2026 Momocon Commissions and Wrap Up

 

Hello everyone, after a full day of sleep, I have somewhat returned to a normal state, and have some stuff I can report for Momocon 2026! So, Momocon is a huge show, it's 4 days long if you've never been to it, and this year was even larger than previous years. I was lucky as well to get another booth in the Comic Creator's section, and I had some good friends and great creators as neighbors.

One of the things I love about Momocon is that despite it being a HUGE show, the audience is super diverse and that means that even though my booth is largely original comic books, I can still do well there. This year, I debuted Curse of the Eel volume 5 at the con, which almost didn't happen so let me tell that story first: I finished this volume late, between freelance work and school duties, I was running sorely behind on my pages for the latest volume. I managed to turn around that 20 pages in two weeks, but I had assumed getting any volumes in time for the con would be impossible. However, I have an amazing printer in Wonderpress, and they managed to send me copies in time to make my table a success (and it was)!

Long story short, my last two Momocons have been my most successful conventions ever, and this is from most of my sales coming by book sales. Curse of the Eel sold really well, I had a bundle of the 5 volumes and while I worried that it might be too pricey, I sold several bundles and many even came just to grab volume 5 because they had already bought volumes 1-4. Also, Honor Bound might have been my best selling book in general, I even had a few people come back to tell me how much they enjoyed it, which warmed my heart and made me excited to get back to work on chapter 2!

As for the art of this post, I also took on 9 commissions at the show and was able to finish all but one of them at the con! They were an original character obsessed with blood and eyes, Rui from xlov (a K-pop group, this image isn't the finished one, I forgot to get a photo of the complete commission), Commander Wolfe from Clone Wars, Winry Rockbell from FMA in Watercolor, Nico Robin from One Piece (which I forgot to get a complete photo of), Static Shock, Gammoth from Monster Hunter, and lastly, 2 Creepy Pasta characters in a warring embrace, which I completed in the last 3 minutes of the show, but the commissioner was very happy with this one so I'm happy too.

All in all, Momocon is my favorite show to do, and I really hope that I can keep attending in the future. I have plans for new books in some of my other series, like Rare Drops, as well as some one shot and competition comics I plan to make this summer.

Check back to see some of the things I have in the works, and consider checking out my Patreon for more behind the scenes looks into my projects!

 

Illarys Ink Illustrations

 In preparation for the DVPit event where I pitched both Curse of the Eel and Illarys, I wanted to populate my pitch with illustrations so it wasn't just a wall of text in the story summary.

These were very inspired by Gary Gianni's illustrations for "The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," which is a series of short novels about a knight and his squire. I loved the book and the illustrations were amazing, so I wanted to try out this style of inking for Illarys, and here are the results!

Tools used were Deleter G-pen, Tachikawa Nihonji pen, Pilot drafting ink, on Stillman & Birn Epsilon paper.

This was the cover to the pitch, I still really love this image

Separation

Recovering

The Knight

The Cave

Panther

I'm joining the anthology "Jump Tales" for a one shot!

Hey everyone, it's been a busy month and just as one Kickstarter I worked on has finished, another one is coming up in a few days! This KS is for a black and white comics anthology inspired by Shonen manga magazines like Shonen Jump, called Jump Tales! The Kickstarter is coming up, and you can pledge to receive 3 issues of this magazine, with 4 ongoing stories and a single one shot per issue. My one shot will be in issue 3, and it's called Illarys! I'll be joining a group of very talented comic artists and writers, so I hope you'll support the Kickstarter! 

Illarys is my first real attempt at a high fantasy story! I've been neck deep in fantasy novels, Dungeons and Dragons, Elder Scrolls, the Witcher, and more since the pandemic, and I'm excited to share my own fantasy world that should be fun for people who are fans of the aforementioned properties!

Illarys is a young half-elven girl in a cold land with an even colder regime. Her father attempts to flee their home nation to reunite with his elven wife, but their trip does not go as planned. It is up to Illarys to safely escort her younger brother across the lands as they are pursued by bounty hunters and other magical dangers!

Here is the promo image for Illarys, both in color and in black and white!

Final Gamble #1 is on Kickstarter!

 Hey everyone! So this has been under my hat for a bit, but there's a book that I'm working that is available for pre-order on Kickstarter! It's called the Final Gamble, and it's about 2 people trying to gamble their way out of a terrifying situation. If you'd like to see the pitch and video and maybe donate to receive your copy, here's the link: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bandofbards/final-gamble-issue-1

TEAM:

Writer: Bobby Singer
Pencils & Inks: Me
Colors: Harry Saxon
Lettering: George Gant
Publisher: Band of Bards

I'll also include the process work for my cover of the first issue. So this one was tricky, so to make it easier on me, I created two separate pages for this cover: one was the characters and all of the money and pokerchips, and the other was just the slot machine background. After I inked them, I combined them in Photoshop and colored them.

The campaign starts today and goes for a month, so hopefully we'll meet our goal! 

This is the final version that you'll get if you preorder the book.

Without the type

Pencils where you can see the overlap of the two images.

Spencer & Locke 2 is Nominated for a Ringo Award!

 Hey y'all, I hope you're doing well in the quarantine/world being on fire. The state of things has left a lot of people feeling depressed and this summer has been super hard to concentrate on making the comics. There have been a few bright spots, but it's hard to celebrate anything knowing that people are suffering out there. But this post isn't about my depression, it's about spreading some hopefully good vibes? Seriously though, stay safe and keep spreading good, the world needs it!

But yeah, I got the email about this years Ringo Award Nominations, and I must have been exhausted because I didn't even notice Spencer and Locke on it, but we were nominated for Best Single Issue for Volume 2 Issue 1!

I'll include some of my inks for that issue, which was a very different experience than drawing the first issue of volume 1. I decided to try using G-pens and other Japanese art tools because I wanted this issue to have a more scratchy gritty feel since we're essentially jumping into a war story. It was a lot of fun to play with these tools again, having left them aside for brushes at SCAD, but now I use a hybrid of both when I'm making comics. My tools on these are: Deleter G-pens, Zebra brush pens, Raphael watercolor brushes, Yasutomo Sumi Ink, and Pentel Hybrid Technica pens on Stillman & Birn Zeta paper.

Our team on this book is:

David Pepose - Writer

Me - Pencils and Inks

Jasen Smith - Colors

Colin Bell - Letters

Curse of the Eel Ch12 Art and CONVENTION UPDATES

Hey ya'll, making a quick update to my schedule so far! I'll be attending two conventions for sure this year:

SC Comic Con in March in Greenville, South Carolina
MomoCon in May in Atlanta, Georgia

Check my social media for my table numbers! And now, here's some art because I'm trying to get as much done between freelance work and my new teaching gig. I'm also teaching now, that's a new development!

This is a pretty important moment for Frank, who has been questioning his sexuality since chapter 3. Holy crap, that was 8 chapters ago... Love is the most powerful feeling ever, and it conquers all. Take care and I hope you'll enjoy the next update when it comes up!

Curse of the Eel volume 2 cover!

Hello everyone! A lack of updates to this site means I've mainly been working on freelance works that I can't really share, but it's good to be busy! I've also been doing my best to keep up with all my original comics, and Curse of the Eel volume 2 is almost ready to go! Here is my process for this cover and some of my thoughts on it.

Curse of the Eel is my take on a modern day world where eldritch creatures and magic wind up in the hands of some odd peoples. Connie is a goth girl who is bullied at high school, and the only person she's able to trust/talk with, is the weird Cthulhu-ish Eel monster that she accidentally summoned. Unfortunately for Connie, Eel isn't the only weird eldritch abomination wandering the halls of her school and the woods of the surrounding area.

This comic was my thesis for my MFA and has been running for 5 years at this point, and I'm working on the 12th chapter as we speak! It's actually doing well on sites like Tapastic and Smackjeeves.

For this cover, I wanted to mirror the first volume cover but also showing that the earth and the Eel's realm are being smashed together, and the thin veneer keeping the worlds separate are cracking, hence the fun glass cracks!

As always, inked with my Raphael 8404 #3 brush with Yasutomo sumi ink on Stillman & Birn Beta Paper.

 

Spencer and Locke Volume 2 Going Strong!

Hello, welcome to the end of May! I thought I had posted something about S&L volume 2 but that apparently didn't happen, so here's a quick little art gallery of some of my favorite pages that are being shared of the book! These are just my inks, so you can see some of what I was sending to David Pepose, Jasen Smith, and Colin Bell which is our team on the book. I hope you enjoy the quick gallery!

Materials: Deleter G-pen, Sakura Sumi Ink, Pentel Color Brush
Paper: Stillman and Birn Alpha and Zeta paper