The Turtle Comforts A Grieving Widow

(click for bigger)

The Turtle Watches A Film By Yasujirō Ozu

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The Turtle Tries To Buy Some Lettuce

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The Secret Lair Of Doctor Doom...

...as constructed by my daughter.

I believe Dr. Doom is attempting to reanimate the skeleton.

Click on each pic for larger awesomeness.

The Turtle Who Thought He Was A Casino Greeter

*Someday* I want to do a comix week on my blog, where all the posts are drawn instead of written.

Unfortunately, I do not see that happening in the near future.

Of the several people interested in collaborating with me on some comics, SamuraiFrog was kind and awesome enough to submit a cartoon based on an idea of mine.

He sent it to me way back in November 2008, and I've been holding it back from the people of the Internet. But no longer!

People of the Internet, enjoy! (click on the pic for a larger version).



Thank you, SF. You are a good person and a wonderful cartoonist.

I Still Want To Do A Comix Week

I was going to do a comics week on my blog last year, where for a week the posts would all be drawn instead of typed, but ran out of time, etc.

I still really want to do this. I have been sitting on a wonderful strip by SamuraiFrog for a long time that I really want to publish.

Anyways, I might again bug the people that said they'd be interested in doing a piece way back when. If anyone new is interested, leave a comment here.

I think it might be better for me not to announce the dates for Comics Week, and instead cobble together enough pieces for publishing. That might take the pressure off anyone who might be interested, but who might not have the luxury of time to complete a comic before some arbitrary date.

Comix Week Is Canceled

My comix week was scheduled to start next week, but I just don't have the time for it.

I have too much going on these days, and I haven't really been in contact with anyone who expressed an interest in contributing (and who I assume are also very busy).

If and when I'm able to do this (and I'd like to -- it's a cool idea, I think) I'll let you know.

If you have already drawn (or intend to draw) ideas I have already given you, I'd still love to get them, and will happily publish them when I do finally get around to the week.

Realistically, it will probably be some time after the holidays.


Love,


Splotchy

Comix Week Approaches

To all parties who expressed interest in participating in my comix week, I'll get my ideas to you by October 10th.

You are under no obligation to do the idea I give you, nor are you under any obligation to participate.

If anyone else wants to jump on board that hasn't already expressed a desire to join the project, it's still not too late.

Hopefully I can get at least a few people interested, and together we can create some special pieces of artful goodness to brighten the world.

AND ISN'T THAT WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT, PEOPLE?

Since time might be tight for everyone, I'm going to bump comix week a month into the future, to the first week of December.

Go Comix Week!

Embrace The Comix

Hi kids.

I have a neat idea. I have already contacted a few people privately about this, but thought, what the heck, it wouldn't hurt to put it all "out there" for any interested parties.

I am planning on doing a Comix Week at I, Splotchy later this year. As of now I am thinking of doing it during the first week of November, 2008.

What Comix Week is this -- during that week, the only blog posts I do will be in comics form. Any text in the post will have to be part of a cartoon.

I am the first to admit I am pretty awful at drawing stuff. I thought it would be neat if I could get contributions from a variety of people.

There are some stipulations to participating in Comix Week. Either the comics will be created based on something I write, or created as a result of my direct collaboration with the artist. What I'm trying to say is that I want to be some kind of creative force in any of the comics posted on the blog. All the comics posted during the week will be assembled into a digital comic book and made available for free download.

I'm announcing Comix Week with lots of lead time because I know it's not easy making the fancy drawings.

So, let me know if you are interested!

Just Some Guys From Queens

Did you know that the fictional comic book character Peter Parker, who would later become Spider-Man, grew up in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens?

Did you know that the punk group the Ramones were from that same neighborhood in Queens?

Did you know that the Ramones covered the theme song from the 1960's Spider-Man cartoon?

Well, you do now.

The Ramones - Spider-Man

Doctor Strange And Frank

So, one day I'm looking at what I can do with my blog, and see that it's possible to associate a picture, an avatar, with my profile.

Without too much thought, I went and snagged a picture from one of my favorite comics, Frank, by Jim Woodring.

---

When I was a kid, a trade paperback collection of old 1960's Dr. Strange comic books came into my possession. I was too young (well, technically unborn) to read these when they first came out, but this reprinted collection took a firm grip on my young imagination as soon as I laid my eyes on it.

There were two main Marvel superhero comic artists at the dawn of Marvel's "Silver Age" in the early 60's -- Steve Ditko, who drew Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, and Jack Kirby, who drew pretty much everything else. Apart from the fact that Spider-Man was my favorite superhero as a child, I gravitated more to the quirkier style of Steve Ditko.

His drawings of the early Spider-Man were wonderfully executed, but looking at Dr. Strange, there was truly some freaky stuff going on. Through the course of its initial Lee-Ditko run, Dr. Strange spent many a day in other dimensions. I have a sneaking suspicion that Ditko was given quite a bit of artistic license to invent these wonderful worlds. Here are just a few samples of some of his otherworldly artwork.







I thought (and still think) this stuff is amazing.

---

My brother has been into comics much longer than me (he's also a talented cartoonist in his own right), and has always been interested in, for a lack of a better word, "alternative" comics.

For Christmas or his birthday, I'd usually pick up an underground or non-mainstream comic for him -- for example, something by local Chicago artist Chris Ware. I noticed a Frank book in a visit to a comic store, and snatched it up for my brother. Now, I have to admit that I did not immediately wrap this gift. I read it from cover to cover.

It was reminiscent of the Dr. Strange comics of my youth in that it showed an incredible, imaginative world, but to me it seemed so much richer. The artwork was amazing. The stories were different -- the recurring characters were enigmatic, ever shifting. There was no dialogue. The stories seemed to bypass one's matter-of-factness part of the brain, plugging directly into the unconsciousness. Sometimes the stories were whimsical, sometimes funny, sometimes quite jarringly disturbing, and sometimes they were all these combined.

The stories in Frank had (and still have) a profound effect on me. Have you ever been exposed to some form of art, music, where after you have experienced it, you find it hard to believe you went your whole life unaware of it? That's pretty much what these stories are to me.


Note: the image below represents a page within the context of a larger story.



Here's a large sampling of Jim Woodring's work, much of it of the beloved enigmatic cat Frank (just follow the art show links, why don'tcha?).

Woodring also has a blog which he sporadically posts the odd piece or notion.

I actually managed to contact Mr. Woodring, inquiring whether I could continue to use the image I [ahem] appropriated for my avatar. He was very gracious and said it was okay.

I'd highly recommend you give his stuff a look-see. It's the bee's knees, dears.

My, How The New Fantastic Four Movie Will Suck

Wow, did the previous Fantastic Four suck.

I borrowed a copy of the DVD (I knew well enough not to pay money to see it in a theater) and I could not even sit through the whole thing. I had to fast forward through it.

I was especially pissed off at how they completely crapped on the great villain Doctor Doom.

The movie was worse than Daredevil. It was worse than The Hulk.

If we can apply the Law of Movie Sequel's Diminishing Returns, the new Fantastic Four movie will, improbable as it might seem, suck even harder.

This movie will follow you home from the theater, kill your family then take a dump on your kitchen floor. It will be that bad.

And they turned the Silver Surfer into a T-1000 (search the web for images of what they did to the surfer, you won't find images of that cinematic travesty on this here blog)!

Bastards.

Meme O' Merlin

A belated contribution to yet another Invincible Super-Blog meme.

Superman Meme

My purposefully vague yet disturbing contribution to a Superman Meme.




Ah, what the hell. One more.

Spider-Meme!

My entry to Chris Sims' Spider-Man meme.

If it's not obvious, he is speaking to Harry Osborn.

Rory's First Kiss Update!

There is a gargantuan old US Post Office building off of Van Buren Avenue in downtown Chicago that, to my knowledge, has sat dormant for at least 10 or so years.

A week or two ago I noticed some people building this wooden "gateway" at the service entrance of this building. I was curious as to what its intent was. The fact that it was just a wood frame made me think there wasn't anything permanent about it.

Later, the facade was painted to match the stone of the post office building. It matched surprisingly well, I thought, but still, what the hell were these people doing?

Last week, I had lunch with a friend who knew someone in the "Industry" who said they were building a set for the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

Sure enough, this is true...

Latest on The Dark Knight Filming
Dark Knight Set Pics

To not stir up the comic book geeks, they have all the Production signs referring to the film as Rory's First Kiss. Of course, by having all these 'RFK' signs everywhere, they don't even realize the amount of buzz they are creating for fans of the Kennedy family, a far more rabid group of people than your average comic book gaggle.

Seeing this cool set in person (I walk by it every day to get to work) reminded me of the time I was walking downtown when I saw a parking lot full of police cars that said "Gotham" on them during the time they were filming Batman Begins in Chicago. I was only mildly interested, due to the fact that the Batman movie franchise up until then was absolute garbage (yes, even the Tim Burton ones). I figured, oh wonderful, they are making another crappy Batman movie.

Now with the realization that Batman Begins was such a good film (up there with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films, even), it's fun to be excited about Rory's First Kiss.

Go Rory!

If You Needed Another Reason To Like The Watchmen

Occasionally, I'll get a minor epiphany, where I'll realize a cool facet about something (usually music/movies/pop culture stuff) that to my knowledge has not been remarked on by someone. So, here's a first post trying to convey my geeky excitement about one of these occasions. Hopefully you get at least 1/3 the pleasure from it as I did.



First of all, if you haven't read the Watchmen, read it.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, a little background. I used to be big with the comic book collecting and reading, mostly of the superhero variety. I was more into Marvel stuff, Spider-Man mostly.

I stopped collecting comix in the mid-80's. The last comics I bought were a DC mini-series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons called the Watchmen, which pretty made every other superhero comic look like a big pile of superpoo. The comic is incredibly dense, with many, many references, puns, intricate storylines, all that stuff. It's an impressive piece of work.

Anyways, I had a hankering to reread it again recently, and didn't have the original comics on hand. I was able to obtain a digital copy of it (basically a zipped-up file of jpegs) and in quickly flipping through the images suddenly realized something I had never noticed when I was reading the actual comic.

There is this part where Dr. Manhattan, a very powerful superhero, has his sense of time all messed up, and he starts acting a little goofy as if he is not in complete control of his own actions. So, by flipping through the digitized images of the comic I noticed that in two consecutive pages the artwork is completely different except for two images of Dr. Manhattan, which remain completely still...

This is something I doubt I would never have noticed had I not viewed the comic digitally. For God's Sakes, look at Dr. Manhattan's word balloons in the second detail. Even those are in the same position!





Once again I geekily bow to the feet of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.