only because most students are practically at it like rabbits anyway and there's no need to propagate the myth that sex can only be obtained through subterfuge or at the hands of psychologically damaged young women.
The Wolfman - good to see Teen Wolf get a non-canon prequel in the same way the Stargate movie did (with 10,000BC), and it even has the main character bus-surfing a horse-drawn carriage -such a wizard jape! Seriously, because of the pretty good recreation of the tropes and idioms of the classic Universal/Lon Chaney Wolfman movies, the makeup is decidedly retro to match the tone and there's no getting away from the fact that once the full moon fills the sky, this film has got Teen Wolf in it. This is either a really big problem for you or it isn't. For me, it's practically a selling-point. I liked it, but as with some stuff like Life Aquatic and Book of Eli, I'm not sure what mileage others will get from the material, but recommend it regardless because it's worth a punt when we live in an age where Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakual is totally a real thing that exists.
The Middle - as in 'Middle state', not 'Malcolm in', though you'd be forgiven for thinking it is. Mostly undemanding, has its moments, and the odd real laugh, but it's mostly laughter at someone's expense, which I do find a little tiresome at times through omnipresence.
Star Trek, season 3 - I'm a big fan of the original Trek, so every time I remember there's a whole bunch of it I haven't seen, it always surprises me. Then I remember it's mostly stuff from season 3 when the show was pretty much fucked and I'm not that bothered. Watched the Enterprise Incident on a whim online and it was rubbish, but still fun. I found Trek's version of space chat-up between Spock and the Romulan lass unintentionally hilarious, an impression not helped by the fact that I'd watched this video moments before and the opening exchange is pretty much the same thing.

Watching: Community, Smackdown, Space 1999, House, 24

Watching: Secret Life of the American Teenager (why do I do it to myself?), Castle, Batman: Brave and the bold, Home and Away

Watching: Survivors, Home and Away, White Collar

I'm not one for drawing on the hop, and it's not like I ever finish these sketches anyway, but I am watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century again and thought I'd have a quick bash at Wilma Deering (the utterly saucy Erin Grey) in the Jack Palance-starring episode 'Planet of the Slave Girls', which despite the moniker doesn't offer much for the Leia fetishist, the slaves being more of the sweatshop variety than Jedi's bondage harem and attendant bestiality undertones (I can't decide if that's better or worse than the incest angle), but nonetheless my dedication to the objectification of women is unabated.
Obviously I haven't finished drawing it, but I figure this way I can pretend it might have turned out better than it probably would have, possibly because I corrected the massive foreshortening failure on the right arm...

Feet still not quite right, and the colours have gone a bit funny between drawing it on the tablet and looking at it on the monitor so I'm assuming I've somehow managed to reset one or both to factory settings and this will be the cause of Problems down the line.

God fucking dammit, the joke was supposed to be I'm so late to do Saucy Mondays that they actually happen every Tuesday, but here's Tuesday night and me not even given thought to what I might have drawn.

Watching: Home and Away, American Dad, Clone Wars, Smackdown

Watching: Spartacus, Vampire Diaries

Thumbnailin' an' letterin' d'thumbnails all night long...

Watching: TNA, Royal Rumble, RAW, Smackdown, Supernatural (boy, what is this show's deal with female characters?), Mercy, the Middle, Cougar Town

Watching: Smallville - the JSA episode. My review is thus: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Hawkman walking across the room is just hysterical to watch, as is Michael Shanks' Batman voice when he's trying to hold a conversation, Stargirl is clearly a short 30something woman from her first appearance onscreen and her costume is lamentable for a list of reasons that begin with "that top is fifteen years too young for her" and end with "teenage cosplayers have done a better job in their bedrooms", Lois' dialogue is spectacularly terrible - in fact 90 percent of the dialogue is terrible, mostly because it comprises of characters talking exposition and unnecessary/outdated pop-culture references to each other, and Doctor Fate is surely a legend in the making for choosing to remake someone on the genetic level using his occult powers rather than just step to one side to avoid being stabbed to death by a purple icicle-phallus. It's beyond terrible in places, trying to have all this daft imagery but scuppered by the fact that since day one Smallville has thought itself too serious for such things - there's simply too much disparity between concept and execution for any objective evaluation to avoid, and the best way to enjoy it - as I have for several years now - is to hunker down with someone like yourself who watches the whole thing as car-crash television and shout what you hope are amusing jokes at the screen, though in this episode, that comprised mostly of shouting "Thundercats - HOOOOOOOOOO!" when the camera pans across Hawkman's golden girdle, or quoting any of Anult Sweatyknickers' awful cold-related puns from his turn as Mr Freeze in Batman and Robin every time the villain 'The Icicle' shows up onscreen, because he has exactly the same skin make-up as the Governator did, and the fact that this is all done with a straight face is either the saddest thing on television ever, or the most awesome. Standout moment is probably Dr Fate's 'Henshin!' sequence, which, like the Wonder Twins' "Powers - ACTIVATE!" scene, is pitch-perfect silliness for this kind of material, only let down by everyone else in the room trying to act grown-up instead of joining in the fun.

Bah! Hate time-limit sketching, but it does loosen up the creative juices. I'm probably imagining that the sketch of a giggly girl looks ruder than I'd intended, though - dirty mind, me.

Watching: Community, CSI:NY, Bones, Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Deep End

Watching: Black Dynamite ("Yo' momma would be turnin' in her grave if she was here to see this"), Leverage, The Cleveland Show

Good old Vista - never lets me down in letting me down:

Nonetheless, still got some work done, and I'm still scribbling away in the hope of finishing on schedule (one page a day, double page spreads every two days)

Watching: Survivors, Mock the Week, Human target, Men of a Certain Age

Watching: Big Bang Theory, 24

Balls, but Saucy Monday keeps taking me by surprise. I can't be buggered thinking up anything too saucy, so here's a quick inking/colour job on a deliberately oversexualised superhero with a massive rack, although there a slight 'amputee' vibe going on that I didn't notice at the scribbles stage...

Anyhoo, there's not much boobage going on in that because my niece has taken to reading comics of late and seems to want to read mine, so I'm being careful to not go too far into letch territory, hence lots of skin but no arse or boob cleavage. I'm throwing the floor open to suggestions for Saucy Mondays, mind - outright filth probably won't happen, but if you have a thing for stockings or dragons or whatnot, I'll probably have a bash. Furfags need not apply.

Watching: Simpsons, Terminator: Salvation
Everything else: Fallout 3 which I am determined to cane