Dan Hammond's Blue Devil Fan Art

A few weeks ago when we approached Dan Hammond at his booth at the Ottawa Comiccon and told him we publish a webzine about DC comics from the 1980s, he seemed a little skeptical at first but then got really excited at the idea of it all.

As a major DC comics fan of that era, he couldn't decide on which character to draw/submit to our site, but he finally settled on the "horny devil himself". We were really excited to find this in our inbox last night, as we were worried Dan had forgotten all about us - but he didn't. He was just busy with commissions.

So why did Dan pick Blue Devil? "I picked the Blue Devil because he was a cool character and [his ongoing series] didn't get the following from the readers that the character deserved. He had a lot of potential as a hero. He was a Hollywood stuntman who became one with the suit due to an accident. As a stuntman he already would have been strong, fearless and acrobatic so he would have had "superhero" qualities even before he became the Blue Devil. I don't know if I had a favorite issue but I remember Kid Devil's debut being a good one."

It should probably be mentioned that Dan Hammond has been quite active in the Canadian comics scene these last few years. Dan and Dustin Crocker created a comic called H.E.L.L. (by Jailbird Comics) about an underground prison designed to contain demons. It's run by a modern day sect of the Templar Knights and instead of swords and chain mail, they wear mechanized battle suits. H.E.L.L. stands for HOSTILE ENTITY LOCATION and LOCKDOWN.

Dan has done some work for Canadian comic book publisher Chapter House Comics. He did a variant Captain Canuck cover last year in 2015. He's currently working on a new project for Chapter House's newest character, Northguard. (Coming July 2016)

Dan also has a few kids books on the go and is debuting a comic in June 2016 in Ann Arbour for little girls called Petalianne. The Canadian debut of that will be at Toronto's Fan Expo.

You can reach Dan Hammond at www.midnightpencils.com.  Dan had a lot of fantastic DC comics art at his booth and I really hope to showcase more of his work in the near future.


Richard Vasseur of Jazma Online interviewed Dan Hammond about breaking into comics and his work on H.E.L.L. You can read the interview here.