Ryan Ottley

The official art book of Emerald City Comicon, Monsters & Dames is an annual release that invites a wide spectrum of talent to indulge their artistic idiosyncrasies in the name of charity, with proceeds from sales of the hardcover release and original art auctions having raised over $55,000 for Seattle Children's hospital. Between now and Emerald City's start date of March 27, ComicsAlliance will showcase some of the gorgeous work to be found in the 2014 edition of Monsters & Dames, including exclusive images you'll see here before any where else. Today's preview includes never-before-seen art by Ryan Ottley, Lindsay Ishihiro and Scott Kurtz, as well as new art by Robin Kaplan, Amy Mebberson, Scott Blair, Brett Bean and Edwin Huang.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, and some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it’s awesome.

About ten years I sent a fan e-mail to "Penvincipals," the Invincible fan mail page. To my surprise, it actually made it to print in Invincible 24. I don't remember what I wrote, exactly, but I do remember asking about Invincible toys and having Robert Kirkman jokingly threaten to sue me...

Robert Kirkman clearly thinks that centennials are a good time to kill people. Following the surprise death in the recent 100th issue of The Walking Dead, Image Comics and Skybound have spent the week teasing the death of a main character with promos drawn by Ryan Ottley for next year's 100th issue of the creator's superhero series, Invincible...

The proliferation of social media is an incredible boon for lovers of comic book art, design and illustration. Sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and other countless blogs and feeds bombard us with a ceaseless supply of artwork by professionals and fans that is variously excellent, clever, funny, innovative, and numerous degrees of awesome...

There have been plenty of unexpected hybrids to come out of the world of comics over the years -- I'm looking at you, Frog Thor -- and this Wednesday Ryan Ottley and Jason Howard continue that tradition with the 48-page "Sea Bear and Grizzly Shark," an Image comic imagining two murderous beasts who have gotten terrifyingly mixed up...

Remember back in elementary school when teachers would have you trace your hand to depict the shape of a turkey in honor of Thanksgiving? They'd have you make mods by adding a beak and an eye and that little gross thing that's attached to a turkey's beak - y'know, a wattle - and then color it the many colors of the traditional entree...