"Welcome to the Party, Pal!"

Still about to snap.

So since you've had enough whining from me about my life and the lack of free time in it, I'll mercifully skip the details. It's just gotten worse, and something has to change soon. I really, really miss having a life, and would like to have one again soon.

And because of that, haven't really had time to work on the Forte stuff I wanted to (again). So no new Forte issues, no new Forge, and none of the other stories I wanted to work on (like a second chapter of "Tag & Dream Girl" and my Del Oeste Omniverse page!). Managed to get some content for you, though, so instead of getting through too much of my oh-so-concise fiction, you can look at pretty visuals instead.

This Time Around

First in Forte 2000...

Once again, a ridiculous amount of art. I think there's more this time because I went though this major binge around the holidays and thereafter, and a lot of it has taken a long time to get done and get to me, and now is all starting to show up at once. Which has made for one BIG-ass gallery update!

In the Character Art Gallery, there's loads of new stuff to look at, so please jump in and check it out. Once again I've used those handy-dandy "new" tags to show you what's gone up since last update, so I hope that'll help. Oh, I should also mention...I added in sections for both Ben Bellot and Tim Watts F2K art. While none of these piece are actually "new", I realized I'd neglected to give these Forte boys their own sections to collect the art of theirs that's otherwise scattered through the site. So props now up for the original Forte art ho team!

There are, as I said, some amazing new pieces up there. Eryck Webb, who's done so much art for the site, squeezed in time for a couple of color pieces for me, one a Seahawk shot I had him do as an interpretation from the "The Storm" fiction already on the site, and I made this piece into both an issue cover and a wallpaper as well. What a remarkable shot. VERY cool. I also thought it would be fun to have a shot of Dr. Jackal's daughters together, so he also did a Parker girls shot with Nightsable and her two sisters, Monique and Nichole. I'm jumping ahead in the timeline a little bit, since we're still about a year away from them putting on costumes and becoming Passport and Frenzy, but that's what they'll look like.

The shots I ordered from the amazing Garrett Blair took forEVER to get done, but worth the wait, I think. He did Dyna Girl, Nightsable and Moondancer for me, and the Moondancer one is definitely the best of the bunch. You might recognize Mr. Blair's art from an Americana shot he did for K.C. Got a cool Nightshift (from Forge) and Moondancer shot from a girl I've used before named Jenni Chasteen that turned out really cool. A fun artist named Keith Dotson did three shots for me, too (Dyna Girl, Nightsable and Tinker), yet another of the cheap color artists I've found.

You've seen the stunning work of David Enciso on here before, and I decided to hit him up again for some non-F2K Forte girls. And when I did, he threw out his best work yet. Check out his Moondancer, Nightshift and Mist shots. That's a big wow. And you've also seen the work of Juan Falk before, but along the way I got a Tinker shot from him, and also a nice cheap sketch card head shot of Moonspider.

A new artist I've added to the Gallery (and another artist who took a very long time to get the stuff done) is Paul Jaworksi. Paul is a really, really amazing artist, as you can see in the works he did here. His only problem? He's never seen a real breast in his life. And it shows. You don't know whether to ooh and ahh over the art, or laugh out loud and the giant inflatable boobies. But still, look at the detail work on the Dyna Girl, Mist and Nightsable shots. The man's got talent. Just needs to stop reading comics and going to strip clubs...

You were dazzled by the art of Hoa Phong on here last time. Well, I was dazzled enough to go back for more, and just take a look at his shots of Tinker, Knightsabre, Phantashia and Mist. I'm planning to, over (a lot of) time, see if I can get one of each of the women that have been in Forte. I'm off to a good start. Funny story on the Mist one. The original version had her hair too light, nearly blond. As Kaye pointed out, Mist definitely has black hair, and would never, as a character, go blond. So Kaye put Ben on the job, and Ben took the .jpg and did some surgery and darkened up the hair himself. Nice work, Ben!

I LOVE the stuff by Toni Q! How fun! I saw her auction on eBay, and she specializes in anime/manga work. I thought it'd be fun to see what Forte 2000 would look like as an anime film. So I first had her do the one of the "second wave" of F2K characters, and loved it so much I had to order one up of the original four F2k heroes. Definitely like the first one better, but the other one turned out much fun, too. Forte super action monkey force GO!

And tried out some other new artists, too. I really wanted a good standard shot of the new Thresher, and that's just what Scotti Kimble gave me. Mark Kuettner took a number of months to finally get me this Nightsable shot (his interpretation being a little curvier than normal, but artist interpretation is fun). I LOVE what "Crash!" Landen did with this Nightsable shot! That's a lotta purple. Interesting how he decided to combine elements from both her original and newer costumes (again, interpretation. Got to let your artists have their own kind of fun sometimes). Liked it so much I had to turn it into a wallpaper, in fact. An artist preferring to go by the name "Peach Fist" (psst! Her real name's Tina! Don't tell her I told you!) did a Nightsable for me where I told her (as I do most artists) that the pose is totally up to her...and she came back with a wonderfully fun shot that I never would have thought of. Laura Wilson did a very fun and groovy Dyna Girl shot that made me smile. Scott Wolfe, a very nice guy and talented artist (yet another one who thinks Nightsable can fly...maybe it's the cape...), did a cool Nightsable for me. And finally, Brandy Woods did a very fun F2K girls shot for me that I love. Mainly, I love it because it looks like something on a library book, doesn't it? Like a book about super-heroines for young adults. Very original...and very colorful! Actually, one of my favorite things about the last few months of art-hunting is that I've found a lot of really talented female artists to work with, and it's a nice reminder that yes, there are a lot of them out there. Comics aren't exclusively a boys' club.

Oh, and speaking of galleries... I started getting really tired of cutting and pasting multiple art links into e-mails to artists that I'm commissioning to give them character references. And I got to thinking how nice it would be to just be able to put in one link per character, one that had ALL the references for that character... And that idea led me to creating individual art galleries for each F2K character. Basically, each character's page features both the individual shots of that character, plus any group shots they may have appeared in. So I put a link for each of those galleries on each characer's "character" page. If you feel like checkin' 'em out, the menu for F2K characters is here.

And in the Adventures section of the Forte 2000 site, I did manage to add one story. Only because it's one that I started a long time ago and just finished up for this update. "Meet the Parkers" is something I started (and never quite got back to) back when the whole F2K site began. I got this idea that the old Forte people would have discussed it and decided they wanted to get to know the new Forte people a little better...and do so in a more informal environment. So they decided that four of them (old-school Forte people) would each invite one of the new Forte foursome (this story takes place back before the "second wave" joined the team) to dinner. So Dr. Jackal (and wife Knightsabre) were the ones who invited Seahawk over. This story is of the dinner over at the Parker house. Mainly, when writing this story, I wanted to use it as a means to catch Forte fans up on what was happening with the Parker family since the campaign ended. And I also wanted to use it to tell a little more about Nightsable. I've done plenty of both since that time...I hit on the Parker family home life on the Forte '05 page with the "Good Girls and Bad Guys" and "Daddy's Girl" stories. So just keep in mind that this story takes place back in 2000...the twins aren't teenagers like they are in the '05 stories, Nightsable hasn't joined Forte and has barely gotten to know Seahawk (this is well before their romance began...which makes it fun, now, seeing some of the early flirting). It's a little trip back in F2K time that's fairly short (for me) and fun, I think. Hope you like it.

And on the Forte Universe gateway page, I did a little snazzing. I wanted to make it appealing to newbies who stumble across the site, and actually make them want to jump in and try some of the Forte pages. So I figured nothing does that like nifty character art, so I added lots of colorful Forte art to it, which I think makes it look pretty cool ("Hey! Boobies! I'm going to explore these pages further! And see if there's more boobies!").

And finally, I had some fun with the new art and decided to make some more Forte ads. Just a little quick thing I do that feeds my creative juices without requiring the time needed to, say, finish the final Forge chapter (it's coming...I swear!). Check out my Forte Universe ads featuring Nightsable, Moondancer and Nightshift. Clicking anywhere on the art on any of them takes you right to the gateway page.

 

Next Time...On "The 'F' Word"...

I'm making NO promises, based on how everything's going right now. But I'm trying to get back to Forge and the Forte 2000 issues (will we EVER find out how the "Dawn of Anubis" ends? And will we remember who the hell Anubis is by the time I get another issue out?). And I've got this really fun story in my head for the Forte '05 page featuring Knightsabre and the Parker twins called "License to Drive" that I'm dying to start, so we'll see if that happens. But between now and then, I hope to be creating some fun Con memories when the gang and I hit San Diego for Comic-Con next month! Got that going for me, at least. Tell you all about it next time, so we'll see you then!

Michael O’Connell
Prime Minister of Forte Lore