Roberto Macedo Alves

… with photo reference in the middle: the first appearance of the Innocent Zombie!!!

Initial Layout sketch idea:

Due to my inability to draw hands (sometimes), I needed a photo reference for the pose I wanted – the most handy model (literally “handy”) was myself:

And the finished panel:

Não falamos com muita frequência (excepto pelo ocasional contacto online) – mas não quer dizer que o pessoal que estimamos esteja esquecido:

Para celebrar, aqui ficam as “Happy Birthday Variations” do Peter Heidrich:

FELIZ ANIVERSÁRIO!!!

Un gran abrazo de tus amigos de Portugal que nunca se olvidan de ti!   

Podemos estar lejos, pero como decía Saint-Exupery (creo yo) – “la distancia es como el viento que apaga los fuegos pequeños y alimenta los incendios“.

FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS!!!

A Revista Cultural Online Paralelo 33, onde sou colaborador ocasional, tem um novo texto de música, sobre o Concerto de José Manuel Dapena, guitarrista clássico que decorreu durante o XXX Festival de Música da Madeira, cujo início reproduzo a seguir:

Para ler o resto, basta clicar AQUI.

A couple of friends asked about the “touch of bacon” in my post from yesterday about the LOLZombie, so, here is a small note to explain the private joke – I was talking about Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) - the irish figurative painter, not the philosopher. Bacon painted (among other portraits based on Velázquez portrait of Innocent X) something called Head VI, that, according to wikipedia <<was Bacon’s first surviving engagement with Velázquez’s great Portrait of Pope Innocent X (three ‘popes’ were painted in Monte Carlo in 1946 but were destroyed). The Cobalt Violet mozzetta, crimson in Velázquez’s painting, may reflect Bacon’s use of printed reproductions of the painting. Bacon later said that, although he admired “the magnificent color” of the Velázquez, Velázquez “wanted to make it as much like a Titian as possible but, in a curious way he cooled Titian”.>>   

From the Facebook Notes page of the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies book: A CONTEST!

They gave us exactly 24 hours to create our own loveable LOLZombie and send it in! For a chance to win a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – signed by Seth Grahame-Smith! Also and iPod Shuffle loaded with the audio version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…

I already have ordered a copy – but who can resist to win a signed copy?

Here is my holy-meatball-loaded-LOLZombie! With a touch of Bacon… Francis Bacon! ROTFL!

From 1987 to 1990 I spent countless hours playing a Macintosh game called “Beyond Dark Castle” – suddenly, browsing the internet, I found out a video excerpt, that brought very vivid memories:

Even if I spent years playing that thing, I never got to see the “mysterious” ending animation. The protagonist of the game was a Prince Duncan, who went on his quest to defeat the Black Knight who lived in the Dark Castle. When we finished the game in the “beginner” difficulty level, we got transported to the second level, “intermediate” and after finishing that, to the third difficulty level, “advanced”. I knew that when we get to finish the “advanced” level, we could see a “hidden animation” that took me FOREVER to finally arrive! Here is the ending animation:

Ah, good old times. When I see stuff like that I realize how old I really am!

A page from my sketchbook: A copy of a GIORGIO ARMANI advertisement, done as a drawing exercise:

I grew up in the tradition of nice Arthur Conan Doyle stories and the Sherlock Holmes mythos.

I had fun with Arsène Lupin and the Countess of Cagliostro and Raffles and Rocambole.

But, now that I think of it, I am not really a big fan of most of the crime comics I’ve read… until recently. The usual crime story opening, stuff like: “The night’s as hot as hell. It’s a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town – I’m staring at a goddess. She’s telling me she wants me. I’m not going to waste one more minute wondering how I’ve gotten this lucky” might bore me, unless the artwork is virtuoso enough. I enjoyed Frank Miller’s SIN CITY (one of the most widely known noir comcis), for example, but some of those speech balloons, being read aloud, just sound somewhat silly. The stories are entertaining, true,  but we cannot find much depth there. Graphical virtuosity and entertainment, but not many content layers.

And probably that is one of the reasons why crime comics are considered “inferior” to crime prose novels.

However, there is one notable exception: KICKBACK, written and drawn by David Lloyd, creator of V for Vendetta!

The first words of that Graphic Novel are unlike the usual beginning of a crime comic. No lousy rooms, no lousy parts of a lousy town, just a talk about a dream, from an unseen narrator: “Okay. I will tell you about it. I’m in a dark warehouse… at least., that’s what it feels like… there’s ironwork — spears of metal — all around me… I’m on a catwalk that’s too narrow to turn around on, so I start to make my way along it in the direction I’m facing… ahead of me, it seems to grow narrower… I can’t see to the end of it… then, as I move along it, I see someone coming towards me… I try to make out who it is, but there’s a kind of mist…“. I thought it was a great way to begin a crime novel. With the description of a dream that is also an essential part of the story in many ways.

First, because this dream is like a metaphor of what the protagonist is going through. Joe Canelli feels he is going in one direction, but would that be the correct one? The pathway in his dream offers no other choices. After all, the protagonist of KICKBACK is a corrupt policeman – because everyone else in that town with a position of authority seems to be corrupt… but to say that KICKBACK is a story about a corrupt cop in a corrupt city would be an understatement, because the story is much more complex and interesting than that. This dream is just a small segment of one of the several layers of meaning and complexity that form the narrative of this very entertaning work.

In the beginning of this review, I said that I was not a big fan of crime comics, because many times, they feel hollow and clichéd (even when virtuously drawn) – but KICKBACK is different, it is not only a crime comic, it is a intrincate story, about guilt, about dreams, about progres

s, about corruption. And that is curious, because in a way, the content has some parallells with V FOR VENDETTA – mostly when we talk about corruption, even if we are talking about a different kind of corruption.

There is much more going on in KICKBACK and I do not want to talk too much about some of those layers, to avoid spoiling part of the relevant content of the book. However, it is a great story that offers us lots of food for thought: about listening to our conscience, about the value of old people’s wisdom, about the moral value of doing what everyone else does – and much more, all wrapped up in a nice mystery with lots of action drawn in the magnificently detailed and deep style David Lloyd had already shown us in previous works like V FOR VENDETTA, but with digital improvements this time. And they make quite a difference in the storytelling: from the rain to speed blurs, the nice classical touch of Lloyd’s artwork just blends naturally with some of the digital touches.

So, to conclude this small review, the world of KICKBACK feels like a believable place, where not everything (or everyone) is just black and white and each character feels like a real, complex person. This is not your usual crime comic. This is a crime comic that a thinking man will enjoy, as rich and deep and entertaining and complex as any prose novel. I’ve always been a fan of David Lloyd, and this work, drawn and written by him is a worthy addition to the collection of anyone – comic collector, demanding reader or crime novels aficionado. An Unmissable Book, without a doubt!

	I recommend…
	Kickback David Lloyd (Hardcover – Aug 30,… $12.95 The Crime Comic for the Thinking Man! Privacy

This time, Violetta and Alfredo (the protagonists of Verdi’s Opera “LA TRAVIATA”), from my previous exhibition “OPERA GRAPHICA”: