Tag: Fake Comic Cover

Do I Know You? Who Are You Again?

I’ve been wait­ing a year to do this! After I gen­er­at­ed last year’s Christ­mas offer­ing, this idea popped into my head. Though it’s a vari­a­tion on a theme, I had to final­ly get it out of my brain!

I have a big soft spot for DC’s Sil­ver Age 80 Pg. Giants, and the 100 Pg. Super Spec­tac­u­lars. The 80 Pg. Giants in par­tic­u­lar col­lect­ed a lot of fun, some­times strange, sto­ries. It occurred to me that it would be fun if there were one fea­tur­ing a bunch of odd­ball dif­fer­ent San­ta Claus­es, play­ing on some of the old comics tropes in think­ing them up. For some rea­son, they always had these “future men” with giant heads, pre­sum­ably to hold their enlarged brains! And of course there had to be a goril­la too!

Hope you enjoy! I’m not going to lie; if this were a real com­ic, I’d absolute­ly buy it. That’s about all there is to say, except to wish all my site vis­i­tors a Mer­ry Christ­mas, and a Hap­py New Year!

“It’s the Red Tomato!…Er, Tornado!”

This is anoth­er one of those things where I was look­ing at some­thing, and an idea popped into my head that I had to do in order to get it out of my brain. A fake cov­er, sort of a “What if DC gave Shel­don May­er a ded­i­cat­ed Red Tor­na­do com­ic back in the Gold­en Age?”

This hap­pened as I was re-read­ing DC’s JSA All-Stars Archives (Vol­ume 1), fea­tur­ing solo sto­ries of sec­ondary and ter­tiary char­ac­ters who showed up with the Jus­tice Soci­ety in All-Star Comics at one point or anoth­er. And part of that col­lec­tion was a batch of sto­ries fea­tur­ing Shel­don May­er’s Scrib­bly, the Boy Car­toon­ist, where the Red Tor­na­do debuted.

Ini­tial­ly, the first Red Tor­na­do char­ac­ter I encoun­tered in comics as a kid was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter! He was an android, and had become part of the Sil­ver Age Jus­tice League. When not in his hero­ic iden­ti­ty, this Sil­ver Age ver­sion of the Red Tor­na­do was in the midst of learn­ing how to be more human (a bit like Mar­vel’s the Vision). After a lit­tle while, I learned of the pri­or exis­tence of the orig­i­nal Red Tor­na­do, a hero­ic iden­ti­ty adopt­ed by Ma Hun­kel in Shel­don May­er’s Scrib­bly the Boy Car­toon­ist install­ment for All-Amer­i­can Comics #20.

The Red Tor­na­do was played for fun and laughs, in that ear­ly era when super­heroes were still some­times called “mys­tery men.” And as mod­ern super­hero comics seem deter­mined to take them­selves ever more death­ly seri­ous, I find myself becom­ing ever more appre­cia­tive of comics that are fun. After all, I think “fun” is a big part of why most of us got into read­ing comics in the first place!

I should talk a bit about Shel­don May­er, cre­ator of the Red Tor­na­do. May­er was a rar­i­ty for the Gold­en Age: an artist, writer and edi­tor all in one. He worked briefly as an edi­tor for the McClure Syn­di­cate (for M.C. Gaines), where he came across Siegel and Shus­ter’s unsold Super­man strip, which he “fell in love with.” He talked it up so much to any­one who would lis­ten, he even­tu­al­ly con­vinced Gaines to take it up to Har­ry Donen­feld, who was look­ing for orig­i­nal strips to run in a new com­ic they were going to call Action Comics. To use a cliché phrase (one appro­pri­ate in this case), “the rest is history.”

A num­ber of Gold­en Age artists cred­it­ed May­er as being very help­ful to them as an edi­tor. Being a writer and artist, he had a per­spec­tive that oth­er edi­tors did­n’t. May­er on his own as a writer and artist did a lot of fun, cre­ative comics! I recent­ly dis­cov­ered that the Scrib­bly strip he did for All-Amer­i­can Comics (where he cre­at­ed the Red Tor­na­do) even­tu­al­ly got its own title for awhile post-WWII. Prob­a­bly his best-known and longest-run­ning title would be Sug­ar and Spike, about two babies who com­mu­ni­cat­ed in baby talk that adults were unable to under­stand. In the ear­ly ’70s, he also wrote and drew a num­ber of large for­mat Col­lec­tors’ Edi­tion comics fea­tur­ing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer for DC. I kind of feel like I need to see if I can get some more of May­er’s work in my collection!

DC nev­er did a ded­i­cat­ed Red Tor­na­do title, but when I was read­ing that mate­r­i­al in the Archive Edi­tion I men­tioned up top, I came across the splash pan­el that kicked off the Scrib­bly install­ment for All-Amer­i­can Comics #23, and real­ized that it would work great as a cov­er. Hence the attri­bu­tion (though I put my own lit­tle spin on the idea).

Hope you like this, and that you’re enjoy­ing the hol­i­day season!

Getting Blitzed

Ear­li­er this year, I was post­ing a num­ber of fake comics cov­ers I’d done for Big Bang Comics’ “His­to­ry Issues” (#24 and #27) that I had new­ly col­ored. Since then, some oth­ers turned up that I did­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly have copies of the fin­ished inks for, which gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly col­or them too. And giv­en that they’re doing #Big­Bang­To­ber again this year, and today’s prompt is Big Bang’s speed­ster, the Blitz, it seemed a good time to post this (final­ly) col­ored ver­sion of the cov­er I drew for All-Blitz #21. It’s a twofer, in that you also get the intro­duc­tion of Speed Queen!

This orig­i­nal­ly appeared (small, in black and white) on pg. 27 of Big Bang Comics #27, AKA “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics 2.” The pen­cils, let­ter­ing (and now col­or­ing) are mine. Because of how the con­trib­u­tors were list­ed (and how many years lat­er this is), I’m not entire­ly sure who inked this. Per­haps it was Ed Quin­by? I know he inked one or two oth­er fake cov­ers I did for this project.

As I think I men­tioned before, to do these His­to­ry issues, Gary Carl­son need­ed a WHOLE bunch of cov­ers gen­er­at­ed, so all of us artists had a lot of lat­i­tude to cre­ate stuff. On this one, I was think­ing of how much fun some of those old com­ic cov­ers were when they debuted a new super­heroine, and the name “Speed Queen” popped into my head for a char­ac­ter. Seemed like some­thing they would’ve done back then.

I had also pen­ciled a cou­ple oth­er Gold­en Age Blitz cov­ers, and if good copies of the fin­ished inks for those ever turn up, I’ll prob­a­bly col­or them too. For now: hope you enjoyed this one!

The Supreme Allied Commando!

Here’s anoth­er fake cov­er I drew for Big Bang’s His­to­ry issues. Not only fresh­ly col­ored, but also inked for the first time! A lot of fake cov­ers need­ed to be gen­er­at­ed for those issues, and there was­n’t time to ink them all. Since they were being print­ed pret­ty small, it was okay if some of them were in pen­cils, as long as they were fair­ly clean and tight.

Gary Carl­son had incor­po­rat­ed into the Badge’s back sto­ry that at a cer­tain point dur­ing WWII, he took up anoth­er name for a time and changed his uni­form accord­ing­ly, going into action as the Supreme Allied Com­man­do. I think this is the first time he’s appeared in col­or in this garb.

Ini­tial­ly when I first tack­led design­ing the Badge, I took my inspi­ra­tion from the heroes Simon and Kir­by cre­at­ed for DC (prob­a­bly the Guardian espe­cial­ly). For this ver­sion, I looked back at what they had been doing with Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, of course.

While Cap­tain Amer­i­ca was a patri­ot­ic super­hero (the prime one peo­ple think of from WWII), I real­ized awhile back that Simon and Kir­by’s Cap sto­ries also had some­thing else going on. There was a def­i­nite influ­ence from the “weird men­ace” pulp genre, with the kind of foes they went up against. It was even on the cov­ers, with the mad sci­en­tists per­form­ing unspeak­able exper­i­ments, evil hench­men, deformed mon­sters, and odd men in hood­ed robes who would some­times throw axes. Strange­ly, I’ve rarely heard any­one else call­ing atten­tion to that influence.

That’s why all those things are present here. I even came up with names for the two main bad guys that I jot­ted down on the out­side bor­der of my cov­er: Dr. Von Mungler and his hench­man Oggar.

Enjoy! And with the tim­ing of this post­ing, I wish you a Hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!

Oblivious

Fake comic cover for Big Bang Comics' Venus #198, with the character Olivia featured on the cover.As has no doubt become clear, I did a lot of fake cov­ers for “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. This one end­ed up being espe­cial­ly fun, for rea­sons you’ll under­stand when I explain who did what.

This cov­er is for the most part my work. I pen­ciled it, let­tered it, and now col­ored it. The inks? By none oth­er than (drum­roll please) Mr. Mike Roy­er him­self! He was Kir­by’s best inker in the ’70s, no ques­tion in my mind. I still kind of can’t believe this hap­pened. More about that in a minute.

Oblivia came about because I was think­ing of those odd char­ac­ters like the Black Rac­er who would sud­den­ly pop up ran­dom­ly out of nowhere in the midst of Jack­’s Fourth World saga at DC. I start­ed think­ing about what Joe Kingler (Big Bang Comics’ equiv­a­lent for Jack) might have done in the con­text of work­ing on Venus, and the name “Oblivia” popped into my head. It seemed to me very much the sort of “play on words” name that Jack often used. So a Venus cov­er fea­tur­ing her did­n’t at all seem out of line.

When I pen­ciled this cov­er, I had no clue who might end up ink­ing it. I prob­a­bly would­n’t have gone ahead and let­tered it if I had known. So when Big Bang’s Gary Carl­son raised a few pos­si­bil­i­ties for inkers, Mike Roy­er being one of them, it was the no-brain­er of all no-brain­ers to say, “Yes!”

I actu­al­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pick up the fin­ished cov­er in per­son, and was thrilled with the end result. I got to spend a very fun Sun­day after­noon hang­ing out at Mr. Roy­er’s home, con­vers­ing and hear­ing a lot of great sto­ries about his time in comics, work­ing for Dis­ney doing licens­ing art, plus oth­er top­ics. Again, thanks so much, Mr. Royer!

In col­or­ing this, I heav­i­ly ref­er­enced the way all those Fourth World cov­ers at DC were col­ored. That guid­ed me to go in some direc­tions I prob­a­bly would­n’t have gone if I were just col­or­ing this nor­mal­ly on my own (like knock­ing the gang­sters out all in green), but it helped to real­ly get across the right peri­od look.

Thanks for looking!

Venus Vs. Cupid

Fake comics cover for Big Bang Comics' Venus #169, with Ares looming in the backgroundI’m adding anoth­er to the group of fake cov­ers I had a hand in cre­at­ing some­time back for “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues of Big Bang Comics. Cred­its on this one take a lit­tle expla­na­tion. Pen­cils were by Frank Squil­lace, inks and let­ter­ing by me. Frank did a col­or comp on a pho­to­copy with mark­ers, which I marked up with col­or for­mu­la call­outs to cre­ate a col­orist guide.

This cov­er end­ed up being repur­posed as an actu­al Big Bang cov­er for issue #34, with dif­fer­ent trade dress. For that instance, I believe some­one at Image actu­al­ly gen­er­at­ed the col­or file used to print it, based on the col­or guide we’d pro­vid­ed. I don’t think I actu­al­ly did that one myself in Pho­to­shop, because after much search­ing, I don’t seem to have a file for it. Which means the ver­sion you see here has been total­ly recol­ored by me from scratch in Pho­to­shop, ref­er­enc­ing the col­or guide. I tweaked the ren­der­ing in a few spots to plus what was in the print­ed ver­sion a lit­tle bit, so a sharp eye might spot some of those differences.

I sus­pect most vis­i­tors will imme­di­ate­ly real­ize that Frank and I were shoot­ing for a Jack Kir­by style here. I always thought of Big Bang as sort of “comics his­to­ry through a fun­house mir­ror.” It’s known that when Jack Kir­by jumped from Mar­vel to DC, they offered him any book he want­ed. Jack was­n’t com­fort­able with putting any­one out of work, so he said, “give me your least-sell­ing book.” That’s how Jim­my Olsen end­ed up as part of Jack­’s Fourth World Saga at DC. Any­one who’s stud­ied Jack­’s work knows he had a life­long fas­ci­na­tion with myths and leg­ends. So I thought, what if instead of Jim­my Olsen, Jack had tak­en on Won­der Woman? In Big Bang terms, that would’ve trans­lat­ed to Joe Kingler (Big Bang’s Kir­by equiv­a­lent) tak­ing on the char­ac­ter Venus.

This is the first time this has appeared in col­or with the orig­i­nal Venus mast­head. Hope you enjoy it!

Getting Animated

Fake comic cover for Adventures of the Knight Watchman #23, with Big Bang Comics' the Knight Watchman and Pink Flamingo facing off.Here’s anoth­er fake com­ic cov­er I gen­er­at­ed for one of “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues, this one fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed-style ver­sions of the Knight Watch­man and his neme­sis, the Pink Flamin­go. With my pen­cils, inks and let­ter­ing, it appeared orig­i­nal­ly in black and white in Big Bang Comics #24. And now for the first time, it’s in col­or here!

I’m sure I don’t have to explain what style I’m going for here. At the time I orig­i­nal­ly did this, I believe I was like­ly still work­ing on X‑Men: the Ani­mat­ed Series. It would be awhile yet before I final­ly got the chance to work on an ani­mat­ed Bat­man project for Warn­ers, on the direct-to-video Bat­man: Mys­tery of the Bat­woman. Thanks to Curt Geda for giv­ing me the call!

Like with some of the oth­er fake cov­ers I did for Big Bang that I’ve post­ed here recent­ly, I tried to take my col­or cues from the source mate­r­i­al I was imi­tat­ing when draw­ing it. Those books were done around the time that Pho­to­shop was start­ing to be used on some comics, and though I don’t think Pho­to­shop was ever used on those Bat­man Adven­tures comics, it did appear to be hav­ing an influ­ence, in that they were clear­ly using a great­ly expand­ed col­or palette from the usu­al Gold­en, Sil­ver or Bronze age style comics cov­ers I usu­al­ly imi­tate. So it was a fun chal­lenge to try to put my head in a lit­tle dif­fer­ent place and work that out.

A unique thing about all those DC comics based on the WB car­toons was that hard-edged shad­ow col­or they used on the art. I’ve seen orig­i­nal b/w art from those comics, and they’d usu­al­ly indi­cate the shad­ow edges direct­ly on there with a fine point red felt pen (I assume drawn in by the inker). Those red lines would be dropped from the final print­ed art, but the col­orists would use them as their guides for exact place­ment of the shad­ow areas. The shad­ow col­or I’m using here is most like­ly not the same one they used back then, but it’s one I’ve used in the past that’s always worked well for me. I felt like it worked well here, too.

Hope you like it!

Bonk, Bonk on the Head!

Fake comic cover for Thunder Girl Adventures #23, featuring Big Bang Comics' Thunder Girl meeting Konga, queen of the Troglodytes.I’ve recent­ly been post­ing a num­ber of fake com­ic cov­ers I did some­time back for Big Bang Comics’ “The Big Bang His­to­ry of Comics” issues. Here’s anoth­er one, new­ly col­ored! Thun­der Girl Adven­tures #23, fea­tur­ing Thun­der Girl meet­ing Kon­ga, Queen of the Troglodytes.

Post­ing this gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about artist Bill Fugate. Bill end­ed up being the artist who devel­oped Thun­der Girl’s visu­al design. While I had a lot of respect for my fel­low Big Bang artists, I was an out­right fan of Bil­l’s work. Most of us were try­ing to do dif­fer­ent styles, draw­ing like spe­cif­ic oth­er artists. Bill just drew the way he drew, and he seemed nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed with the kind of car­toon­ing charm to his work that C. C. Beck had. Any time Bill did a Thun­der Girl sto­ry (or Erik Larsen’s Mighty Man), it was a real treat. I wrote a bit more about Bill here. Wish I’d had the oppor­tu­ni­ty at some point to tell him just how much I loved his work!

Back to this cov­er: for the Big Bang Comics His­to­ry issues (mod­eled after The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics vol­umes), a lot of cov­ers need­ed to be gen­er­at­ed to fill all those pages. While some ideas were dis­cussed, in a num­ber of cas­es, Big Bang hon­cho Gary Carl­son just kind of let us wing it and come up with what­ev­er seemed right for the par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter or time peri­od. This cov­er was one of those.

Thun­der Girl was kind of Big Bang’s mash-up/e­quiv­a­lent of both the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel and Mary Mar­vel. One of Capt. Mar­vel’s ene­mies was King Kull, the Beast­man. Kind of a pre­his­toric cave­man char­ac­ter. Remem­ber­ing Kull got me won­der­ing what an equiv­a­lent kind of char­ac­ter for Thun­der Girl might be like, hence Kon­ga. In my mind, though, Kon­ga was less vil­lain­ous than comedic, com­ing to the sur­face world look­ing for a mate, and not under­stand­ing how things work up here.

This cov­er was inked by Jef­frey Mey­er (if my mem­o­ry’s cor­rect), with pen­cils, let­ter­ing, and now col­or by me.

There’s a fun­ny sto­ry I prob­a­bly should­n’t get into here about an inter­est­ing fan reac­tion we got to this cov­er when it ini­tial­ly appeared in tiny black and white form. If you ever see me out in the real world, ask me and I’ll tell you about it.

Hope you enjoy this!

Behind the Badge Again

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

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.

The Adventures of Santa Claus

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!

Oh, Venus…!

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

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!

Captain Saturn Giant!

Some of you may rec­og­nize this as the cov­er of Odd Comics’ Cap­tain Sat­urn Giant, pub­lished in the ear­ly ’60s. Odd Comics as a pub­lish­er seems to have been large­ly for­got­ten these days, and it takes a lot of dig­ging to find their comics, but it’s worth the effort.

Okay, I con­fess: the above was a lie! It’s just a fake com­ic cov­er, by me. I’ll tell you the truth as to how this came about.

Over on LinkedIn, the very tal­ent­ed Thomas N. Perkins IV post­ed a draw­ing he’d done on the first page of a copy of his book If…. Thomas does a lot of cool stuff, but some­thing about this draw­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly caught my eye. It had a sort of Sil­ver Age-look­ing super­hero char­ac­ter, with a big mon­ster behind him. I com­ment­ed on how I liked it, and in Thomas’ reply, he said it was “Cap­tain Sat­urn and his pet Gulglammakus.”

Some­how, their being named plant­ed a seed in my brain. And sud­den­ly, I was envi­sion­ing Cap­tain Sat­urn fea­tured in a Sil­ver Age extra-length Giant com­ic. I told Thomas about this, and with his bless­ing, I went to work on this cover.

Thomas’ orig­i­nal draw­ing was in black and white with gray tones, and he want­ed to fig­ure out the col­or scheme for Cap­tain Sat­urn for me first, which I then trans­lat­ed into the Sil­ver Age comics col­or palette.

His response when I gave him a pre­view of the fin­ished cov­er was, “I won’t lie, I am sure this is a book I would’ve read as a kid.” I’m very pleased to get that kind of reac­tion. And I’ll con­fess, this is the sort of thing that would’ve caught my eye too. And prob­a­bly still would!

For a time after grad­u­at­ing col­lege, I used to have this recur­ring dream: I’d walk into a comics shop I’d nev­er been in, and dis­cov­er all these real­ly cool comics that I’d nev­er seen before! The sad part though is that I could nev­er remem­ber any­thing about them after I woke up, or maybe I’d have tried to cre­ate those comics myself. Maybe one of them might have been some­thing like Cap­tain Saturn!

Cap­tain Sat­urn is ™ & © Thomas N. Perkins IV. Thomas, thanks much for let­ting me play with your toys for a minute!

The Boop! of Frankenstein

Long time vis­i­tors to this site may recall that come Hal­loween, I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of doing a Franken­stein draw­ing to celebrate.

This year, I was kind of wrack­ing my brain for inspi­ra­tion, look­ing at var­i­ous old comics cov­ers, movie stills and things, and none of the ideas I was com­ing up with were real­ly grab­bing me. Then I stum­bled across a two hour block of Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons air­ing on TCM, done by way of cel­e­brat­ing the stu­dio’s 100th anniver­sary. Watch­ing one of the Bet­ty Boop car­toons, an idea final­ly struck me that I had to do. It grew from there. This is the result.

Orig­i­nal­ly, I was just going to do the black and white image, but while work­ing on it, the thought struck me that this could also work as a com­ic book cov­er. Some of you may be won­der­ing: why make this a Gold Key cov­er par­tic­u­lar­ly? Because back in the Sil­ver Age, if you want­ed to read a com­ic fea­tur­ing a car­toon char­ac­ter, you were going to end up buy­ing a Gold Key com­ic. They had the licens­es to pret­ty much all of the char­ac­ters. Though (so far as I’ve been able to deter­mine) they nev­er actu­al­ly did a Bet­ty Boop com­ic, if any­one had pub­lished one back then, Gold Key would’ve been the publisher.

I’ve always had a gen­er­al soft spot for the “ball and rub­ber hose” school of ani­ma­tion. And more specif­i­cal­ly, I’ve always got­ten a kick out of the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons, because they have their own per­son­al­i­ty that’s noth­ing like Dis­ney’s, Warn­er Bros., or any­one else’s. The Fleis­ch­er car­toons are chaot­ic in a fun way, where almost any­thing can hap­pen. Inan­i­mate objects come to life at a momen­t’s notice.

If you don’t know about the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons, you real­ly should do some­thing to rec­ti­fy that. You can prob­a­bly find a num­ber of them on YouTube. They’re a real treat (no trick!).

“Dad joke” free of charge. Hap­py Halloween!

I Dare You!

There’s a sto­ry behind this one. Of course! Isn’t there always? 😀

But first; there are prob­a­bly some of you scratch­ing your heads, going, “Huh? That’s not Dare­dev­il!” It’s under­stand­able that you might only know about Mar­vel Comics’ ver­sion of Dare­dev­il, from the comics and the recent Net­flix series. But back in the Gold­en Age of comics, there was a dif­fer­ent Dare­dev­il, pub­lished by Lev Glea­son. The char­ac­ter’s title sold very well, run­ning for about 16 years, until sales fell (like many super­hero titles did post-WWII). This Dare­dev­il had a kid gang who hung around with him called the Lit­tle Wise Guys. The boys had tak­en over his title by the time the book ceased pub­lish­ing, Dare­dev­il him­self hav­ing gone MIA about six years pri­or to that.

But I should get back to the sto­ry behind this re-cre­ation/rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. Ear­li­er this year, I was chat­ting with direc­tor Dan Riba (known for his work on Bat­man: the Ani­mat­ed Series, among many oth­er car­toons). In the course of our con­ver­sa­tion, he men­tioned that he’d recent­ly had an online inter­ac­tion with movie pro­duc­er Michael Uslan, via the Book of Faces. Some­where out there on the inter­net, Mr. Uslan had stum­bled across my ear­li­er re-work­ing of Mar­vel’s Cap­tain Mar­vel #1, replac­ing the Kree ver­sion with the Gold­en Age Faw­cett orig­i­nal, as if Mar­vel had bought the rights to the char­ac­ter from Fawcett.

Dan told me that Mr. Uslan liked my cov­er, but did­n’t know where it had come from (The inter­net some­times has a way of strip­ping us cre­ative folk of cred­it for our work). Dan informed him that it was my work. In reply, Mr. Uslan won­dered if I had ever con­sid­ered doing a sim­i­lar thing with Dare­dev­il #1, rework­ing it as if in some alter­nate uni­verse, Mar­vel had bought the rights to the orig­i­nal Gold­en Age char­ac­ter instead of invent­ing their own new ver­sion. (Some­where, I read that this was actu­al­ly con­sid­ered briefly).

I told Dan that I had­n’t thought of that, but it was an inter­est­ing idea. The con­ver­sa­tion moved on from there, and I did­n’t think about it again. At least not for a lit­tle while. But this thought kept peri­od­i­cal­ly cir­cling back into my brain. And as occa­sion­al­ly hap­pens, it got lodged in there. When that hap­pens, I’ve found the only way to get it out is to actu­al­ly do the thing. So here it is!

Re-cre­at­ing and re-imag­in­ing this cov­er was a much big­ger chal­lenge than my Cap­tain Mar­vel #1 was. In the process of dig­ging in and work­ing with a cov­er image like this, you come to real­ize cer­tain things about it. One is that for a Mar­vel Comics cov­er of this vin­tage, it’s a very busy cov­er! It’s almost more like a DC Annu­al or 80-Page Giant cov­er of that era.

I have a the­o­ry about the rea­son why this cov­er is so unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly busy for Mar­vel. It’s only a guess, mind you, but I sus­pect that orig­i­nal­ly the cov­er was going to be just the pri­ma­ry image at left. That part looks to have been drawn by Jack Kir­by, while there are oth­er hands in the rest of the art. Three of the Fan­tas­tic Four heads are just the paste-up art they used in that comic’s cor­ner box! I can’t help but won­der if some­one (per­haps Stan Lee, or maybe Mar­tin Good­man) felt like this new title need­ed more of a sales boost than just the one image, so the main piece of art was reduced and shoved to the left, and all the addi­tion­al text men­tion­ing Spi­der-Man and the Fan­tas­tic Four was added in that col­umn on the right.

Adding to my sus­pi­cions are all the tan­gents that exist­ed on the orig­i­nal, which I made an effort to fix here. They feel like the sort of thing that hap­pens when art is re-worked after the fact by oth­er hands, in ways the ini­tial artist did­n’t plan for.

There are a cou­ple addi­tion­al things I should men­tion, because of course there are sto­ry bits about this new/old ver­sion that I worked out in my head while doing this cov­er. I fig­ure Mar­vel might have giv­en Dare­dev­il fold-up boomerangs that he could store in his belt (see dia­gram). And at first I was­n’t sure what to do with the spot at low­er right where Fog­gy Nel­son was on the orig­i­nal cov­er. Who could I put there? But as I thought about it, the idea of aging up the Lit­tle Wise Guys to teenagers (ala Rick Jones), and hav­ing them form a band seemed like a good way to go. They’re rep­re­sent­ed here by Scare­crow. It was­n’t too hard to take his hair­cut from his Gold­en Age look and turn it into more of a Bea­t­le cut.

Thanks to Mr. Uslan and Dan for plant­i­ng the bug in my brain!

Art Vs. Artist!

So there’s this thing, and I guess all the cool kids are doing it over on the Twit­ters and the Insta­grams. It’s called “Art Vs. Artist.” You put some of your work togeth­er in this for­mat, along with a pic­ture of your­self in the cen­ter. It seemed like some­thing that might be sor­ta fun to take a crack at, so here we go!

To be hon­est, I’m not entire­ly sure what all the rules are (if there are any), so I’m prob­a­bly break­ing some of them. I did get the idea that this was sup­posed to cen­ter around faces, so there’s at least that. Some of these sam­ples are more recent and oth­ers slight­ly old­er. At the moment, I feel like this works pret­ty well. If I were to attempt this again tomor­row, it’s pos­si­ble I could pick a few oth­er images.

I feel like I might be break­ing one of the rules with my pho­to in the cen­ter. It’s (obvi­ous­ly) not a cur­rent self­ie. Not by a long shot! That’s a 12 year-old me, on my birth­day. If you could see more of the pic­ture, you’d see I was attempt­ing to paint a pic­ture (using oils) of the USS Enter­prise fir­ing on a Klin­gon ship. Why that pho­to? I fig­ure: don’t we all start some­place like that as artists? Every­thing else flows from that.

“What Have I Done??”

So back when I first start­ed this site, I had in mind cre­at­ing a tra­di­tion of doing Franken­stein-relat­ed art for Hal­loween, when I had time. It’s been awhile since I did one. So here you go!

Mil­ton the Mon­ster is one of those car­toons from my child­hood that I’ve always looked back on fond­ly. Cer­tain car­toon prop­er­ties are well-remem­bered and seem to come back for revivals every so often. Mil­ton is one of those car­toons that seems to have slid into obscu­ri­ty, unfor­tu­nate­ly. Most car­toon fans either don’t remem­ber it, or have nev­er heard of it.

For those who don’t know about the show, the con­cep­t’s right there in the show’s theme song! Take a look. I had­n’t watched the show in a long time, so doing this cov­er was an excuse to watch some episodes and refresh my mem­o­ry. Yes, it’s def­i­nite­ly lim­it­ed TV ani­ma­tion, and the jokes can get a lit­tle corn­ball, but I still get a kick out of it. If some­one were to actu­al­ly do a revival of this show, it would be a blast to be involved!

Search­ing for actu­al char­ac­ter mod­els to draw from, I could­n’t find any. I have a sense that TV ani­ma­tion in the ’60s some­times had a much broad­er inter­pre­ta­tion of “on-mod­el” than what it does now, or even when I start­ed work­ing in ani­ma­tion in the ear­ly ’90s. It’s sur­pris­ing to see how much the look of the char­ac­ters on this show can fluc­tu­ate from episode to episode, depend­ing on the animator.

And of course, this had to be a Gold Key cov­er. They actu­al­ly did pub­lish one issue of a Mil­ton the Mon­ster com­ic back in the mid-’60s. If you were a kid in the ’60s and want­ed to buy a com­ic book fea­tur­ing your favorite ani­mat­ed character(s), Gold Key had the rights pret­ty much sewn up to all of them!

Any­way, I hope you enjoy this. And Hap­py Halloween!

The Captain That Split the Scene

Captain Marvel Split! by Mark LewisIt won’t come as any sur­prise to long­time vis­i­tors of my site to hear this, but most of my friends know that when you say the words “Cap­tain Mar­vel” to me, my default set­ting is to think of the orig­i­nal Faw­cett char­ac­ter. How­ev­er, this ain’t him!

This Cap­tain Mar­vel is an android. His com­ic debuted in 1966, pub­lished by M.F. Enter­pris­es, 13 years after Faw­cett pub­lished their last adven­ture of the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Marvel.

So what does this Cap­tain Mar­vel do? He seems to have a lot of the usu­al super­hero pow­ers: strength, flight, etc. But his real call­ing card is that when he says his mag­ic word (“Split!”), he can detach parts of his body at will and have them fly around and do his bid­ding. A unique pow­er, to be sure, but more than a lit­tle odd. To rejoin, he speaks his oth­er mag­ic word, “Xam!”

In look­ing for a fresh take on this Cap­tain, I thought it was such an odd­ball con­cept that it might have been bet­ter-suit­ed to Sat­ur­day Morn­ing car­toons. So I start­ed to re-imag­ine it as the kind of semi-comedic super­hero adven­ture car­toon that back then would’ve fit in well along­side Han­na-Bar­bera shows like Franken­stein Jr., The Impos­si­bles, or Atom Ant. Since those shows appeared as Gold Key comics, that seemed a good place for my re-imag­ined Cap­tain Mar­vel too.

Thunder Enlightening, and a Big Bang

Thunder Girl Adventures #16What you’re see­ing here is actu­al­ly a draw­ing gen­er­at­ed some years ago for Big Bang Comics. It was a fake old com­ic cov­er, done for one of the His­to­ry issues we put togeth­er. Those issues con­coct­ed a whole fic­ti­tious back his­to­ry of Big Bang as a comics pub­lish­er (bor­row­ing their for­mat from the two com­plet­ed vol­umes of The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics). I did­n’t ink this image; if mem­o­ry serves, the inks were by Jeff Mey­er, who also inked my work on a num­ber of oth­er projects around that time.

The col­or on this is new, though (which is why you’re see­ing it here). I was recent­ly con­tact­ed by Big Bang head hon­chos Gary Carl­son and Chris Eck­er, asked if I’d be game to final­ly add col­or to this cov­er. They’ve recent­ly part­nered with a com­pa­ny named Pulp 2.0 Press to bring back some of the Big Bang prop­er­ties, and look at new ways of get­ting them out there. I under­stand this image might even­tu­al­ly end up on prod­ucts like t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, etc. Which would be a very cool thing to see!

So this gives me the chance to talk about a cou­ple oth­er things, while this image is up. I believe I’ve men­tioned my Big Bang asso­ci­a­tion before, but haven’t got­ten into much detail about it. Though I did­n’t entire­ly get in on the ground floor, I came in pret­ty close to it. Gary and Chris had­n’t yet pub­lished their first few issues through Cal­iber, but were begin­ning to assem­ble the con­tents when I was intro­duced to Gary at Com­ic Con. This meet­ing came about because writer Nat Gertler and I had done a one-shot for Par­o­dy Press/Entity Comics called Mis­ter U.S.: 50 For­got­ten Years (This lat­er came out as Big Bang Comics #8). PP/EC tried to solic­it for it twice. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the num­bers weren’t there. But Pub­lish­er Don Chin thought there was some­thing there that might be of inter­est to Gary for what he and Chris were work­ing on, so Don made the introduction.

Gary and I hit it off right away. I was first brought in just to help design and draw a Simon/Kir­by-ish char­ac­ter they’d had an idea for, called the Badge. But they dis­cov­ered that I could also help with cre­at­ing logos, as well as design­ing a slew of oth­er char­ac­ters and doing occa­sion­al col­or work. I did­n’t just get to draw like Simon and Kir­by, but oth­er artists too, along the way. Plus I even had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help out with sto­ry­line con­tri­bu­tions. It was a blast, and exact­ly the sort of thing you hope to get to do when you dream of doing comics as a kid. So, thanks, Gary and Chris!

And while I’m here, this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for me to say some­thing about Thun­der Girl and Bill Fugate. Thun­der Girl was sort of Big Bang’s nod to Faw­cett’s Cap­tain Mar­vel. And Bill Fugate was the per­fect artist to bring her to life and draw her sto­ries. With­out Bil­l’s involve­ment from the begin­ning, she would not have been the same. Bil­l’s draw­ings just had “fun” com­ing out of every line on the page. His work was car­toon­ing of the high­est order, in the best pos­si­ble sense. I hon­est­ly think C.C. Beck would’ve liked Bil­l’s work a great deal. When­ev­er Bill man­aged to get a new Thun­der Girl sto­ry com­plet­ed for pub­li­ca­tion, it was an occa­sion. Heck, any time Bill pro­duced any comics work, you knew you were in for a real treat!

I admired many of my fel­low Big Bang con­trib­u­tors for their tal­ents and skills. With Bill, I con­sid­ered myself an out­right fan. I nev­er had the chance to meet him or exchange emails, tell him how much I tru­ly loved his work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Bill passed away (much too soon!) back in Feb­ru­ary this year. He was not as well known a name in comics as I think he should’ve been. As I’ve told some peo­ple already: in anoth­er world, some very smart pub­lish­er would’ve paid Bill big bucks to cre­ate any comics he want­ed to draw. And those comics would’ve sold in real­ly huge numbers.

R.I.P., Bill. You are most def­i­nite­ly missed.

The Forgotten Ones: Bee-29, the Bombardier

Bee-29There’s prob­a­bly a lot of ground I should cov­er to explain this one, so I’ll get right to it.

In doing research for a recent project (which you’ll find out about at a lat­er date), I was point­ed towards a web­site fea­tur­ing com­ic book char­ac­ters that are now report­ed­ly in the pub­lic domain. While going through all those char­ac­ters, it struck me that there was mate­r­i­al there which might be worth min­ing for future blog posts. As a result, this will be the first of a series of posts on “For­got­ten Ones,” which I may do from time to time.

For this inau­gur­al out­ing, I chose Bee-29, the Bom­bardier. Bee-29 is unique because so far as I know, he’s the only bee super­hero! He only made a few appear­ances back in 1945, but one of them was in a com­ic named for him. In the inter­ests of sav­ing col­umn space, if you’d like to read the entry for Bee-29 on the Pub­lic Domain Super Heroes site, you can check it out here.

If you’ve vis­it­ed this site much, you’ve prob­a­bly picked up on the fact I often like to try to find an angle to approach a char­ac­ter like this, some kind of a dif­fer­ent spin I can put on it instead of just repro­duc­ing some­thing ver­ba­tim. So I thought, “What if in some alter­nate world, Han­na-Bar­bera had picked up the rights to this char­ac­ter?” Going down that path lead to my attempt at an HB ver­sion of Bee-29 on the faux Gold Key cov­er you see here, since Gold Key han­dled most of the car­toon-based comics back in the day.

Let me go on record here and say that I am def­i­nite­ly a fan of the clas­sic Han­na-Bar­bera look. Yes, I grew up watch­ing those shows, but it’s more than that. Years ago when Han­na-Bar­bera was locat­ed on the 14th floor of the Impe­r­i­al Bank Build­ing in Sher­man Oaks, mul­ti­ple times a day I would walk by these great framed cels from shows like The Flint­stones and The Jet­sons, hang­ing on the walls in the hall­way. I saw how well-designed all those char­ac­ters were, and how strong­ly sil­hou­ette-ori­ent­ed they were. The HB design­ers took the restric­tions of lim­it­ed ani­ma­tion and small TV screens, and actu­al­ly turned them into strengths.

I’ve not had a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to attempt that clas­sic HB look, so this was a chance to ven­ture onto that play­ground a lit­tle bit. And I’d be remiss if I did­n’t tip my hat here and say thanks to my good friend Mark Chris­tiansen, who is tru­ly a clas­sic HB master.

Captain Marvel is #1!

Captain Marvel #1 FakeOkay, I real­ize I’ve done a lot of Mar­vel Fam­i­ly-cen­tric posts here late­ly. I hon­est­ly intend­ed that I was going to move away from that this time. But I could­n’t help myself!

My orig­i­nal plan here was to do a straight recreation/reinterpretation of the cov­er of  Cap­tain Mar­vel #1, pub­lished by Mar­vel Comics in 1968 and fea­tur­ing their alien ver­sion of Cap­tain Mar­vel (Kree, to be spe­cif­ic). It was to have been kind of a lit­tle joke, that it would be a Cap­tain Mar­vel, but not the same Cap­tain Mar­vel I usu­al­ly draw. Plus, I’ve always kind of liked the Kree Cap­tain Mar­vel’s orig­i­nal green and white out­fit for some reason.

But then, as I was look­ing at the cov­er, I remem­bered a con­ver­sa­tion I’d had with FCA Edi­tor P.C. Hamer­linck. For those of us with an inter­est in comics his­to­ry (who did what, who pub­lished what, and when), some­times it’s fun to play a game of “What If?” You take events as they hap­pened, then pro­pose a change. It’s like throw­ing a stone into a stream, and see­ing what rip­ples it makes. In this case, P.C. and I once had a con­ver­sa­tion where he threw out the idea, “What if instead of DC pick­ing up the rights to Faw­cett’s Cap­tain Mar­vel, it had been Mar­vel Comics that had made that call?”

That con­ver­sa­tion sud­den­ly came to mind as I looked at the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this cov­er, and real­ized that the pose of the Kree Cap­tain would­n’t take much to rework it slight­ly and make it work just as well for the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel. So I got hooked on the idea. This was the result.

Please bear with me for a lit­tle fan­boy indul­gence here: who do I think would’ve been the like­ly can­di­dates to do this book, if Mar­vel had bought the rights back then? Every­one’s obvi­ous first thought would like­ly be Jack Kir­by. How­ev­er, at that point in time, Kir­by’s con­tri­bu­tions to Mar­vel were mov­ing towards being most­ly just between the cov­ers of Fan­tas­tic Four and Thor. I believe it’s more like­ly that some­one from the sec­ond wave of Mar­vel cre­ators com­ing in at that time would’ve been giv­en this assign­ment. Art­wise, at the moment, I’m think­ing per­haps Bill Everett might’ve been the best choice. He had some of that Mar­vel ener­gy going for him, yet he also still had a cer­tain “car­toony-ness” to his work that I think Cap­tain Mar­vel needs.

The writ­ing side of the equa­tion is a no-brain­er. I’m sure Roy Thomas would’ve argued a very strong case for his being the one to get this assign­ment. And I’m think­ing Stan Lee most like­ly would’ve giv­en in and hand­ed the book to him.

“Sorry,…What Was Your Name Again?”

Hm. Where to begin to explain this one?

This orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out intend­ed to be just a sketch, done for John Pierce. But as these things some­times hap­pen with me, it sort of took on a whole life of its own. John is a friend, an email cor­re­spon­dent, a long­time comics fan and writer. You may have seen his work in some mag­a­zines about comics like Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego/FCA (the Faw­cett Col­lec­tors of America).

Any­way, John has a char­ac­ter he cre­at­ed called Jon­ni Star. Her sto­ries have appeared in a few small press comics here and there, usu­al­ly illus­trat­ed by Brazil­ian artist Emir Ribeiro. (I even took a crack at draw­ing Jon­ni myself once, and you can see the result here in my Gallery). John had an idea for a com­ic book char­ac­ter that John­na (Jon­ni’s civil­ian iden­ti­ty) liked to read about, called Mara­cana, the Invin­ci­ble Eagle. Which I guess makes Mara­cana a com­ic with­in a comic.

Most comics fans will like­ly be able to sort out for them­selves which char­ac­ter arche­type Mara­cana’s descend­ed from. But John has some inter­est­ing twists in there too, like hav­ing her root­ed in a more Celtic-influ­enced cul­ture instead of the Gre­co-Roman type one might tend to usu­al­ly expect with a char­ac­ter like this. Like I say, this start­ed out intend­ed to be just a sketch, but I guess I got car­ried away and could­n’t help myself. I thought the end result was fun. Seemed like I might just as well go ahead and post it here, while I’m at it.

Mara­cana the Invin­ci­ble Eagle is ™ and © John Pierce.

Before “Before Watchmen”

The image I’m post­ing this time is not a new one (it’s already over in the Gal­leries side of my site), but I’ve had some friends make the case that with DC Comics doing all their “Before Watch­men” books right now, it’s a good time to call atten­tion to it anew here on the front page.

There’s a sto­ry behind this piece. A friend of mine in the ani­ma­tion field, Lance Falk, has these sketch­books he pass­es around. They have art by some amaz­ing artists. Chances are if you can think of some big name artist, Lance very like­ly has art by him or her in one of his books. Way back when we were work­ing on “The Real Adven­tures of Jon­ny Quest” togeth­er, Lance asked if I’d be will­ing to do a sketch for his then-cur­rent book. It’s both huge­ly flat­ter­ing and daunt­ing, once you see the lev­el of work oth­ers have done.

Lance sug­gest­ed he might like to see the Watch­men done as if Kir­by had drawn them. I wound up mak­ing a whole cov­er pro­duc­tion out of it, as if it were done in the mid-’60s. Lance was very hap­py with the end result, and I was huge­ly relieved that it was well-received.

Fast for­ward some months lat­er (maybe even a year), and I find out that this sketch­book had been cir­cu­lat­ing fur­ther. It had crossed orig­i­nal Watch­men artist and co-cre­ator Dave Gib­bons’ path in Lon­don. When I first heard he’d seen the book with my draw­ing in it, I must admit I was tak­en aback. But Lance assured me that Mr. Gib­bons actu­al­ly got a big kick out of what I’d done. Once again, I was huge­ly relieved.

Fast for­ward to more recent times, and the pub­li­ca­tion of Mr. Gib­bons’ book, Watch­ing the Watch­men, which com­piled all kinds of back­ground mate­r­i­al on that piv­otal work. He appar­ent­ly liked this Kir­by Watch­men cov­er well enough, he asked me if I’d mind his includ­ing it in the book. What do you think I said? 🙂

Thanks much, Lance and Mr. Gibbons!

With One Magic Word…

Final­ly I get to show off the last of those two items I teased back in Decem­ber. I gave a fur­ther peek at it here. It’s anoth­er cov­er done for FCA, which appears in the back of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine. This one was obvi­ous­ly done up to look like one of those issues of Secret Ori­gins that DC Comics pub­lished in the ear­ly ’70s. I loved those as a kid, because back then they were one of the rare venues where you had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see any of that gold­en age com­ic material.

I’ve talked in pre­vi­ous posts about how much I liked the gold­en age Super­man and Bat­man. But with­out a doubt, my favorite gold­en age char­ac­ter would have to be Cap­tain Mar­vel. When DC brought him back from pub­lish­ing lim­bo in the ear­ly ’70s, I was already primed for it. I’d read about the “Big Red Cheese” in our local library’s copy of All in Col­or for a Dime, as well as in The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics. Some­thing about the visu­al and the idea of the char­ac­ter hooked me, even with­out ever hav­ing seen a sin­gle Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ry yet.

Not to dis­miss the sto­ries, but a huge part of the appeal of those gold­en age Cap­tain Mar­vel comics for me is the art. As the char­ac­ter’s design­er and main artist, C.C. Beck set the tone there. Most gold­en age com­ic book artists doing super­heroes looked to the news­pa­per adven­ture strips for their inspi­ra­tion. They most­ly tend­ed to fall into one of two schools: it was either the illus­tra­tive real­ism of Fos­ter and Ray­mond, or the more impres­sion­is­tic approach of Sick­les and Can­iff. Instead, Beck looked to the “fun­ny” por­tion of the fun­ny pages for his inspi­ra­tion (like Jack Cole did with Plas­tic Man). The result was a strip that had a look and feel like no oth­er. And of course, the writ­ing played a role in mak­ing that pos­si­ble too.

While the high­er-ups at Faw­cett may have want­ed Bill Park­er and C.C. Beck to just give them a knock­off of Super­man, that was not what they got. They got some­thing bet­ter. Many read­ers back then must have thought so too; at the peak of the char­ac­ter’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, they were pub­lish­ing Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures bi-week­ly and sell­ing 1.3 mil­lion copies of each issue!

I know some­times mod­ern fans have trou­ble with Mr. Tawky Tawny and some of the more whim­si­cal aspects of the strip, but for me, the clas­sic Cap­tain Mar­vel mate­r­i­al is inspi­ra­tional stuff. I wish I could tell you of a rel­a­tive­ly cheap and easy way to lay hands on that work if you haven’t seen it, but it seems hard­er to come by these days.

Doc (“Don’t Call Me ‘Doctor!‘”) Strange

Now that it’s fin­ished, I can show you one of the two items I teased back in Decem­ber. It’s a pin-up of the old Nedor Comics hero Doc Strange, as he might have appeared on the cov­er of an issue of Thrilling Comics in 1965, had Nedor still been pub­lish­ing at that point.

If you’re not famil­iar with the com­pa­ny, Nedor pub­lished (under sev­er­al names) dur­ing the gold­en age. They actu­al­ly had a fair­ly siz­able group of heroes, includ­ing Doc Strange. Nedor ceased pub­lish­ing comics at the end of the gold­en age. Since then, many peo­ple have tak­en a shot at doing some­thing with their old char­ac­ters. AC Comics has made use of them over the years, and so did Alan Moore and Peter Hogan more recent­ly in the Tom Strong spin­off minis­eries, Ter­ra Obscura.

Doc was a scientist/adventurer who invent­ed a serum he named Alo­sun, dis­tilled from “sun atoms.” This serum gave him super­hu­man strength, flight and invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty when he used it.

Enough of the his­to­ry les­son. So why did I do this pin-up/­cov­er? Easy; because I was asked. The one and only Will Meugniot is cur­rent­ly doing a new cre­ator-owned series (in the back of AC Comics’ Fem­Force) that picks up the threads of the Nedor books with the descen­dants of some of the char­ac­ters. It’s called “Agents of N.E.D.O.R.,” and is intend­ed as a peri­od piece tak­ing place in 1965. Will invit­ed sev­er­al artists to con­tribute pin-ups of the orig­i­nal Nedor char­ac­ters, and I was very flat­tered to be asked if I’d like to do so too.

As is typ­i­cal for me, instead of mak­ing things sim­ple on myself, I had to make a whole cov­er out of it. Since Will’s sto­ry takes place in 1965, I thought this should be a cov­er for Thrilling Comics (which starred Doc) also from ’65, as if Nedor had kept on pub­lish­ing all that time. I even did some math to work out the issue num­ber. How’s that for obsessive?

Doc Strange most often went on his adven­tures accom­pa­nied by his young side­kick Mike (who wore an iden­ti­cal out­fit, only with the addi­tion of a green cape for some rea­son). I thought it would be more fun though to show Doc with his girl­friend, Vir­ginia Thomp­son, as she would also some­times take part in his adven­tures. Of course, I updat­ed her look here for the times.

This will appear in b/w line art form in Fem­Force #159, since the book has b/w inte­ri­ors. But for my blog here, I want­ed to go full col­or. Because it’s how I saw this in my head from the start. I get asked to do a b/w pin-up and I envi­sion some­thing in col­or; go figure!

Thanks, Will. This was a lot of fun!

Yet More Teasing

Things are real­ly busy here. I fin­ished one of the projects I teased last month, but I still can’t show off the whole thing quite just yet. How­ev­er, rather than let the month pass with­out post­ing any­thing, I thought I’d at least show a por­tion of the final art. It’s anoth­er faux com­ic cov­er (some­thing I’ve done a lot of). This one I’m quite hap­py with (So is the client, which is always a good thing when you can man­age it), and I look for­ward to when the whole thing can be shown!

Once Again, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Well, I find myself in a strange posi­tion at the moment: buried under a num­ber of var­i­ous side projects. It’s unusu­al for me to get hit all at once like this, so I’m not quite sure what to make of it. They’re all the kinds of inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing assign­ments that are hard to say “no” to, and should be a lot of fun to see through. Got­ta keep them all mov­ing though. If you can imag­ine me fran­ti­cal­ly jug­gling to the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment of the “Sabre Dance,” you’ll get the idea.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though I’ve got all these projects going, they’re all just works-in-progress at the moment. None of them are done and ready to post. Even if they were, some of the peo­ple I’m doing them for might not be ready for me to put them up quite yet. And with the hol­i­days so close, I don’t think I’m going to have time to do any­thing else spe­cial for my site right now. So in lieu of that, I hope maybe some sneak peeks at a cou­ple of the works in progress will suf­fice for the moment. It’s either that, or let this month go by with­out post­ing anything.

One brand new item I can point out: I am pleased to announce that I am now being rep­re­sent­ed by Ellen Ann Mersereau, who works with a ros­ter of some of the most tal­ent­ed cre­ators in the busi­ness. You can find her con­tact info over to your right in the sidebar.

Wher­ev­er you are, what­ev­er your cur­rent cir­cum­stances, I hope the hol­i­days are good to you; that you have a good Christ­mas, and an excel­lent New Year!

Now It Can Be Told!

Some may recall there was a mys­te­ri­ous “teas­er” post I put up back before Christ­mas. I’d been asked to hold off on putting the full art­work for it on my site…until now. So here it is, final­ly: a copy of Amaz­ing Faw­cett Fan­ta­sy #15.

Nev­er seen one before? That’s because it does­n’t exist. It was done as the cov­er for FCA #159, which will be appear­ing in the upcom­ing land­mark 100th issue of Alter Ego. You can see it in con­text with the FCA logo and every­thing else over in my Gal­leries.

You’re prob­a­bly say­ing, “Wait, you goofed up! That does­n’t look any­thing like Spi­der-man!” Ah, but it seems that before the Spi­der-man we’re all famil­iar with came to be, there were sev­er­al vil­lain “spi­der men” char­ac­ters who cropped up in var­i­ous Faw­cett strips. Includ­ing the fel­low on this cov­er here, who went up against Cap­tain Marvel.

This assign­ment was sev­er­al lev­els of fun: get­ting to do my best C.C. Beck impres­sion, try­ing to fig­ure out just what a Faw­cett com­ic might have looked like had they still been pub­lish­ing into the ear­ly 60’s, and work­ing out how to use Pho­to­shop to make it look like a real, well-read comic.

Many thanks to both P.C. Hamer­linck and Roy Thomas for invit­ing me to be part of this mile­stone issue!

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to You All Out There

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!

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.