On The Record With Rocko Jerome

Back in the 90s, a young Anton Blake received a letter from Jim Valentino. It's still mindblowing.

Conceived as a companion piece for Image Grand Design, Image Grand Disaster is an anthology book where "anything goes" was the name of the game. Whereas Design had a meticulously designed plot, Disaster is freeform...but with a plot running throughout. Mark Darden returns to the podcast to talk about how he made it all fit into place.

A fan of Image from the beginning with art immediately evocative of Todd McFarlane, Allen Greenwood brought a lot of positive energy to the Image Grand Design project, not to mention some killer SuperPatriot pages. We broke it all down.

A stellar cartoonist best known for her series, Half of the Crown, Ro Higashi contributed inks to Image Grand Design that really made pages pop. We had a nice chat about comics (What else?).

The only person I know who is a bigger fan of the character called Captain America is my pal, Don Bacon. We had a very interesting Saturday afternoon chat about what Cap has meant to us over the years and what he means at this point in history, especially after the recent Falcom and Winter Soldier TV show.

Hailing all the way from Australia, Nathan Grixti is a truly international member of the Image Grand Design Family. With a keen eye for capturing wild action, all of Grixti's pages crackle with absolute electricity. From his intricate retelling of the Savage Dragon saga to the baddest brawl in Image history, we broke it all down.

With his Shadowhawk vs Trencher story, Anton William Blake brought one of the most intriguing angles to Image Grand Design. It's a story that works fantastically on its own but also ties the overall tapestry together with a pitch-perfect tone between story and art. Here, we talk about how Anton got into comics, why he digs Image, and what might be next.

The true link between the Cartoonist Kayfabe episode detailing the proposed Image Grand Design pitch and the book becoming a thing was Michael Kemp's mock-up ad made for Wizerd #1. It made a hundred pencils start moving, and before long, the "fake ad" became very real. We talked all about that, the joys of an airtight page of panels, and the bone he has to pick with me.