Coming to your local comic book store this holiday season:

The Tick: All-New #1 written by Benito Cereno, drawn by me.

It’s a new ongoing series, with us as the creative team. Oh, we’ve got such plans. This first issue, which one might find on page 280 of today’s new Previews catalogue, with the item code SEP09 0937, is a Christmas special, something I’ve always wanted to do.

If you’re a regular comics reader, or even if you’re not, try to get down to your local comics shop and ask them to order a copy or two. It’s gonna be good and we want it to do real well.

Also, Arthur has some pretty shapely legs on that cover.

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with the updates.  It’s going to be another week or so until I get going regularly again.  This last week I had two rush freelance jobs and I fell off track again.

Next week I’m going to be at the San Diego Comic Con, so no updates there.  If  you’re going to be there, I’ll be at the Viper Comics booth from time to time, and I’ll be wandering around.  You can send me an email if you want to catch up with me.

Hey folks,

You know what would be the perfect gift for a spouse, loved one, or even yourself?

How about a hand-drawn commission from yours truly?

Over the next month or so, I’m going to be doing 100 commissions!  They will be 5″x5″, in black ink with blue pencil on acid-free bristol board.

I will draw whatever you like (withing reason– it’s a small space!) for just $10.00 each, plus $3.00 shipping, flat.  Order as many as you like and shipping remains the same!

You can buy them by clicking this button right here:

Well, we got a new studio.  It’s a much better space, right in downtown Portland.  We get lots of natural light and can even see the “Made in Oregon” sign from the windows!  I should be able to start updating here again on Monday.  Yay!

If anyone else in the Portland, Oregon area is looking for studio space, we’re looking for another two people to come in with us– even with seven people we’ll each have almost a hundred square feet.  Shoot me an email if you’re interested: lesmcclaine(AT)gmail.com.

Just for some content, here’s a warmup drawing I did yesterday.  I’ll probably be posting a color version over at evil space robot at some point.

all my ruined stuff

I was heading into work on Friday when I got a telephone call from Indigo Kelleigh, my studiomate.  It seems that the roofers who were “fixing” the roof at our studio did an extremely shoddy job of covering the building before they left on Thursday (Wednesday?  I’m not sure when they’d last done any work) and the rain of Thursday night and all day Friday had poured right on into the building.

I got in a few minutes later, and it was a disaster.  Almost a total loss.  About ten or so finished Jonny Crossbones pages (they’d all been scanned, thank goodness), a few commissions, some other illustration and comics work, and all my art supplies were completely waterlogged.  Water got in under the laminate on my drafting table, so that needs to be replaced, too.  I am extremely glad that I’d taken my Cintiq home for the week, so I could work on an illustration gig there because of the noise the roofers were making.

My bookshelf seems to have escaped mostly unscathed, so my reference and inspiration library is okay.

My housemate/studiomate/hetero lifemate Jon lost all of his art books, all his artwork, and his Cintiq was soaking wet but still seems to work for the time being.

Indigo lost a big box of minicomics he’s been collecting for the last fifteen or twenty years, some books, some art supplies, etc.

And BT Livermore lost a ton of artwork that was hanging on the wall, and a whole rack full of supplies, but was lucky enough that his own artwork was on a rack that escaped most of the damage.

Now we’ve got a couple of garages full of wet art stuff and nowhere to work.  We’ve already started our search for a new location, so hopefully we’ll be back on track soon.

The most frustrating thing about this is that almost the exact same thing happened at the last location Jon, BT and I shared.  Roof taken off without adequate covering, water-damaged studio.  That was just a year and a half ago!  At least that time we didn’t lose anything.  We weren’t nearly so lucky this time.

Let’s just hope this trend does not continue in our next location.