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Augst 2007
There were some interesting developments following San Diego Comicon this year. Mainly, my comic book project Wulf and Batsy has finally found a home at Viper Comics, the same publisher I illustrated The Expendable One for in 2006. Now the good folks at Viper are planning to start publishing Wulf and Batsy as a bi-monthly series in early 2008.
July 2007
I'm back to work on another season of "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" for Walt Disney Television Animation. This show is a blast to work on, even for a bloody gory horror artist like me. It's fun to switch gears and draw "cute" stuff every now and then. And besides, even though Horror is where my heart is... Disney pays better. Haha.
June 2006
"THE EXPENDABLE ONE" Graphic Novel Gets Good REVIEWS!
There have been some great reviews of "The Expendable One" on various comics news websites since the book came out. So far they are all pretty favorable, and have offered some very nice comments about my artwork. Thanks, folks!
Here's my favorite review of the book so far, by Ken Lowery at POP SYNDICATE:
"Gore, lingerie, gore, and guns. And gore.
The first word that comes to mind when thinking of Jason M. Burns and Bryan Baugh’s The Expendable One is “lurid.” Merriam-Webster defines “lurid” as “causing horror or revulsion; gruesome; melodramatic, sensational; shocking.”
"There’s good lurid and bad lurid. Bad lurid is Wolf Creek or the New York Post; good lurid is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Weekly World News. Happily, The Expendable One falls into the latter camp, and does so with a splash of gore and mean humor.
"Twigs Dupree, a guy as classy as his name would imply, cannot die. Shoot him, stab him, burn him, blow him up—he’ll take the hits and keep on coming. How he got that way is basically unimportant; his buddy Jerry, the mad scientist mortician, cooked up a serum that regenerates flesh blah blah blah. What matters is that Twigs is impervious to death and (apparently) pain. He wants to be a superhero, but the nature of his gift is the complete opposite of glamorous; Twigs takes a bullet to the head the very first page, and for the next 10 half his head hangs off him like a limp flag.
"We are spared no detail.
"Twigs and Jerry are two guys with little imagination. One is invincible and the other is creator of a miraculous and revolutionary formula, the best they can think to do with these gifts is stop the occassional mugging or robbery. Twigs spots a pretty woman and rather than approach her directly he—well, he walks in front of her car and has her run him over for sympathy. If Peter Parker felt great power brought great responsibility, Twigs and Jerry view it as a path to effort-free opportunism.
"Enter Agent Armstrong. She’s the Sexy Fed with the Sexy Tie and Sexy Miniskirt, and she wants to sic Twigs and Jerry on the trail of a serial killer known only as the Animal. The Animal might be an honest-to-God werewolf, and who better to confront such a physically savage creature than a person who can take that kind of punishment indefinitely? Turns out this is just the impetus Twigs and Jerry need to rise from pretenders to true-blue heroes, and Twigs jumps at the chance.
"But can he keep Miss Vehicular Manslaughter interested and safe? Can he hide his true nature from her? And just what is the deal with Agent Armstrong, anyway?
"The final confrontation between Twigs and the Animal is as gory as you could possibly hope for. There is lingerie involved, and blood.
"And teeth. Lots and lots of teeth, sometimes set firmly in jaws but more often not.
"Bryan Baugh’s art is equal parts grue and cartoonish caricature, painted in the—well, the most lurid colors on the palette. Imagine the love child of Dario Argento and Chuck Jones, raised in Suburbia on a diet of nothing but EC Comics. That’s what Baugh brings to The Expendable Ones, and for the life of me I cannot imagine an artist more suited to the material.
"And he hates teeth.
"There’s a lot about The Expendable One that could be called reprehensible. Twigs is sulky, Jerry’s teeth play a prominent supporting role, and Armstrong moves strictly in cheesecake poses. The gore practically drips off the page. Any one or two of these attributes could sink the book, but combined together form a sort of anti-charm that keeps the whole thing afloat, and makes it a hell of a ride besides. Good taste dictates you look away; good thing you can ignore it."
Thanks, Ken! Here's some of my other favorite pulled quotes from various other reviews...
"Bryan Baugh’s sanguine-drenched art is sort of a bloody blend of Will Eisner and Kyle Hotz if filtered through the spastic style of Chuck Jones and the splatstick vision of early Raimi, and Baugh’s animation storyboard background is evident in the panel flow and “camera” placement."
- Dave Davis at CHUD.COM
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"The art by Bryan Baugh is fun. Animated caricatures with a lot of expression and body language. Great coloring job, especially on Armstrongs pink stockings. I’m not the kind of comic fan who gets upset with needless cheesecake because with this kind of story needless cheesecake just heightens the enjoyment of the (graphic novel). Much like the tone of the story it hops around scene after entertaining scene. However the heavy lettering in certain scenes covers up the excellent work. Did I mention Agent Armstrong's pink stockings?"
- Review by Carl Towns
April 2006
Started working at Walt Disney Television Animation, doing storyboards for the upcoming show, "My Friends Tigger and Pooh."
October 2005
Halloween was awesome this year. My lovely wife Monica went as Little
Red Riding Hood, and I went as a very big, bad Werewolf.
September 2005
Work has been completed on ZAP! How To Draw Science Fiction Comics
Characters for Watson-Guptill Publications, a follow-up to my
How-To-Draw horror art book, SCARED. This was a really great project to work on. It includes artwork by comics legends Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Bernie Wrightson.
Recently finished working on storyboards for Sony Television Animation,
on a show called “The Boondocks”.
July
2005
The first Wulf and Batsy graphic novel, "We Have No Home" hit stores early this month. I'm proud to say the book received a great review from Tony Isabella at The Comic Buyer's Guide:
TONY
ISABELLA'S REVIEW OF WULF AND BATSY: "WE HAVE NO
HOME" GRAPHIC NOVEL:
"The walking dead figure prominently in a trio of comics previews I've received of late. Be aware that I'm reviewing these comics from advance copies and not their final published versions, though they will likely not change too much before they show up in your friendly neighborhood comic-book store. Wulf and Batsy [Chanting Monks Press; no price given] is an intense graphic album featuring characters who previously appeared in the publisher's Zacherley's Midnight Terrors. He's a werewolf, she's a vampire, they're detectives. Okay, they're not detectives. I just couldn't pass up a chance to use that gag. When I reviewed the "Wulf and Batsy" episode in that earlier comic, I wrote that they were good characters and that I'd like to see more of them. Writer/artist Bryan Baugh accommodated me with "We Have No Home," a 64-page exploration of an evening in the lives (or un-lives) of the title characters. Wulf and Batsy are as violent as you would expect a werewolf and vampire to be, but they are not evil. They are survivors who clearly try to do as little harm as possible as they make their way through an oft-uncooperative world. Baugh does a terrific job of establishing the characters, their bond, and their desire to live in relative peace with mankind. When the evening progresses badly, the results are frightening and horrible. Even then, Baugh allows us to retain sympathy towards his characters. Wulf and Batsy has a modest manga sensibility to it. "We Have No Home" starts well, moves forward at a deceptively calm pace, and then explodes into its conclusion. From the cool Joe Chiodo cover painting to its shocking conclusion, this is an impressive piece of work. It earns four out of five Tonys."
Thanks so much
for the kind words, Tony!
August
2004
I have just wrapped up another season of drawing
storyboards on Jackie Chan Adventures for Sony Television Animation. This would be season five now. I worked on a handful of different episodes, but the most fun was storyboarding the “scary parts” of the Halloween Episode, titled "The Demon Beneath My Wings".
Work has just been completed on the Watson-Guptill book SCARED:
How to Draw Fantastic Horror Comics, which I co-authored
and illustrated with Steve Miller. As the title implies, it’s
basically a “How-To” art book on creating horror comics,
aimed at young adult readers, but it also covers the history of
horror comics, and includes interviews with noteworthy professionals.
This project was such a pleasure to work on. Along with requiring
me to spend a solid six months drawing and writing about nothing
but monsters, it also offered me the chance to collaborate with
Bernie Wrightson, who has been, I have to say, my favorite artist
since I was in the fourth grade. When I asked Bernie to be involved
he was immediately enthusiastic, and I had the pleasure of going
over to his studio to show him the work I’d done for the book
and discuss the project with him one-on-one. Being slammed as he
was with other, bigger jobs, his involvement with SCARED
was limited to simply lending us samples of his work for reproduction,
but many of these pieces have not appeared in print for years, so
our younger audience may be seeing them for the first time in our
pages. The book will also include art by Arthur Adams, Vincent Locke,
and others.
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