Friday, November 28, 2008

The Secret Cross Blog is LIVE! [Secret Cross]

The Weird War One comic I'm working on (with Stephen Lindsay and Dominic Vivona) has its own website now, and more importantly: its own blog. So, please follow that link and check it out, as I will be doing Secret Cross updates, previews and etc through there!

Once again: THE SECRET CROSS BLOG.

Come on down and look around... leave a comment to let us know what ye think.





Welcome to the Weird Front, troop-- we all have a secret cross to bear.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Midnight Mini pr0n - Mutant Chronicles [Minis!]

Tonight I'm taking a break from watching The Lighthorsemen so that I might post this new find in the world of miniatures. Now, I'm a long-time fan of Mutant Chronicles, primarily the RPG. It would seem the master-lords of boardgames and Warhammer roleplay material, Fantasy Flight Games, have a collectible miniature wargame for my beloved Mutant Chronicles.

Sadly, having seen the movie with my special mutant powers, I don't think it will help the sales of this game much. However, these 54mm minis may just sell the game on their own.

And before you start-- Yes, I am well aware that Inquisitor immediately springs to mind when you see these. But then again, MC was already deeply drinking from the 40k cup anyway.



There's the starter box, above. Go ahead and click on it to see what you get when you drop the $30 USD required to possess it.



Dudes with swords. Huzzah!



Yeah, those guys are pretty sexay.





Nice.



Hey, look! Kroot-taurs.

What.

More minis-action here, and that includes some cool looking Capitol guys.

The official page for the whole Mutant Chronicles collectible minis-game is here.

I really don't know how the game plays completely, but it looks pretty cool. It also claims to have some cool new army building kinda madness, which is also cool.

Maybe I'll check it out. But for now we can enjoy these high-quality pre-painted figs.
(I also assume the figures are plastic.)

Or this game could totally suck in a mind-blowing manner. I guess we'll find out when it hits shelves.

Now... back to my WWI movie, dammit.

Page in the Execution [Secret Cross]

I was going to wait until Monday to show this off... but goddammit, it's so damned good we feel the need the world should see it now.

Below is a page (just pencils and inks) by primary Secret Cross artist Dominic Vivona. It's the opening page for the first Secret Cross short, Humanity in the Execution. It should be also noted that this is where the primary Secret Cross story kicks off.


As always, be sure to click on the image to see it in all of its beautiful glory.

While there are quite a few stories being worked on, here are the shorts which are already at the art stages:

Humanity in the Execution
Höllenhaus
Tank Eaters
Frohe Weinachten

Have no fear, other stories are being written up as I type this. And hopefully we can get art to all of them!

For more on this project that Stephen Lindsay, Dominic Vivona, me, and our guest-artist friends are hard at work on, just visit this last post and follow the links.


And remember:

WE ALL HAVE A SECRET CROSS TO BEAR.

(more information and previews can now be found here)

We all have a Secret Page to bear... [Secret Cross]

Here's some of what I posted in my Livejournal earlier...

Like I've said a couple times already, Stephen Lindsay and I are writing up comic shorts under the banner TALES OF THE SECRET CROSS to be put up on the Secret Cross website very soon. Already, the artists we're working with are churning out superior work straight from their dark and twisted hearts, helping us chronicle this covert German outfit and spanning from 1869 to 1925.

One story that is being written by Stephen (or Steve-L as only I like to call him!) is Höllenhaus, which has the remarkable Breno Tamura on art duties. And guess what I have for you? The first pencilled and inked page!


Go ahead and give that image a click to make it bigger, ja!


And here are the links to the previous SECRET CROSS posts:
Eddy, Black Hans and Willi designs and a group shot.
Roy and Zhel.
Jup and Rudi.
Captain Füller and a Soldat.
Original teaser/cover image and some information on the Secret Cross.

More to come soon!



Thursday, November 20, 2008

Weird War Love [Comics Safari!]

Instead of miniatures this witching hour, how about some Weird War Tales covers? Yeah?

I thought so.

See, I just can't help loving this classic comic book anthology series-- especially after the work I've been doing on The Secret Cross. This stuff is inspirational, entertaining, and highly, highly influential for me.

I grew up on these books, man.

DC - Weird War Tales - No.3 - Feb,1972 by DaddyNewt.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Weird_War_Tales_1971_1.jpg

I love that one above. Brilliant!

weird_war_tales_89 by gorillamen.com.

Nazi gorillas... imagine that!

Weird War Tales No. 40 by FromConcentrate.

Above is a fave from when I was a youngin'.

weird_war_tales_120 by gorillamen.com.

G.I. Robot!!!

Weird War Tales No. 39 by FromConcentrate.

Ahhhh... A Kubert CLASSIC.

http://www.centaursite.com/comics/weirdwar/ww01.jpg

Ever wonder what's wrong with comics today? I'll tell you: NOT ENOUGH CENTAURS VS. TANKS. That's pretty much it in a nutshell, folks.

http://molarradio.ca/photo/MR053-2007-04-11_DBT_Cover.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/weird-war-tales/16-1.jpg

Nein! Voodoo Ratzis!

Weird War Tales 9

AWESOME.

Weird War Tales 15

Of course, I'm partial to anything WWI these days.

Weird War Tales 48

Weird War Tales 73

Weird War Tales 80

Above is another all-time Weird War fave cover o' mine.

And before we're done, you HAVE to see this:

Weird War Tales 98

That is such a rad cover.

I pulled these images from all over the web, but one great place I found eventually is coverbrowser.com! Here are their Weird War Tales ones.

See if you can find one with the undead Native American warriors going to battle in space.


God, I love Weird War Tales. And I dug the Vertigo re-vamp ones, too... but they just didn't have the same feel (though they were still fantastic).

Alright, bedtime for me. Hope you enjoyed this!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Midnight Mini pr0n - Empress Miniatures [Minis!]

You don't hear very often about women playing wargames and the like-- so I bet you thought you'd never EVER hear about two women deciding to design and manufacture their own minis lines! But that's exactly what happened in the case of Empress Miniatures...

So here, take a look at what they've done with their first line of 28mm miniatures, covering the 1879 Zulu Wars:





Be sure to click on the pictures if you want to see exactly where they came from!



And now that you've seen some Brits, here's some Zulus...


http://www.empressminiatures.com/USERIMAGES/ZWZ01.JPG



Very nice, eh? Be sure to spend some time at their site here.

They also provide some free rules to play by!


Right, I'm tired. Time for bed! See you soon for another Midnight Mini pr0n!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Three new character designs and a group shot! [Secret Cross]

Hola, folks!

Today I would like to introduce you to the following...

The primary sergeant and senior NCO Eddy Rosin of the Secret Cross unit we focus on in the main story. He likes using the shotgun as his preferred means of "negotiation":


Then we have Black Hans, a native of Kamerun (Cameroon)-- he's the history, occult studies and demonology expert:


And last, but certainly not least, we have Willi, who is Moravian and acts as the unit's medic and fortifications specialist:


It should be known he's holding that rifle for someone else. Willi doesn't like guns all that much.


And here's a group shot that Stephen Lindsay whipped up of Dominic Vivona's amazing character designs:


Remember, you can always click on the images to make them bigger!

Right now we are working on the Official Secret Cross website so that it's not just that killer placeholder image you'll see.



In case you missed anything: Information and original teaser cover image here, Captain Füller and a Soldat here, Jup and Rudi here, Roy and Zhel here.


The pages of the first story, "Humanity in the Execution", are underway now.


See you soon!