Happy 2010!

Here's to the New Year. I hope to do more with Dorks this year now. BOTW has been finished for some months now and it was fun as hell to do. I hope to be working on another project with Dave soon but first up will be the long awaited (by me) Dorks 10th anniversary collected edition. It's going to be like the original collected book except it'll be printed the way I had intended to back in 2000. The funniest part of the story is that I wanted to print it in the smaller format which wasn't really popular back then, but I wanted the smaller fomat done to go with the the printing of the original books which were printed as ashcans. The printer had told me that he doesn't print in that format though. I argued with him though since he had prices listed on his flyer for the smaller format. That was the least of the printing issues with Dorks though. Like I've said, the cover just falls rite off as soon as you open it. Alot of other things were my fault because I rushed it but I've been working on this since I finished Bride Of The Wolfman so this time around no excuses. There will be alot of new goodies in it and also an exclusive new story written by Dave Gruba (Bride Of The Wolfman, Gondor, White Knife) and drawn by myself. You've seen the pinup supplied by Stan Tanaka colored by Benny Fuentes and it just knocks my socks off each and every single time I look at it. There's a couple more goodies but they're surprises so I won't spoil it. Just be ready for the newly improved Dorks: A History collecting issues 1-6 of the original series and then some. Until then I hope you all a Happy New Year and I'll be seeing you at the conventions.

-Rene Castellano January 1st, 2010

As a special treat, here's a peek at the new cover. This is how I had intended for the original to look like.

Orthodox Man

Back in the day when I started drawing Dorks I created Orthodox Man. I had no idea what the word meant but just thought it sounded cool. Later when a teacher explained it to me I still don't think I really understood it but his origin story was that he was a priest and he was outside doing stuff and a big fireball hit him. Thus giving him powers. In the one picture you can see Orthodox Man fighting Attitude who is not sporting his signature "horn" and for some reason he's wearing a cape. And they're in the mountains. My friend at the time put his character in the background who was also a type of silly hero who's power was a stretching neck. So there he is trying to save a guy from falling but at the same time there's a bunch of rocks about to crush him. We were real genius' back then huh.

I don't know why Orthodox Man is sporting a "Have A Nice Day" chest emblem nor a smiley face with an arrow thru it on his arm. I think I was just throwing stuff together just for the sake of it. His adventures were short lived and he never really stayed in the Dorks universe. He won't be missed and nobody will care and quite frankly, neither will I. :)


Update:
As I was doing this post I was sketching Orthodox Man. I guess sometimes you just feel a bit nostalgic.

Before Instant Press. Before Idiot Press, there was...

...Rene Comics! I know. Real original. You should see the credits inside. I listed each chore and put my name under each one. Story: Rene, Pencils: Rene, Letters: Rene and so on and on. I must've restarted Dorks so many times over but this is one of the few that I never really reproduce or show. Not that I'm ashamed of it but it's hard to get good scans of it cause of the pencil work. I could only find a copy of issue 1 and the quality is terrible. If I can find the original version I'll scan it and post it for people to see. It was a 12 page story and pretty much was the same thing as the first issue from Idiot Press. Maybe one day I'll post the seldom seen third try of the series. Yes, there was a third attempt. Same cover, same story etc.

Mist of the Caped Wonder #2...sorta

I was preparing the next issue of MOCW but something wasn't working out on some of the pages. For some reason my settings changed on me out of the blue and everything I converted got all pixelated and crappy. *Holds for jokes* I'll just be posting the pages that successfully made it and explain a bit until I can get the rest of the pages sorted out properly.

In this installment the Idiots went on their search for the remaining Dorks members. In their hunt they were ambushed by the Mr Men and Little Miss group. Oh Noes!

Mist of the Caped Wonder Issue #1

Mist of the Caped Wonder was an odd idea for a book. What made it even more odd was that I did this all in my sketchbook. I had penciled two twelve page issues and part of the third issue before getting bored. It was kind of a daily journal of comic panels that I would do at my job at the time. I had a choice of either arriving three minutes late or one hour early everyday and after getting written up for the three minutes I decided to just do the one hour. In that hour I would draw this comic. The idea was that it was post-Dorks. The gang has disbanded and the members have moved on with their lives. The Caped Wonder was the focus now and I made shure to throw in everything and the kitchen sink (kitchen sink not pictured) into this story. None of it was intended to make sense and to this day it still doesn't. One interesting thing though, I've been rewriting the Dorks story and there is an element in the MOCW that does take a big part in the main story. I can't wait to reboot that series once and for all. For now, here's the first issue of Mist of the Caped Wonder.

New for 2010...not really.

As I was lettering the original series of Dorks, I got a bit caught up at looking at the panels. With each page I kept looking at the art and just thinking to myself, "What the hell was I trying to do in that panel?". With each page I got more and more of an itch to redraw the whole darn book. I had even started redrawing panels here and there on whatever scratch paper I had available. One day I finally had it and I just took all the pages, popped them in a box and picked one at random. Issue 2 page 8 is what came out and that's the page I redrew to get over my itch. I don't think it helped since I feel like redrawing the whole series again but at least I got something out of the way. Check out these before and after shots. You'll know exactly what I mean.

Scripting/ Thumbnails

As many comic book artist do, I did a thumbnail version of the Dorks issues before actually drawing it. Looking back, I'd love to get into this habit since I can look back at these notes and know exactly what was going on. I have some later stuff of Dorks where I just drew the book as I went along but there are missing pages here and there and missing dialogue and I can't make heads or tails of what was supposed to happen or what was to be said. I did this type of scripting for Bride of the Wolfman but it was all loosely done. I was able to work nicely off of it though and having an actual script helped out tons. Here's a look a the first issues script and thumbnails. Apparently once I finished the book I signed the script and dated it and wrote whatever song was playing on the radio when I drew it. Odd times I tell ya.