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16 December 2009 : Sneak Peek

Wow! It's been a while, so let us dust off the cobwebs here and inform you of some stories that are currently in the works.

First, we have our first story featuring Mik'L of Jobus. Mik'l is friend of Tiegre's and they have often find themselves working together. Mik'L is quite an interesting character, so be sure ot join us for his first of many adventures.

Written by Mike Exner with art by Will Blankenship

Our next and final sneak peek is Tiegre story. There are many, many adventures of Tiegre and just as we are about to embark on a weekly Tiegre ongoing story, we will also shed a little light on the various adventures of Tiegre's past.

Written by Kyle Steele with art by Pat Inglebert

That's it for now.
Be sure to check in for more Zombie King.
Don't forget to check out Jamal's blog for his regular commentary on creating Warmageddon comics.

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TAGS : Mike Exner, Mik'L, Pat Inglebert, Tiegre, Unpublished Art, Will Blankenship

6 December 2009 : Process Junkies!

Warmageddon creator, Jamal Walton, gives us a peek inside his coloring process over on his blog. Check out his coloring tutorial with a panel from a recent Thomas strip.

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TAGS : Thomas

16 November 2009 : The Zombie King

From now until the end of the year, we are running a new story in place of Eirian and Orumil. There is a myth that floats about Warmageddon about the...

So starting, Tuesday we will tell the story of the Zombie King. Eirian and Orumil will return on Tuesdays in 2010 followed by the weekly adventures of Tiegre on Thursday as they journey in the land East of Warmageddon.

The Zombie King is written by Richard Nelson and pencilled by Marcela da Silva Casaqueviti with letters, inks and grays by Jamal Walton.

Tiegre will be written and lettered by L Jamal Walton with art by Dominic Vivona.

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TAGS : Eirian and Orumil, zombie

29 September 2009 : Congratulations, Jamal!

We were informed by Jamal that there would be no new Thomas strip for this month because his family just welcomed a new baby girl into the family. However, he does promise 2 strips for the October 1st update!

Congratulations, Jamal and family!

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25 September 2009 : Looking Back: Joseph Reynolds

Once again we enter the Warmageddon Wayback machine and this time we land on Joseph Reynolds.

Joseph Reynolds completed more conceptual art for Warmageddon than any other artist. His style is akin to the Moebius and what you're more likely to see in European comics. Not much really to say this week, so we'll just get out of the way and show you the art.

Female Giant with Mace

Size comparison between male giant and dwarf

Male bwang with axe

Male Orc Samurai

Battle Bot

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TAGS : bwangs, elves, giants, Joseph Reynolds, Looking Back, orcs, robots

18 September 2009 : National Talk Like a Pirate Day and Looking Back: Jason Alexander

Tomorrow is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. In honor of talking like a pirate we will be posting the first 6 pages of "The Golden Egg" adventure featuring Barbarian Pirate Asar (written by Richard Nelson with art by Noel Tuazon). The following 6 pages will be posted on Tuesday and the final 6 pages the next Tuesday.

Back into the archives we dip and this time we bring you one of the early character designers of Warmageddon, Jason Alexander .

Jason Alexander (now known as Jason Shawn Alexander) is a friend of Jamal. During the early years of Warmageddon, Jason was relatively local to Jamal, so Jamal contracted him to complete some character designs based on Jamal's description. At the time Jason was doing RPG drawing for White Wolf and other gaming companies, so this work fit right in.

Below are the designs for the Troll (left) and the Cyber-Troll. These characters have yet to appear in any Warmageddon stories, but the basic idea was that the Warmageddon Games were always creating new creatures to pit against the gladiators. When they found a creature that was sentient enough to do battle, they would often enhance it with cybernetics to make it stronger, faster, and more deadly.

And every good concept is made better with zombies and if you have zombies, then you have CYBER ZOMBIES. Cyber-zombies appeared in the story Ahead of the Game where Jorge Vega dubbed then GOD CADAVERS. The story behind zombies is that the Warmageddon scientists produced a serum that would heal the gladiators quicker. The side effect of the serum was that it continued to heal the body even after death. Even when brain dead, the serum continued to regenerate brain cells enough to produce a semi-sentient zombie.

Warmageddon dark elves being what they are applied the serum to the already dead an produced a rambling shattered zombie known as a mummy. The mummy drawing is one of the most intricate and interesting drawings that Jason produced for Warmageddon. Full size prints of it can be purchased at BullCityComics.com

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TAGS : Asar, Jason Alexander, Looking Back, Noel Tuazon, Richard Nelson

14 September 2009 : Wiki and the Fargee: 8rgd z3r swb fx764h

In preparation for the exploration of the land to the far east of Warmageddon, Jamal has created a new language for the dominant race, the Fargee. It's not really a new language, but in the grand tradition of the comic book languages, it's a cipher. Jamal is issuing a challenge to the Warmageddon faithful and that challenge is to crack the Fargee cipher.

To assist in cracking the Fargee cipher, we will provide you with 3 clues.
1) The title of this blog post when translated is "Wiki and the Fargee"
2) Punctuation is important and not important.
3) The balloon below is written using the Life Form font from Blambot.com. If written in a regular comic book font, it would appear as:

We will learn more about the Fargee in the future.

The reason why this post is entitled "Wiki and the Fargee" is because there have been updates to the wiki.

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TAGS : Fargee, wiki

10 September 2009 : Looking Back : The Lost Artists

These week in looking back, we're taking you way, way back and featuring the very first Warmageddon concept art. Way back in the beginning Jamal ran a web site called ComicsPortfolio.com and was able to contact artist who put together portfolios and ask them to do concept drawings. A lot of really interesting drawings came from these artists, however, the downside is that it was really informal and we don't really have names for all the artist.

So hop into the WayBack Machine and let's get started.

When Jamal contacted these artists, he gave them a simple concept and let them run with it. In this case is was female human warrior versus an orc in a swamp. The artist is Hillsman. I'm not sure if that's a first name, last name, or just online username. Coincidentally, these characters look very much like Trivun and Kiara who are featured on the cover to Warmageddon Illustrated #1.

Next up we have a war bot and a goblin duking it out in a swamp with art by Walton (not Jamal). Goblins were a subspecies of orcs that were essentially dwarf orcs. Along the way as we developed Warmageddon, these tiny creatures got left behind.

George Todorowski is up next with the heavily armored dwarf battling the heavily armored battle chicken. The battle chicken soon evolved into the more humanoid chicken that would become the bwangs. This is one of our absolute favorites of all the early Warmageddon art.

A giant meets armored human in this next piece by Starnes. If the human is a normal sized character, then this giant is HUGE, at least 18-20 feet! Warmageddon giants have been greatly reduced in size as the tallest would still be under 10 feet.

Here a female elf battles an orc in a forest with art by Kinjo. This piece of art has a style very similar to the current World of Warcraft comic book published by Wildstorm. The art for that is by Mike Bowden.

Last, but no least, we have a female elf with cybernetic bwangs by Juan Chav. This is the earliest appearance of bwangs. The problem here is the use of magic by the elf. Warmageddon is not known for it's magic usage as Jamal and Mike (Imboden) were very careful to avoid relying on magic to explain things. Like every thing in early Marvel could be traced back to radiation, every thing in Warmageddon can be traced to some pseudo-scientific solution.

And that's it for Looking Back this week.

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TAGS : bwangs, elves, goblins, kiara, Looking Back, orcs, Trivun, war bots, Warcraft

7 September 2009 : Updating the Wiki

One of the often overlooked parts of the Warmageddon web site is the wiki and we are hoping to change that. Every weekend, we gather all the Warmageddon sages, soothsayers, wise men, and scribes together. When they get together we find ourselves flooded with new information about Warmageddon and he denizens.

So stop by the Warmageddon wiki and learn more about the land of Warmageddon. The latest information features the Map of Warmageddon as well as information on Penny the Robo-Bwang.

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TAGS : Penny, wiki

4 September 2009 : Looking Back: Covers and Cover Designs

Ever since the beginning, there have been cover drawn and designed that were just not used. This is a showcase of just a few of those items.

Alternate Cover DWP #17

Digital Webbing Presents #17 featured the first Warmageddon story, "Travesty." Shane Nitzsche provided these layouts of a version of the story events for a potential alternate cover. After some back and forward this drawing was taken to completion and even colored. Ultimately, it was not used because Kri'lang just never appeared to be as menacing as we all wished. The finished art was used as the back cover to the Art of Warmageddon Year One.

On the left, is a cover layouts for a future issues of Digital Webbing Presents featuring Warmageddon. At one point, we considered running Warmageddon as a regular features of Digital Webbing Presents. However, that plan was shelved when DWP went full color with issue #19 featuring Sherman Danger.

This cover is an homage to the "Song of Red Sonja" from Conan the Barbarian #24. Song of Red Sonja begins with Red Sonja dancing on the cover as Conan and crew cheer her on.

The idea here was that Kri'lang the Executioner would take the place of Conan and Tiegre would take the place of Red Sonja. the background would be filled with the Warmageddon Senior Council. Artist Edwin Rhemrev was contacted to put together this cover, however the effort was soon abandoned.

When we put together the Foundation collection for Warmageddon stories, we revisited this idea once again with artist, Jake Bilbao. The Bilbao version has Kiara filling in for Red Sonja and the entire composition is flipped. The foreground contains: Li'l Myke, Python manning, Izzy, Gunnar, Kri'lang, and Kiara. The background is littered with Tiegre, young Penny, Lefty, Marcus, Ulmragha, and THF.

Of course, the Bilbao version as well as the Foundation collection can be picked up at BullCityComics.com.

After the move from Digital Webbing, there were plans to continue future Warmageddon stories in comic book sized format (rather than magazine format). The design on the right was one of the designs considered.

The design is very similar to the final design used for the magazine -sized Warmageddon Quarterly. However, the biggest differences are:

Pricing
The pricing information for this issue would have been in the bottom right corner right above the URL. The URL in the bottom corner was kept in the final version, but the price was moved to the top.

2 Cover Features
On this cover you see the art by Shane White on the Asar cover and then the lower art by Mike Hawthorne for the Zombie City story. The goal was original to have rotating features with Tiegre, Asar, Zombie City and Izzy & Gunnar rotating into the cover slots. Scheduling conflicts ultimately cancelled those plans.

That's all for this week's looking back.

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TAGS : Digital Webbing, DWP, Looking Back, Mike Hawthorne, Shane Nitzsche, Shane White, Warmageddon Quarterly