Hey again. It’s a brand new year, and a brand new DR page! Hope you enjoy Brian’s take on the stylings of Sir William Shatner. I know I do.
I’m stoked that DarkRaven has made it to the fabled “Year we make contact”. 2010. Wow. We’ve been doing this little comic since in one form or another since early 2007, and I’m still loving it. And while there’s not a huge number of pages completed in those three years (87 is still a respectable number), each and every one of them has been crafted with love by Brian and I.
So here’s to the next three years (or more!) and hopefully many, many more pages of DarkRaven and Blue Tit fun!
BTW, I wanted to share with you a Christmas gift I received. My friend John Ragone is builds model cars as a hobby, and he created the ultimate DarkRaven-inspired vehicle.

This guy put in untold hours constructing this most special of gifts, and I thank him deeply for it. John, you rock! Now only if I had the money to get a full-size Blackbird…
See ya next time.
-Ray

Hey people!
I realize that it’s been over a month since our last post and for that I want to apologize. Life and work have sucked up all the free time Brian and I would have otherwise dedicated to the comic, and updates have suffered as a result. We’ll try to do better in the future. Hope you enjoy the new page. See you soon!
-Ray

Hey again. I hope all of our US service members are having a good Veterans Day! I had to work today but Brian, with his cushy government job, did not. Jerk.
I’m a little bummed that I missed the Astronomicon sci-fi convention held in Rochester this past weekend. A friend was on a panel discussing vampires vs. werewolves, and that sounds like it would be totally awesome, but I was too busy painting my kitchen. I should hand in my geek card.
BTW, if anyone wants to buy me a Christmas gift early, the new Justice League Complete Series on DVD came out yesterday. It’s only $67 bucks at Amazon. Don’t I have a rich uncle out there who can make this happen for me?
Okay, enough shameless begging. See ya next week.
-R

Hello again! This week’s page is a fill-in by yours truly. Go easy on the critiques, as this is my first attempt at actually penciling a page. I’m nowhere near the penciler that Brian is, but who is?
This week’s comic is especially comic-geeky, so don’t worry if you don’t know what the Blackest Night is, or why there’s a zombie Superman up in the top right panel (a quick primer can be found here). Just enjoy this brief glimpse of what it would be like if the DarkRaven existed in a world full of real superheroes.
See ya next week (hopefully).
-Ray

Today’s strip is a little shout-out to Brian and Alison’s cat Maddy. I thought it would be funny to include her because she has the most enormous eyes I’ve ever seen on a cat. Seriously. We’re talking freakishly big. Anyway, we found a fun way to get her in the strip and I spent a good part of the day making sure I got her fur colored just right. (That, and those damn brick walls in every frickin’ panel.)
So what’s everyone doing for Halloween? The wife and I will be kid-less, so maybe a night out on the town is in order. I might even bust out the DarkRaven costume if we end up going to a costume party.
Later,
-R

Hey friends,
I know it’s been about a month since we had a new story page, and I apologize for that. I lost my grandmother two weeks ago and was out of town for about a week, so the page you see now would have went up last week. I still need to fully render the art on this page, but I didn’t want to wait any longer before posting. I’ll get the final rendered page up soon.
Until next week,
-R

Hey friends,
In case you missed it, we have a guest artist for this week’s episode! My good friend Adam West (not the one you’re thinking of, the other one) offered to help us out with this special page. The strip doesn’t take place in the current “Tales of the DarkRaven” continuity (and really shouldn’t take place in any continuity). This imaginary tale shows what would happen if DarkRaven and the Blue Tit existed in the Marvel Comics universe. Good times.
Hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled story soon.
-Ray
PS. If the page is too small for you to read up, just click on the link below it to show a bigger image.

Hey friends. I didn’t get this week’s script to Brian before his anniversary dinner last night, so the page will be a day late. But I didn’t want our fans to go without anything this Wednesday, so I’m unveiling my coveted picture of Bruce Campbell that I got at the 2009 FanExpo in Toronto.

If you don’t know who this fine gentleman is, he’s a master thespian who has appeared in a number of movies and television series. He’s played a range of characters from Elvis to The King of Thieves. He chopped off his own hand and replaced it with a chain-saw in “Army of Darkness,” and he sang “Hungry Like a Wolf” while playing piano in an Old Spice commercial. 

He’s The Man.

When we took the photo, the sum total of what Bruce said to me was, “Let’s do an action-hero-y pose.” It was like he looked inside of me and knew I was a closet action hero. He just knew. 

Best day ever.

See ya tomorrow.

-R

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and we’re back! Hope you didn’t miss us too much. We apologize for the delay over the last few weeks, but between Brian moving and my trip to Toronto we just needed to take a break from the comic. But we’re back now, and working on guest fill-in pages for those weeks when we can’t get a page out. I just hate the thought of you good people not getting your weekly fix of the ol’ DarkRaven and Blue Tit.

Below are a couple of pics from my trip to the Toronto Fan Expo two weeks ago. I had a blast, although going by myself was a little weird. It did force me to go outside my comfort zone and talk to people that I didn’t know, and I like to think I grew a little bit as a person while I was chatting up complete strangers about Green Lantern comics and Star Wars costumes. Thank you to Louis, Cynthia, and everyone else that I met who made this American feel so welcome.

I’ll post my coveted picture of Bruce Campbell in the A.M. but for now, enjoy these little tidbits.

Until next week!
-R

Hey friends.

Here’s the deal: Brian is buying a new house next week. This week he and his wife are packing up and getting ready for the move. He’s had zero free time, and has not been able to pencil any new pages. Hence, there is no new comic this week.

We may not have a comic for next week either, because we just don’t know how the move will go. Please accept our humble apologies for the temporary break. We will return, and it will be cool. Promise.

In the meantime, I’m going to the Toronto Fan Expo this weekend and I’ll take lots of pics to post next week. If you’re there, look for the guy in the DarkRaven t-shirt and say ‘hello’.

-R