@christianward / christianward.tumblr.com
So what’s new everyone. Hey, I’d forgotten how nice it is here. Billionaires eh? Urgh. While I’m the subject did you hear I’ve written another comic book and yes that’s right , this ones kinda of about how billionaires are vampires. It also has actual vampires and I’m pretty proud of it. It features pretty incredible art from Patric Reynolds with mind blowing colours from Heather Moore and it’s called BLOOD STAINED TEETH. Vol 1 out now!
The Kiss Timed limited edition giclee print available till Saturday http://www.cjwardart.bigcartel.com/product/the-kiss-time-limited-edition-giclee-print
I've set up a webstore where you can order signed indigo prints ( previously only available at conventions ) direct from me. Link below! Www.cjwardart.bigcartel.com First batch of orders being sent out this weekend
Other Worlds Exhibition
Select pieces from my recent solo exhibition Other Worlds.
All piece are one off giclee prints created for the show and are available for purchase.
Marvel assked me to do a HIP-HOP variant of one of my favourite recent albums: Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book
Some recent Marvel covers
A cover of cosmic awesomeness by Christian Ward @cjwardart for an upcoming issue of ROM.
I did a ROM cover!
…To take a month off Tumblr.
ALL THESE THINGS HAPPENED AND I REFUSED TO OPEN THE APP AND SHARE WITH YOU. And thus with that in mind here is a ROUND UP OF STUFF that might interest you.
THE ODY-C ADULT COLORING AND ACTIVITY BOOK There aren’t words for how staggering Christian Ward’s art is and now this book brings it to you liberated from the burden of my belabored text and also color. He spells it “colour” though. For fans of ODY-C or Ward, this book is manna from Olympus — a combination of all new art and design, a few famous sequences from the first cycle of ODY-C, and ACTIVITES like crosswords and word finds and mad libs inspired by the wildly-inappropriate DUNE ACTIVITY AND COLORING BOOK to help you wile away your idle summer hours. On sale AUGUST 10. Tell your retailer or pre-order online at the book seller of your choice.
Seriously, this is INSANE and GORGEOUS. Christian should be the biggest artist in the comics world but I keep writing all this impenetrable muck for him to draw. AND NOW FREE OF THAT MUCK YOU GET TO COLOR CHRISTIAN’S MAD VISION.
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The centerpiece of the big MILKFED panel at HeroesCon was the launch of our new WEBSITE. Wonderfully designed and built by the good folks at Graybear, we want it to be an information hub for all things me-and-Kelly Sue.
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One thing happening on the site on a near-weekly basis is a kind of column I’m calling THE ME DECADE. If CASANOVA is ten years old (it is) then it’s been ten years since I started writing stuff for Marvel. As loathe as I am to reread my work, I haven’t read any of this stuff since sending it off post-proofreading. So join me on a kind-of critical, kind-of anecdotal, kind-of random stagger down memory lane. How I broke in, how I stayed in, what I did when I was there, and what I make of it all looking back at it, ten years and a few thousand pages later.
• Also on that panel I prematurely announced two things.
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Our THIRD VOLUME of the collected SEX CRIMINALS is out — it’s called THREE THE HARD WAY and chip made this amazing ad
and posted this welcome-to-the-world post.
Once again we made a small batch of HARDCOVERS that will be for sale at shows only; your next chance to buy will be at the IMAGE BOOTH at SDCC in about a month’s time.
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Is that everything? I think that was everything? When did CASANOVA #6 come out? Did you see the tenth anniversary cover we did?
WE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS BOOK FOR TEN FUCKING YEARS
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Times running out to pre-order the ODY-C Adult Coloring and Activity Book. Final order cut off is next Monday.
Tell your Bookstore/comic store you’d like a copy.
THE HEAVIEST TRIP IS THE ONE BACK HOME.
Lose yourself in an epic twenty-six centuries in the making. Featuring art from the genderbent, science fiction comic ODY-C by MATT FRACTION (CASANOVA, SEX CRIMINALS, SATELLITE SAM) and CHRISTIAN WARD (INFINITE VACATION, OLYMPUS), this interactive activity book takes you on a feverishly eye-popping journey rendered in lavish psychedelic pen-and-ink illustrations — all waiting to be brought to life through color.
“It’s an unlikely mixture of elements, but it hits an inimitable combination of cool and classic that pulls you into the orbit of an intoxicating journey.” — Paste Magazine
“Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s psychedelic, "gender-broke” scifi odyssey has been blowing people away since it debuted late last year, and for good reason. This wild retelling of Homer’s Odyssey — in which space captain Odyssia and her crew encounter cyclopean space monsters and deadly living narcotic Lotus Eaters — is a surreal, massively entertaining epic.“ — io9
FOC is today! Tell your comic shop if you want a copy
Times running out to pre-order the ODY-C Adult Coloring and Activity Book. Final order cut off is next Monday. Tell your Bookstore/comic store you'd like a copy. THE HEAVIEST TRIP IS THE ONE BACK HOME. Lose yourself in an epic twenty-six centuries in the making. Featuring art from the genderbent, science fiction comic ODY-C by MATT FRACTION (CASANOVA, SEX CRIMINALS, SATELLITE SAM) and CHRISTIAN WARD (INFINITE VACATION, OLYMPUS), this interactive activity book takes you on a feverishly eye-popping journey rendered in lavish psychedelic pen-and-ink illustrations — all waiting to be brought to life through color. "It's an unlikely mixture of elements, but it hits an inimitable combination of cool and classic that pulls you into the orbit of an intoxicating journey." — Paste Magazine "Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's psychedelic, "gender-broke" scifi odyssey has been blowing people away since it debuted late last year, and for good reason. This wild retelling of Homer's Odyssey — in which space captain Odyssia and her crew encounter cyclopean space monsters and deadly living narcotic Lotus Eaters — is a surreal, massively entertaining epic." — io9
Created a whole bunch of new work for the ODY-C adult colour.
This one however is one of the books out takes.
DC art - just for fun
Matt and I have only gone and done a (very) adult colouring book! What was going to be black and white lifework reprints of existing pages is now almost wholly new. Even the pages that have been recycled from Vol 1 and 2 have been redrawn for this edition.
Designed to be accessible whether you’re a fan of ODY-C or not. Featuring new story content and colourable pin ups of our entire cast including some of the Olympian Gods making their debut here! We’ll also be teasing arc 3 of ODY-C prior to it’s return in September.
Diamond ID: MAY160682
Lose yourself in an epic twenty-six centuries in the making. Featuring art from the gender-bent science fiction comic ODY-C by MATT FRACTION (CASANOVA, SEX CRIMINALS, SATELLITE SAM) and CHRISTIAN WARD (INFINITE VACATION, OLYMPUS), this interactive activity book takes you on a feverishly eye-popping journey rendered in lavish psychedelic pen-and-ink illustrations—all waiting to be brought to life through color. “It’s an unlikely mixture of elements, but it hits an inimitable combination of cool and classic that pulls you into the orbit of an intoxicating journey.”—Paste Magazine
Digital : $11.99 Print: $14.99
ODY-C Vol 2 -TPB out May 18th!
I’m so proud of this volume!
Diamond ID: NOV150686
Some people would do anything for love... even go to war... forever. What happened to Ene the Conqueror, and He, of Troiia, after the end of the Troiian War and they departed for home, reunited at last? It doesn't go well for either of them, it turns out. You think war is hell? Try being married to these two. This legendary couple finds themselves trapped on a world where madness reigns and blood flows daily. To escape, Ene must hunt and kill the bastard son of a god and He must weave stories night after night hoping to stay alive long enough for his bride to rescue him... "Fraction and Ward are doing wildly imaginative work combining fantastic Greek mythology with futuristic science fiction, and the book has a visual sensibility unlike anything else on the stands." —The A.V. Club
Digital : $11.99 Print: $14.99
The Ultimates issue 6, written by the fantastic Al Ewing and full art (lines and colours) fro me is out next Wednesday - April 27th. It’s my first full length issue for marvel and I couldn’t be prouder of it.
This double was previewed by Marvel last night so it’s ok for me to show the process now. Roughs. Line work. Flats ( by Dee Cunniffe ) and final colours.
Full preview over at Comic Book Resources
Lyrics by Matt Fraction @mattfractionblog
Visions by Christian Ward @christianward
ODY-C is a challenging book. A gorgeous, rhapsodic, intensely rewarding challenge, but difficult nonetheless. Formally speaking, it is less straightforward than standard comic book fare, with fantastically abstracted artwork and the dreamy musicality of Homeric dactylic hexameter. But there is also a challenge in the substance of this gender-swapped sci-fi retelling of Homer’s epic. Because the Odyssey is an ordeal at times steeped in blood, as the uncompromisingly red cover of this issue proclaims.
ODY-C, like its source material, can be violent, sexual, disturbing, and sometimes all three at once. As a reader, sexually violent content makes me very uncomfortable. While I don’t advocate artists censoring their work, I am likely to avoid a book with especially brutal content unless I have a lot of trust in its creators. Matt Fraction has talked about making this book in part to give his daughter monumental heroines. Along with his overall sex-positive body of work, this helped put me at ease with the way he might handle difficult subjects. Christian Ward’s neosurrealist narrative style seems to implicitly reject callous depictions of graphic violence in favor of thoughtfully infusing scenes with the tenor of their emotional underpinning. The horrors and ecstasies dawn on you like secrets whispered in your ear while you dream.
This is not to say that Fraction and Ward pull their punches in ODY-C. On the contrary, issue 10 is painted with a palette of pain. But its painful story is told in a way that makes clear these creators respect their readers’ own pain evoked by the telling. You get the sense that we’re all in this dense, millennia old story together. It’s a long haul, but take your time exploring the artwork. Read the lyrics aloud. Fraction and Ward’s vision of ODY-C is a challenging voyage with a worthwhile destination.
Tia Vasiliou is a Digital Editor at ComiXology. She is putting her humanities graduate degree to good use writing this review.
