Wayback Wednesday: The Pajama Game
I was a pretty driven kid, all things considered. I've known all my life I wanted to be a cartoonist. And I actually made sure to take assignments to teach myself to draw on a deadline. I took jobs that I didn't necessarily want to do, or weren't in my wheelhouse, just to train better. Doing a more realistic style wasn't my strong suit, but I tried it here on my high school musical's poster for The Pajama Game.
Design-wise, and especially on the logo, I think I did pretty well. In actual drawing, 
oh Lordy is there a lot to wince at. Bad figures, deformed faces, steroid-induced bodies. But you get better by doing, right?
I also was in the stage crew for that musical, which was a lot of fun, and I wished that I had done that sooner. I waited until I was a senior and had a girlfriend in the cast to get involved. But I loved my time on that show, and still have one of the sewing machine pieces (lovingly referred to as the Satan Desks) that I designed for the show here in my house. I can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Love and Capes Covers, FCBD and Retail
I'm about to send the 2010 Free Comic Book Day issue of Love and Capes to the printer. As such, I've put together the alternate cover for the retail version, which I now debut here. Click on either to see them embiggened.
I'm looking forward to Free Comic Book Day this year. I should be doing a signing that hopefully I can officially announce soon. I'll let you know as soon as I can.
Wayback Wednesdays: Schooltones
Let's go back to high school, my days at Lake Catholic. I did the comic strip for the school paper. It was an odd gig for me at the time. The paper came out every couple of months, so it was more a magazine than a newspaper. I was a Bloom County fan, as mentioned before, and deep down wanted to do a four panel strip with recurring characters. Unfortunately, the schedule didn't let you build anything like that. So, I had to do a straight-up gag strip.
I sed to say that it'd take me one month, twenty-nine days and 22 hours to write the strip, and two hours to draw it.
The name of the strip was "Schooltones". Lake Catholic, you see, didn't have bells, it had tones. A high b-flat if I remember right. So, instead of School Bells it was SchoolTones. Man, was 14 year old me clever!
The problem was, at the time, I wasn't funny at all. I hadn't taken John Troy's humor class at Kubert, which taught me the important lesson of lower your standards. I wanted to do laugh-out-loud classic comics, and I wasn't good enough. But if I just tried for a smile instead, I could learn and build to something better.
Occasionally, I did a good one. I leave it up to you whether this one was one of those. Here, in the height of the 1988 political season and Halloween, I took a pretty obvious shot at Vice-Presidential candidate Dan Quayle, the Rosetta Stone of comedy at the time.
In the background is someone dressed as Dr. Crusher, because I always tried to throw some hidden Star Trek reference in my strips. You'll also notice my old signature, a Klingon"R" lookin' thing that was my attempt at a TZ. My family had a couple artists in it, and there was a family signature. In my youthful quest for indivduality, I tried to carve my own out, but I was never satisfied with it. Eventually, I went to the familar family sig, and I'm very happy and proud that I did.
…and We're BACK!
The site is back up and looking almost the same as before. There's still a tweak or two to be had, and some of the older art won't be up until later today. Those things aside, the Blog should be back to normal and spam free now.
Almost there
The weblog is almost back up to speed. All the old posts are back, and the images are following now. The page design should be back later this afternoon.
Don't Go Breaking My Heart
So I got hooked on Curling. Especially after the USA was eliminated, I became a big fan of Team Canada. So much so that I actually TiVoed the last two matches since I wasn't home to watch either live. Last night was the final between Canada and Sweden. Canada looked like they were going to win it, but Sweden managed to score two in the tenth end off a Cheryl Bernard misstep, and then the Swedes won in the eleventh. It was good and exciting and…
…well, depressing. I mean, I finally watch part of the Olympics, something I haven't done since 1984, get invested in a team, and they lose. You'd think being a Cleveland fan, I'd be used to this. Still doesn't make it less of a downer, though.
Anyway, Good job Team Canada, and congratulations Team Sweden.
Oh, yeah, and I did another page, too. While watching the match. See, everything ties together.
I Just Liked This, Watson
I just saw Sherlock Holmes again today, and liked it just as much. Then I stumbled upon this music video for the movie featuring the Hans Zimmer score, which I think worked really well. It's got that old fashioned sound and yet still rocks the modern.
Warm-Up Sketch Largely Featuring Ice
I did a warm-up sketch to try to get my brain firing today.
With the USA out, I'm rooting for our neighbors to the north today. I figure, they've given us William Shatner, Evangeline Lilly, Leslie Nielsen, Nathan Fillion, Estella Warren and my friend Mark Lutz. For all that, I can give a little cheer back.
Don't spoil it for me, though. I have to watch today's match TiVo-delayed a couple of hours.
Wayback Wednesday: Bloom County
Here's another Joe Kubert class project. Here, we had to ape the style of a comic strip. I've mentioned before how huge a Bloom County fan I am, so it's no surprise I did Berke Brethed's strip. At the time, Clarence Thomas was being grilled by the Senate at his confirmation hearings on the way to becoming a Supreme Court judge. I thought this was a perfect topic for my strip.
I tried to do things like Brethed did. I inked with pen instead of brush. I used the photocopy/photo thing on Ed McMahon's picture. I even signed my name backwards the way he did.
The Sunday strip was out of continuity, as many Sundays were. The reference to Kent State's nursing school was a call out to a high school friend who was attending that program (and later graduated and became a nurse).
Of course, if you want to see Bloom County done right, be sure to check out IDW's beautiful Bloom County collections. The first one is out now, and the second one is soon to follow.
If you want to see it done by me, click and embiggen!
