Category Archives: Comics

Work that’s either done specif­i­cal­ly for comics, or is comic-related.

Behind the Badge Again

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Fake Comic Cover for Red Hot Comics #17, with Big Bang Comics' the Badge and His RookiesI explained last time how, when Big Bang Comics did a cou­ple issues focused on the fic­ti­tious his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny (mim­ic­k­ing Ster­anko’s His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes), they need­ed a whole bunch of fake cov­ers to pull it off and make it all feel believ­able. Here’s anoth­er one from the bunch I generated.

I drew this back then, inked (I believe) by Jeff Mey­er. And now for the first time, appear­ing in col­or! It’s fun to final­ly see this real­ized in this form, after hav­ing it exist only in black and white for all these years.

I’m not exact­ly sure where the idea for this cov­er came from. Per­haps I was think­ing about Simon & Kir­by’s kick-off run of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, which seemed to draw a lot of inspi­ra­tion from the “weird men­ace” genre of pulps (an ingre­di­ent I’m sur­prised that most peo­ple don’t seem to pick up on). I kin­da wish I could read “The Vam­pire of Var­ney Street!”

I had fun doing this. Hope you enjoy it!

Behind the Badge

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Fake Comic Cover Red Hot Comics #14, with Big Bang Comics' the Badge and His RookiesLong­time vis­i­tors to my site might know that back in the ’90s, I was a con­trib­u­tor to Gary Carl­son and Chris Eck­er’s Big Bang Comics. The first issue had­n’t quite come out through Cal­iber yet when I came onboard, I  think, but some mate­r­i­al was already done.

When I met him, Gary was look­ing for some­one to draw a Simon & Kir­by type Gold­en Age char­ac­ter he had in mind called the Badge, and he’d been point­ed my way. I got to have a pret­ty good hand in devel­op­ing the char­ac­ter, his look and that of side­kicks Troop­er and Bob­bie, even mak­ing some sug­ges­tions about the char­ac­ters’ back sto­ries. So I have to admit to feel­ing a bit of pro­pri­etary inter­est in the Badge.

We even­tu­al­ly did a cou­ple issues of Big Bang sub­ti­tled “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics,” in imi­ta­tion of the Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes (not real­ly par­o­dy except in the most lov­ing and respect­ful way, because we all had a lot of affec­tion for those books, as they were a gate­way into a life­long inter­est in comics his­to­ry for many of us).

The His­to­ry issues end­ed up being Big Bang Comics #24 and #27. If you’ve seen the Ster­anko books, imi­tat­ing those meant we need­ed a whole bunch of fake cov­ers! So I and a num­ber of oth­er artists set about to gen­er­ate them. I recent­ly made a list, and was shocked to see just how many I did, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hold­ing down my day job in animation!

Any­way, to what you’re see­ing here: this was one of the ear­li­est fake cov­ers I gen­er­at­ed for Big Bang. If my mem­o­ry’s right, I think it might even have appeared as far back as the Cal­iber minis­eries. I recall it appear­ing in col­or, but small, like part of a back cov­er ad. Recent­ly, I thought it would be fun to go back and revis­it a num­ber of those old fake cov­ers I did, and give them the full col­or treat­ment they always called out for. Most have nev­er been seen in col­or at all!

The char­ac­ters along the left side were ones I just made up on the spot, but most of them end­ed up appear­ing in Big Bang sto­ries at one point or anoth­er. I sort of thought of Big Bang as “comics his­to­ry through a fun­house mir­ror,” and to that end when I was draw­ing up this cov­er, I just made up char­ac­ters that felt like they were play­ing with some of those famil­iar old Gold­en Age arche­types, but hope­ful­ly also feel­ing like you had­n’t entire­ly seen them before.

Pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and now col­or­ing) are mine; inks were by Jeff Mey­er (I believe), who inked sev­er­al of my fake cov­ers for the His­to­ry issues, and did a nice job of giv­ing them the cor­rect fin­ished look and feel. You can check out anoth­er of our fake cov­er col­lab­o­ra­tions here.

I still have oth­er cov­ers in the pipeline that I might post too, but I had­n’t put any­thing up here in awhile, and thought this might be fun. Hope you enjoy!

And thanks always, Gary, for let­ting me have a lot of fun on the Big Bang play­ground! Those inter­est­ed can check out more recent Big Bang issues over on Indy Plan­et.

Member of the Inker Tribe

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Years ago, I thought my life’s career was going to be in comics. My way in appeared to be through ink­ing. To that end, I did what all aspir­ing inkers look­ing to get into comics did at the time: I got my hands on pho­to­copies of pen­ciled pages, then inked them either on vel­lum, or by light-box­ing them onto bris­tol board. While recent­ly dig­ging through some old work, I redis­cov­ered this ink­ing sam­ple that I had total­ly for­got­ten about!

I had gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of ink­ing sam­ples work­ing over sev­er­al dif­fer­ent artists in those days. But for some rea­son, I don’t believe I ever includ­ed this when I sent out copies look­ing for work. Reap­prais­ing it all these years lat­er, it’s bet­ter than some of the oth­er sam­ples I did back then, so I’m not sure why I did­n’t use it. You might rec­og­nize the pho­to­copied lay­out as the work of Jim Star­lin, done for Mar­vel Comics’ War­lock #11 (pg. 14 of the sto­ry). It’s a good, clear lay­out. Pret­ty much all the info you would need as an inker to car­ry it to a fin­ish is there. There are even some sug­ges­tions about lighting.

When I did my inks, I did­n’t have a copy of the fin­ished com­ic to look at. And real­ly, that would’ve defeat­ed the pur­pose, see­ing how the art­work had actu­al­ly been fin­ished. Edi­tors and art direc­tors were look­ing to see how you approach ink­ing, not your pro­cess­ing of some­one else’s inks. And keep in mind, in those days, there was no inter­net where you could go to grab reference.

For post­ing here, I thought it might be fun to also sort of “re-mas­ter” the page, add the speech bal­loons and col­or it, based on how the page appeared in the com­ic. I guess that makes it both some­thing old and some­thing new.

Hope you enjoy!

The Adventures of Santa Claus

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Here’s one that’s been in my head since last Christ­mas, but there was too much going on then for me to get to it in time. So it feels good to final­ly get this real­ized this year!

I’ve always had a soft spot for those DC 80 Pg. Giants and 100 Pg. Super-Spec­tac­u­lars, and the idea of a some­what super­hero-style San­ta Claus 80 Pg. Giant com­ic sound­ed like a fun idea that need­ed to exist. And it’s a giv­en that Go-Go Checks auto­mat­i­cal­ly make any com­ic cov­er better!

Of course, there were a lot of pos­si­ble vil­lains to pick from, but ulti­mate­ly I grav­i­tat­ed towards these. For those who don’t know, Pitch comes from the 1959 Mex­i­can movie San­ta Claus. Voldar and Torg appear in the 1964 “clas­sic” San­ta Claus Con­quers the Mar­tians. The Heat Miser and the Snow Miser show up in the TV spe­cial, The Year With­out a San­ta Claus. And final­ly, Oogie Boo­gie comes from the Dis­ney clas­sic The Night­mare Before Christ­mas. Just real­ized: they’re all in chrono­log­i­cal order. I had­n’t real­ly planned it that way (I was think­ing more about even­ly dis­trib­ut­ing the reds and greens), but so be it!

That’s about all I can think of to say for this image, except: I’d like to wish all my site vis­i­tors a Mer­ry Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year!

A Whole Buncha Stars Here,…You Bet!

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I’ve men­tioned before how some­times ideas for art kind of come at me from ran­dom direc­tions, and cer­tain ideas will stick in my head until I do some­thing about them. This is one of those.

Most fans of comics and comics his­to­ry will rec­og­nize the sig­nif­i­cance of All Star Comics. Espe­cial­ly issue #3: it was the first appear­ance of the Jus­tice Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca! The cov­er for #3 is well-known, as it’s been re-cre­at­ed and repur­posed by a num­ber of oth­er artists over the years. I even did it myself once some years back for an FCA cov­er (Faw­cett Col­lec­tors of Amer­i­ca), replac­ing the DC heroes with Fawcett’s.

Less famil­iar are the issues pri­or to #3. I guess once DC had pub­lished Archive Edi­tions con­tain­ing every issue from All Star #3 for­ward, it was decid­ed that they prob­a­bly should com­plete the set and put out an Archive col­lect­ing the first two issues, before the title became about the Jus­tice Soci­ety. Hence vol­ume #0.

On a recent reread of that vol­ume, I was struck by the cov­er of All Star #1. The pub­lished cov­er seemed an after­thought: using exist­ing art pho­to­stat­ted from pre­vi­ous sto­ries and past­ed up, the char­ac­ters look­ing tiny and con­strict­ed in the lay­out. Maybe the issue was run­ning close to the dead­line when they real­ized they still need­ed a cov­er. I start­ed to think, “What might it have looked like if they’d had more time to put it together?”

And as men­tioned up top, the idea stuck, and the only way to get it out of my head was to actu­al­ly do it! So here’s my take on it.

Hope you enjoy it!

Oh, Venus…!

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I dis­cov­ered just before the start of this month that there’s some­thing of a social media thing going on at the moment with Big Bang Comics char­ac­ters. #Big­Bang­To­ber appar­ent­ly. As an ear­ly con­trib­u­tor to Big Bang (ear­ly and often, in a vari­ety of ways), I felt like maybe I should con­tribute to the cause. So over on LinkedIn, I’ve been post­ing a num­ber of my old Big Bang pieces.

The attached is one I always want­ed to col­or, but nev­er had the chance to, until now. It’s a faux Gold­en Age cov­er, done as one of many for one of the “Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. Mod­eled after The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics books, Gary Carl­son need­ed a lot of cov­ers to fill out the pages. This was one I came up with. Pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and of course, col­or­ing) are mine. Inks were by Jeff Mey­er, who did a great job of help­ing fur­ther the H.G. Peter art look I was going for here. (I came up with the name “P.G.Harris” as kind of Big Bang’s H.G. Peter equivalent).

Thanks for looking!

Monkey Business

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Lancelot Link cover based on Steranko's Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.IE.L.D #6 cover.Hm. How best to explain this thing?

Peri­od­i­cal­ly online, you see that age-old ques­tion pop up again: “Where do ideas come from?” Just speak­ing for myself, they can strike at very odd times. This one hit me as I was dri­ving up I‑5 one day to go vis­it a friend. Just, “boom,” there it was in my brain. And as I’ve men­tioned before, some­times an idea will just lodge itself in my brain, and I can’t get it out unless I actu­al­ly do it. So here it is.

Some of you will know that Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was a live action Sat­ur­day morn­ing show where they put a bunch of chim­panzees in cos­tumes and filmed them. I think I read some­where that they gave them food or some kind of chew­ing gum to get their mouths mov­ing, and then the voice actors would lat­er dub in their parts, try­ing to get some sem­blance of lip sync. I’m pret­ty sure it’s not exact­ly a show you could do today, for a num­ber of reasons.

Many will also real­ize that this is a re-cre­ation/rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the cov­er of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #6, by Jim Ster­anko. Apolo­gies to Mr. Ster­anko, whom I have noth­ing but respect for, but I had to get this out of my brain!

It’s a Gold Key cov­er, and not Mar­vel, because Gold Key was the com­pa­ny who held pret­ty much all the comics licens­es to all the Sat­ur­day morn­ing shows at this point. They actu­al­ly pub­lished Lancelot Link comics back then. Those who’ve seen the show might be won­der­ing, “What’s with the red hair? He did­n’t have that on TV.” The artists drew him that way in the com­ic (I’m guess­ing to make him more visu­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able among all the oth­er chimps in the sto­ries), so I fol­lowed their lead.

This image end­ed up being a lot more com­pli­cat­ed to exe­cute than I had orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned in my mind. Some­times I think I must have some kind of a masochis­tic streak as an artist. Often I’ll get deep in the midst of things like this, find it more com­plex and involved than I expect­ed, and think, “Why do I always do this to myself?” I’m sure I can’t be the only artist who does this.

Hope you enjoy my silli­ness here!

One More for the Road!

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Recent vis­i­tors to my site in August will know that I was doing the online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute every day, the brain­child of Howard Simp­son. it was a blast par­tic­i­pat­ing, refresh­ing my appre­ci­a­tion all over again for all the great work Kir­by did over the years.

I stuck to a very spe­cif­ic for­mat with all of these: por­traits in a small square, col­ored with the lim­it­ed palette used in the old comics most of these char­ac­ters orig­i­nal­ly appeared in, even down to the dot pat­terns. And I had in mind that the end goal was to be able to assem­ble them all into one com­pos­ite image. I was­n’t sure how that would work out, but here’s how it did!

This was kind of just a per­son­al challenge/exercise in tak­ing the Trib­ute a step fur­ther. Not sure what hap­pens with it beyond this point.

Hope you enjoyed the ride!

A Jolly Old Time!

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We’ve made it! Day 31 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by trib­ute, in hon­or of his birth­day this month (back on the 28th). The brain­child of Howard Simp­son, you can find the work of par­tic­i­pants on your favorite social media plat­forms via the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for this last day reads, “Draw your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. The King would want you to cre­ate char­ac­ters you own.” So I present: the Jol­ly Jaunter!

The rea­son I went with him is that he was a char­ac­ter I orig­i­nal­ly came up with back when I was 14 or 15, when I was heav­i­ly into a phase of try­ing to draw like Kir­by. Kind of a sil­ly, satir­i­cal British super­hero. I’m not sure where he came from exact­ly, as at that point, it was­n’t as if I had seen much of jack­’s humor work (like Fight­ing Amer­i­can) yet. Wher­ev­er it came from, the idea struck my fun­ny­bone, and I had to draw it. Buried deep in my files, I still had the drawing!

It was a lit­tle odd, revis­it­ing a draw­ing and a char­ac­ter I had done when I was that young. How often do you do that? Obvi­ous­ly 14/15-year-old me had­n’t both­ered to dig up ref­er­ence for how a Union Jack flag real­ly works, or real­ly thought through how the col­or would work. What can I say? The idea amused me at the time. But there you go!  For what it’s worth, the Jol­ly Jaunter is ™ & © Mark Lewis.

Thanks for look­ing, and for fol­low­ing all my Kir­by Trib­utes this month!

On to Victory!

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We’re get­ting close to the end! Day 30 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, you can find the work online on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I’m going off-menu again today. The prompt sug­gests doing a “Kir­by Col­lage,” of the type Jack was known for doing in his spare time, some­times even find­ing ways to use them in his comics. But I could­n’t think of a way to do that and have it fit in the­mat­i­cal­ly with the rest of what I’m doing. So instead, I chose to draw Cap­tain Victory.

This was the title that launched a brand new com­ic com­pa­ny in the ear­ly ’80s, Pacif­ic Comics. As men­tioned yes­ter­day, the fact that Jack Kir­by was doing a com­ic for a new start­up pub­lish­er and not for Mar­vel or DC again, was a Big Deal. It was thought that the “Big Two” were real­ly the only game in town, so it can’t be over­stat­ed that this was big news.

One of the rea­sons Kir­by was will­ing to do this was con­tained right there in the indi­cia in the front of the book: “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was­n’t some­thing he was ever like­ly to get from Mar­vel or DC, and I’m sure the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions he’d had with both pub­lish­ers at dif­fer­ent points over the years were also part of his inter­est in going inde­pen­dent again (like he and Joe Simon had tried once before with Mainline).

The sto­ry of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and his Galac­tic Rangers was inspired at least in part by Jack watch­ing E.T. and think­ing that “first con­tact” was not like­ly to be so benign. In fact, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that hap­pened when explor­ers came from Europe to the “New World,” Jack thought more like­ly it could go hor­ri­bly wrong..for us! And that was the seed of the story.

Front and cen­ter you’ve got Cap­tain Vic­to­ry. Behind him to the left is Major Klavus, and to the right is Tarin.

Hope you like it. One more to go!