Author Archives: Mark

PC News, Part II

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Here’s anoth­er PC News cov­er flash­back from my LLNL days, cir­ca ’84/’85.

Umm, what to say about this one? I don’t know that I can ful­ly explain what’s going on here any­more. Too many years removed. I think what’s going on is that this was for an arti­cle talk­ing about how they were able to give PC’s ver­bal instruc­tions and have them trans­lat­ed into prop­er com­put­er lan­guage, but then you can prob­a­bly pick up that much from it on your own.

And for rea­sons I don’t recall, I was play­ing around with a qua­si-Chester Gould “Dick Tra­cy” look. Though I no longer ful­ly under­stand what I was try­ing to do here, I still think it was kind of a fun piece.

The “flash­back-ery” will continue.

PC News, Part I

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Often to start off a New Year, peo­ple will spend a lit­tle time look­ing back. I’m going to look way back to the mid-80’s for a few posts or so here. Hope­ful­ly it’ll be of interest.

At that point in time, I was work­ing at LLNL, Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, doing graph­ic design and illus­tra­tion. Most of the graph­ics we did were tech­ni­cal type things, as you’d imag­ine. One of my more fun reg­u­lar jobs though was to illus­trate the cov­ers of The PC News, an in-house newsletter/magazine.

Most of this stuff has nev­er been seen out­side the Lab. And it’s fun­ny to look at some of the con­cepts these illus­tra­tions address now, some 25+ years (yikes!) removed. A lot of this stuff we take for grant­ed now, the per­son­al com­put­er’s become so imbed­ded in our culture.

This first cov­er I’m post­ing was for an issue index­ing some of the more impor­tant or “pop­u­lar” sto­ries that had appeared over the pre­vi­ous year. At this late date, I don’t recall why I drew a punk, or why they would even let me do that in the first place. One thing I do recall; they made me get rid of the ray gun for pub­li­ca­tion, replac­ing it with a light­pen. So this is the first time any­one (out­side of the PC News edi­tors) has seen this in its orig­i­nal form. The small­er draw­ing was just a spot illo for the inside front cover.

There will be more PC News flash­backs to come.

The Galleries are Up! Happy New Year!

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I was­n’t sure if I would get to it or not, but it appears I was suc­cess­ful in putting up my gal­leries. Though there are still a few minor bugs to iron out around here, things are func­tion­al. You can access them via the “Gal­leries” link up top.

And just so I’m not only giv­ing you bor­ing text to read, by pop­u­lar request (do three requests by one per­son count?), I’m post­ing an old pin-up I drew fea­tur­ing Chesty Sanchez and Mis­ter U.S.

I had a lot of fun with this! It start­ed with a gag idea sug­gest­ed by writer Nat Gertler, whom Chesty Sanchez cre­ator Steve Ross had ini­tial­ly con­tact­ed to request a pin-up. For some rea­son, though I knew the book was only going to be print­ed in black and white, I always want­ed to see this in col­or. Maybe one day I’ll do it, just for fun. This appeared in the 96 page “Chesty Sanchez Super Spe­cial” some years back, pub­lished by Antarc­tic Press.

Look­ing back over the com­ic, a Chesty Sanchez movie could be a lot of fun. The time is right, with all the oth­er com­ic book movies out there. Steve? you should get right on that and make it happen! 😉

Chesty Sanchez is ™ and © Steve Ross, Mis­ter U.S. is ™ and © Nat Gertler and Mark Lewis.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to You All Out There

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I’m not sure whether I’ll man­age to get my gal­leries up before the hol­i­days or not, but I thought I’d at least get one more post in before the end of the year. That project I allud­ed to in my pre­vi­ous post last month? This is a teaser/portion of that illus­tra­tion. Down the road at some point when I’ve been giv­en clear­ance, I’ll post the full image. This was a fun one to do, as I got to try out some things in Pho­to­shop I’d nev­er done before.

And in case I don’t wind up post­ing any­thing else before then: hope you all have a good hol­i­day sea­son, wher­ev­er you go, what­ev­er you do.

Happy Thanksgiving: Now Go Out and Hunt Down Your Own Turkey!

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I still haven’t had time to get back to fig­ur­ing out how to install the gallery plu­g­in (due to anoth­er project which will prob­a­bly make its way on here even­tu­al­ly), but I want­ed to keep the site active. So by request of my friend Lyle, I’ve post­ed the draw­ing on the left. It’s a fake com­ic cov­er fea­tur­ing a jun­gle girl char­ac­ter named Zhantika.

She’s the blonde at left. Zhan­ti­ka was a char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Lyle and myself. Around that time, I’d got­ten my hands on the Ger­ber Pho­to-Jour­nal Guide to Com­ic Books. Look­ing through them, we both real­ized sep­a­rate­ly that the “jun­gle girl” com­ic was a real pop­u­lar genre of its own at one point that sort of van­ished. That sparked an idea. Lyle came up with the basic con­cept, and the visu­al was mine.

We actu­al­ly pub­lished a Zhan­ti­ka sto­ry in Big Bang #17, much thanks to Gary Carl­son. I also have to thank inker David Zim­mer­mann, who brought a real­ly nice pol­ish to my pen­cils with his brush­work. The above image is not from that sto­ry though; it was done as a faux gold­en age cov­er for one of “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues (#27, if any­one cares to look). It was part of a whole fic­ti­tious his­to­ry of comics that did­n’t real­ly exist, but it was lots of fun to pretend.

Maybe even­tu­al­ly one day I’ll col­or this cov­er, just for fun. And just to make this a lit­tle longer: Zhan­ti­ka is ™ and © Lyle Dodd and Mark Lewis.

Is There an Echo in Here?

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Just mov­ing in to the new place here, fig­ur­ing out where to put stuff. Hope­ful­ly, it won’t take me too long. Bear with me while I try to get this sort­ed out.

Why the image? Well, it’s just a cou­ple days after Hal­loween, and I think this would look too bor­ing with­out a lit­tle visu­al inter­est. Plus it gives me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to learn how to work all the var­i­ous han­dles, noz­zles and gear shifts around here.