The Man Who Japed

All the rage

2012-01-26T08:05:00.000-05:00

A little while back I decided to try my hand at this rage comics meme I'd heard about via the series of tubes. To kill two birds with one stone, I did a rage version of a comics exercise I'd been meaning to try for a long time, something suggested by cartoonist, educator, and old friend Matt Madden in his book "99 Ways To Tell A Story: Exercises In Style." Challenge accepted!

Drawing on the walls

2012-01-15T12:32:00.001-05:00

My mom always told me not to when I was a kid, but this month The Detroit Artists Market invited me to draw cartoons on their walls to coincide with their annual design show. The theme this year was "occasional tables," with several local creators contributing some unique furniture, so I thought about famous tables in art history and came up with these cartoons. (There was a fashion and jewelry runway show at the opening too, and cocktails - which you can also see in the drawings). Feedback's been good, seems the drawings are a big hit! The show's up until February 18, 2012. Many thanks to the folks at DAM for giving me the opportunity. (More photos are on my Flickr site.)

Just ghost to show...

2011-11-23T15:18:00.001-05:00

Another Optik ad, this one for the Metro Times' Xmas gift guide. My Scrooge looks just a bit Patrick Stewart-ish, probably since that's the version of the story we listen to every year.

Return of the Living Dead Intellectuals, Parts I, II & III

2011-11-02T00:11:00.000-04:00

Seems everyone loves an intellectual zombie! Lately my cartoon has been cropping up all over, for better or worse. First a co-worker pointed out that it's being swapped around several blogs (and horror fan sites, too). Then it showed up on the online version of the Yale University campus humor magazine, The Yale Record!

A couple days later, I got an email from musician Gorgorgathgorgorgor saying he'd used it as the thumbnail art for his zombiriffic electronic tune "Do The Shamble".

All cool and flattering and well and good - I'm truly glad so many folks get a laugh out of it! BUT...

...then the cartoon, or a lo-res fragment of it, was stolen and included, along with other swiped photos and art, in a collage created by the Loudon County, Virginia branch of the Republican party and sent out with an email to their supporters on Halloween. One of the images was a zombified version of the Shepard Fairey Obama poster, complete with bullet hole in the forehead. The perpetrators had their wrists dutifully slapped by GOP higher-ups, but only after the horse was out of the barn, of course.

So: The GOP used my work without my permission or that of my publisher Tor.com, and without giving credit or providing links; reproduced it in a mutilated, lo-res state (minus the punchline, even!); and utilized it in support of a party I strongly oppose on virtually every front. I dunno, I guess I expect better from people who claim to be so concerned about private property rights. Mmmmmmactually, no I don't, not at all. F-in' scumbags.

Mask of the Dead

2011-10-23T14:29:00.000-04:00

Why dress up like a character from a movie when you can wear the whole movie right on your face? Here's the "zombie attack"mask I made to be auctioned off at the upcoming Hatchoween fundraiser.

Hatch-o-ween!

2011-10-19T23:57:00.000-04:00

Here's the poster I came up with for Hatch's autumn fundraiser. Any money we make goes towards getting heat in the old police station we're renovating, so we can get our studios rented out and start bringing in some revenue on our own.

Rrrace fansss!!

2011-09-27T10:58:00.000-04:00

Don't miss the Popps Packing Pinewood Derby, an auction and race of dozens of handmade toy cars created by local artists. Auction proceeds go towards creating a sculpture park on the border of Detroit and Hamtramck! Here's a look at my entry in the wacky races.

Dr. Sketchy Rides Again!

2011-09-18T23:03:00.001-04:00

Sketchy started with an '80s aerobics theme last week, but these are from the cowboys-'n'-indians look that came up later in the night.

Happy 5th Birthday Detroit Sketchy!

2011-09-11T11:46:00.002-04:00

Forgot to post these, from last month's fifth birthday celebration of Dr. Sketchy in Detroit. Had a whole troupe of wacky burlesque beauties to work from, plus a fire-twirler performing afterwards and cupcakes! Next session is this Thursday.

Movies in context

2011-09-03T21:09:00.001-04:00

On the Facebook page for The Criterion Collection they're having a contest: Photograph one of their DVD covers "in context" - illustrating a scene from or the theme of the film somehow - and maybe win a prize pack of new releases. Here are my two entries, which I spent most of a Saturday putting together, for Orson Welles's documentary on art forgery "F for Fake" and Clouzot's nail-biter "The Wages of Fear."

UPDATE: My "F for Fake" entry came in second in the voting! (I lost to a "Videodrome" image.) My "Wages of Fear" image was among the top ten finalists too, for a few minutes anyway, but then it was removed, most likely because the judges didn't want two entries from one person in the final 10 (that's my hopeful theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it!). Anyway, I consider that a bonus victory, and I got lots of kind words from the Criterion fans, plus a free DVD as a prize.

So now that I've got the bug, the next art film-related project for me will be contributing to the very cool Fake Criterion blog!

Ain't no Thing

2011-09-01T10:23:00.001-04:00

Here's my page for the upcoming exhibit at Green Brain Comics, a recreation of the first issue of Fantastic Four with each page redrawn by a different artist. Check out the exhibit when it opens September 21.

Crush with eyeglasses

2011-08-29T10:25:00.003-04:00

Here's the latest ad for Optik, featuring a college-dazed bizarre love triangle, appearing in the College Guide issue of the Detroit Metro Times.

Bass Man

2011-08-03T11:06:00.001-04:00

Doodled in the dark at a performance at the Berkley Front pub, Berkley MI.

Dr. Sketchy June/July

2011-07-26T09:31:00.003-04:00

June: Does the Scarab Club have bugs other than scarabs?

July: Jessica Rabbit returns. Fill up that tip hat, folks!

Happy Daze at Dr. Sketchy

2011-05-21T23:41:00.003-04:00

Some drawings of model Renee Daze from last week's session at the Scarab Club.

Pro-Spec-tive students

2011-05-16T11:21:00.002-04:00

Here's some happy-lookin' characters I drew up to help promote the "Media Mayhem" workshop series at Specs Howard school. They may turn up in an upcoming project here as well...

Rock 'n' roll never forgets

2011-04-18T15:16:00.003-04:00

These are some photo-collages I did for the Specs Howard marketing department's Street Team video-makin' crew.

They were used in a faux documentary interview with WRIF DJ Anne Carlini, casting her as a sort of rock 'n' roll Zelig who's hung out with rock's giants - and dispensed some horrible advice to them along the way. You can see the full video here.

These are cobbled together from posed photos of Carlini and dozens of stock photos. I cropped the heads off the celebs so we wouldn't need to pay for their photos, but actually I think it's funnier this way.

April sketches

2011-04-17T10:53:00.004-04:00

Two from the mini-Dr Sketchy session, featuring Delilah Debauch of Hell's Belles, held at the opening of the Hatchback 5 art opening at Cafe 1923...

...and one from afterwards, hanging out at the Atlas Bar with some Hatch members. (Wish I drew in this style more often!)

One for the art majors

2011-03-24T23:44:00.002-04:00

I sketched this a dozen times on various scraps of paper before finally sitting down, finding a reference and finishing it. This watercolor version was made for the 2011 Actual Size show now on display at the Whitdel Arts gallery in Detroit.

(Sc)avengers assemble!

2011-01-16T13:46:00.004-05:00

Some digital collages I did for a sketchbook project (that I might actually finish someday soon...)

MODOKs, mo' problems

2010-12-31T11:16:00.005-05:00

Here are my entries into the MODOK show that graced the walls of Green Brain Comics the past several weeks. These are some of AIM's less successful attempts at making a mental organism designed only for killing. They got the "mental" part right, anyway.

Happy Holidays 2010

2010-12-23T21:29:00.002-05:00

Flaked tragically on the snail mail thing this year, but here's our holiday card. (This one's dedicated to Fang, our late great mighty hunter and member of our feral porch colony.) Peace, everyone.

Back pocket sketchbook

2010-11-15T12:06:00.003-05:00

A few keepers from the auxiliary brain I keep near my hindquarters - like a stegosaurus!

Music man

2010-11-12T13:56:00.002-05:00

A cover illustration for Metro Times, depicting a sort of archetypical forgotten musician. Unusual for me to work strictly in Illustrator like that. I did the first sketch for this in the steam on the glass door of my shower - a literal thumbnail sketch!

Close enough for rock & roll

2010-11-12T13:54:00.002-05:00

My attempt at caricaturing the Rolling Stones, for a recent Optik ad.

More Friday night DIA sketching

2010-10-31T14:12:00.004-04:00

In the Asian galleries last night. (Wish I had a bigger scanner at home so I wouldn't have to stitch these together to post them!)

(Edit: adding a sketch from last year of one of my fave pieces at the DIA, Barlach's "Avenger.")

They won't stay dead!

2010-09-15T10:08:00.001-04:00

Another year, another batch of zombie cartoons from Yours Truly over at Tor.com, a new one each weekday as part of their Zombie Week extravaganza! Check out all the stories, essays, comics and other undead-related fun, including some thoughtful comments on the nature of zombies from me and other authors in the Zombie Survey. (As you can see in the cartoon above, folks take these matters very seriously...)

Masters — of Eyewear!

2010-09-15T08:51:00.002-04:00

My latest illustration for Optik Birmingham, to run in the Metro Times's Fall Arts issue.

Stage dive!

2010-07-28T16:46:00.002-04:00

Found this oldie while cleaning up a hard drive; a Metro Times promotional illustration from 2000 some time.

Lone Shark Rides Again!

2010-07-05T00:03:00.002-04:00

Me on the set of the "Cynicalman" movie, with the Sharkmobile, ready to mix it up with Dr. Pweent's zombie army. Photos by Jim Mackey.

Go easy, it's my first ray gun

2010-07-02T22:55:00.002-04:00

Behold(!) the Brainiator weapon, built by me mostly from (can you tell?) used office supplies, dryer hose and duct tape. Created for Matt Feazell's upcoming "Cynicalman" movie.

Cemetery Sketches

2010-06-26T23:39:00.002-04:00

Drawn at Elmwood Cemetery as part of Hatch's June sketch outing.

Once and future

2010-06-26T00:15:00.004-04:00

This cover art from the 25th anniversary of Metro Times was one of the "slides" I showed at the Specs Howard Sketch Night, as an illustration of character design. MT is coming up on 30 years old now.

Annie-lectronic

2010-06-24T22:51:00.002-04:00

A sketch of "Red Hot" Annie Weinert from a recent Dr. Sketchy session where I first used my slightly-outmoded-but-still-cool tablet PC.

Buffalo stance

2010-06-15T18:56:00.002-04:00

Another good place to draw: The Detroit Zoo (Home, BTW, of the fountain seen in the snow globe in Coraline.)

Cool cat

2010-06-12T12:26:00.002-04:00

Stone cold, actually - it's a marble sculpture in the Greek section of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Been trying to head over there more often on Fridays when they're open late and draw in the galleries.

Just Like Heaven

2010-06-09T20:48:00.004-04:00

This watercolor cartoon was made for an exhibit at the great Cass Cafe in Detroit with the theme of "targets." So far I haven't heard The Cure's Just Like Heaven used to sell anything to me and my fellow aging Gen X-ers, but who knows — there'll be plenty of adjustable mattresses and incontinence briefs to fob off on us in the coming years.

Where's your head at?

2010-06-07T21:54:00.003-04:00

These are at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, drawn while Soph and I visited there in '09. There's half a wall of labeled and sorted skulls there, along with rooms full of other medical novelties. Great place for sketching!

San Diego Zombie Con

2010-06-05T05:49:00.004-04:00

Tor hired me again last year to do some zombie cartoons to promote their presence at the San Diego Comic Con. (Tor's presence I mean, not the undead's. Although...) The cartoons were posted one-at-a-time online and also put together as a flyer to hand out at Tor's table. Read them all here. Zombies and comic con — double-plus geek!

And because who can get enough, here's a shot of a few of the hundreds of "Smokin' Zombies" matchbooks I've hand-drawn and sold over the last couple years at art fairs and whatnot.

One more time...

2010-06-04T23:53:00.002-04:00

Gonna try this blog thing again, strictly as a place to post art samples (and encourage myself to draw more...) To start, here's the re-working of the cover of R. Crumb's fantastic Genesis adaptation, in the manner of his earlier work, for an exhibit of re-imagined comics covers hosted by Green Brain Comics earlier this year. It's now in the private collection of a local Crumb fan.

The 12 Days of Zombie Christmas!

2008-12-22T09:04:00.003-05:00

Nothing gets me into the seasonal spirit like zombies, so Tor.com is publishing a new zombie holiday comic strip by me every day from today to Jan. 2 - it's "The 12 Days of Zombie Christmas!" Take a look!

Political coverage

2008-11-28T19:58:00.005-05:00

Two recent Metro Times covers by me with political bents, one on the elections in the suburbs of Detroit, the other on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

Better Zombies Through Physics!

2008-09-26T19:31:00.003-04:00

It's ALIVE! Better Zombies Through Physics, the new web comic mini-series by me and writer Jim "Two-Fisted Science" Ottaviani is now online.

Cats! Zombies! SCIENCE! Through the miracle of quantum mechanics, a brilliant physicist bearing a strange resemblance to Erwin Schrödinger has produced the perfect undead feline - or has he? Go now to see the first installment this week at Tor.com.

Hulk BLOG!!

2008-09-25T20:27:00.010-04:00

Yeah, I'm back, updating my puny little corner of the internet after nearly a year.

In comics news: I got last-minute recruited (as in, I had to do it all over a weekend) by the Detroit free weekly paper I work for, Metro Times, to do a 2 1/2 page comic strip plus a cover illustration to mark the resignation of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. See the whole strip here. It's caught some flak, but generally reactions have been favorable. You can hear me and writer Curt Guyette interviewed on local public radio about the strip here.

And just for fun, I'm posting a few recent movie review illustrations I've done for said weekly.

And if you're one of those "word-reading" types, you can even look up some of my recent arts-related MT articles, here, here, and here (that last one being a story on cartoonist James Kochalka's recent visit to the area).

More to come, if I don't flake out for another 11 months!

Battlegourds!!

2007-10-31T09:46:00.001-04:00

I could carve a normal old jack-o-lantern, but where's the fun in that? If only I'd thought of this concept in the mid-80s, it'd have made a great Saturday morning cartoon. Battlegourds!!

Lookit me, I'm a real arteest!

2007-10-31T09:18:00.000-04:00

Somehow I find myself involved in not one but two real-life gallery shows right now. (This is unusual for me, most of what I do is for reproduction rather than wall-hanging.)

First is the Actual Size show, at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, a show in which all pieces must be the same size - 8 1/2 x 11". I entered a modified version of my Morton's Girl/Judith image under the title "She Reigns (Judith)" that seems to be getting good reactions from gallery visitors.

The other exhibit is actually a benefit auction for the exhibition program at Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester, Michigan. All the participants were given blank CDs and jewel cases to do with as they pleased. Some went as far as dismantling them completely into abstract sculptures, but I decided to keep mine functional. The idea is to make a mix disc of "guilty pleasures" - your most embarrassing favorite songs - and share the disc with a friend. I put together a sort of homemade "eco-pack" to hold the disc. That's the cover image up top there.

How to milk a concept

2007-08-15T20:10:00.001-04:00

So this is my cover illustration for this week's Metro Times. The cover story is about local authors and small presses around Michigan. Someone on the editorial staff remembered a drawing I'd done years ago (around 2000) for an MT in-house promo ad and thought it'd make a good cover. Except I'd already recycled that drawing in 2005 for an ad promoting another literary supplement, the annual fiction contest! Oh well. I redrew the image, amped it up a little and added color, and everyone on staff loved it, so there it is.

I'm fond of it, though it's really just a angst-ified version of the "duck hitting a computer with a hammer" art that every office on earth has a 100,000th-generation photocopy of, tacked up in a cubicle somewhere.

Oh, you know, keepin' busy

2007-07-12T22:39:00.000-04:00

Some recent stuff: Above is the cover art for this week's Metro Times, an illustration for an article about the 7 "deadly sins" of children's pop culture and the pitfalls they present to parents.

Also in this issue is my review of Elvis Road, a massive, manic comic strip by two Swiss cartoonists. I hear that at least one reader was asking for it at good ol' Green Brain Comics after reading my article, so that's gratifying.

Finally, here's an article about the arts group here in Hamtown, Hatch, that explains everything we're up to (and against) better than I could. Closing reception for the Exquisite Corpse show is tomorrow night.

...and leave a pretty corpse

2007-06-27T19:54:00.000-04:00

The arts group I'm part of here in Hamtramck, Hatch, has a show up now of exquisite corpses, collaborative figures randomly cobbled together from pieces designed by 21 different local artists. Here are my four pieces, reassembled into their original state. I started out with the idea of illustrating the 7 deadly sins, scraped the notion early on, but kept a vague "angels vs. devils" theme (without taking sides in the fight myself...). Photos of the panels by Krysti Spence.

The "chest" panel depicts a hot rod version of one of my favorite objects, the first-ever artificial heart pump, designed by General Motors and first successfully used here in Detroit. There's one in a case at Harper Hospital here, another one's in the Smithsonian. It looks like a chrome-plated lawn mower engine, with glass piston cylinder things on the sides and big analog knobs and gauges. You can almost make it out here.

My time of the month

2007-06-16T21:18:00.002-04:00

Hm, yeah, time for my monthly blog post, huzzah.

So here's some stuff I've been doing for the Metro Times lately. First, for the Summer Guide issue, the editorial staff all went on short trips within about a two-hour drive of Detroit and wrote about what they found. I did a full-page comic strip about the town of Petrolia, Ontario, site of North America's first oil well. Sample panel above, and you can find the full strip here. (Edited with new link, since the MT one seems to be broken...)

That same issue I did an illustration for an article about how the Sgt. Pepper's album wasn't as innovative as you think. I punted on the likenesses, but you get the idea. I'm particularly proud of Paul's skull-n-crossbones boxer shorts.

What else? Lots to see on the Dr. Sketchy blog, since the last session was a big hit. Also I finally got to do the last panel of "Good Ol' Conan the Barbarian" in living color over on Serializer.net (if you've seen the strip before you'll know why that's a big deal!).

Speaking of Serializer, last week I met up with the cartoonist who got me on the site, Eric Millikin, and fellow Serializer member Matt Feazell, at Green Brain Comics to see Mikhaela Reid and Masheka Wood do slide presentations about their comics. Detroit was the first stop on their book tour - they each have a collection of their stuff out now. Mikhaela's the editorial page cartoonist for Metro Times, so the D was an obvious place to start her tour. I wrote about her work and did a brief Q&A that you can read here. More gooder photos and some cartoons of Mikhaela's on her Flicker pages.

Here's some more recent MT articles of mine:

A review of Fantagraphics' bestiary "Beasts!"

A rant of sorts about a package of stationary decorated by Detroit pop artist Glenn Barr.

A rumination on David Lynch's recent book.

See you next month?

Oh, hey, hi!!

2006-11-02T14:44:00.000-05:00

Hi, hey, yeah, so... how the hell are ya?

Oh, you know, I'm okay. Geez, what've I been up to, let's see. Went to Greece? Greece was fun. Lots of cats there. I should put some photos online for y'all probably.

Went to Portland? Very cool, saw a bunch of people, did some stuff, y'know. (In fact, here's photographic proof that I not only attended the Stumptown comics fest but fashioned a hideous jackrabbit-o-lantern while in Portland as well...) More on that soon too, maybe.

Um, oh - ! They're running my "Jape" comics on Serializer! Yeah, I know, but they're back up now and it looks great, you should check it out.

What else... Well, as you can see, I got to draw Satan for the cover of Metro Times last week, just in time for Halloween.

Whew, there, a post! Good!

Hatched!

2006-08-12T19:21:00.000-04:00

I've been helping lately, along with other local artists, to start a nascent arts collective here in Hamtramck called Hatch. We plan on sponsoring arts-related events and exhibits, educational projects for the community, and studio and communal space for local artists.

Last Thursday we held our first event, the launch of a series of "life drawing with a twist" sessions inspired by Molly Crabapple's Dr. Sketchy project in New York. This was the design for the postcard I handed out at the event. Check out the results of the first Dr. Sketchy: Motor City Division session - we had a really great time!

A few thoughts...

2006-08-08T01:04:00.000-04:00

Yeah yeah, I know, "it's the web, add some color! It's free!" I like black-n-white, okay?

Possum Dearie

2006-08-05T23:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, enough people have chuckled at this in my sketchbook that I decided to post it. I spotted this teeny-tiny possum, small enough to fit in your palm, at the arts festival at Wayne State University last month. He was happily chomping up something in the grass (bugs?) before he spotted me and waddled away into the bushes. (There! A post!)

When she reigns, it pours

2006-07-23T12:56:00.000-04:00

Another Judith-like image, a sketch for a future print.

Hey, this is the first piece of art I've created with the express purpose of putting it online! How about that.

Hell is other papal

2006-06-18T11:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, that's a lousy pun. It's just I found this jpeg I put together during the changing of the popes a while ago and thought I'd post it here. Well, I thought it was funny.

(And yeah, I know the sidebar is goofed up and the links are gone... not sure what happened, I'll fix it later. Bleah.)

Insert trite comics pun headline here

2006-06-14T11:02:00.000-04:00

I'm finally getting back into writing about comics for the free paper I work for. Not sure why the article is in the summer guide - none of these seem like lite beach reading, but then I don't go to the beach too much so how would I know?

Apologies for the dumb headline, I didn't write it. I guess comics writing is still novel enough (or graphic novel enough, ah ha ha ha...) to call for silly punny headlines. Imagine if every article on the symphony had a headline like "Maestro orchestrates a classic," or every emotionally evocative film ever made was described as a "moving picture" (hyuk!).

Art above is from 676 Apparitions of Killoffer. I've already read one review of this book that had a very different take on it than I have. What do you think?

The write stuff

2006-05-21T13:19:00.000-04:00

And just because I haven't posted anything in forever, here's another one, an illustration I did for the Metro Times' fiction contest issue a couple years ago. The poet in the center and the slash writer are based on friends.

Cartoonists + booze = monkeys

2006-05-21T12:28:00.000-04:00

Whenever you get three or more small-press cartoonists in a room together for very long, a comics jam is likely to break out. Alcohol makes this even more likely, and when said cartoonists haven't seen each other in months and are all suffering from Chinese buffet food buzzes and the post-convention slap-happies, it's almost inevitable. Following the Motor City Comic Con on Saturday, a bunch of us gathered in Pam Bliss' hotel room with a few bottles of wine and discussed... oh, hell, I forget. Anyway, some of the wine bottles had, oddly, pictures of monkeys playing jazz instruments on them. This one had no monkeys, so naturally we had to remedy the situation. I think I have the contributors sorted out: clockwise from top left are Jim Ottaviani, Pam Bliss, Matt Feazell, Jane Irwin, Paul Sizer, Yers Trooly, Michelangelo Cicerone and Suzanne Baumann (center). (Looking at it, I might have Jane and Michelangelo switched. Anyone who was there know if that's so?)

In other jam comics news, Stan Yan has posted the results of several jams done as part of this year's SPACE convention. I've said before that reading last night's jam comics is like listening to a recording of a drum circle, but these are still pretty funny even a week later.

More Gocco-y goodness

2006-04-27T22:14:00.000-04:00

Uh oh, almost ten days without a post. Not good. Let's see now...

This was my contribution to Jeremy Onsmith and Ivan Brunetti's Gocco Box Set, a collection of work by 17 artists doing prints on the Print Gocco. I wonder if they didn't just find the nifty kraft paper boxes at a store somewhere first and come up with an idea for how to use them afterwards. In any case, it's a fantastic little set of prints, with a surprising variety of approaches to using the Gocco on display. If you can get a set through Jeremy or one of the contributors at a comics show like the Small Press Expo, grab it (but don't ask me, I'm fresh out of 'em).

The disassembled airplane in the picture is part of an old A-6 Intruder Navy jet, waiting to get put back together at the Yankee Air Museum at Willow Run Airport near Ann Arbor. I drew this at an air show only a few weeks before fire destroyed the museum's main hangar. Their historic airplanes were rescued but a lot of donated aviation artifacts housed in the hangar were destroyed.

Mein Fuhrer! I can WALK!!

2006-04-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

Another movie review illustration, this time, obviously, for "Dr. Strangelove." I saw this film again a few years ago at the Detroit Art Institute's film theater with Matt Feazell, and I swear to God we were the only ones in the theater who were aware that it was a comedy! The people around me were so stone-quiet I started feeling self-conscious about laughing... almost.

The Detroit Film Theater, though, is the place to go for art films here in the 313, so if you're ever in town with nothing else to do, check 'em out.

Born Again to be Wild!

2006-04-16T11:59:00.000-04:00

Here's a cover illustration I did for an article about Christian motorcycle gangs (or, er, clubs). Happy Easter!

Star Wars Quiz

2006-04-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

I really only did this as an excuse to draw Aayla Secura. And saag paneer.

Gabba Gabba Hey!

2006-04-12T18:25:00.000-04:00

Here's an illustration I did for the free paper I work for, to go with a review of the recent Ramones documentary. I sold the original after a show at Hamtramck city hall, where I, Matt Feazell and Suzanne Baumann had cartoons and other work on display. (This blog is a good repository for rarities and stuff I no longer have around. Gone-but-not-forgotten art, excellent!)

Hm, that guy on the left might actually be Zook & Max cartoonist Tim Kelly...

The Book of Judith

2006-04-07T21:57:00.000-04:00

I first created this mini-comic version of the story of the apocryphal/Biblical heroine Judith a few years ago using the Print Gocco screenprinter. I printed 150 copies or so and hand-stitched the binding.

Judith was a favorite subject of 17th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose Judiths, unlike those of her male contemporaries, actually looked capable of and predisposed to sawing a man's head off his shoulders. One of Artemisia's masterpieces is here in the Detroit Institute of Arts, a suspensful post-beheading Judith scene.

Vee Dubya

2006-04-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

This pristine turquoise Beetle sat on the side of a busy street here in town for months before some lucky guy bought it. I kept expecting to walk by one morning and find it sideswiped or rear-ended. I can't afford to buy a car that would amount to an expensive new hobby - I'm strictly a "reliable beater" owner, unfortunately - but I can lust after them and tuck them away in my sketchbook.

I've noticed that surprisingly few comics artists are any good at drawing cars. Seems like most of the car drawings I see in comics tend to range from merely serviceable to downright awkward. They're such familiar machines, you'd think they'd be easier to draw but I think maybe the familiarity somehow actually makes them harder to get right. I think you have to approach drawing a car the way you would a human body - they need to look alive somehow. (Someday I'll put together a coherent rap on this and write a proper essay, maybe.) And as distinctive as these old VWs are, they're one of the easiest cars to get wrong! There's a lot going on in the lines of a Beetle.

Print Gocco

2006-04-01T15:29:00.001-05:00

This is one of several prints I've made with my wonderful little Print Gocco. The Gocco is this shoebox-sized Japanese gizmo that's designed to make miniature screenprints, using a thermal process to burn the screens from photocopies. It's handy and lots of fun to use, and apparently going extinct, at least in the US, much to my chagrin. I wrote a short article about its demise for the Detroit free paper, Metro Times, and you can get more info at the Save Gocco site

I've been in love with the Gocco and have evangelized on its behalf for years now, and everyone who touches one seems to fall in love with it too, especially DIY craftsy-types and mini-comics makers. In a desert of electronic reproduction and graphic design processes, the Gocco is an oasis of old-fashioned hands-on art making. If the supplies for the thing dry up and it becomes impossible to use, it's really going to be a sad thing. I'll post more of my Gocco images in coming days.

"Hey, you're that Popeye-Jesus guy!"

2006-04-01T12:45:00.000-05:00

Yeah, that's me. A few years back I did a six-page comic in one of my minis that channeled gospel passages via E.C. Segar's Popeye characters, and it's pretty much my Greatest Hit, the one most people who know my stuff remeber most fondly. It was one of those things where once you have the equation Popeye=Jesus in your head, all the other characters and situations kinda fell into place.

"He undermined their world with mockery!"

2006-04-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome, y'all, to my electronic junk drawer, my online scrapbook of art, comics, beard-strokingly brilliant personal insights and/or wise-ass remarks. I have a similar pile of miscellaneous creativity here at my house, but it comes in a dull, battered cardboard box instead of a shiny, glowing plastic one like you have, so consider yourself lucky!