Other As and Alternate Zs

My A to Z was not the best, nor was it the first. It's difficult to remember now, but I think Garen Ewing was the one who kicked it all off with his Facebook group, the A to Z of Comic Strip Characters:

Others followed, including Neill Cameron's A to Z of Awesomeness:

There was also an A to Z of monsters and an A to Z of robots, as I recall; I'll try to track those down and link to them too.

Whatever good work I created during my project was inspired by the great work that had come before from artists like Garen and Neill, so if you liked my A to Z, go and look at theirs!

M versus N

Here we are at the end of my A to Z, but due to the odd format, also the beginning and the middle. I wanted to finish the project with a big picture stuffed with loads of characters, akin to E versus V, but something about this suggestion -- from my friend Liam as I recall -- grabbed me; perhaps I was drawn to the opportunity to have a go at some pixel art.

In this final A to Z image, Alan Moore's Nite Owl chases Nintendo's Mario for reasons unknown.

L versus O

This one looked much better in my head.

Furry boy king Lion-O takes on Optimus Prime and loses, because while he may have sight beyond sight, he does not have the touch.

K versus P

This is another of my favourites.

Here, Jason Cobley's Keiko Panda sees off the upstart Po.

J versus Q

Judy Jetson breaks poor Quasimodo's heart.

This is one of my favourites, although I think it could be improved. Maybe I'll do that.

I versus R

Iron Man takes on Ralph Wiggum. You can see I was being quite lax with the naming conventions in this series.

If you think Iron Man wouldn't vaporise a child, even one such as Ralph, then I would guess you haven't read Marvel's Civil War. I wish I were so lucky.

H versus S

Here is the last of today's A to Z pictures.

Even Hellboy, with all his experience, is surprised to encounter a giant Sooty. My attempt here to capture Mike Mignola's distinctive style is not at all successful, but I'm still quite fond of this one.

G versus T

This is one of the more popular images in my A to Z series, and one of my own favourites.

Galactus may have met his match in Tank Girl.

F versus U

I have to admit, this is not one of my favourites.

That's The Fonz jumping over a shark on Uni. I am happy to say that the sequence of images did not jump the shark with this piece.

E versus V

Right then. Deep breath.

So, here in deadly battle we have the Elebits, the Ewoks, Eeyore, V, Venger, Ernie, Vectorman, Elektra, the Vision and the Vulture.

I think that's everyone.

D versus W

Here's the last one for today.

I have met a couple of people who are much like Daria; I have yet to meet anyone quite like Winnie-the-Pooh.

C versus X

Let's have another.

That's Captain Caveman -- before my time -- and Charles Xavier.

B versus Y

This one has appeared at my website, but I'll include it for the sake of completeness.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes on a vampiric Yosemite Sam.

A versus Z

In October 2008, a number of artists on Facebook each produced a themed "A to Z", and I decided to join in with one of my own; I cheated a little by putting two characters in each image, so I only had to do thirteen rather than the full twenty-six. I've put my favourites on my website, but I've had requests for the others and they seem to have disappeared from Facebook, so I'm going to post them here over the next few days.

So this is Arnim Zola, Ash Williams, Luther Arkwright, Astro Boy, Animal Man, Zabu, Doctor Zaius, Zorro, Arnim Zola (again) and on the table, Atom Ant. I don't remember why they're playing Risk.

Dying in Public

If you're on Facebook, then please pop over to my new group and vote. Following on from the likes of Garen, Tony and David, I'm going to be doing one of these daily art challenge thingies, only my one won't be halfway as good, since they're all proper artists.

Anyway, the basic idea is that every other day, I'll be drawing one cartoon/comic character from the beginning of the alphabet and one from the end, engaged in some sort of conflict. Starting with A versus Z, we'll then move to B versus Y, then C versus X, and so on. If I've done my sums right, we'll end with M versus N. You can vote for one of the combatants, for both, for the winner, and the type of conflict. I thought it was quite simple, but some people seem to be confused already. Oops.

Anyway, if you have time and a Facebook account (despite it being run by a bunch of Republicans), then do head over and vote. I will more than likely post the images here too.