Tag Archives: Mister U.S.

Hey, Mister!

Long­time vis­i­tors to this blog might know that I was a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Big Bang Comics back in the day. I had lots of fun being a part of that! On his blog over on the Big Bang Comics site, Big Bang co-founder Gary Carl­son has been writ­ing an arti­cle about each issue that came out, in pub­li­ca­tion order. He just made it up to #8, which end­ed up fea­tur­ing a char­ac­ter named Mis­ter U.S. (co-cre­at­ed by writer Nat Gertler and I). You can read all about it here.

Just so there’s some­thing to look at here, I’ve put up a col­or guide I did for one of the vari­ant cov­ers. Back in those days, I was­n’t using Pho­to­shop yet, so this was all done using mark­ers and water­col­ors, then mark­ing up the page with the CMYK col­or for­mu­lae I want­ed for each col­or. Aside from that, between Gary and Nat, they’ve cov­ered the rest of the sto­ry pret­ty well, and I don’t want to spoil any­thing here. But it’s worth check­ing out, if you’re curi­ous about the “secret ori­gin” of this issue and how it came to be.

 

Nat Gertler to the Rescue!

This post will be a lit­tle out­side my ordi­nary, but I think it’s war­rant­ed in order to give cred­it where cred­it’s due.

Since launch­ing this site, I’d been telling peo­ple that it was 90–95% of the way there to what I want­ed it to be. There were a few items where I just could­n’t quite fig­ure out how to tweak them into what I need­ed. But as of late yes­ter­day, that has final­ly changed!

This is cour­tesy of an old friend, writer and expert/dabbler in many things, Nat Gertler. I approached him to see if per­haps he might be able to tweak those inter­web thin­gies that need­ed tweak­ing, and he agreed to give it a shot. And he did it bril­liant­ly! It’s a huge relief to have my site final­ly work­ing just the way I always want­ed it to work. So, a very big “Thanks!” goes out to Nat.

So what’s with the bear? Well, I thought it would be bor­ing to have a post with no images. These pan­els come from a sto­ry I drew fea­tur­ing Nat’s Licens­able Bear™. LB™ and Mis­ter U.S. are prob­a­bly the main things that Nat and I have had the plea­sure of col­lab­o­rat­ing on. You can see sam­ples of my Mis­ter U.S. work on the site herehere and here.

Mis­ter U.S. is ™ and © Nat Gertler and Mark Lewis, Licens­able Bear™ is ™ and © Nat Gertler.

The Galleries are Up! Happy New Year!

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.