Cropped Will Cardini artwork

January 23rd, 2020

Wheel of Time TV Series Dream

Filed under: Sketchbook Pages — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 8:42 am

The other night, I dreamt I was watching the new Wheel of Time TV series, but it was an anime. Rand was flying across the ocean with the One Power (something that’s impossible in the books) towards a battle on a mystical island. And a translucent blue magical pyramid crowned his head. My dream show was so vivid that I drew some fan art, maybe it exists in an alternate timeline?

William Cardini Wheel of Time fan art

I’m looking forward to the live-action Wheel of Time TV show but I’m apprehensive about how they’ll portray the epic magic battles. How are they going to convey the threads of the One Power in 3D CGI? It would be better if it was an animated show. I always image them as flat lines flying around and interweaving or like thick threads of yarn. How amazing would it be if the One Power was shown as stop-motion yarn animations?

Anyway here’s a drawing of Rand with his pyramid crown and flaming sword:

William Cardini Wheel of Time fan art

I don’t know where the pyramid came from.

December 5th, 2017

CXC Recap, Hypercastle Store Updates, and Study Group Comics Forum

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: , , , — William Cardini @ 7:40 am

Thanks to everyone who bought or traded for a copy of Tales from the Hyperverse and my other books at CXC.

Will Cardini at CXC 2017
A photo of me at the Retrofit / Big Planet Comics table at CXC 2017.

It’s a newer show so traffic is a bit slow but it has great potential. The downtown Columbus library is a beautiful location. I met and hung out with a bunch of great people!

Will Cardini sketch of Destroyer
I did this sketch of Destroyer for Matt Horak’s The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe sketchbook.

If you don’t have Tales from the Hyperverse yet you can now order a signed copy of it (and Sphere Fear and Vortex) from the Store page of this site. I’ve seen evidence on Instagram of copies in the wild in people’s mailboxes and on store shelves. If you read Tales from the Hyperverse, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads, it really helps to get the word out.

CXC 2017 Haul
Here’s my CXC haul.

In other news, I’ve helped Zack Soto add a forum to the Study Group Comics site. We’re still tweaking but come join this new comics community!

July 10th, 2015

Blank Hill Zine

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 10:04 am

I did a drawing for Blank Hill Zine, a book inspired by King of the Hill. The editors, my buddy Jason Poland and Blake Jones, provided a template of Hank’s face that we could fill in.


Drawing this made me feel a little less homesick.

Blank Hill Zine is still available for sale. It’s the spiritual successor to SHAQZINE, edited by Jason Poland and Keith Mclean, which I also contributed to.

SHAQZINE is sadly sold out.

March 17th, 2015

Silver Surfer 2099

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 9:04 am

I moved recently so I went through my six longbox comics collection and culled the fluff. It was a lengthy process that involved a lot of re-reading old comics that I’ve been lugging around for years and never removing from their plastic bags. I tried to only keep the comics that I’ll want to re-read again in five or ten years.

This process led me to re-read all of the 2099 comics that I have. One that’s really stuck out is 2099 Unlimited, which had some cool little shorts in it that are pretty far from a typical 90’s Marvel book. It’s got me thinking about what I’d do in the 2099 ‘verse, and the obvious answer is SILVER SURFER 2099:

Silver Surfer 2099
Collage background is “The star cluster NGC 3572 and its dramatic surroundings” by ESO/G. Beccari. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

ORIGIN: The Silver Surfer was infected by a rogue Celestial AI techno-virus in 2077. Norin Radd’s mind has become a war zone. The mutant Celestial mind tries to compel the Surfer to destroy unfit alien societies through hallucinations – sometimes the Surfer sees through these illusions and sometimes he doesn’t. Paranoid, the Surfer begs Galactus for healing, but all Galactus can do is wall off the Surfer’s consciousness from the exterior universe, sending Norin Radd and the Celestial AI on a vision quest through layers of subconsciousness, trying to destroy each other.

January 8th, 2013

The Last Scene of the Wheel of Time – Full Spoilers for A Memory of Light

Filed under: SF Reviews — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:39 pm

I’m going to discuss the much hyped final scene of the Wheel of Time series, conceived by Robert Jordan from the very beginning*, written before he passed away, and incorporated virtually unchanged in the final book.

Michael Whelan A Memory of Light cover painting
Michael Whelan’s cover painting for A Memory of Light.

*Robert Jordan: “I started thinking about what would turn into the Wheel of Time more than 15 years ago, and the first thing that I thought of that was really solid was the last scene of the last book.” – From this chat.

Full A Memory of Light spoilers within. (more…)

November 30th, 2012

Stoner Alien Fan Art

Filed under: Sketchbook Pages — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:41 am

I drew some fan art for the webcomic Stoner Alien:

Stoner Alien fan art

Stoner Alien fan art

November 14th, 2012

BCGF 2012 Recap

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: , , , — William Cardini @ 12:19 am

Thanks to everyone who came by the GCPM table and traded for or bought an issue of Vortex.


Me and Josh Burggraf. I look like a madman.

BCGF was amazing (and hot and crowded and intense).

Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest
I keep showing people this picture from the BCGF tumblr to give them an idea of how crowded BCGF was. You can see me staring directly into your soul through the camera.

It was my first time tabling at an east coast comics festival so I got to meet a lot of people IRL that I’ve only known online, which was fantastic. I’m really feeling the comics love right now. It’ll be a while before I can travel to another con so it’s good that BCGF was so great.

William Cardini Silver Surfer and Josh Burggraf Batman fan art
One really awesome moment was when this dude Barney came up to me and Josh and asked us to draw some sketches of superheroes for him. Barney’s a big fan of Rub the Blood, if you look at his Twitter he asked other people to do fan art.

You can see Josh’s perspective of our weekend on our GCPM tumblr. I’ll put Vortex #3 in my store soon.

August 7th, 2012

The Quest of the Riddle-Master by Patricia McKillip

Filed under: SF Reviews — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 9:14 pm

I just finished the fantasy trilogy The Quest of the Riddle-Master, written by Patricia McKillip. The three books are The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979). The trilogy is a beautifully written story with many twists and turns. I won’t spoil any specific plot points but I’m going to discuss the story generally in this review.

Harpist in the Wind by Patricia McKillip cover by Darrell K Sweet
Cover art by Darrell K Sweet. I’m not really a fan of Sweet’s Wheel of Time covers but I dig this one. From my personal collection.

Click here to read the rest and see some of my spoilery fan art.

June 12th, 2012

Prometheus Thoughts with Spoilers

Filed under: SF Reviews,Sketchbook Pages — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:59 am

I’ve now seen Prometheus twice so I’d like to tell y’all my spoiler-filled thoughts. I’ve read a lot of reviews and opinions seem generally mixed: the visuals are spectacular but the plot, science, and character motivations are weak. I see what these reviews are saying but I give Prometheus some leeway just because there are so few big budget, big idea sf movies. For example, I find the ideas in Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods to be complete fantasy. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the mythic resonance of Jack Kirby’s The Eternals and it doesn’t stop me from digging Prometheus. And like The The Eternals, Prometheus is showing us our place in the cosmos by investigating the myth of the Titans.

The beginning sequence of Prometheus shows the Earth being seeded with life. An Engineer is transformed into the primordial soup of DNA strands. Why would the Engineers seed the earth with life, come back and check on it after millions of years, and then try to destroy it? Maybe it was because they could, the same answer that Charlie gives David for why humanity would create synthetic people with artificial intelligence. Or maybe the answer’s more sinister and the Engineers created humanity to provide the Engineers with test subjects for their weapons of mass destruction.

I dig Prometheus because it plays with ideas as large as a planet and as old as life. Throw in body horror, deadly impregnations, and highly sexualized monster designs that approach Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit and I’m sold. It’s not as good as Alien but hardly any movie can match that spare masterpiece.

Even after seeing all of the riffs on the xenomorph in Prometheus, the original xenomorph remains my favorite sf creature. It’s ruthless, it’s terrifying, it has no eyes but it knows exactly where you are. It’ll impregnate you with its young and destroy you. We have no idea how intelligent they are. In the Alien quadrilogy, they are a force of nature. Does it spoil my appreciation of the xenomorph to know that they are purposefully created weapons? No. In the other Alien movies, we get hints that Weyland-Yutani wants specimens to use as templates for biological weaponry. With its metal teeth, acid blood, and shiny reflective carapace, the xenomorph already inhabits a weird limbo between machine and animal. And I love the idea of the mutagenic ur-Alien ooze that the Prometheus crew encounters in the skull-topped pyramid. We see so many varieties of effects and creatures that I can only assume that the ooze delivers individualized destruction.

I can forgive the rushed, reckless investigation of the Prometheus crew by thinking of Elizabeth and Charlie as religious zealots on a quest instead of rational scientists. Shaw’s faith in particular is unshakeable. Even when our creators want to wipe us out she still clings to her cross. It reminds me of Philip K Dick’s gnostic outlook: our world is a place of evil, therefore the being who created the cosmos is evil; but Christ delivers salvation from outside the evil material world. Or maybe that faith is a delusion and it’s just more massive, more implacable, and more evil giants all the way up to the source of the universe.

If the Prometheus sequels get made they could definitely ruin my enjoyment by providing too many unsatisfying explanations and not enough mysteries. I’m not really interested in seeing exactly how we get from the last scene of Prometheus to the crashed spaceship the crew of the Nostromo finds on Alien.

October 14th, 2011

Turtle Mutant Ninja Bart

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:47 am

Inspired by KC Green’s Fan-Fiction Fridays, here’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle/Bart Simpson mashup:

Turtle Mutant Ninja Bart

Should I make this into a t-shirt?