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~