Rebekah Isaacs / The Launch of IDF Weekly

I don't know about you, but whenever I get the chance to meet a real artist in person I go for it!

Case in point, the wonderful Rebekah Issacs was down my way only yesterday.

Rebekah for those who did not know, has an impressive portfolio, having provided art on all of the following -

The Iron Age: Alpha/Omega; Marvel (June 2011)

-Captain America & Falcon #1; Marvel

-Magus #1-5; 12 Gauge Comics (#3 in stores now)

- DV8: Gods & Monsters #1-8; DC/WIldstorm

- DMZ #50; DC/Vertigo

- Ms. Marvel #38; Marvel

- Sheena: Dark Rising #2-3; Devil's Due

- Drafted #7-10; Devil's Due

- Hack/Slash #7-9; Devil's Due

- The Twilight Zone: The After Hours GN; Walker Books

And to top that off, she has just scored a place as artist on the hot new Dark Horse Angel and Faith series!

Well I thought to myself, would it be possible for me to try to make an attempt at some Rebekah Isaacs art?

So I got hold of the cover of issue 2 of Angel and Faith and had a go, this is the end result.  I finished this just in time for Rebekah's signing!

Regular readers will note for the first time some pencils have been left behind, this was because the ghosts and St Paul's Cathedral was grey on the original cover.

Anyway Rebekah herself was very sweet and asked me a rather unusual question "are those your inks?" to which I explained my method of making the drawing (pencil traced using light box and then lined, blacked in and in this case charcoaled by my hand) as she drew me this cool Faith Head-sketch

As well as passing on observations I had made about the cover, particularly how it was a dynamic and multi layered effort I also asked Rebekah how she did eyes as I had some trouble with both Faith and Angel when redrawing her art

She was rightly stoked at getting her new assignment and I have to say that her art brings something great to the Faith and Angel comics, Rachel was actually over here to get reference as Faith and Angel is set in the UK, The drawing of St Pauls Cathedral on the cover of 2 for example is architecturally perfect, something you don't get much in US comics depicting the UK very often!

And of course she let me take the Photo above - Thanks Rebekah!

Your can check out her web site at http://www.rebekahisaacs.com

Now before my regular readers get worried, I will leave the decision as to if I am yet actually a inker (as such) to yourself, post a comment or send a email by all means.  Using my own judgement I think still have a way to go yet
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Next - I have decided to dip a tiny little toe into the realm of self-publishing with Images Degrading Forever Weekly,  which is a double sided single sheet one page of text from this blog along with a page devoted just to the drawing I did alongside it.

I have actually gone and printed 20 physical copies, which have been dropped off at a good comic book shop as a free giveaway item

If you have only recently started reading this blog, IDFW (as I will call it from now on) is a good place to jump on, as it starts from the beginning of the in-progress Daredevil project and will cover it in its entirety

Now as most of you are pretty unlikely to be able to get a printed copy (but email me if you really want one) below is a slightly different variant which I have made for ebook use:-

and every Sunday I will put a completed issue up here.

For my regular and loyal readers, Please make your own judgement (and add comments or send me a email) as to what you think of this enterprise, but I felt I had got enough inventory to make this possible and I thought it would be a good way of starting off an attempt at actually making a newspaper type / illustrated fanzine but a whole lot more frequently than I think I have ever seen.

Who knows where this could go, so its another avenue - but as ever the goal is to try and attract some people to to hopefully get them thinking about comics and trying to learn to draw as well, as I don't want this to be all about me, by any means

I hope that is okay!