She's leaving on a jet plane...

We lost Mary Travers to leukemia.
So sad.
I always like Peter Paul & Mary. I like the protests, I like the harmonies, and I liked the way they seemed to really throw themselves deep into the music.
And for some reason, the idea of a powerful voiced big woman with a square jaw really appealed to me!
Go figure...
Anyway, here she is with Joni Mitchell and Mama Cass singing Dylan's I Shall Be Released.

Original Art Sundays, No. 11: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 10

Boy, the work gets loosey goosey at about 2:45 AM!
Big energy page, very loose, crawling with errors. I fixed a few in Photoshop but was more interested in preserving the energy and attitude of the page.
Addendum: somehow there was all kinds of gunk on the page when it was posted. I've cleaned it up and reposted it, for your reading pleasure!

It begins anew....

My Digital Photo student didn't make it in today, ostensibly due to a job interview, so I am well caught up on grading and such. Having a minute, I contemplated the future of my darlings, The Surrealist Cowgirls.

In my musings, I checked and discovered that the next 24 hour comic challenge is a mere 3 weeks hence!

As I will have just finished posting the current story at the point, perchance I'll participate again. Let's not kid ourselves, of course I'll jump in.

Since I'm not teaching there this semester, I don't know if it would be appropriate for me to attend the MCAD shindig. But I'll go again, and I'll get another odd little story out of it. The Cowgirls, maybe a Speedy Ricuverri story, maybe the Flameheads (no Flameheads stories have been told since 8th grade- yikes!).... There are so many other stories to tell!


Here's a shot the impressively smart and talented Barb Schultz took of me at last year's MCAD event!

Original Art Sundays, No. 10: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 9

The Bugs Bunny moment. "Of course you know this means war!"
Fixed a few late night errors on this one- corrected some funny-shaped word balloons, popped vest textures into the last panel.
This one uses one of my favorite visual devices, the Holding Arc of Darkness, a spot black that spans multiple panels on a single tier. I don't know if it's his creation, but I first became aware of it in Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise.

Marvel-ous Disney?

I would be a bad toad if I neglected to comment on the purchase of Marvel by Disney.
Well, I'm not too sure what to say.
Truth is, the jury's still out on the impact (if any) this will have on creative output from Marvel. I do hope it improves the visual quality of Marvel animation!
But I can't help but reminisce about past similar deals.
DC acquired Captain Marvel decades after suing to prevent publication of the character. And DC became a subsidiary of Time-Warner, allowing for the flawed but interesting Bugs Bunny/Superman teamup of a while back.
Now Disney controls over 5000 Marvel characters, including Howard the Duck, a character over whom Disney once threatened suit. This resulted in numerous alterations to Howard's appearance, some of which were ludicrous. I mean really. Disney cornering the market on round-eyed, ill-tempered ducks is every bit as silly as Harley-Davidson attempting to patent the sound of its choppers, or Donald Trump attempting to trademark the phrase "you're fired", or the greatest irony of all, Fox News attempting to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced."
Well, now Howard is a Disney Duck. It remains to be seen whether he will be welcomed to the fold, or tolerated with embarrassed silence.
However, one can take hope in the crossover of so many copyrighted characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This remains the only time a Warner Brothers toon (Daffy) appears on screen with a Disney toon (Donald).
Of course, that's now also a DC- Marvel crossover! Well, after a fashion.
The bind moggles.
Special thanks to the immensely talented Amanda Zima for permission to repost her wonderful Aurora/Black Cat image!

Wrong in so many ways

Offered without comment, other than to say it's fun.

Bugs Bunny in "Glen or Glenda"

Original Art Sundays, No. 9: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 8

After midnight on a busy (and mostly successful) day, so technically it's Sunday.
This was a very late-night page, got a burst of energy on this one. I rather like the layout, with the shape of the cave echoing the top of Sparth's head.
Popped some heavy blacks and messed around with fonts more than I should. It works, but you really have to click the thumbnail to see it properly.

This just in

Brill Building songwriter Ellie Greenwich has died at 68.
Her songwriting contributions to the world informed our lives. It's sad to think there will be no more.
Here's a Beach Boys version of a song she composed with Phil Spector and her then-husband Jeff Barry.



Another co-composition. This one expresses her raw emotional range. It's both easy and wrong to dismiss this work as a product of a bygone era- there's an eternal aspect to this, with the harmonies and pure voice.



Finally, here she is singing her own material.



I've avoided some of the obvious ones like River Deep Mountain High, in favor of some of the more vulnerable material.

Tull meets Shankar!

Okay, this happened a while ago, but it is still noteworthy.
Done as a series of benefit concerts for Mumbai, these shows present a singular opportunity for the marrying of musical ideas.
My first real prog concert was seeing Curved Air open for Tull in the early 70s. I was hooked instantly.
I've watched Tull and/or Anderson evolve musically over the decades. Anderson's solo work, in particular, reinforces my notion that although there are singular aspects to every culture, many of the musical forms have more commonalities than they do differences. I don't hold with the old saw of music being "the universal language", but I suspect we can learn about each other by noting the similarities between, for example, Celtic and Indian forms, despite their use of different scales (Eurpoean notation vs. pentatonic).
Case in point: the tour of Tull with Anoushka Shankar sitting in.
This from Ian Anderson's end of year letter to the fans:
New studio works will commence in the next weeks. Some music recorded in 2007 has to be finished and it would be nice if, after writing and performing new tunes for and with Anoushka, we could get together for long enough to record them. But, as AS is a busy gal, and currently busy with Dad playing Pandit Ravi’s new concerto for Sitar and Orchestra it might take a while for our diaries to coincide again.
Okay, back to me.
I wish this were better than a mediocre audience video. There should be a decent commercial release of this material; it's so good!

Original Art Sundays, No. 8: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 7

Well, it says p. 8, but it's really p. 7.
Some of the gags area bit on the nose, like the foothills.
Lord Sparth's conflict with Babcock harks back to a story I began ages ago as a solo Babcock story. Its intended destination was a webcomic contest put on by Dark Horse, who I would dearly love to work with on something. I've sent out feelers on editing jobs with them, called a couple times, and despite getting postive feedback on my ideas from the editor at San Diego, had no response to the communication.
Well, these things take time, I suppose.
Anyway, been thinking about the Cowgirls a lot lately, and the fun I could have expanding their world.
possibilities.....

Ah, yes, the superhero Western

I'm usually not much on the whole mash-ups thing ( do we even still say that?), but this was too much fun.
Mind, there have been some decent superhero Western comics.
There's Denny O'Neill and Jim Aparo's mini-epic for Charlton, Wander (okay, more of an SF story than a superhero, but still elements).
The original Ghost Rider comes to mind. A Western supernatural superhero (say that three times fast!).
The Western Batman, Zorro, is a perennial favorite. His current incarnation from Dynamite is quite strong, with subtler characterizations than might be expected.
The most appealing to me remains The Lone Ranger.
There's DC's Vigilante and El Diablo, Marvel's flawed by ambitious Red Wolf, the SF superheroine Dawnstar in the Legion of Super-Heroes, and arguably, the Man With No Name revisioned by Vertigo as Preacher.
I feel like I should have something quite profound to say about all this, but it's late. Let's just tickle the idea for tonight!

Original Art Sundays, No. 7a: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 6

Extra post to get back on schedule with the Cowgirls!
This is still part of the 24 hour comics challenge.
Okay, this is the point in the night where I begin to get a bit punchy. Note that the page numbering skips a page.
In naming this post, I'm reminded of the beginning of the Monkees' Daydream Believer, in which Davy asks for a room number and "7A!" is shouted at him.
Just 'cause I'm short, I know.
Needless to say, I found my pen drive at work. The world is safe for more of the Cowgirls- for now.
Once again, blacks honed in Photoshop, some gradients and textures added just for increased weight of the page.

Original Art Sundays #7: Gnidrolog: Gnosis

Slight change of pace today.
For the life of me, I can't find the pen drive that has the Surrealist Cowgirls pages on it. I think I left it at work, so I guess I'll know tomorrow.
Let this be a lesson to us all: back up your work!
Meanwhile, just to stay on schedule, here's a piece I did about 10 years ago. I am loath to post work this old, but here we are. This was proposed cover art for the album Gnosis by Gnidrolog.
The band loved it but declined to use it. I was nonplussed by this till their keyboard player, Nessa Glen, let me in on the skinny. The twin brothers Goldring (the ones in the gray hats and tunics) regarded it as THEIR band at this point, and did not really want pictures of anyone else on the cover of this particular album.
I had done a poster for them previously, which sold fairly well at a couple festivals.
They finally decided to use a cover made of typographic effects and gradients, which was OK, but I like mine better.
So today's humbling lessons, Zen masters and mistresses:
1. Back up your files.
2. Keep track of your hardware.
3. Know what your client REALLY wants!