The Veil

Yes, it’s been a while since something was written in this, little, lost blog. My apologies to our faithful four readers.

Well, last issue on the stores, our job is done. Time to pack and put the chairs on the table. Almost, I said I’d post more sketches and stuff, so here they go. Hey, it’s in the title!

Behold! The dream sequence where The Slug Man gets Chris in issue #2.  Something wasn’t right with the first version, so Gaby pointed we needed to insert some references to the room where everything ends.

The train. The Acadian, with all its phallic glory. Where everything started. This train really existed, and you can have more info in this interesting site. Never had a terrible accident as happened in the book… its end was more dull and related to money. We doubt in inserting this panel or not, where the Acadian enters into the tunnel, accident happens, and Slug Man appears to have a good time.

Entering into the tunnel or coming out? I’ll never know.

We’ve received a lot of good reviews. Greg Burgas, in “What I bought” has been reviewing every issue. Thanks a lot for calling  The Veil “the most surprising comic of the year”, Gaby and me are really happy you enjoyed our little horror story.

People at Newsarama posted a preview of each issue, and some people left their comments. Thanks to all them.

Matthew McLean shared his thoughts about Luna and her Crooksville’s tale at Comics Bulletin… we just catched you at issue #4, but thanks for this kind review!

There are lots of cool reviews here and there, just let us know and we’ll post them here, so this blog will finally serve as a sort of press album. We’re happy you enjoyed The Veil as much as we did creating Chris Luna and the horrors she had to cope with.

We’ve been waiting to show this, but here it is, finally. It’s the scan of one of these sketchbooks that Gaby uses to create any book, in this case containing stuff about issues#3 and #4. You almost can read the whole issues here. Characters, expressions and prop designs, and a lot of thumbnails of every page, every panel, everything shows how meticulous Gaby is, and the amount of work he put on every book.

We were happy to guide you through some places beyond The Veil. And we’d like to acknowledge a lot of people. Here goes a lot of  “thank you, people”.

Thanks to Chris Ryall, our fair editor, and to boss Ted Adams, who believed in the book much more than we even did. Thanks to writer James Heffron, who can put some order on my awful english babblings. Thanks to Justin, Anne Marie and all the staff at IDW. Thanks to Cristina, who always give us good hints and directions. Thanks to Gaby’s wife, Violeta, who really pointed us to the right direction about how a real woman could behave in certain horrific circumstances. And to my little love Paqui. Words can’t contain all the support and love you gave me, girl.

And to you, our four -maybe five- readers. Thanks for your support, thanks for reading The Veil.

See you in the funnybooks!

Two more great reviews, this time…

Greg McEllhaton, in Read About Comics -a great site, by the way.  The Veil is waiting for you in issue #2, amigo!

Doktor Mostro, at Kopodo, reviews issue #1 too. This excellent site and the review are written in spanish.

And now, let’s talk about Frank. For those of you who haven’t read the first issue yet (what are you waiting for?), he’s the deputy sheriff who meets Chris Luna at Crooksville, and will play a main role in the miniseries.  Gaby and me depicted Frank as a friendly, big guy. It was OK, but still something looked odd. Violeta, illustrious Gaby’s wife, nailed it. “Chris never, never, never would date a guy like that.”

“But we wanted a normal guy, you know. We don’t want a muscle-hero-type… this is a horror book”, we tried to reply.

“The true horror would be to keep that character design”, she said.

So we keep the personality, Gaby changed the design. Anyway, I liked that chubby guy with goatee. So here it is, the original page where Fatso Frank appears and tries to hook up with Chris Luna.

Frank, O Frank, where art thou?

We’re getting a lot of  cool reviews of The Veil #1. It’s hard to live in front of the computer hitting “reload” every five minutes to see if someone wrote something about our book… but we do it gladly. Man, we’re hooked on this.

Thank you very much everybody, thank you. Not only for the reviews, but for reading the book.  Because that means someone read it after all!  Seriously, after all this work, we’re very happy with the feedback.

Some reviews The Veil received:

Marlowe Lewis in Major Spoilers. An intensive analysis and the first one we read!

Jay Tomio was true on his word and wrote a really intensive analysis about The Veil in BSC. And we believe he nailed it.

Greg Burgas, Comics Should Be Good, CBR… another review! Just look at the end of the post.

Akamuu at Ifanboy liked it too… phew! When we started to read it, we feared the worse.

Guys at Comic Pants reviewed it too. Just one note, Gaby (Gabriel) Hernandez it’s not the same artist that Gabriel Rodriguez. But hey, both are Gabriel, similar surname and both work at IDW.

Thank you very much everyone. Really.

And here goes the design of Mrs. Grabowski. Four panels of pure horror!

And finally, here they are. There are some corrections in the final version (Chris Ryall credited as editor, for instance).

Come on, buy the comic, people! We need the money!

I must admit I’m intrigued by the sewers. What lies in there, beneath our feet.  Yes, I know you’re thinking about rats. They say that in any big city, most of the time, you’re never far from 20 steps from a rat. But rats are not what I’m intrigued about. It’s about our wastes. All the things we waste, all the things  excreted by hundreds or maybe thousands of people at the same time, running like muddy, sick blood in concrete veins.

Yep, that’s a real pile of shit.

There is a scene in book #2 with sewers. Gaby did -as usual- lots of sketches. This one was a panel we decided to leave aside.

Next time… less shit and some preview pages from the issue #1! Stay tuned!

One of these character studies that Gaby usually does. This one is for a ghost woman who appears in the corner of a panel in the first page of the book, to be finally covered by a caption text.

Another Chris Luna color sketch, and the sheriff  of  Crooksville, Sheriff Foley, a character that appears in issue #2. We don’t know his forename. Paul, maybe. Yes, he looks like a Paul.

…we rejected. This was the very first color illustration done by Gaby, before attempting the pages.  It had the feeling we wanted for the series, but we felt we were missing something. “She’s ugly”, we agreed. “Do you really want to draw an entire miniseries about an ugly girl?”, I asked him.

“Why not?”, Gaby shaked his head. “You said Luna wasn’t the big boobs babe of the month”.

“Right, but she scares me more than the dead in the background”, I replied.

Then, Gaby kicked my ass and redraw Chris Luna’s face.

We were all “Ooh, wow” when we saw The Veil cover that Maestro Ashley Wood did. It’s also the first drawing about the characters done by other artist than Gaby (don’t count me and my rough scribbles on bar napkins).  When you see these interpretations on your characters, you feel strange (your child in other hands!), but overall you feel amazed at it. And when it comes from Ashley Wood…  you know, all jaws dropping and “Ooh, wow”.

It’s been a long way. More than 3 years in the works, since Gaby Hernandez and me wanted to do a horror story.  You know, that horror story that always roam in your mind. And finally, thanks to the folks at IDW, it is going to see the light.

The Veil… 4 issues… lots of panels. Ha. The story of Chris Luna, a girl who can see beyond our reality, to another realm, through the veil which separate these worlds. Spirits, dead people and strange feelings live there, so our girl becomes a private eye, with dead customers. Not the easy way to earn a living, really.

Please, consider this site your blog.  Ask whatever you want, even our breast size… We’ll post sketches, character designs, and panels and pages that we cast aside; but don’t ask for spoilers. Our lips and keyboards are sealed.

First post, first sketches. These are the very ones where Gaby designed Chris Luna…

Meet Gaby Hernandez, alias Sketch Man. He owns three, maybe four notebooks full -and I mean full- of sketches, quick paintings and designs… just for The Veil.  Before attempting a page, he draw some thumbnails and plays with the light sources in every panel. So… we have tons of designs to post!