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!

da bode' strikes again!

I grabbed this great photo from Golden Age Comic Book Stories, one of the intriguing blogs I follow. You can find the link in my list as well.
This time around, they're posting the stunning Purple Pictography run, which concluded with episodes written by Vaughn and drawn by the so powerful Bernie Wrightson.
I believe the Purple Pictography stuff has been reprinted a couple times. It's in Wrightson's book A Look Back, at least the Wrightson/Bode' collorations, it's in one of the Fantagraphics trades (I think- my Bode' stuff is upstairs), and Fantagraphics did a stand-alone color comic of it in the 90s. But it's still a treat to see it here. Besides, I think these are scans from original printed pages in Swank.
However, the remark at the end of the Golden Age post comments can be inferred as Bernie being unhappy with his work with da bode'.
Well, I chatted Wrightson up on this very issue last year at San Diego, and he had nothing but kind words for Vaughn. Said it was a delight to work with him.
But then, Bernie seemed to have kind words for most folks!

Original Art Sundays #6: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 5

The story takes shape, as much as a silly story can.
Again, some added Photoshop values just to give the page a bit of weight. Also, I'm leaning more and more to digital lettering. It's somewhat austere compared to hand work, but legibility is the watchword.
Maybe I'll take a page from the book of Waller (and many others) and create a digital font based on my own best characters.
Notice I did not replace the hand lettered caption of Maggie's mule. I like the convention of perpetual joy and innocence in the mule/whale. He has several functions in these stories.
1. he always smiles.
2. he sums up the situation in one word, always a thought. He never speaks. Much like some of the animals in Oz, we don't know if he can or not, but we know he doesn't.
3. when necessary, he saves the day!

Original Art Sundays #5: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 4

Here we go with another Cowgirls page!
At the time I was doing this one, I'd done three pages in two hours and was starting to feel a bit rushed. No excuses for the work, just reporting in.
The story is a mish-mash of a couple stories I'd been kicking around for years. I really wanted to avoid the "Scooby-Doo panic moment" but there was no way around it. Besides, even though it's a cornball, it's kind of fun.

Encyclopedic Efforts

I'm hard at work on my last entry for the forthcoming Greenwood Press Encyclopedia of Comic Books.
My entries are on:
Craig Russell
Rocketeer
Curt Swan
Ghost Rider
Summer of Love
Grendel
Dave McKean
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
The Homeless Channel
Satire in Comics
I'm also editing/advising on nine entries by other comic scholars.
I'm honored to be part of this work. As Jim Morrison says, proud to be part of this number!

Original Art Sundays #4: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 3

Couple quick notes:
Aside from cleanup and some spot values, I am resisting the temptation to rework these.
I am replacing all the non-dialogue text with digital lettering. I had a devil of a time settling on a font. I'm leaning towards Futura right now, but as there is no non-dialogue text on this specific page, it's moot for today!

Original Art Sundays #3: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 2

The Cowgirls are great fun. I get to draw whatever comes to mind, really let loose, and find out who the girls are as I go. They always surprise me.
My one regret is that I have such a wild time doing them that I rush the art!

Art Judging...

While I think Sotomayor will be confirmed with relative ease, and that she'll be good for the country overall, her pro-corporate stances on many issues leave me wondering if we truly have a champion on our hands.
I'm glad she'll be confirmed, but I'm not doing handsprings.

Original Art Sundays #2: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 1

This is page 1 of an 11-page story I did as part of the 24-hour comic challenge this year. I made it for 14 hours.
These are some of my favorite characters. I haven't done any work on them for years. It's long overdue!
Next year, if I do the Challenge again, as I hope to, I won't work full size! Most everyone else in our cadre was working on rather small sheets. Sean Lynch was doing his usual lovely dry brush work.
This work is fast and sloppy, but with the time constraints, all I really cared about was the energy and the wild ride, as subsequent pages will show. I always want to do the best work I can, but my primary focus with this was having a wild, joyful mind come through on the page.
That, and I wanted to get as much done as I could as fast as I could!
next week: page 2!

By Hook or By Crook....

I just discovered that there's a new version of The Prisoner airing this November.



I don't share many people's Pavlovian revulsion to remakes. It's possible to remake something and have it come out well, though opinions vary widely on what makes a remake "good".
My concern on this lies elsewhere.
I think Ian McKellan is a brilliant choice for Number Two. However, it wouldn't matter who they cast as Number Six. A big part of the original series' fire came from the subtle, witty, seething performance of Patrick McGoohan.
George Lucas' original choice for the role of Palpatine/Emperor in the Star Wars films (he reportedly turned Lucas down), McGoohan always made canny choices in his career and his performances.
Sadly, we lost him earlier this year.
He also played one of my favorite characters from childhood: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, another lifelong obsession!

Original Art Sundays #1

Time to finally start posting my own work.
I'll be running original art every Sunday, God willing and the crick don't rise, as my late friend Kate Collins used to say.
This piece is ancient. This is a scratchboard of Billie Holiday (well, duh!) that I did circa 1994 as a birthday present for an ungrateful witch who later tried (and failed) to blackmail State Rep. Keith Ellison over alleged improprieties.
Guess it's just as well that she "forgot" the present.
In spite of its arcane history, I've always been rather pleased with this piece. Despite my love of chairoscuro, I've never been so good at scratchboard- I screw myself up on the inversion thing, drawing out the light areas. But this one I was always happy with.

Why they Call her Omaha....

AS some of my readers (if any there be) may already know, I served an apprenticeship with Reed Waller on Omaha the Cat Dancer during my tech school commercial art training.
The internship lasted about 6 months, and is often the case, I got more out of it than my sensei did. And not what I expected to learn.
I learned quite a bit about art and comic art, but learned much more about human nature by being around Reed and his then-partner Kate Worley.
Reed and I continued our association beyond the professional over the years, sometimes with good results, other times not so good. I'm completely out of contact with both Reed and Jim Vance these days. Seems to be the way we all want it, but still a bit sad. Just a byproduct of being human, I guess.
Which is ultimately what Omaha is about- being human.
As the story is currently in its final stages in Sizzle, an otherwise largely worthless magazine full of stories people with impossible anatomy engaging in loveless sex acts, I am reading the final chapters as they unfold.
The pieces are coming together.
It's starting to look like Shelley ordered a hit on Joanne, but the shooter got Bonner by mistake. But why did she keep the gun? And what's the connection to those City Hall bigwigs who were talking clandestinely about the hit a couple chapters back?
Who's behind the A Block Molotov Cocktail?
Will Omaha get her acting career going? Will she marry Chuck? Will Hector live?
Remember, the whole story is being told in first person past tense, from Panel One if BIzarre Sex #9 on.
I'm sure my speculations are way off base. I've believed I knew exactly what was going on in this story so many times in the past, and been pretty much dead wrong every time.
Well, whether I'm right or wrong, it's still a good story.
I love a good story.
The above drawing of Zorro and Omaha was a commission from the master Tom Yeates, and is put out on the Web with his permission.