After working on Astroboy and Wonder Woman, for many years I was "on the list" of writers consulted for every comic-book movie that came down the pike.

When the Iron Man people asked me for a take on their then-aborning project, I took a jaunt to my local comic-book store to look for source material. This was quite a few years ago now, and, as hard as it is to believe, there was almost no Iron Man material in the stores. The only readily-available collection was The Power of Iron Man, an important, ground-breaking story arc that dealt mainly with Tony Stark's alcoholism.

First there was Garfield with Garfield silent. And I saw that it was good.

Then there was Garfield without Garfield. And I saw that it was also good.

Next I suppose it will be Garfield without anybody, just a low horizontal line, and it will be better than ever.  Then it will simply be three blank rectangles, and then it will finally be gone.

Via the newly-engaged Heidi at The Beat (congratulations Heidi!) and LJ-er Matthew High (of whose marital status I am ignorant).

UPDATE: You know, I almost forgot -- The Man Who Wasn't There was shot on color stock which was then desaturated to achieve some of the most lustrous black-and-white photography in cinema history.  However, because of the demands of the marketplace, in some markets the movie was released in color.  For those who wonder what The Man Who Wasn't There looks like in color, the answer can be found here.
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So I'm reading the new biography of Charles Schulz. Schulz, like Bob Dylan and the Coen Bros, was from Minnesota. Like Dylan and the Coen Bros, Schulz consistently, throughout his life, downplayed the cultural significance of his work. Bob Dylan says "I'm just a song and dance man," the Coens say "O Brother is a simple hick comedy," and Charles Schulz, to the end of his days, rued the smallness of his ambition, bemoaning the fact that he spent fifty years doing nothing more than drawing a simple comic strip.

Just as Dylan and the Coens have, occasionally, seen fit to acknowledge that yeah, they're pretty proud of some of their work, Schulz, when pressed, would reveal that he thought of himself as a serious artist doing better work than any of his contemporaries in his field (which, in fact, he was).

Dylan, it is well known, is obsessed with identity and masks, and the Coens have proven to be impenetrable in their interviews. Schulz, as well, said that he wore his unassuming looks as a kind of mask -- he always knew he was better than anyone around him, but craved invisibility, anonymity, lest anyone take too much notice of him.

(And then there's Prince, another Minnesota oddball, who seems to not have gotten the memo about Minnesotans being reserved and self-effacing.)

Following up on last week's group of Sam Superheroes:


( Dad's versions within )

Swiped from The Beat.  The other six parts of this hour-long piece can be found nearby at YouTube.

click for readable view.

I have no idea who created this. I found it here, with no explanation.

I post this primarily for the edification of r_sikoryak , who studies comic adaptations of classics (and who's probably already seen it).  The weird thing is, based on the Classics Illustrated comics R has shown me, this doesn't even seem like too far a stretch, more like a loving tribute.

click on images for larger view.

The first three pages of my long-in-development graphic novel are done, and the reviews are ecstatic!

"Those look -- pretty good -- " -- Robbie Busch

"They do look good, and I can definitely tell what's going on." -- R. Sikoryak

"Great work! I don't know how you learned to draw so quickly." -- Tony Millionaire

"Those pages look great. Good on you!" -- Jackson Publick

"I mean, I don't know anything about comics, but they look great to me." -- James Urbaniak

With ringing endorsements like this, I am hugely encouraged to continue. Messers Busch and Millionaire both detect a Kirby influence in the "big hand," which is weird because I've never particularly looked at Kirby, and Mr. Busch, in a moment of extreme generosity, compared these pages to the work of Jim Sterenko. I said that these pages look like Sterenko -- if Sterenko drew with a meat cleaver instead of a pen.

For the non-comics creators in my readership, please keep in mind that there will eventually be speech balloons taking up all the blank space you see here and sound effects added to make it all more dramatic.

I post these partly to promote my work and partly to comfort Senator Larry Craig, to remind him that a bathroom encounter with a strange man could end a whole lot worse.

Mark Gleim's A Simple Apology is good. The drawing, as you can see, could not be simpler, but is deceptively so. But I'm impressed by the sheer number of left turns he manages to put into his strips.

Last year I took some photos of my son's Justice League 4.5" action figures to test out the close-up feature on my digital camera. Then later I did some drawings based on the photos to test out my Wacom tablet. The results of this screwing around may be found here.

click for larger version.

Master cartoonist r_sikoryak is in town visiting and had two notes for my drawing from yesterday -- one, I had made the file too small, which was going to complicate printing later, and two, I had made some errors in coloring that it turns out I didn't have to make. So I thought, well, I had so much fun drawing it the first time, it won't kill me to draw it again and do it properly. So there you are -- a little peek inside the graphic-novel development process.

click for larger version.

Above, the opening panel of a new graphic novel I've started working on. Details to come.

In chapter one of Feeder Birds, squirrels invade the feeder. Cardinal dismisses them as "rats with fuzzy tails."  Later, he drowns one and the other birds attack it and pluck out its eyes.

Imagine my surprise when I looked out my window the other day to find this:



The feeder drawn in the panels above has moved three thousand miles, only to be invaded by actual rats.  And while Cardinal is not here to sort them out, the House Finches who frequent the feeder certainly had a thing or two to say about them.

My re-vamped Chapter 1 of my one-fine-day-to-be-completed graphic novel Feeder Birds will be presented at r_sikoryak's Carousel this Wednesday evening. The author (me) will be in attendance and providing the voice of Flicker. Details of where and when can be obtained by clicking on the above images. Following the link below will provide the viewer with a 10-second version of the chapter. More images from the massive bird fight that forms the centerpiece of the chapter can be found here.

It's worth noting that this edition of Carousel is to benefit Doug Skinner, whose studio was flooded a few months ago with much loss to his work and livelihood.  Doug is, to put it simply, one of the most talented people I've ever met in my life.  A true renaissance man, Doug is a gifted songwriter, performance artist, musician, composer, cartoonist, and many other things.

How smart is Doug Skinner?  Here's an illustrative story:

In 1989 or so, I ran into Doug at an evening of performance art.  We were both on the bill that night and we had some time to kill during tech rehearsal.  I had brought the Village Voice to read.  Doug was reading Voltaire.  In French.  The big story that week was that Steve Martin and Robin Williams were currently starring in a big-deal production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center.  The scandal of the production was that, in spite of gigantic ticket demand, it was being presented in the 300-seat Mitzi Newhouse Theater.  I wondered aloud if the production justified the hype, and Doug mentioned that he had seen it.  I remembered that Doug had trod the boards at Lincoln Center for many years as the co-star/co-creator of Bill Irwin's In Regard of Flight, and that  Mr. Irwin was playing Lucky in the current production of Godot.  This all explained how Doug got in for the hottest ticket in town, but how did he like the show?  I asked him, and he replied, with characteristic underplaying, "Well, it's not a very good play..."

Master cartoonist Ruben Bolling sums up my feelings much better than I could have.

As usual, The Beat has the story.

His apology seems a little pro forma to me, which is fine, but it leaves many questions unanswered. Like, who, if not Mr. Goldman, wrote that bizarre, obscene bulk email slagging his opponent? And why? And what about all the other dozens of design thefts his company indulges in?

Master cartoonist Ruben Bolling neatly sums up the war in Iraq.

The Beat is covering a truly unbelievable scandal regarding one Todd Goldman, who, apparently, makes a living from stealing other people's work and putting on t-shirts. It seems that not one, nor two, but all of his designs rely on the work of forgotten, amateur or low-profile artists.

When challenged on his actions, Goldman's response is, apparently, to accuse the people he's ripping off of being child molestors.  I wish I was making this up.

I'm conflicted by the death of Johnny Hart. When I was a kid, B.C. was my favorite strip in the world for a long, long time. I collected the books, read them over and over, compared one to another, mentally charted the development of ideas and themes, thought about how the characters differed and how they acted toward one another, learned to draw all of them. It was a big part of my life for what seems like years.

I had not read the strip in decades when I learned that he had decided to go out of his way to inject his strict fundamentalist Christian views into his work. Strips like this, this, this and this seem unasked for at best and hateful at worst. To start with only the most obvious, how do you explain a bunch of cavemen discussing evolution? Or Jesus? In a strip titled, ahem, B.C.? It's one thing to write according to your beliefs, but why use an art form (on the funnies page, no less) as a tool to bludgeon Jews, Muslims and, essentially, anyone who isn't also a fundamentalist Christian? Charles Schulz was a devout Christian and wrote of his beliefs with elegance, charm and great warmth. Not every cartoonist can be a Schulz, and my early life was greatly enriched by Hart's work, but he ended his career on a decidedly sour note of intolerance.

UPDATE: An eloquent appraisal of Hart's talents can be found here.

Dinosaur comic makes me laugh! I enjoy laughing, it's better than sadness!.

Meanwhile, what could be funnier than Dinosaur Comics? Nothing I can think of! Unless maybe it's panels from Dinosaur Comics presented in a constantly-changing random order!

swiped from The Beat.