On Wednesday, I had some time to kill before my sketchgroup met, so I whiled away an hour or so at this ridiculous three-story Value VIllage on Capitol Hill. Up on the third floor, in the "I have no idea what the fuck to do with this crap, shit, let's dump it next to the cookie jars" department, I found several unopened boxes of Batman Returns trading cards.

I really regret that I didn't buy all three boxes (five bucks each!), because it never stopped being amusing to, later at the cafe, present the box, flip back the lid and ask "May I offer you a factory sealed package of Batman Returns trading cards from the 1989 TIm BUrton blockbuster?" (I have no idea if it came out in 1989, as an aside, it just feels right).

I ended up giving out all but two packs, which I kept. Because we're cartoonists, and because everybody loves drawing Batman (it's super-easy with those pointy ears), I found just about everybody was drawing selections from the cards they pulled. It was pretty spectacular, to be honest, a spontaneous shared art event, it'd cheapen it to schedule something like that.

It would cheapen the experience of a bunch of people drawing Batman trading cards. I had to say that twice.

Anyway, here's what the original of this card looked like. I may reapproach this, it was a fucking blast... I hope everyone else scans theirs ...

I am in a lot of shows in the next two weeks. In addition to the above program, don't forget:

Friends of the Nib Featuring Art From the FOTN Playing Card Project at Vermillion
Art from the Playing Card series plus additional pieces by us Nibsters
February 11 - March 7
Artists Reception February 11 6-10pm
Vermillion
1508 11th Ave,
Seattle, WA. 98122
(206) 709.9797

Phoneticontrol: Thought Processor Series Seattle
Not a Nibster show, but rather it's original 3-D Paper Robot Art - I'm building a robot!
February 12 - March 4
Artists Reception February 13 6-10pm
Urban Light Studios
8537 Greenwood Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 913-2834

Some fun, eh kids?

littlewashu got me thinking about the chest tattoo sported by what is apparently my super-hero man-crush Iron Fist, or at least the way I draw it (I got it quite wrong, but I frankly like mine better).

I made this into an .AI file which I may clean up, get a better swoop on the body, may make the resulting .EPS available under Commons, I'll let you know, for all your Iron Fist needs.

Higher res versions available at Flickr by clicking the image ...

( Read more... )

I'm in this here show (four pieces plus extras), along with a lot of really great artists, spread the word!

(The actual flyer for the show is located here, feel free to hotlink)

"SUCH A CARD" featuring the Friends of the Nib
February 11 - March 7
Artists Reception February 11 6-10pm
Vermillion
1508 11th Ave,
Seattle, WA. 98122
(206) 709.9797

Via TheParkBench, I caught the preview for the upcoming season of Doctor Who, starring new guy Rondo Hatten Jr Kid Potato Face No seriously he is young and his face is large Matt Smith.

It looked like someone's kid cosplaying David Tennant, but more than that, it reminded me of something else.

( To wit ... )

New article at Heavy.com -- by me! The Strange Life and Times of Richie Rich, go check it out, and spread the link if'n you lo-o-o-o-o-ove it ...

I'm trying to keep up with a resolution to sketch a whole page worth of doodles every day, to shore up my speed skills. This one is ostensibly of the X-Men character Rogue -- I was thinking about that brief period in the late Seventies/early Eighties when a handful of superheroes and villains took to wearing scarves instead of capes or what-have-you. I kind of liked that.

First 2010 show I'll be in, but not the la-a-a-a-ast ...

I can't recall if I ever posted this before, but Kate found this photo last night of some googley-eyed tacos I made for her some time back.

Yup, the fun never stops with the fun factory.

Click for Larger Image

Another installment of my "Babylonian Prostitutes and Superheroines series". Weird (and frustrating) thing is that I can't really draw these ladies when I'm trying, like for a proper illustration - or at least it's a lengthy, erasing-intensive process - but I can sketch them easily enough. Amateur psychologists, start your analyses of how pretty women give me anxiety.

Anyway, enjoy these, some rapid gestural sketches ...

Back in the late 1980s, DC undertook a complete reinvention of the Superman titles from scratch, wiping away almost fifty years of backstory and giving a bare bones cast and setting a whole new coat of paint. Part of the revamping involved addressing that old general complaint about Superman - that he's too powerful¹ - and toned him down drastically, making him more of a match for the contemporary threats of terrorist organizations and rogue super-scientists². Along those lines, they revamped Superman's archenemy³ Lex Luthor by ... ALSO toning down his power level. I didn't get this, because if you make Superman less powerful but also make his greatest enemy less powerful then you sort of have acquired no net value change so why exactly did this happen again?

Anyway, in an effort to make Superman more "street-level", Luthor went from implacably evil super-scientist to corporate douchebag with a good PR machine, supposedly beyond Superman's reach because the city of Metropolis just lo-o-o-o-oved Luthor, like we all just lo-o-o-o-o-ove fatcat industrialists. Shy of his formerly trademark jetpacks and kryptonite death-traps, late-Eighties Luthor's arsenal of evil tricks was comprised of (a) loads of money (b) megalomania and (c) he was an avid womanizer. This was one of the things that made him so evil; he didn't value women as people. You don't need Superman to save you from a bad boyfriend, ladies, Oprah can help you with that shit⁴.

It's all part of the hyper-juvenile confusion over gender which typifies super-hero comics, that Luthor was such a bad guy because he slept with women but he wasn't nice about it, that the women are once again targets whose only purpose in the story is to get raped or murdered and thereby give the hero something to get mad about. By the end of this period, I literally cannot think of more than two or three core female characters with whom Luthor had not had his way - I was going to say "Perry White's wife Alice," BUT NO, he fathered an illegitimate child with her! It's been strongly suggested that he and Lois Lane were bumping (exceptionally) uglies, and possibly that he'd even raped (or had arranged to be raped) Lana Lang. Dude was combing it out of his hair⁵.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about Luthor as a predatory sexual opportunist - if the incredibly boring late Eighties Luthor was all about conquering his enemies by sleeping with their ladies, why not also sleep with their friends? Why not seduce Jimmy Olsen? How about Perry White? Why not Pa Kent⁶? Why not Krypto⁷? If poorly-conceived late Eighties Lex Luthor insists on using his dong as a weapon of conquest, why not open up the playing field? It'd give him an amped-up advantage against his old enemy and also it would lead to the hilarious scene up above, implied robot-hand fisting not intentional⁸.


¹A complaint most often made by the same group of people who then go read a comic about an "ordinary guy" who is also the world's most brilliant genius of everything and also best athlete of all time and also gets tons of tail and is indescribably rich and also if he gets shot or gets his back broken he just shakes it off, but at least he can't fly I guess.

² Which is what the Eighties were known for.

³ "Enemies", actually, because a lot of Superman's rogues gallery got trimmed back - Brainiac, for instance, went from interstellar toy train enthusiast to fat magician named Milton. He and Luthor had once been Superman's greatest enemies, now they were mostly tubby targets of a potential visit from the Ghost of Cardiac Events Yet To Be. Also did I mention that Luthor got cancer? A terrifying menace, that sick fat sonofabitch Lex Luthor.

⁴Like, I'm not even joking, that was basically Luthor's super-power - he made women feel like shit. They wrote whole comics about it. Included in DC's "The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told" is a back-up story wherein Luthor just fucks with the head of some waitress in a greasy spoon out in Buttfuck, South Egypt. THAT WAS IT. The whole conflict of the story, what drove the narrative, was that he made her feel quite bad -- ON PURPOSE! Move over Joker, stand aside Doctor Doom, there's a new number one baddie in town!

⁵ Sort of.

⁶Because he's dead.

⁷Because he's a dog.

⁸ PS Late Eighties Luthor had a robot hand. He was a fat cancer-ridden middle aged dude with a prosthetic, A FINE OPPONENT FOR THE MAN OF TOMORROW!

Sad to hear last week about the death of Arnold Stang, voice of Top Cat (among others). His lifestyle of wild sex, drugs and alcohol finally took its toll at 91.

I've recently been reading some of the late Sixties' Archie Publications comics, specifically the early Josie series. I'm not particularly a fan of ... well, just about any teen comic, really, and the Archie family is no real exception. There's a period which begins in fits and starts around 1958, peaks around 1968, and which is gone, gone, gone by 1971 where Archie - if just for the quality of the art - was really notable, and those are what I've been lately perusing.

Dan DeCarlo (and, eventually, the trio of Dan and his twin sons) was the artistic core of these books, the elder DeCarlo specifically being known for his energetic good girl art. Josie's the best of the endless teen comedies DeCarlo and the rest of the Archie Publications crew turned out during this period (for other publishers, even), and the one which received the best flourishes from DeCarlo ...

So, flipping through 1968's Josie #38, I was delighted to come across this charming cameo in a story featuring the (unfortunately typical for the era) stereotypically ditzy blonde bombshell Melody and her anonymous cadre of dumbfounded admirers ...





Did I mention that DeCarlo based the character Josie on his longtime wife? Thus I declare that this is adorable...

Hey Jerks¹! Still stuck at work with little or nothing to do? Here's some more time-killers from the best of the latter half of the year's worth of my Livejournal!

• I'm mostly looking for an excuse to once again show off my zombie makeup for a mass Thriller event ...


• A cartoon for my 10th wedding anniversary


• A little article on the Lois and Superman relationship.


• Watchmen Pizza


• FOLK FACTS!


• Which Muppet would you make out with?
• And, in case you somehow missed it, my picks for the best comics of the last decade.

Hey, you know what I did on the way to work? Picking up breakfast at the supermarket, I also got a wheel of President brand "Wee Brie", tiny wedges of processed brie. I did this because I thought it was funny. Then I ate some. It's not funny anymore.

MURRAY CRISSMUSS!

¹I'm sorry, that was rude, I meant to say "Hey Jerk-ASSES"...