ALIENS IN BOSTON?

Hello again.... This is a little page to show you geek-sters I am still indeed working on my new comic: SUPER GROOVY MAN on a continuing basis. I was going to cut you guys a break and show you a finished page, but I am drawing on my iron will power and keeping things a little mysterious by only showing you the finished lettering, and the rough pencils.

Okay....I lied~

The truth is this... I fully intended to show the finished page, but my work schedule has kept me too busy to do little more than the lettering :-( On top of that free time is running out, because I am getting ready to go to, ( what is shaping up to be ) the WOODSTOCK of comicbook conventions...SUPERMEGAFEST in Boston!

Dig this hipsters... Adam West, and Burt Ward, ( the original 1960's Batman and Robin ) will be there, Julie Newmar, and Lee Meriwether, ( the two hotties who played Catwoman from that series ) will be there...THE FRICKEN BATMOBILE, will be there, Superstar Fantasy Artist Ken Kelly will be there, Holly form LAND OF THE LOST, Edddie Munster, BOZZO the clown, and a slew of other Big time B-listers...you can check it all out at http://supermegafest.com

If you are able to get there at all it will be well worth the visit, and when all the dust has settled, yours truly will be right back here at ye Ol' blogsite to give you a blow by blow re-cap.

Till then, keep yer pencils sharpened~

GET YOUR GROOVE ON MAN!

Hello all you Cat's and Chicks! Here I is again with my latest humble offering from the pages of SUPER GROOVY MAN. In this page we see the groovy one before he had powers, or skill, or charm, or charisma, or anything closely resembling a personality. He is being confronted by the latest in a series of dates to tell him he is duller than a doorknob. She urges him to read something once in awhile so he has topics to discuss instead of pick-up lines. This urging leads him to Barlows Books where he meets a mystical proprieter, and his destiny is forever altered.

I often will letter a page first, then ink my balloons and caption blocks, then do my characters, then my backgrounds. Not this time however... Nope I am staying true to my promise of keeping a wee little bit of mystery surrounding SGM so I wanted to post this page sans detail, and keep ya hungry for more.

Hope you like this little sneak peek. May the god of all things geeky bless you with boogie beats, and a comicon soon~

NOT EASY BEING GREEN

Trick or treat! I recently went to a comicbook convention in Boston, and I was talking about my work with Jim Steranko, ( yeah..."THE" Jim Steranko ) oKAY.....so I'm a shameless name dropper, so what else is new? ~ Anyway... Mr. Steranko was there to sign autographs, and I was fortunate enough to get to shake his hand, and hear some feedback about my portfolio. I must say the man was extremely kind to me. With a line of fanboys a good 15 feet long waiting to get his signature, he took the time to go through each and every page with me, and offer very helpful and constructive comments.

One thing he said I should do was to emulate some other comicbook artists for practice, and also that I need to "punch-up" my blacks...this is not the first time a top dog in the field has told me this, so I know it's a portion I still need to work on. Also while at the show, I bought a short stack of coverless comics for 50 cents a pop, Among them was an old INCREDIBLE HULK, with art by Marrie Severin who was not, to my knowledge, a regular artist on the Hulk run. Marrie was sort of the "Gal Friday" of comics, and much beloved by nearly every comic creator of the gold, and silver age. She got her start at the offices of EC comics in the 1950's as a secretary, and before long was being asked to do touch-up's, coloring, and corrections. It was interesting to see someone who did not have a buttload of experiance working their way through the monumental task of a 52 pager, and doing an okay job of it. It was actually very educational, and inspiring.

I looked at that comic and thought..." Alright, I'll give it a whirl. " So I chose some scenes I thought had enough action and drama in them. I mixed up the players, and changed a pose or two, re-wrote the dialouge to fit my new arrangement, and ...wha-la, my trick or treat HULK practice page was born. There are things I like about this page, overall it was a very good artistic workout, and though it is no prize winner I sure did learn a heck of alot.

Yaknow what else? When I was talking to Jim, ( Jim Steranko ya moron, haven't you been paying attention...sheeSH! ) He flipped through my pages, then came to a dead stop...flipped back one or two pages, stopped again and studdied the page with his hand cupped over his chin. Then he waved his finger at the page and said " This page I REALLY like... I like this one alot!" Then he went back to his place in succession. Now.... do you think this giddy fanboy thought to pay attention to which page he liked so well? .....Hell no, and it's been driving me cuck-koo ever since!

Enjoy your comics everyone!

A SUPER GROOVY SPLASH

Hey all you groovy goblins out there, Just thought you would want to take a peek at the Splash page for SUPER GROOVY MAN. I was influenced on this page by both the 70's romance comics, and the work of comic master Gene Colon, who did, ( among many other great things) , a really inspiring run on HOWARD THE DUCK. The page isn't quite finished yet, and I still need to punch up the blacks quite a bit, so don't be surprised if this post is re-edited sometime soon.

I just wanted to keep to my new goal of posting bi-weekly ( instead of the bi-monthly posts of late ) and I wanted to put something real fresh up. Hope you guys dig it...

LOOK TO THE SKIES

Greetings inhabitants of planet Earth.....

Bet you geek-a-zoids thought you wouldn't hear from me for at least another month or so huh? Well... you were all wrong! Here I am....and with the latest page from SGM to boot yet! This little number let's us see just how the two pointy headed pythons from Zenar 7 got here in the first place. It is the classic UFO arrival scene inspired by countless sci-fi movies, and also more recently by a comic selected especially for me by a very good friend.

I'm hoping you dig this little scribble. This was just a test of the inking I wanna do. What I did was, I took a copy of the original pencils, and just went over that with an ordinarry ball point pen while I was at work.

Of course, I still have the original pencil that I will take the time to ink properly later, but this gives ya a pretty fair idea of what it will look like in the end. Ooohhh.... I should also mention that since I was using a ball point, and not my good micron pens, I decided not to even attempt the lettering. If any of you are hard of seeing, an cannot make out the word balloons... you have my deepest apologies.....b'sides, I don't want you should all know everything upfront.

Who will be interested in buying my book then???

Hang loose hip, and hairy ones~

WHERE YA BEEN LATELY?

Hey everyone remember me? I'm the goofy "retro" comicbook geek artist who used to post here...like, a really, really long time ago. I used to post quite often, as some of you may recall, but Ummmm well there's this stupid little place I go everyday called "work", and I sort of have to go there to keep the lights turned on in my house, ( really lame how that works ) anyway, and this place called " work" has like...really been eating up all of my time lately. Folks...I am so-o-o-o-o not kidding here, I just got done working ten, ( count 'em ) ten 12hr shifts in a row! Not only that, but half of them were night shift, and half of them were day shift! Yowza!

Anyway...enough excuses, and whinning, what you came here to see was art right? Well... here is a little doo-dad I had started on one slow night at work, and then stuffed in my locker. Every week or two I would pull it out, and dabble with it a little more as time allowed. It took me a month or so, but I finally got it finished. It is an homage' to the work of Gerry Taloc, who for years worked on the DC comics classic UNKNOWN SOLDIER.

I hope you dig this little number, and for those of you wonderin where I am at with SUPER GROOVY MAN these days....Wel-l-l-l-l-l-l, Let's just say the Groovy one is still back there perculating in the dark corners of my addled brain, and yes I did do another page, and yes I will post it soon, but I just wanted to show you this one first. IS THAT OKAY WITH YOU??? Sheesh.... You guys are tough! Jes kiddin :-)

Oh...a few other points worth mentioning. I went to the comicbook show in Nashua NH Sunday and was able to get my portfolio critiqued by a nice gentleman from DIGITAL WEBBING. My retro look isn't exactly what they have in mind for their upcoming projects, but the guy was really nice, and took his time looking over my work, and had very positive comments about it, so it turned out to be a very good experiance for me. He asked if I did all the writing, coloring, penciling, lettering, and inking myself, and I said: " Yeah ", and then he said: "WoW!" and so I thought that was very cool.

Finally...I promised to give a shout out to my co-worker Bert Barrett who gave me some fair amount of crap for not posting my blog lately. I asked why he was giving me crap about it, and he said " Cause I like reading the stuff you put up there." I thought that was very cool too. Thanks Bert for a well deserved kick in the kiester.

Peace out Geeky Ladies, and Gents~

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY~

Hey cat's and chick's! I thought it was time to do a little tiding up here at the old blog site, and this is one of the post's that is being re-visited, ( for those of you who are paying attention ) I originally posted this as a two part deal where I had my raw pencil post, and the finished ink, but...well, there are other examples of that in the archives, and I just wanted to have a nice flow of more finished pages for new visitors to look at. This page is when I decided to take some of my SGM practice pages, and meld them into a back up feature. I originally thought of a length of about 8 pages, but it now looks more like at least 12. The long haired young man in the lower left is a sort of morphing of me, and my son Brandon at age 13. The character could easily be recognized as eiether of us at that age. Well that's it for now ragamuffins,....Don't fall off your bicycles~

ZAPPO!

Holy Cat's ! Super Groovy Man is being blasted by the cone head aliens from Zenar 7 ! Their leader, Klatok, has just unloaded a blast from the dreaded new weapon he calls: THE KARMA RAY. Can SG break through the wall of confusion and meditate his way back to his positive energy flow?

What is all this anyway? So glad you asked... it is just some busy brainstorming on what is sure to be the best Mitchell comic yet SUPER GROOVY MAN. This is just another doodle page really, but I am having so much fun with these I might use it for a mini-four page serial in the back of the book.

Say...where is everybody? It's as empty as a tomb around here....

Is all you all gone to conventions?

SUPER GROOVY SAMPLER

Here is a finished page to give everyone an idea of what SUPER GROOVY MAN will be like when it's finally in the bag. This page isn't going in the book, it's just sort of sumpin I was messing around with at work one day. It does give you a little flavor for the style and themes however.

Give me a shout if your having a groovy summer~

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Whassup blogsters? Well I'll tell ya what's up wid me. I have already penciled pg#4 of my new comic SUPER GROOVY MAN. I am getting real excited about this one! Yeah, yeah I know...what about issue #2 of ZOMBIE BOY? A funny thing... Ya see, I have come up against a brick wall with that, and rather than beat myself endlessly over the head, and spinning my wheels in "non-productive mode" I have decided to vent my artistic frustrations in a totally new direction by doing a coffee break comic featuring a superhero, ( my very first ) who is going to give voice to the many ideas ping-ponging their way around my head and stopping up the old ZOMBIE BOY flow.

See...it's like this here, ZOMBIE BOY, MONSTER DISCO, and even DISCO TALES, have all dealt with more of the humor, and horror side of comics. I have been thinking since last summer of doing a Superhero character who is sort of every guy, but through the power of self discipline, fervor, and actualization, tap's into powers which are latent in all of us, yet precious few ever apply.

In other words, ....anyone could be SUPER GROOVY MAN. His powers are not unattainable, they just require a journey which few are inclined to take. What started him on the path to this journey? Well, initially it was for the love of a girl, but he quickly realized, ( through the auspices and guidance of a friendly bookseller ) that he was but an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.

How did he fill his vessel? ( boy ...you guys ask good questions! ) Well since he was empty, and not very well read on topics of self improvement, he began his journey of attainment by discovering an interest in comicbooks.

SUPER GROOVY MAN is for any one of us who ever had the childhood experience of reading a comic and wondered: " What if ? " What if I could gain super powers? What if I were super smart? What if I were super strong? What if I had a divine path to follow?.... What if?

Of course, the adventures of SUPER GROOVY MAN are set against the backdrop of the year 1976, ( where all my fondest fantasies dwell ) and this only serves to make it all the more nostalgic, fun, and a little weirdly believable. It also gives me a reason to groove on my old 70's albums when I ink the sucker!

I know everyone will enjoy SUPER GROOVY MAN, I had alot of fun this past weekend at the COMICBOOK SHOW in Nashua NH, showing the rough copies to the whole gang and touting it as " The small-press sensation of the summer of '07 " Yeah that sure brought some funny stares! Seriously though....although many will think it an attempt at humor, and pure nostalgia, it actually has a very important message to send to any of us who has ever read a comic and wondered ..." What if? " , and be honest, who among us hasn't?

Peace out, comicbook cat's and doggie-dog's.

LOOKIT MY NEW COMIC!!!

Check it out comicfans !!! I have penciled the cover for my new "coffeebreak comics " project called SUPER GROOVY MAN. I think I am going to do this years comic a little different in that I am going to do all the inking in the studio on the day's when I am not working in the mill. Last year I did the inking on the fly, and even though that comic MONSTER DISCO was a real fun blast to read, nobody ever really bought into it at conventions, because it was so rough looking. ( lesson learned ).

Anyways...another thing about last years comic was that I posted each finished page, and alot of folks said, " Yeah I've already read that on your blog. " ....POOF! no sale. Well this time I am only going to post the pencil pages, and I am going to skip a few here and there so you sneaky little wise guys won't know what your missing untill you fork over some dough and buy a copy. Ha-ha ( another lesson learned )

I am also am thinking about taking my mentor Ron Fortier's advice and really bitting down hard on the bullet to get this one proffesionally printed, and stop jerking around with the copy store print runs. Yeah it's cheap to do my comics that way, but nobody pays much respect to cheap desk top wanna be comics, sure it's got me this far, and thats great, but I am ready for the next step so look out ( third lesson learned )

This concludes our lessons in comicbook self awareness for today...stay tuned for further words of wisdom from me and SUPER GROOVY MAN.

SUPERMAN WEEPS

I went to a comicbook convention not too long ago where I chanced among my many purchases to snag a copy of SUPERMAN # 298 from April of 1976. As many of you know I collect mostly low-grade reading copies of 1970's comics, so this was just another rag on the pile ya might say.

When I finally got around to reading this issue I was utterly amazed to see the panel at the bottom of page 14, by Superman master artist Curt Swan. Superman is crying!!

It turns out the story behind it all is equally striking... Superman, under the influence of an alien power, decides to live his life for awhile entirely as his alter-ego Clark Kent. Living as Clark, Superman is no longer troubled by the responsibilities, and demands once made of him as Superman. If a ship is sinking...oh well, ho-hum, I can't take care of it, Clark has a date with Lois tonight. ( Yaknow...that kind of thing )

Anyways....as you can imagine a good deal of suffering occurs because Superman is not around to help. Eventually Clark begins to realize what he has done, and riddled with guilt, decides his only course of action is to correct the matter by living exclusively as Superman for awhile.

At first Superman is happy to be back, but soon he realizes that the world has a never ending supply of woes, and cares to serve him 24-7. The burden filled Kal-El begins to crack under the strain of living an unbalanced life, and finally in panel 14...he weeps.

I thought the panel was very striking in it's simplicity, yet enormously powerful in it's execution. Curt Swan proves once again why he was the supreme Superman artist. I was reminded when seeing this of the shortest verse in the Bible, which simply reads: " Jesus wept". We ought not ...any of us, take for granted, or place too many expectations on those we think to have seemingly limitless power. We would do well to remember they have a human side to their nature as well. I hope all of you enjoy my feeble attempt at copying one of the great comic masters, Curt Swan.

NEW DIRECTION

Hey gang! Well I have taken a little bit of a breather from drawing since the whirlwind completion of the Proffesor Stone book, and I am ready to start wading into some other areas artistically. As I try to figure out where I want to go next I thought I would post every few days some of the doodles I do during break time at work. I often give these little scribbles away to co-workers who express an interest, and sometimes will make a sketch or two on demand. Every so often however one of these little numbers grabs hold of me for some reason, and I decide to keep it for myself.

Take todays post for example, I did this a few weeks ago. It started out as just practice drawing a pretty girl, ( us artists types do have to do that once in awhile yaknow! ) I would add a little here, a little there, then I got to thinking...this girl has sort of a 70's style hair-do. Next I plopped in a little stylized icon of my favorite year...1976! When I got back to the doodle a few hours later I was thinking about being 10 years old in '76, and how I used to go roller skating all the time and hope a pretty chick like this would ask me to skate, ( hence the word balloon addition ) to spiff it up a little I added the flower power background.

One other note about this piece. This was a free flow of thought type exercise, ( sorta like dreaming through your hand ) and there was no forethought whatsoever going into it. There was no pencil sketch, no pre-sketch, and no outline. I just took a standard ball point pen and had a blast on some paper.

I like that. That is what makes drawing enjoyable to me, when you have no intentions, no design, and something just pop's out of your sub-consious to say hello to the world. Look for many more of these kinda thingys to appear in the weeks ahead.

Peace my brothers and sisters...Mitch!

LOOK...UP IN THE SKY! IT'S PROF. STONE!!!

At last... at long last it is finished. You see before you the final spot illo for the new book, ( sure to make the NY Times best seller list ) Professor Stone, and the Eye of Re.

I am so very glad to have had this opportunity to work on such a cool project. I cannot thank Ron Fortier enough for giving me this incredible opportunity. I also want to thank Wayne ( Judge ) Skiver for his enthusiastic response to my illustrations. Anthony, and Rob...Thanks to you also for "tweaking" my doodles to make them printable. Finally thanks to everyone who encouraged me along the way~

It is going to be so exciting to hold the finished book in my hands just a few short weeks from now! I have great faith the book will be a tribute to the Wildcat line of pulp novels.

Help prove me right everybody..... by ordering your copy soon!

JUST LIKE DOMINOES

Uh-oh...Sombody's gunna have a lot of esplainin' ta do!!! Stone has decided to create a big distraction by toppeling over one of the fifteen statues of the egyptian god, Anibus. As a very meek Professor Baumhaufer looks on in amazement. Why is the distruction of 5000 year old statuary neccesary? I dunno....buy the book and find out fer yourself Dummy! I'm just the guy what draws this kooky stuff. Whew... only one more full page spot, and a widdle icon to go and we can put this book in the bag...HOORAY! Soon hordes of people from Tiwan to Timbucktoo will be standing in line to scoop up Proffesor Stone and the Eye of Re, but not me...nope. I'm waitng for the major motion picture...ha-ha-ha. Sorry Wayne and Ron...I couldn't resist :-)

Back to the drawing board ~ Mitch

AMBUSH BY STONE!

Sure there is still some clean up work to do on this one gang...but check out this new illo for the Novella EYE OF RE....it will keep you suspended....get it? ( I must be sniffing my markers again ) that joke was a real dud! Oh well....come up with your own snappy puns! Ha-ha

MEET DOCTOR PHOBOS KIDDIES

Having trouble sleeping at night? Doctor Phobos can help...You will never, ever get to sleep again once his treatment begins. His friendly assistants are here to help deliver that one of a kind special attention that every new patient deserves. Hopefully your visit will be brief...if your very, very lucky..Mwhaaaa-hahahh

That rotten Wayne Skiver fella is rubbing off on me...scuse me. Gotta go take a shower now...I feel icky all over.

Seriously blog fans...this is just another of the illos for the new Professor Stone Book. This one is'nt quite finished, but I thought you might like to see a work in progress for a change.

HOW I SPENT MY WINTER VACATION

BRRRR... As if the cold was'nt bad enough... now we got to deal with this!!! Just another illo from the Professors files...I think it's the best drawing Yeti !

TERROR TUBES

Look out guy's! Wayne Skiver is up to his old bag of tricks again...scaring the pants off everyone with his pulpish ways. This illo is from the Proffessor Stone book and has an astonished Stone looking on as three victims are tortured endlessly in hermetricly sealed chambers. They are each exposed to their greatest fear. Ooooooo SPOOKY ! It is a total blast to draw this stuff I am going to feel a little guilty cashing all those big fat royalty checks Ha-ha-ha!

LOOK KIDS! SPACE GHOST!

Right about now Ron and the gang at Wildcat books are going to reach through the screen and shoot me. Before they pull the trigger, I got a little somthin to say. Now any artist worth his salt will tell you that in order to stay on your game you gotta excercise. I am supposed to be working my brains out on the illos for the professor Stone book. But....see I reached a stopping point where I was waiting for word on where to proceede with the next batch of illos, and well see I was really on fire artisticly, and I did'nt want to let the blade get dull see, and I had this really cool space Ghost comic in my mits that my bestus buddy and all around imaginary friend sent me in the mail see, and well one thing led to another see, and well.....here is my tribute to Space Ghost.

Yaknow...it is only right considering that two of the main creators of Space Ghost ( Alex Toth, and Joseph Barbara ) passed away recently. Jo Barbara was in his 90's and led a very nice life...Toth went the way I would like to go...simply died at his drawing table. Now don't you get any ideas Ron...I'm in no hurry to go this weekend...ha-ha

Okay...back to work on Professor Stone now....Sheesh! You guys are no fun.

STONE VS ROBOT NAZI'S

Check out the latest illo for the Professor Stone book which will be out very soon...so soon in fact I don't have a whole bunch of time to let loose with the " lips " just now...gotta get back to the drawing table! You just take yourselves a good ol' gander and make up your own silly little story to go along with this post...okay? Let me know what you come up with....( Oh boy this ought to be a hoot! )