"Home for the Holidays"

Each Christmas for the last few years, The National Post has invited Canadian comics artists to contribute half- or full-page comic strips built around a holiday theme, and published them in their Christmas Eve edition. In 2005, they asked Darwyn Cooke, Kagan McLeod, and myself.

The theme was "Home for the Holidays". I decided to use it as an opportunity to address something that the media just couldn't get enough of that particular December: the so-called "war on Christmas." I was appalled by the amount of ignorance on BOTH sides of this non-issue (which, thankfully, seems to have died down some since then...what used to be a round-the-clock "war on Christmas" watch in the news media has become just the odd news snippet) and wrote this strip affirming the true value of the holiday as something that's the exclusive domain of neither Christians nor secularists.

Though the drawing is a bit rough in places (it was done in a hurry, like most newspaper work) I'm still very happy with the strip, and it hasn't been seen anywhere for three years now, so here it is, just in time for another Christmas. You can click either image in this post for the bigger version.

And, oh yeah...merry Christmas!

"Three Thieves" Pencils in the Can

It's been a long four months, but 108 pages worth of pencil art for Three Thieves: Tower of Treasure just came off the scanner. Here are some highlights of the swashbuckling action, or at least ones that don't give away any major plot points. As always, you can click on the images for larger versions. Enjoy!

Christmas On Its Way

For illustrators, a sure sign that the holidays are around the corner is the number of Christmas-themed assignments we end up being offered. Here's a recent one, for Leader's Edge Magazine, which allowed me to pay tribute to one of my heroes, Theodor "Dr. Suess" Geisel. It was a full-page illustration for a feature article about employee incentives (like cash!) Enjoy!

New "Northwest Passage" Reviews

Sure, the book has been out for a year and a half and is headed for a second printing, but that doesn't mean it's too late for new reviews of The Annotated Northwest Passage!

First, newspaper arts & entertainment editor John E. Mitchell gives the book a thumbs-up over at The Last Visible Blog.

Second, Don MacPherson gives the book a 10/10 at Eye on Comics. He also comes as close as anyone has yet to appreciating what was meant by the book's title...so give yourself a cigar, Don!

Thanks for the positive (if somewhat delayed) notices, gentlemen!