A quick look at the terribly primitive manner in which I write the comic.

A little preview of all the spot illustrations for the book. I figure if I talk about finishing the damn thing enough, it’ll actually happen. The good news is that I figured out the audio sync problem so now I don’t look like a badly dubbed kung fu flick.

My friend Greg sent along a shit ton of videos of Paul Antonio demonstrating various aspects of his job as a calligraphy Master Scribe. The Master Scribe title means that Paul Antonio essentially draws letters for a living. And from the video posted above, it’s not hard to see why.

Video Jug has 27 videos of Antonio teaching calligraphy and they are all mind-blowing. I foresee spending many hours watching all 27 videos to try to absorb his craft. This stuff is so inspiring. In an age where calligraphy has been replaced by generic fonts to save designers time and money, it’s great to see master craftsmen still using actual pen and ink to create such beautiful forms. It also inspires me to keep working on my own lettering.

This is how I letter the comic. It is not the best way, nor is it the fastest way, but it’s worked for me for a while now so I thought I’d share. If you’ve got a different, probably better, method for lettering, please share.

In September, the differently abled community will lose one of its strongest fictional role models when Babs does indeed put on her Batgirl tights to walk the Gotham nights and kick ass. Gail Simone is writing the new Batgirl series which makes the announcement slightly easier to bear. But not really.

Over the weekend, this little sketch I drew in response to the news that Batgirl was going to get a reboot in September kind of kicked a hornet’s nest. The idea that Babs would gleefully walk away from her wheelchair if she could is terribly ableist and as someone who advocates for minority representation in entertainment, I should have thought it through before I posted it. However, the discussion that the image provoked has been quite good and for the most part, people on both sides have been quite articulate in voicing their positions. Here’s an article called Batgirl Triumphant: The Price of Restoring DC Comics’ Disabled Heroine that uses my sketch. And here’s an amazing piece entitled Oracle is Stronger Than Batgirl Will Ever Be.

Personally, I’ve always liked Barbara Gordon Oracle better than Babs Batgirl. No doubt that she kicked quite a lot of ass as Batgirl. And she had the wits to do a decent amount of detective work. But she always felt like a kid, like a female version of Robin. She wasn’t quite her own character, more like a feisty young shadow of the Bat. As Oracle, I felt Barbara Gordon really came into her own. No longer was she just another person with a Bat symbol flitting about. She could do things none of the rest of them could do. It’s pretty telling to me that you can replace Batgirls and Robins with other kids, but there’s only one Oracle.

There are more Oracle stories to be told. It is unfortunate that DC doesn’t see that. But since this is the age of the internet, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing even more Oracle in the wake of DC’s rebooted universe. There’s already a Tumblr collecting Oracle illustrations called the Oracle Create-a-Thon. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the fan fic starts rolling in and artists start doing their own comics. Hell, I’d love to see comic hopefuls using their own Oracle pages to submit to DC.

Have no fear, Oracle fans. DC may have abandoned her, but we never will.