And will soon disappear.

But all of us live on.  Join us at:

http://www.standardattrition.org/

THE LOSERS is finally released in the US today, marking 4 or so years since Andy Diggle and I first heard there might be an adaptation in the works. It’s been a winding road since then and we’ve finally reached opening day.
I hope you get the chance to see it on the big screen where it was designed for and enjoy it!

Here’s some links to reviews, including Roger Ebert, The New York Times and Ain’t it Cool News –

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/movies/23losers.html

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100421/REVIEWS/100429990/1023

http://io9.com/5522319/in-the-losers-comedy-goes-badass

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44776

thanks and all the best!

Jock

Praise for SWEET TOOTH

“SWEET TOOTH is like Mad Max with antlers. . . . spellbinding and offbeat.” –USA TODAY.com

“Like a Coen brothers road-trip drama, “SWEET TOOTH,” by indie comics fave Jeff Lemire, is a fantastic post-apocolyptic comic.” —AM NEW YORK

“Excellent.” –USA TODAY/POP CANDY

“Jeff Lemire’s amazing postapocalyptic comic SWEET TOOTH: bloody and gentle all at once.” –New York Magazine (Approval Matrix Lowbrow/Brilliant)

“Sweet Tooth is a grabber from the get-go . . . Lemire retains his gift for imbuing ordinary moments with a sense of wonder.” –THE ONION/AV CLUB

If you thought you knew Eisner-nominated writer/artist Jeff Lemire’s (The Essex County Trilogy) work, think again. A cross between Bambi and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, SWEET TOOTH has everything you love about Lemire’s work—the quiet intimate moments, the powerful emotion—mixed with violence, and an edge that is unlike anything you’ve read of his before.

Follow Gus, a rare new breed of human/animal hybrid children, as he sets out with Jepperd, a hulking drifter, on a post-apocalyptic journey into the devastated American landscape to find ‘The Preserve’ a refuge for hybrids.

Read issue #1 now! Then go pick up SWEET TOOTH Vol. 1: Out of the Woods this May, to find out what happens next!

From the Vertigo blog GRAPHIC CONTENT –

The cover to HELLBLAZER: PANDEMONIUM was a long time in the making – I’m guessing the first sketch was conceived at least a year before the final image was decided upon. In a similar way to the first issue of a series, but possibly even more so, a graphic novel cover has to have specific considerations as it will be on the shelves for a long time. This led to a number of different ideas and treatments before everyone was happy with the design. Myself and editor Pornsak Pichetshote and DC designer Louis Prandi all worked together up to the final stages to ensure everything – from paper stock right up to varnishes and finish – would look as good as we could possibly make them.

Here’s some ideas and designs from along the way -

The very first promo piece – altered from a charity painting of Constantine I had worked on previously. This went out with the initial announcement of the project.

Then we needed a placeholder cover for Amazon etc. cue a quick b/w drawing and simple colour and logo placement.

I began work on the final cover wanting to utilize the full wrap around dust jacket. I always think this brings a cohesiveness to a book design and should be done wherever possible! I remember sending designer John J. Hill extra bits of art for THE LOSERS trades so he could make use of the designs…. but I digress.

I wanted a close shot of Constantine, but rendered in an interesting way. I wanted the disjointed style to speak for his depth of character. I also wanted an aesthetic that would sit well in bookstores alongside novels and I thought a strong headshot, with some nods towards the Iraq theatre of war where the story is set, would work well.

A white background with a smaller figure, trying, pretty unsuccessfully I must say, to include some magical/Babylonian icons in there too.

After sending these in, DC was keen to include our female lead, Aseera, in the cover and also show a little more context than just the close up face/figure. Here’s a couple of designs from that time with various war elements and backgrounds. I like both of these but it was felt that we still needed a ’setting’… to show the Middle East and the Iraq tableau.

Pornsak and I came up with the idea of a subtle nod towards the Iraq flag – made up of a red, white and black horizontal stripes. I tried this with some detail from the flag too. I liked how the green worked against the other colours, so we decided to carry that through to the title treatment. A green title against the red would really pop the logo.

As we were losing the flag detail we included the silhouettes of temples to evoke an eastern backdrop. this, coupled with the green of the logo, became the final cover, seen here in the full wraparound version.

Over at Blogomatic3000 —  #mce_THE LOSERS pics_url#

The Losers TV Spot #2

WB have released the first official TV spot for THE LOSERS, in theaters April 23th –

the losers tv spot

Hey Cliff,

I got my galleys of Greendale today and I immediately sat down to read it from front to back. In that first reading since the lettering proof I found myself most proud of the points you forced me to wrestle with during our collaboration. The sections where you and I had conflict but stuck it through and hashed it out until we were both happy. The pages where you said, “what we have here simply isn’t good enough”. Upon putting the book down I realized that the moments we rethought together are its most clear, successful and moving.

I’ve said it to you in private many times, but I want to say it in public. You made this book better. And not just with your clean line work, wonderful acting and humanist approach to character design, but with your uncanny story sense as well. You really pushed us to go back to the script and rethink major sequences, even when I resisted. For a guy like me, a writer who loves comic books but can’t fully create them alone, you proved to be a rare gift. The perfect collaborator. That artist that pulled himself out of the role of hired gun and took on the project with true, personal passion.

So if you’re ever feeling it, I’m down to do it all over again. CHA!

Thanks for the art,

Joshua Dysart

How I write.  In case anyone gives a shit.

– I build an outline for each arc with major story beats, some specific scene notes, maybe some important dialogue.  For an issue, I start by just numbering 1 through 22 and writing a brief description of each page.  Sometimes after that I’ll go through and breakdown each page into very brief panel descriptions and build from there.  Other times I’ll just start at the beginning and build the whole thing as I go.  It usually just depends on how long I’ve had the story in my head and how nailed down I’ve already got it.  My best days of writing, when I can churn out 12 or more pages, are always preceded by several days of no writing at all, but instead just a lot of thinking, so by the time I’m actually sitting down to write, the story is already nailed down and all I have to do is get it on paper.

– The first five pages and the last five pages of any script are usually pretty easy.  It’s always that shit in the middle that’s hard.

– I always aspire to have something memorable on every page, whether a line of dialogue or an action or what. I certainly don’t always achieve that, but I try.

– I write people throwing up a lot. I write sour looks and stern stares a lot.  I use “fuck” a lot.  Just making note of all that.

– I try not to dictate camera angles or set up shots.  I always figure that’s best left to the artist.

– I can’t listen to music or watch TV while I write.  I’m too easily distracted.

– I try to always talk my dialogue out, to say it out loud.  Would sometimes make for an interesting listen, no doubt, if someone happened to be passing by the window.

– I break the supposed dialogue rules all the time, in terms of how many words you shouldn’t exceed in a given balloon or panel.  Maybe I shouldn’t, but fuck it, if the story needs it, it needs it.  I don’t feel like I’m overly wordly overall though.  Maybe I was a couple years ago when I was first starting out, but these days  I truly appreciate a great silent beat.  It may sound weird, but I love being able to take out dialogue or narration from a page because you realize that you don’t need it, that it’s all there in the art.

– I suck at coming up with character names. I’ve reused lots of the same names, usually of people I know.  When I was in college I would always flip through CD liner notes to find good names, but these days all my CDs are packed up in boxes in the basement.  I try to keep a list where I jot down interesting names I encounter.  The sheriff in SCALPED takes his name from a road sign I passed years ago in Ohio for the town of Wooster.  I used to also keep a notebook for jotting down interesting bathroom graffiti, though I’m not sure anything useful ever came of that.

Okay, enough of this. I should be doing actual writing now.

SWEET TOOTH #6 hits stores today and it also marks the beginning of a new storyline “IN CAPTIVITY” . After the shocking conclusion of “OUT OF THE DEEP WOODS” we now start to delve in to the backstory of Jepperd and as his history painfully surfaces, his motivations are revealed.

can’t get the video embed to work – please check out the HD version over at MSN! — http://bit.ly/92TxbU

from Andy Diggle’s blog –

http://andydiggle.blogspot.com/

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT have released an exclusive preview of THE LOSERS trailer which debuts on the show tonight, Friday 29th January 2010.

Here’s a taste — turn the sound up, it plays pretty quiet:

[wpvideo hX8OPBri]

Even this brief glimpse shows how faithfully they’ve used lines and story beats from the comic — “If you want your life back, you’re gonna have to steal it,” Jensen shooting the guy with his finger, Aisha with the rocket launcher, “Outstanding!”

I’m chuffed they’ve even used THE LOSERS comic-book logo designed by Steve Cook (using the Quagmire font created by Rian Hughes, typography fans!).

I’m assured the full trailer should be released online within the next few days, and that it’ll play before Mel Gibson’s EDGE OF DARKNESS this weekend. Let me know if you see it on the big screen!

If this is your first taste of THE LOSERS, you can download the entire first issue for free (8Mb PDF), and buy the first 300-page graphic novel from your local comic shop, Amazon U.S. or Amazon U.K.

this time HELLBLAZER:PANDEMONIUM… very pleased with the production on this one, DC have done a great job. matte varnishes, spot gloss detailing and embossed upside down bullet pentagram. constantine would be proud. this’ll be in stores Feb 10th –