Fan Expo 2011 is over and what a great weekend! With the new book TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS, a comics history of the psychedelic Beatles, it was my biggest convention ever by quite a big margin – and I’ve been to these things reppin’ a spin-off comic book from a famous TV show so you know this weekend was HOT!

What’s this on the table with The Beatles?? Two Super Party comic books?? I’ll tell you something about those in my next blog post. Spoiler alert: You’re gonna lose control of your bladder with excitement.

Me and Ninja Turtle Man!

Me and The Dude!

There are a whole bunch more pictures in the Fan Expo gallery on my Facebook page – CLICK THIS SHIT

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This blog post is dedicated to everyone who is looking at this website for the first time after meeting me at Fan Expo.  Leave a comment and say what up!  The star is dedicated to Heather Payne who loves the stars in my Twitter bio.

Extra special thanks to everyone who comes to this website on the regular and has followed my art for years.  Love to you all.

In the meantime, I’ve spent the summer hiatus deep into a bunch of projects that are going to shape the next year of my life.

You may have seen me tweeting my ass off with the link to my hip hop box set.  A lot of painstaking work took place to be able to collect all of my rap music material in one place.  While that’s been out, I’ve been steadily working on the new record including a song I made the beat for three years ago but never was able to write words for.  And then they tumbled out over a weekend.

I’ve got the whole record laid out.  I have to finish the words for three more songs, then record the bitch.

The new record is called THE REINTERPOLATOR.  It will come out this fall, and we’ll premiere videos from the record on my show throughout the season.  I’ve got an interesting idea about how to decide which songs to make videos for but we’ll get into that in another post.

Next week I will enter production on my mini-movie JULIAN ASSANGE AND THE DOUBLE DAMN BURGER.  This is an idea that I got in January and then it grew and got ridiculous until now it’s a half-hour mini-movie.  I’m really excited about my cast, I’ll introduce you to them in another post soon.  I’m going to get this shot before  the show’s Season Premiere, and then the goal is to have it on the screen in time for the premiere to be my birthday party in November.

The new season of the show is going to run from September 1 to December 15.  The concepts we’ve cooked up for these episodes are incredible.  If we pull off half of what we’ve cooked up, they will be some awesome shows.

So that’s me and my life right now.  I’m so glad we got to catch up.  But enough about me, how are you doing?

X-Men: First Class stacked the deck in my favor: I am an enthusiast of all things sixties. I love superhero movies when they’re grounded and stay focused on the characters. I love historical fiction that cooks up an outlandish and crazy explanation for events that actually happened without re-writing history.

X-Men: First Class is the bomb. It’s not good enough to crack my personal all-time top five like Spider-Man 2 did, but it’s definitely the best superhero movie since The Dark Knight.

There were two major things wrong with it, but those two things don’t take away from the enjoyment of it. First, January Jones is way out of her depth here. She seems too much like she’s having fun and impressed with herself over hanging out with Kevin Bacon to actually get down to the business of acting. That said, I didn’t really think about this until after I got home, but that could just be a testament to how good a job the wardrobe department did on Ms. Jones’ Emma Frost costume.  Yowza!

The other problem ended up not being a problem at all. The X-Men who are assembled for the team’s first roster are a collection of characters so lame and with such shitty powers that I had to wonder if they’re really out of cool characters to include in these movies.  But thinking about it later I realized that using crappy B & C-tier characters was a brilliant way to keep the focus squarely on Professor X and Magneto.

The standout performances in this movie are Kevin Bacon as lead villain Sebastian Shaw and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Bacon is so fun to watch, you get the feeling that he hasn’t enjoyed making a movie this much in a long time. Even saddled with a bunch of lames for a crew, he is a menacing villain and he’s an important part of all of the most satisfying moments of the movie. Fassbender gives the movie its dramatic oomph. His Magneto is the most realistic and committed performance of the film. Watching him on his revenge quest is the main thing that keeps this movie feeling like a real movie and not just some junk to give the fanboys something to natter about (like Marvel movies have a tendency to do lately in the run-up to the Avengers movie).

X-Men: First Class is one of those movies where the more I thought about it later, the more I liked it. It’s a good example of how these kinds of movies can take risks and be proper cinema but still be satisfying as summer entertainment. Watching it, I was afraid that it’s going to be too highbrow for the general audiences coming to it from Thor, but I hope it’s a big hit because I really want to see the next one.

Special thanks to the two people behind the scenes who were why I was able to catch the advance screening!

And don’t forget that The Sean Ward Show was where the world got its first photo from the set of the new Wonder Woman movie starring Katy Perry!

The Silver Snail brought the party again for Free Comic Book Day.  That’s when the whole comic book industry goes in on giving away specialty ‘Free Comic Book Day’ editions of whatever comic books the publishers are trying to showcase.  The whole industry uses it as an excuse to have a party with costumes, guest artists, freebies & prizes.

I’ve been a guest artist at the Silver Snail for Free Comic Book Day regularly and it’s become an annual tradition here on my blog to post my Free Comic Book Day drawings for the fans.

Perhaps my favorite drawing of the day, this person wanted Deadpool:

Always happy to do the superheroes:

Mother’s Day played into a lot of people’s requests.

It was this kid’s birthday…

…and here’s what he got!

Two takes on The Green Lantern:

Another satisfied customer!

Star Wars is always a popular theme:

This girl’s name is Mandi.  She has been coming around stuff I’m doing since she was a little teenager.  When she fell in love with her dude, she brought him to me to have me draw their portrait.  And now it’s a tradition they do every year!

Here is the 2011 edition…

This minimalist Batman was a big hit…

This was a request from a cool kid who wanted “something Modest Mouse…”

To see even more of my drawings from Free Comic Book Day at the Silver Snail plus some of the costumes worn by the staff, see the gallery on my Facebook art page: facebook.com/SeanWardSuperParty

And to see last year’s Free Comic Book Day drawings, click here!

I got an email a little while ago from a girl named Emma asking me what advice I could pass along to her friend about how to get his career started as an artist. I thought I would answer her here on the blog since this is the kind of question professionals get asked most frequently.

Morning Sean Ward,

Thanks for hitting me back on Twitter! The reason I wanted to connect with you is kinda weird. I am interested in becoming better acquainted with the Toronto comic book scene. I mean, I’ve lived here for 6 years, and I’ve haunted the Hairy Tarantula and Silver Snail, etc… But a buddy of mine just moved here from the Territories and wants to get into comics here… drawing them mostly…and I have no advice to give him, so I thought I should find someone who could! (also I am pretty pumped about everything you do, as I am a videographer and hip hop head… seems we have things in common!)
Anywho, what advice would you give to a newby transplant about getting into comics here? Toronto is a scary move, and not knowing anyone here doesn’t help much. Whaddya say Sean? Words of wisdom from someone who knows what he is talking about? It would be much appreciated, I would take you for a coffee or beer if you’d let me!
Have a good one dude!
Emma

This question of how one goes about getting started in comics or in any art has been asked many times. Those of us who have been asked it have usually heard different people answer it different ways. But here are a couple of the recurring themes that emerge:

1. The person doing the asking has a conception that there’s a specific blueprint that can be followed.

2. There is no blueprint. Everyone’s journey is unique.

Tony Robbins and guys like that tell you that success is a system that can be easily duplicated. I’ve got a lot out of listening to them, reading books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and attending workshops & seminars. I keep a Bible & a Hare Krishna prayer book near my work space, making a point to flip through them often for context and insight. But those materials do not provide the answers. They help you be the kind of person who finds the answers.

And that’s what it’s all about: success is a process, not an event. It’s about having a vision, and the continual process of doing whatever you can to try to move closer to it.

When I first started doing comics, with no connections in the industry or the scene, I jumped in and went crazy. I spent a year cranking out as many issues of a series as I could, photocopying them and selling them on the street downtown. The most important thing was not how good they were, it was how many of them I could get out there and how many people I could get looking at them. I was wildly prolific – an idea that’s become popular in the business world with the recently popular rallying cry of “ship often”

You’ve heard about the 10,000 hours theory, right? That’s the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at something. So Emma – the only advice there is to pass along to your friend is to start putting in those hours right away.

As my mother used to say: “There’s no way around – you have to go through it.”

So that’s for your buddy to get down to making some comics.  As for getting in with the scene, that’s what Twitter is so damn good for.  Follow these people, talk to them often, jump into the conversation, and go to anything you hear them talk about going on.

Essential Toronto Comics Scene Twitter links: @SilverSnailTO @TDotComics @EscapeFromRL @comics212

(If you can think of anyone else who would be good for Emma to follow, let me know in the comments)

Last night a handful of bloggers and social media people got invited to the Teletoon offices in downtown Toronto for a sneak peek at the new cartoon show Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Watch our video preview:

This show is pretty cool.  I was kind of expecting them to phone it in as a cheap attempt to build brand recognition in advance of The Avengers movie but the show is packed full of surprises and it’s a lot of fun.

And we had fun watching it!

Watch our video Preview:

Last weekend, the Metro Conventon Centre in Toronto was overrun with geeks of all stripes.  It’s Fan Expo time, a celebration of all things collectible.  Comics, Sci-Fi, Anime, Horror, anything people might go bonkers over in pop culture has a home here.

Toronto bloggers invaded the Expo with Michael Nus, Lauren O’Nizzle, and myself posting coverage of the event.

My video:

Lauren O’Nizzle’s video:

Michael Nus’ coverage, in which he teaches us about the costumes at the convention (click to check it out!):

Let’s do it again next year!!!!

Free Comic Book Day was May 1 at comic book stores around the world.  I was invited to be a guest artist at the Silver Snail in Toronto!

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Click here to see the rest of my drawings from Free Comic Book Day!

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Saturday, May 1 was Free Comic Book Day.  For the third year in a row, I was invited to be one of the guest artists at the Silver Snail, drawing sketches for the crowd.

Star Wars is always a popular theme.

And this year Star Trek started to catch up in popularity.

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This was the one I was asked to draw by David and Satro, of Count Dracula and Robin from Batman eating spaghetti like the famous scene from Lady and the Tramp. The Ninja Turtle sort of elbowed his way in without anyone really catching what had happened until it had already happened.

Princess Leia Lady Gaga.

I was asked for Princess Leia as Lady Gaga.  I have her part Episode Four with the hair, the rest Jabba’s slave girl for a performance of Telephone.

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This one was really simple. I asked what the dude wanted a drawing of, and he said “Cars”. “As in the Pixar movie?”, says I. “Just… cars.”, he says.

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This guy went down the row and asked every artist to do something with Ninja Turtles.

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This one I did just to Tweet it from the table.

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Late in the day, I ran right through tired and into delirious. And that’s when I was asked for “Catwoman”. Yes, that is a hook for a hand. And a pizza cutter for an other hand.

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Spock’s second appearance of the day. Sometime between then and now he’s won himself a wrestling championship.

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And then to finish the day off with a sandwich called The Big Ham. It wasn’t that big.