Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Chirstmas presents!

Hey! Anyone who visits this site gets a crappy Christmas present this year! Yay!

In 1998, Kick Enemy Men and I were in the graphic design program of the Maine College of Art . Then we considered ourselves half-geniuses; apart we were of normal intelligence, together, we were a single genius.

I think it was over the course of a few days, in between cracking ourselves up, we generated a super hero team application. The powers/weakness section was a product of us and anybody we could find to ask. I consider this one of our finest works. We had done it quickly in Quark 4.0 (an not-that-great digital typesetting app) and named it a Superfriends application. In 2005 I took it upon myself to re-design it and create a new super-team for this to be an application for. Since the name and logo are were created by myself alone, it is not a full-genius work. However, the humor of the original remains 100% intact.

So, friends, for Christmas I give you:

The Fairness Battalion Superhero Application form!

Page one (01)
Page two (02)
Page three (03)

If you enjoy this gift, please feel free to share it around. Just make sure that you do give credit to the Half Geniuses of the Maine College of Art.

If you don't like it... well, I forgot to get a gift receipt so you'll have to re-gift it. Or give it to the Salvation Army Store or maybe Freecycle it.

or you could have this consolation prize. The hand-colored test edition of a lino cut relief print I did on this Christmas Eve eve. It's based on what Sweet Enemy and I saw on our midnight snowshoe that night. It's our house and I left the tree lit just so we could see that as we made our snow-things (Sweet Enemy: snow creature. Arkonbey: snow-woman and snow-Totoro. Both rained on Christmas eve). It measures 4" x 4" and may have been a bit ambitious for not having done a relief print in three or so years.




Listening to while posting: the washing machine.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

do I look different to you?

This is going to be a long one. I know this blog is supposed to be for art, but this Wednesday I did something I'd never done before. Since nobody seems to read my other non-art blog, here you go.

On Wednesday, I intentionally killed a warm blooded animal.

My best and oldest friend took me goose hunting in CT at the farm he and his father have hunted for years. DD (not his initials, btw), has been hunting for years and is one of those hunters that give hunting a good name. He doesn't trophy hunt, is very environmentally conscious and is not, in any way, a "gun nut". He's hunted (and fished) ever since I've known him, and in those 30 (!) years, I've never gone with him.

Now hunting may not seem like a big deal to some but it is to me. Recently, I've thought about my eating habits and found that while I do eat meat (avoiding veal and trying to avoid factory-farmed livestock), I've never actually killed something and eaten it. This bothered me because I truly hate hypocrisy and since I've justified it by talking about the omnivorous nature of humans and the existence of prey animals( etc. blah blah blah), I should eventually put my money where my mouth is. Now, I must say in my defense, that I've never put down an ethical vegetarian ( though I've had some heated discussions with those that put down hunters), so I'm not one of those 'grocery store carnivores' that don't seem to realize that their steaks once went 'moo'.

But, this year, I decided to put my money where my mouth was. I met DD at a MA Home Depot parking lot so we could take a single vehicle to the farm. We met at 0645 and got to the farm about an hour later. The farmer was a classic NE dairy farmer: laconic, with no time to chat. Until you want to leave, then he'll talk your ear off. His mother had died that morning after having a stroke two days before, yet he was not unfriendly and allowed us to hunt his upper field.

DD led the setting of the decoys ( photorealistic silhouettes and these huge freestanding ones ). I learned that setting decoys is not a 'set and forget' operation. You must change the arrangement of the decoys as the wind changes so that the geese come in and land from a certain direction. After setting, we donned our white raincoats and sat in the snow. Waiting.

The first flight came over about 10 minutes later and it was spectacular. As the geese flew over for their first look, we could hear their feathers humming from the air as they glided in. I mean really humming.

The first group landed and I took my shot.

And missed. I was nervous and didn't lead it and pulled (rather than squeezed) the trigger. Also I hadn't fired a shotgun in a decade and never at a living creature. The flight, amazing came back to DD's call and I took another shot. And missed. The flock pulled up and disappeared.

It was another hour or so of re-setting the decoys and chatting. We talked about whether or not I'd subconsciously meant to miss. Yes and no. I was not unhappy that I'd missed, but when I pulled the trigger, I'd shot to kill. You see, the thing that bothered me more than the possibility of killing, was the possibility of wounding. I did not want to cause pain. This may seem like a strange conflict, but it's not. A good hunter (as DD is) does not want to cause pain; a clean kill with no suffering is the best.

But, it was hard. Still, I had to do it. I knew that I would feel bad after having done it, but that would be the price I'd pay for eating meat. The next flight came over and I picked my bird. It came down, flared to land and I fired. It dropped and attempted to rise, but couldn't. I felt like shit. As we'd planned, I passed the shotgun to DD without chambering a shell. He put a shell in the chamber and two more in the magazine as he walked towards the stricken goose. He shot it in the head. As he brought it back he explained that I'd actually killed it, it just didn't know it right away. I was still skeptical. You see, that whole 'chicken running around thing' that's true. The goose's tail feathers were wiggling as though it was trying to shed water. However, it was dead. To ease my mind, DD broke its neck (let me say how understanding DD was in all of this).

We were getting ready to leave ,as I didn't need to get my limit, and another flight came over. We quickly donned our white and DD called them in. The flight came over, DD picked his bird and fired. The goose dropped like a stone. Stood up, then collapsed dead. That's the kind of shot I wanted to take, but he's got 30 years of hunting experience under his belt. Now we were satisfied. We packed up the decoys and headed back to the farm to clean the birds on the tailgate of DD's truck. It was a remarkable thing. I didn't shy away, but watched the whole thing and even reached in and felt the places where DD would make the cuts to remove the breasts. I took one breast and gave the rest of the bird to DD as a thank you for taking me out. On Thursday night, I sliced half of the breast and sauteed it in sesame oil. I wanted to eat the first taste without adulterating it; that seemed important. Sweet Enemy and I sat down and ate and it was very tasty. The next night, I made a chili with the last of the breast. It was also delicious.

So. How do I feel? I feel bad, but not super-bad and I don't feel bad about not feeling super-bad. Yes, I took a life to eat, but I treated that food with a reverence that I've never done. Not in a total new-age-y way, but sort of. I didn't want to waste even a little of the breast and I wanted to cook it as well as I could.

Will I do it again? Yes. Will I feel bad? Probably. This is a touchy area for some. Why do it, some might ask. Why not just go out and watch geese? I don't know. I liked how it tasted and I felt a connection with that meat that I've never felt with any sort of food.

On the 5 hour drive home, I thought about the ethical vegetarians against hunting and the grocery store carnivores that deride ethical vegetarians.

To the first group: of all the carnivores, hunters should be the least of your targets. If they hunt and kill wild animals, they are allowing a creature to like a life before they kill it as quickly as they can. This is in contrast to the factory farms that keep animals in relative squalor and then put them through terror before killing them. Hunting is infinitely more ethical than a factory farm. Also, license fees go to help preserve the habitats for the animals. A good hunter is also a good environmentalist. And, as I've said, I've never felt a deeper connection to my food.

To the second group: Shut up. You've separated yourself so far from the origin of your food that you never see the blood; you steak-eaters call it 'juices'. If you've never had to look a creature in the eye before taking its life. If you've never seen the steam rising from the cooling meat as you cut the meat from a once warm and vibrant creature, you have NO place in mocking someone who wishes to never kill.

So, where do I fit? I think I'm a category all of my own. I have two cans of chicken in my cupboard. I will make two more pots of my fantastic chicken-lentil soup and that's it. I will try my best to not eat any meat that I did not have a hand in killing. Not because I enjoy the killing, but because I don't personally feel I have the right to eat something where I don't know how it lived or how it died. That's just me. It's not hard. Sweet Enemy and I are 'financial vegetarians' anyway, so we're not giving up a lot.

Well, that's my week. It was a very big deal for me; almost as big as when Sweet Enemy and I first got together. I'm happy that I was able to share it with DD and there is nobody else I'd have rather shared it with.

Oh, I kept only the shell that I fired and a single wing feather from the goose. I don't like trophies, either.

I wasn't listening to anything while posting

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

art in other places

so, on a cool illustration website aggregator I came across a link to a Flikr group Bears in Ill-Fitting Hats. After seeing the cool stuff posted, I just had to do my own.

I grabbed my sketchbook at lunch and started drawing. I cranked out seven sketches and I think I'm all HatBeared out.

Let me know what you think!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Sam the Dog R.I.P

So. I know this is blog is usually reserved for art, but canine friend of mine died this weekend after a long illness. Sam was a large-ish Akita owned by my aikido sensei and his wife.

If you go by the usual definition of 'good dog', Sam wasn't a 'good dog'. He rarely did what you told him to do. He was willful. Praise and criticism bounced off him with an equal lack of effect. But, he was never, ever a 'bad dog'. He was a good guard with a resounding bark that, in the lonely days when I sat him at his home, would cause me to jump. He was wary, but when he recognized a friend, his ears would go horizontal ("airplane ears") and he would run towards them with a goofy bouncing lope that made just made you want to pet him. And, by the way, he loved the ladies; if he had a choice between being pet by a guy and being pet by a girl, he'd choose the girl every time.

We spent a pretty good amount of time together and got along well after he placed me in the hierarchy of his world. We'd go on walks in the woods that unfortunately got shorter and shorter as the years went on. Once, we went for a quick jaunt that turned into a four hour hike when I got us lost in the Proctor Maple Forest. Sam got fed up following me and decided to head out on his own. Since he wouldn't come, I had to chase him; right back to the road we were looking for.

When I house-sat, he'd fall asleep on his dog bed in the living room, but around 5 am, he'd jump onto the futon bed I used and, after 3.5 revolutions, lay down and napped. By the way, he snored. When he did his business, he'd walk a few feet away from the spot and scrape huge gouts of dirt with his massive front paws to cover it up. The only thing was, he was never ever pointed in the correct direction and sent the dirt at least off on a forty-five degree tangent.

He loved carrots and would take them ever-so-gently from your hand. He loved chewing plastic soda bottles (to be taken away from him immediately when he started to take them to bits). He loved tearing the bark off of sticks. He also loved Ronin the Cat, of that I am sure. They would sleep together often and Sam was so jealous of him, if you wanted Sam to come, all you had to do was call Ronin and start petting him. Sam would come running. He was the dojo dog at Aikido of Champlain Vally and had a basket full of toys to keep him occupied. He would 'clean' the faces of certain members after a good long class. He seemed to prefer John J. above all others.

Even though he only obeyed me grudgingly, I will miss Sam greatly. Now that he is gone, I will share something I'm not entirely proud of: I gave him a pet name that I only used when I house-sat with him. That name (ugh) was "Sam Bam-arino". I would also make up dumb songs to sing to him. Songs about getting his food ready, songs about peeing, songs about anything. He really couldn't have cared less, but I did it anyway.

Sam is survived by his 'Mom', Heidi, his 'Dad', Ben his 'brother' Caleb and his brother 'Ronin'.

An early picture of Sam:


A bit later. On his deck.



Sam and Ronin in their usual positions :



This is the last picture I took of Sam last December. Interestingly, it looks a great deal like a relief print I did for his 'parents' a year or two before:



and an artsy picture of the two friends hanging out on the deck:



Sam was laid to rest in the ground of his "grandfather's" flower farm in central Vermont.

He will be missed.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Cort is in session

Here's a turnaround of Jackson Cort (as seen in the previous post). The story is coming along great. Andre Zero is coming up with some great ideas.

This went pretty well, though I discarded a complete profile. It was too stiff. The colors are probationary, but the gun is not. He's packing a Webley and that's how he likes it.



I had a crappy drawing week, actually. After this, I couldn't seem to draw at all. I mean, the turnaround is no great shakes, but suddenly my drawing skills were back at like sixth grade! I even tried copying a photo and couldn't even do that. I was a bit creeped out and felt like putting flowers on Algernon's grave.

I'm better, but still feel artistically dumb. So, here's something I did a couple of years ago when I was trying to hone my Adobe Illustrator skills. I thought about doing a series of the Diablo 2 characters as anthropomorphic animals. I did sketches of all but the barbarian and the ninja and only vectored the amazon:



So, anybody think I should do the rest?

Oh, check this out. Remember the movie Dark City? Did you like it? Give this a listen.

listening to while posting: 'Girl on the Flying Trapeze" by Spike Jones and his City Slickers

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

stuff and other things

Still working on some production design for the comic that andrezero is writing. It's a cool story, I hope I've got the chops to do it justice.

Here's a sketch of another character. His name is Jackson Cort. I should have a turnaround posted this weekend.



He's loosely based on this guy:


Do my photo-reference drawing skills allow you to discover his identity?

Also, I've decided to do a drawing to submit to the bbww blog . It's in progress and was done with the same stupidly painstaking process as my The Crane Wife. I'm currently taking critiques on pose, anatomy, style, expression and stylization. Begin.



Listening to while posting: "Disillusion" by Badly Drawn Boy from 'the Hour of the Bewilderbeast'

Monday, November 19, 2007

For your pre-viewing pleasure

This is a preview of something that may be coming. It will be scripted by AndreZero and drawn by me.

That's all.



Listening to while posting: "The Gypsy" by Louis Armstrong from 'Basin Street Blues'

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Weekly Challenge: anachronism

The funny thing about this topic for the WC is how many of the posters didn't know what an anachronism was! They were confusing it with an incongruity (one 'anachronism' suggested was a deer in a grocery store). Man. I suddenly feel very, very smart.

Well, the idea of a steam-powered robot is not a product of the steampunk genre. Harry Harrison actually had a backwards planet with steam robots in one of the Stainless Steel Rat books.

This is not that particular robot however. The guy is based on a photo portrait of an ancestor of mine that sits next to my great-grandfather's pocket watches (these mechanical marvels are astounding. I'm saving up the $200 need to repair one of them. Interestingly, I live in rural Vermont, but there is a vintage watch repair place within walking distance of our house).

The piece took about 4.75 man-hours from sketch to posting. I'm not good with coloring; I have no real color sense (which probably explains my C+ in painting in art school and my subsequent foray into graphic design and typography). So, I colored it in full-color with lots of local color shadows and then "sepia-ed" it. The full-color one is here . This is the one I posted at the Weekly Challenge.



listening to while posting: Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt (not the Roger Rabbit version)

Monday, October 29, 2007

film noir, baby

So. Sweet Enemy and I read the Sin City comic last year and sort of liked it. I really enjoy the whole genre of film noir. Back in July I caught the film and really enjoyed it not even one bit. It took the surface of film noir, sprinkled on some misogyny, basted it in blood put it in a Convoluto brand mixer and forced me to extend a metaphor way too far. I could go farther, but the way I feel about Sin City should be discussed in conversation, not put forth in diatribe.

Anyway. Last night I introduced SE to the wonder that is The Maltese Falcon. This is a fantastic film in or out of the noir genre and I was happy to see it again. The performances are so wonderful with all of the players at the top of their game. Sure, it's filled with the usual Dashell Hammet lingo (after a long soliloquy Bogart's Spade even pauses to ask a stenographer in the DA's office if he's "getting all this, or am I going to fast for you?"), but this dialog is delivered so naturally that it doesn't seem as stilted as it does on the page. I thought it was a bit like watching Olivier do Shakespeare.

And, line for line, there is no cooler cat than Bogart's Sam Spade. Nothing seems to ruffle, him (and the shot where he looks at his shaking hand after bluffing his way out of the Fat Man's apartment it makes him human and even cooler).

Now, I know that Sin City and The Maltese Falcon are two entirely different movies, but their placement withing the film noir universe allow me a contrast. There were many differences, but what struck me was that Sam Spade only once held a gun by its grip and he never fired one. He even mentions how he never carries one but there were "some back at the office". What Bogart does with this part of the Spade character is subtle, but watch for it.

The most telling scenes depict 'the Fat Man's' hired gun: A cocky kid who obviously has a complex. In one scene, he is escorting Sam Spade to the Fat Man's apartment. He walks in front of Spade, hands deep in his overcoat pockets (where he keeps his pistols). As they near the Fat Man's apartment, Spade pulls the gun kid's buttoned overcoat down over his arms like a straightjacket. Then he reaches in and pulls the twin Colt M1911s out and shoves the kid. He holds both guns in one hand, hefting them like they were just paperweights. When they reach the apartment, he just hands them to the Fat Man.

In contrast, later, when the entire cast of baddies (including the incomparable Peter Lorre) are in Spades apartment, the kid stalks around holding both .45s as though he were trying desperately to look as tough as Spade. Spade, of course, later disarms him.

In Sin City, EVERYONE who is anyone has a gun. It's as though Rodriguez was trying to make some sort of a post-modern feminist art-documentary on the use of firearms as phallic replacements and augmentation.

Now, for the record, I own firearms, but I do think that Bogart's spade was tougher and cooler than any gun-toting tough-guy in Sin City. Go rent The Maltese Falcon and watch it. You won't be sorry that you did.

Here's a quicky picture of Sam Spade and Wilmer the gun-kid. I did it during lunch based on a photo I found online. My scanner's still busted, so another digicam shot. That speaks to the bad quality of the image. The poor quality of the linework is all me (this actually really bugs me because I love my pencil drawing of this).


Listening to while posting: Hayden, Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Weekly Challenge: Spooktacular

So, here's my entry for the Weekly Challenge at Ben Caldwell's site.

This is both a quickie and an expansion of an older work. It is expanded off of a tiny drawing I did for a workmate (I've been drawing her a 'weekly monster' for about 8 months). At the time, she'd said it was the very creepy. This may be the grossest thing I've drawn since this.

It felt a bit weird to do, but I think that unreal things (like abulatory, blade-weilding teddies) are scary in a different way than, say, characters from a Rob Zombie film . An unreal evil, you can imagine what it'd be like, but in your heart you know it isn't a real threat. The new 'gorenography' films portray ordinary-looking people doing nasty things. It's too easy to believe that such things can happen in real life.

That's why I'd do an abulatory, blade-weilding teddy leaving bloody footprints, but never, ever a regular guy in jeans and a t-shit. Call me a wimp, but it creeps me out to even imagine drawing that scene...

The work itself was a quickie because I did the final pencil in my sketchbook at lunch, inked it at home with an 01 Micron. Since my scanner is down (stupid ac adapter, breaks after 7 years of being dropped over and over!), I had to photograph it with a very old digital camera.

I'm still not great at coloring. I'm still concentrating on growing my linework skills right now, so this will have to do for the moment.

So... BOO!



Also, last weekend the art supply store (with no website) that my wife (STILL FEELS WEIRD!) assistant manages hosted 24 Hour Comics Day! I'd suggested it as a good thing for the store to do, especially as the nearest one was being hosted +60 miles away. We had 11 participants including three kids. It was... not easy. It was, however, fun. Fun in that, "this is my first mountain bike race in a decade" sort of fun. I managed 11 pages and that was average for the group. The only one to complete 24 was a retired art teacher/professional cartoonist.

So, want to see what I look like? The local weekly paper Seven Days (a cool, free paper that does real news and actually has well-written articles) has a video blog and the video-blogger-girl stopped by around midnight, I think? We were all pretty loopy by then. I'm the guy who uses the phrase "It sounds cheesy". Yup, that's me.

The work is... not bad. Not great, but not bad. Worth expanding into a real story (that someone else needs to script. Anybody?).

listening to while posting: "The World is a Very Scary Place" by The Gothic Archies from 'The Tragic Treasury'. Funny how apropos that is...

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Dogma Redux

First, let me say that I really like 'Dogma'. I saw it in the theater in it's first run and thought it was a top-notch satire.

I only had a problem with one scene: the 'word of god'. You know, where Alannis Morrisette comes out as God, she and Ben Affleck exchange a look, he asks for forgiveness and she screams at him until his head explodes. Except for the part where Alan Rickman wipes his shirt on god's robe, I didn't like it. I thought it lacked subtlety, especially with the fantastic bit where God shows Affleck the error of his ways with just a look; you could feel the torrents of metaphysical parental shame crashing into him. Since I walked out of the theater, I thought it could've been done differently. I wasn't sure how, but my basic idea went something like this comic. I felt that a whisper disposing of Affleck might more effectively show the 'power of God' rather than a scream that sent ripples through the air.

Keep in mind,

1) it is not a storyboard and there were some narrative and artistic corners cut to fit it into a single page.
2) I was going by memory on purpose (rather than hitting You Tube). I double-checked after and think I got pretty close.
3) I really need to practice hands.

Here you go, as always, click to enlarge:




listening to while posting: 'Something to Remember Me By' by Steve Wynn off of Kerosene Man

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Juggling

Ok. I'm not doing an IF work this week. Mostly because I am actually juggling. Day job, Sweet Enemy's portfolio, and a comic I'm working on with Andre Zero. I'm in the scanning and coloring phase (woo hoo!). Here is a test of the coloring. This is page 2/4:



comments very, very welcome.

Listening to while posting: "Man in a Suitcase" by The Police from 'Zenyatta Mondatta'. (to quote Atom : "Sting cannot possibly be the same guy who was in The Police)

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

wedding

I almost didn't do this one as I didn't care for the topic. I cared for last week's topic, but the irony was I was just getting momentum on a comic written by Andre Zero . It was actually written by him for me last year, and the recent momentum was great. Four pages pencilled, three pages inked. Yee ha.

Anyway, Sweet Enemy bought me The Crane Wife by the Decemberists and I seem to have been listening the hell out of it. Not to always good effect: it is hard to have a really good, fast mountain bike ride with the plodding, depressing Shank Hill Butchers echoing around your head.

However, it did inspire this little piece (and I mean little, the sketch wasn't even six inches high). I dragged out an old Adobe Illustrator (9) technique that is very time consuming, but yields pretty good results. So, here it is:


listening to while posting: The Crane Wife by The Decemberists. All of it. I must stop listening to it. Now.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Alphabets

This is a marvel of obscurity. Not only did I turn the title into a pun, it is a pun on a relatively obscure '70s sci-fi TV show!

Oh the horror...

If you figure out the pun and can stop groaning enough to reveal the name of the show, you win a No-Prize.

This was an attempt at digital inking with a low-end Wacom (a Sapphire rather than an Intuos). So, without all of the bells and whistles like pressure sensitivity, I did not like the result at all. The background was done in Adobe Illustrator and turned out okay.

Here you go:



Listening to while posting:
"Crane Wive 1 & 2" by The Decemberists from 'the Crane Wife"

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Visitor(s)

This weeks title coincided quite nicely with real life. Sweet Enemy and I had a big 'ol party to celebrate our no longer living in sin. Big 'ol, for us: about eleven people, but all of them are on our list of Most Important People on the Planet (Non-Family). It was our first large party at our house and it was fun/hard getting ready for it. I could have done a big portrait with everyone, but, I'm lazy. So, I picked the two farthest-flung males and a nice moment that really happened.

My really good friend Kick Enemy Men came from Maine and Jason "Lefty" Williams came from Atlanta (with Rayann, Sweet Enemy's oldest friend). First let me say (if you haven't clicked on the link) Lefty is a professional musician. I play bass and managed to also score an indefinite loan of a drum set, and since Kick Enemy Men (guitar) and I played together a lot during college, I thought we could get something going. Lefty forgot the special pick harness he uses on his right stump, so chose to play bass, so I hit the drums. Kick Enemy Men blew the dust off of his Les Paul and, receiving much ribbing about the rusted strings, started playing.

We did some fun stuff, even though us playing with Lefty would be like going on a mountain bike ride with Tinker Juarez . Then Lefty noticed something odd while playing my bass; a Memphis knock off of a Fender jazz bass. So he stopped, asked for an allen wrench and began to adjust my truss rod, listing off of the the problems it would solve if my neck weren't so bent. This just goes to show how cool he is.

He stopped after a while, handing the bass off to Rayann (she met him at the Atlanta School of Music where she was studying bass) and we played late into the night. We swapped instruments occasionally and I actually sang some.

Then we went upstairs, drank lots more, ate lots more, all the time reading from a book of 1,700 dirty limericks that Sensei Pincus and Heidi brought us.

So, after all that, here's the drawing of that moment:



Not to forget the other cool people: Sensei Ben Pincus, Heidi Albright and young Caleb; James Taylor (not that one); Andre Zero and Carol; Scotty B. and Gina; and last, but certainly not least, Debi Hron;

listening to while posting: "waking up is hard to do" by +/- (a terrible name for a band that might want to ever be searched for on Google

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Captain(s)

My first idea for this was huge. A gigantic Sergio Aragones-style cocktail party with every captain I could think of. My excuse is running out of time. We have a huge party on Saturday and guests from Atlanta right now.

So, here's what you get. A sketch:



After this, they are both going to enter the Silliest Boot competition. I thought about including the female Captain Marvel and having her saying something like "Cry me a river, cap."

Swinebread should recognize the silhouette on the far right. One of the unsung captains...

Listening to while posting: Crickets outside my window.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Emergency!

I'm going to start off with bad news for the comic book world: Mike Wieringo died this weekend of a heart attack at the age of 44. I personally count him among the greats: Alan Davis, John Byrne and Richard Corben. If he was, in real life, as nice a guy as he seemed from his near-daily sketch post, he will be sorely missed.

Now, if you've linked to all of those artist sites, you may be slightly disappointed in coming back here. I think this worked rather well. An half-hour of research, an couple of hours of penciling 45 minutes of inking and two and a half hours of coloring and here it is. If you recognize it, you are officially old. Really, really old or really, really retro. It goes out to Stat Twelve, the best and only paramedic I know.



Listening to while posting: "1816, The Year Without A Summer" by Rasputina from 'Oh Perilous World'

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

missing

I was going to take advantage of the this week's title to engage in some irony and forgo this week's picture and get busting on a comic I'm working on with AndreZero. However, I decided to do a quickie in Illustrator (about 45 minutes).

This is based on a true story. When I was at art school, I'd gotten a friend into mountain biking. We searched together and bought a nice used bike (it came with early SPDs and she gave them to me in return for some pedals and toe clips). One day a month or so later, I was walking down the street with Sweet Enemy and saw her bike secured to a post by its front wheel only. I'd told her how to correctly lock her bike, but the lesson obviously didn't stick. So, I though I'd teach her a lesson and I flipped the quick-release and stole her bike for her. As S.E. and I were walking to the school to put it in her studio she met us walking the other way. She was rather surprised to see me carrying her bike (sans front tire).



listening to while posting: Fibber McGee and Molly: Brisk Walk to Dugan's Lake

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

moon/mune/muhn/mun

I should have hated this topic, but I didn't.

Huh.

The comic is based on a talk Sweet Enemy and I had about not-so-cool were-creatures. After finishing volume 2 of DC: The New Frontier by the wonderfully talented Darwyn Cooke, I decided to attempt the entire work with a brush. While I am NOWHERE near the inestimable Mr. Cooke, I thought it turned out well enough to try again.



Speaking of trying again, I thought I might attempt a weekly three panel. It may go nowhere, but it will be called "Synecdoche Theatre" and this is the first one...

Listening to: 'Small Plot of Land' by David Bowie from "1.Outside"


p.s. Just now, I thought it'd have been neat and really obscure to do a picture of Tom Cullen from 'The Stand'. Dang, I should have done that...

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Poem

I liked this title and I don't know why. What it did was inspire me to get back to a medium that I hadn't done since art school: relief print. I decided to do a treatment of a poem in the way I'd done one in relief class. I took a haiku and did a very small print based on it. I don't remember the exact poem but it went a bit like:

Now, the fireworks
are over for the night
ah, how vast and dark.

Of course, you don't get to see the print. Only one has survived and hangs on the wall of a friend's condo. He won it at a raffle at a seminar at our aikido dojo.

Anyhoo. I haven't had time to do the actual carving, what with another trip to ride The Queen Latifah Trail in MA and some freelance web design work (Woo hoo! Firewood money!). So, what you get is a sketch for the print done in illustrator. It will be much cooler carved and printed. I think the composition is missing something. Perhaps the angles need tweaking. Any thoughts? The poem it's based on is below.



poor crying cricket
Perhaps your little husband
was caught by our cat

(by Kikaku)

Listening to: Fibber McGee and Molly episode: "Egyptian Good Luck Ring" (1940)

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

discovery

This was a pretty good topic, I thought. I had the basic idea on Sunday and sketched it out rough. Two more sketches later, I decided to attempt a scratchboard of it.

Result = failure.

Ah, well, can't win them all. So, in the need to get something up by Wednesday, I offer the third-round sketch placed in the semblance of an old-school sci-fi magazine cover. I would love to see this painted don't have much ability in painting. I actually entered art school hoping to be a painter, but sucked very much. I was so bad in fact that my instructor was so impressed with my progress from the fall to spring semester that the upped my grade from a C- to a C+. Luckily, I discovered type...

So, here it is. Just imagine that this was painted by Frank Kelly Freas or someone of his towering ability.



A used bookstore in town has a display of three items that the owner bought at an estate sale. Three pristine Fantasy and Science Fiction magazines and the original paintings of their covers! He has them displayed without price in a hidden area of the store. He showed them to me after I'd come up to the register with couple of 'golden age' sci-fi compilations.

Listening to: "Dawning of a New Era" by The Specials

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Geeky

Four things:

First, about the title. It just didn't inspire me. It was the 'y' that did it. If it was 'geek' it would have opened up the field of ideas to at least include a certain type of circus performers. However, nobody ever refers to the guy who pounds nails into his head as 'geeky'. 'Geeky' just seemed, well, lame.

This dislike of titles seems to happen often to me. I must be less about the titles than what I want to get out of IF. I want titles that are rigid enough to provide direction, but open enough to allow depth. I'm not talking Hemmingway, but I need a title that whispers a story. What a title like 'geeky' feels like is just an exercise. Like, I should practice drawing a geeky person because a client might need a geeky person. That doesn't work for me.

Second, about the work. I didn't put a great deal of effort into this as you can see. I did a quite nice small sketch. However, when I transfered it and began inking, I found that the vellum I'm using, while good for penciling is terrible for inking. At least with a crow quill.

Thirdly the subject. This is a portrait, from memory, of a girl I saw in the grocery store a few weeks ago. She was about 5' 4" and had a small smile on her face that I completely failed to capture. I also failed to notice what was in her cart because I was *ahem* reading her t-shirt...

Here you go:



Four. This is selfish of me, but, if you've read down to here, you'd find that par for the course. I was really disappointed that only one person left comments on my work last week. It's got lots of problems that I would want to rectify, but I was hoping to get some comments on whether I'd succeeded in translating a story in a single comic page.

Ah well.

Listening to while I post: "Clubland" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. (is it me or would the young Mr. Costello punch the old Mr. Costello in the face for being in ads for credit cards and luxury automobiles?)

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

twist

First the art:

As I said last post, I've been listening to old sci-fi radio dramas and they've inspired me to crack open my old golden age sci-fi compilations. I really enjoy the ones that were decidedly un-edgy, hopeful and humorous. Many of these humorous ones features Twilight Zone-esque twist endings, so I decided, as an experiment, to pick a short story and attempt to condense it down to a single standard-size comic page. The story is Allamagoosa by Eric Frank Russell. The story won a Hugo and is very funny. I don't think I did it justice, but it works. Read the full story here. It's a very good read.

Here's the work:



Secondly I've been tagged by swinebread.
Here are the rules:
- Each player starts with eight random facts about themselves.
- Those who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight facts and post these rules.
- At the end of the post, choose some people to get tagged and list their names.

1) I was a hoist operator on HH-3f helicopters in the U.S. Coast Guard. I got out after 9 years because the
new HH-60J helos that replaced the H-3s made me very airsick.

2) I really enjoy the taste of prune juice.

3) I am more physically fit now than I was in high school

4) I find a good mountain bike ride as satisfying as sex

5) I hate my own artwork within minutes of finishing a piece

6) Arkonbey is not a name I created. A very good friend of mine once told me that it was the name he gave his 'minifig' alter ego when he played legos as a kid. I have his permission to use the name.

7) With the exception of a short trip to Tijuana, I have never been off of the continent of North America

8) I have a crush on Queen Latifah (and my fiance approves)

That's it. And, so I tag AndreZero, demosthenes, and Kick Enemy Men (if he ever decides to stop playing WoW and update)

Listening to: X-minus One Radio Drama: "Jaywalker"

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Camoflage

Well, I rushed this one a bit and I'm still down to the wire. I'd hate to get lapped by IF.

I was out of town on Friday. Headed down to Mass. to visit my folks and to CT to go to a friend's delayed family wedding reception. It was a good trip. I 'discovered' a bunch of fabulous, purpose-built mountain bike singletrack off of a trail I've been riding for years (For reason of my own, I choose to call the "Queen Latifah Trail"). And, at the reception, I got to see my friend's 53 year-old-mom, my friend's wife and HIS best friend's lesbian partner do synchronized hip-hop dancing (it was his mom's idea). That and I listened to 10 hours of very compelling vintage sci-fi radio drama on the drive. Fabulous.

The drawing was done for IF, but it also wasn't. I had no ideas, so I hit my old sketchbook looking for something to get me going. I found the little robot guy you see. He started as an umpire-bot, but turned into a battlefield medic-bot. I built a little story-snipped around him and this piece is subtitled "Old Number 15". I think it'd be a great seed for a Wierd War Tale.

The inking was fun to do, but I blew off the shading and rushed the color to get this in under the deadline.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Rejection

Woo Hoo! This is my earliest IF post ever.

I win.

Anyway. I did rush this a bit to get the early (for me) post. Thanks to all of those who gave me such great feedback last week; the shadows aren't my best, but they are there. I used this definition for 'Rejection':

"an immune response in which foreign tissue (as of a skin graft or transplanted organ) is attacked by immune system components of the recipient organism".

So, here's rejection:



A no-prize to whomever can name the movie this references (though, remember, you'll be showing your age and/or geekiness by answering correctly). Speaking of no-prizes. The answer to last week's no-prize question was "Sebastian Stark" as played by James Woods in the TV show 'Shark'. The key to the answer was the fact that I said 'attempting to portray" and not "what he looks like".

What I'm listening to while posting: "Man, It's So Loud In Here" by They Might Be Giants off of 'Mink Car'. ( I like this song and like TMBG, but I didn't buy this album because it came with a giant sticker that read '
"featuring 'yeah, yeah, yeah!' from the Chrysler commercial!" and a Chrysler logo)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Suit

Hey, I'm back.

I managed to fit three references to this week's topic into my piece! It isn't bad. I really have to work on my inking style; my pencils look good, but when I ink, it loses something. Of course, part of me worries that I'll never get a style. The other part worries that I do have a style and it isn't good. Heh.

I took reference photos of myself for this. I was wearing a pretty nice, immaculate, vintage, single-breasted, two-button gray pinstripe suit that I got at a local used clothing shop for $15. The jacket fits great, but the trousers are about 6" too long.

Anyway, here's the ink:


and here's the pencil:



And a no-prize to whoever can identify what television lawyer I was attempting to portray.

Friday, June 8, 2007

non-IF work

So, this is what I was working on instead of 'your paradise'. This is from an idea I've been kicking around for a comic. Sort of a Blackhawks/ Sky Captain alternate past deal, only with a female protagonist. Cheesy? Sort of. I picture her character as a trailblazer (a woman flying actual combat rather than just a ferry pilot or trainer). A lot could be done with her relationships with the male pilots. However, I'm not a great writer and can barely write from my own perspective, let alone a woman's. If anyone else feels like writing...

This worked pretty well. I've been very hesitant to use black lately. So, I went heavy on the black here. This almost works, but something isn't right. Not with the color work, but with the linework. I think I'm going to try again. and again.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

your paradise

I'm sorry to disappoint anyone looking for an illustration for this subject, but I'm abstaining from this topic due to it's crappiness.

It's the 'your' that does it. Just 'paradise' would have left enough open (Bosch's 'garden of earthly delights' but with robots!), but the 'your' makes it personal. My first reaction was to the cheesiness of it. The second was how simplistic it was. It ticked me off! How many of us really have only one vision of our paradise? And if we have more than one, can any one be the most important to warrant a drawing?

Me? I've got dozens; more recently since I'm trying to be more Taoist in my life. I have mini-paradises all through my life. I'd enjoy revisiting them all and all of them are too important to trap ineptly in a drawing. So, instead of a drawing, you get lots of words:

Gerry Dyer's lake house in the early 80's. Kids, canoes, swimming, playing jellyroll hopscotch in the dirt road and going to sleep on the screened in porch sunburned and happy.

Standing in the driving mist on the sea cliffs on the peninsula on the Coast Guard base on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The smell of the ocean and the sound of gulls in the fog and nobody else around.

Sitting in the door of a USCG HH-3f Pelican helicopter as a flight mechanic. Watching the Alaskan landscape speed by, swelled with the pride of knowledge and experience, ready for anything.

Pulling an all-nighter in the printmaking department at the Maine College of Art. Watching the sun come up over Casco Bay while using a lever press from the 19th century.

Every inch of The Flow mountain bike trail on that rare day when I'm completely dialed-in. Each turn melding to the next as though I'm on rails; smooth as silk, brave as a lion.

My fiance and I shoveling the driveway of our new rural house at midnight during the Valentine's Day Blizzard. Seeing her little ruddy face smiling from inside her parka as snow hisses on my hood.

My fiance's 6 year old cousin latching onto me at a family get-together and 'forcing' me to play strange, rule-less 6 year old games. The joy is in going with the flow and not trying to impose order.

Waking up at 6am on a Saturday, doing my warm-ups outside amid our trees and flowers, then crawling back into bed with my fiance. She stirs at my touch and rolls over to smile at me...

So. That's only a sampling of my 'paradises'. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, once said that there was one thing that people don't say enough: "If this isn't good, I don't know what is!". I try to say it as often as I can.

Drawing soon, I promise. If not an IF, then something else I've been working on.

peace.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Cars

I almost drew some 'rolling stock', but I'm not much of a railroad buff.

So, I'm pretty darn 'eco-conscious. I prefer walking or biking to driving, but, like the vegetarian who succumbs to the siren song of bacon, I like classic cars. Pretty much any car before 1975. If they could make a hybrid SUV that looks exactly like a 1970 Bronco, a '77 Scottdsale Stepside, or a Shelby Cobra, I'd sell my soul for a garage like Leno's.

Anyhoo. I was messing around with extreme (or, extremely silly) 3-point perspective and made these very, very small thumbnails:


Then I decided that I needed to work on my Adobe Illustrator skills. Both were done in about an hour each (not including sketching and scanning). They aren't perfect, but not bad for an hour each. One Shelby Cobra-ish car and one Fastback Mustang-y sort of thing. Enjoy!



Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Signs

So, I'm going to apologize for this week's offering (SEE! The boring composition! CRINGE! At the terrible perspective! SHUDDER! At the terrible humor!). I have three reasons/excuses.

1) I tore open an old sketchbook and began working on something from it that I'd been meaning to expand on for a while. This took up most of my processor time.

2) All I could think of with this (nearly crappy) topic was The Worst Movie Ever of the same name (WITNESS! The fortitude which I display in not ranting about said film!).

3) I was house-sitting for a friend all weekend and spent a marathon session with their copy of the gigantic coffee table book that has every single cartoon ever printed in the New Yorker.

So, 2+3 - the energy spent on 1 = this:



Again. My apologies.

What I'm listening to as I post: "In the Bath" by Lemon Jelly from 'Lemon Jelly KY"

Non-IF: If anybody would like to critique a comic work I did for a contest back in March, I'd super-appreciate it. This way, please.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

citrus

Oh, what a crappy topic. I was tempted to use my anti-crappy-topic-protest-device, but the early daguerreotype-ists already did suggestive soft-core with round fruit.

How this illustration relates to 'citrus' has a bit of a story behind it (I'm not feeling particularly adept at writing, so bear with me). Pictured is a scene from my real life. Kodiak Island, Alaska c. 1990. I was a SAR helicopter crewman at the US Coast Guard Air Station and, as most young men will, bought a crappy beater truck to bomb around the island in. This was a 1970 Bronco and I named it 'Fear'; as in 'we rode in fear' and 'I drive in fear'. You see It had many frightening aspects:
> the original owner replaced the large truck steering wheel with much, much smaller one from an MG;
> the rubber bushings that supported the axle within the truss rods were rotten, so the axle would occasionally drift back and forth;
> at high speeds on washboard roads, it would drift sideways as though on ice;
> there were only lap belts until I installed an old set of helicopter seatbelt/shoulder harnesses (sans interia reel);
> a friend putting in a new floor for me punctured the auxilliary gas tank which would leak into the cabin when full.
> the three-speed on the column would suddenly pop out of gear, often at speed

But, what you see here was the truck early in my ownership. The original owner had, for some asinine reason, coated the entire back bed with roofing tar. Roofing tar! Since I lived in the barracks, an old USCG friend of mine was a petty officer on the CGC Storis and lived in town and had a driveway. He let me park in front of his crappy apartment and spend two days scraping out the bed. His roomate suggested gasoline. But, since I didn't feel like being flamable, we bought a few gallons of...
Wait for it:
Citrisolve to clean out the bed. Two days of hand-cracking orange-smelling liquid and backbreaking labor we found we no longer stuck to my truck's floor. For all its fear-inducing antics, we drove that thing all over the island. Hunting, fishing, camping, paintball, plinking, mountian biking. We used t he heck out of it. We didn't die, but we were often scared.

Here we are:



For the record, I payed $700. I sold it to a friend for $200 and didn't feel ripped off.

Oh, the dog? He lived nearby. His name was Bear and he was a huge Newfie, only with the extra drool package installed. He was super friendly, but when he shook his head, it was like a sitcom.

NEW FEATURE:
What I'm listening to as I post: "Style It Takes" by Lou Reed and John Cale from "Songs For Drella"

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

neighbor

Well, I actually had this fully drawn and ready to be inked by 9pm on Friday. Then the nice weekend, perfect mountain biking weather. Perfect weather for looking stupid by falling over from a standstill because of the new pedals and cleats I'd gotten to replace the ones I'd been running for four years straight. I was like: "No, really! I've been riding SPDs since '95! Really!". Since then, I'd finally gotten the bug up my wazoo to get cracking on a comic a friend and I are working on. I had one more page to ink to get up to date on the script. So, that took up all of my time until tonight.

Anyhoo, here it is. I feel I've been slacking. I haven't created a totally finished work for IF in a long time. By finished, I mean something that I'd have Sweet Enemy frame and stick on my wall. The piece is an homage to what is arguably one of the best animated films ever: My Neighbor Totoro. If you don't recognize the figure on the left, that's ok. It's supposed to be Fred Rogers. If you don't recognize the figure on the right, GO TO THE VIDEO STORE NOW! No, really. Go.

The title is based on the translation of the movie title from the Japanese. It means, roughly, My Neighbor Mr. Rogers.

Do I get bad joke points?

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Remember

So. I actually had the initial sketch of this done by 1700 EST on Friday. Then it sat as I wracked my brain in an attempt to make the sketch something good. It simply refused to be expanded beyond the sketch, no matter how hard Sweet Enemy scolded me that it should be. But, I have sort of persevered. This is still sketch, but with the annoyances of my Micron starting do die halfway through and the far too many attempts at the shrugging hands, I'd reached the 'fuggit' stage. So, here it is.



I am quite forgetful, but only with people's names. When I was working at a bookstore a regular walked in. She was someone with whom I'd had many great conversations, but I could not remember her name! I called the boss over behind a card rack and asked her, in a whisper, what the woman's name was. The manager replied she didn't know. As we were laughing and commiserating about how embarrassing it is to not know her name and how it was too late to ask her, a smiling face popped around the corner of the card rack. "My name's Such-and-Such!" she laughed, "I bet you won't forget it now!"

And I haven't. I've since left the store, but she asked a co-worker to pass on the message that she hates me. You see on my last day she stopped by and I recommended that she pick up the first book in the Bartimeaus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. She's angry because now she has to buy all three of them, darnit.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Polar

This was an Okay topic. Almost a bit too restrictive, but since I got what I think is an pretty fun idea, I shouldn't complain. What I can complain about is the fact that I made a sketch, refined it, transferred it onto bristol board, grabbed my crowquill and then proceeded to render the bejeezus out of it, turning it into a pile of hierarchy-free little black marks.

Lovely.

Work, while not horrible, is a bit mind-numbing, so I could not dredge up the energy to make another attempt to render it. I will post the third-round sketch. If this feels half-assed, I won't deny it, but I'm sorry.

About the work: I intentionally neglected to do any sort of research on what polar bear or penguin really look like, even though I have some great books in my library(Including this fantastic, but out of print book: Animal Faces by Akira Satoh. If you ever draw animals, this is a book to find). So, the bear looks more grizzly than polar. Ah, well. Here it is:



I resisted the urge to have a reference to the bear being on Prozac, making him a bi-polar bear, but I thought that would be silly. Besides, the penguin is taking Zoloft, anyway.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Fortune

This one took a while and because I'm a sadist, I'll take you through the journey. I started off looking for all the synonyms and uses of 'fortune' from lots of money to 'fortune favors the brave'. I started a Sergio Aragones-esque bit about a guy who visits a fortune teller who (via thought balloon picture) tells him that there are bags of money in his future. He leaves and then gets crushed by a pile of money bags. Since I couldn't figure out how bags of money would be in the air to crush him, I nixed the idea. Then, sitting at work, I thought about all of the things that tell fortunes: tea leaves, crystal balls, tarot cards. Tarot cards! Then I thought of doing a series of Tarot cards that feature characters from Discworld. I made a list and chose one at near random and here it is. Card XIII. Death:



To prove my mediocrity in a number of media, I chose scratchboard. This was difficult for a two reasons. 1) I scratched it small (3 x 6) 2) I haven't touched scratchboard in over a year. Here's the sketch it was based on. Sweet Enemy told me I should have made the dress more revealing, but I was working from photos of Victorian era dresses and didn't feel like taking the time to tart them up.


Sunday, April 8, 2007

Green

This was a pretty good topic. I did have a bit of trouble thinking of an idea (though my alternate i-spy would have worked, yes?), but as a Friday meeting turned to non-graphic design topics, I sketched out a very, very rough homage to my favorite sequential artist in the world: Daniel Torres. Daniel Torres is the creator of Rocco Vargas, a fabulous retro comic from the 90's that was a perfect homage to the future that never was. The action took place in the 'future' of 1983, though it was first drawn in '84. His clean line technique evolved over the years to a style that was both iconic and naturalistic. I truly don't think there is anyone who draws like him. So, I decided to try to copy his style and MAN it is hard to copy another artist's style (not that I have any more respect for style-plagiarists like that guy who draws Robocop in the same style as Geoff Darrow).

What bugs me the most is that since Heavy Metal magazine has jumped the shark, the chances of finding any more translated Torres (or Gess or Frezatto) is slim. No Americans are making true graphic novels anymore, just superhero stuff and depressing, banal graphic memoirs.

Anyhoo.

Here's my Green. It is one of Torres' Martians as the Countess of Mars. I dressed her as the anti-heroine who first appeared in The Whisperer Mystery. Maybe there'll be a crappy prize for anyone who can name that anti-heroine. In the spirit of demosthenes , it's a graphic novel cover (not a comic book cover, so there's no little company box in the upper right)

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

snap

This was a pretty good topic. I had a kernel of an idea Friday afternoon, but other things kept me from working on this; a good friend coming up from Portland for the weekend and a life-drawing class on Monday (and assorted workouts and house-doings). So, Tues and tonight, I worked on this. It isn't absolutely done, but my deadline for posting is Wednesday night. No excuses. It is, mostly done, though. I still have to color it, but I think I'll just grayscale it and repost. The creature design is courtesy of Sweet Enemy.



I will also mention that I found it interesting that nobody even mentioned my soft-core porn response to 'I Spy'. Not even a word. I mean, sure her right arm needs work, but is that any reason to ignore her? Heh.

Monday, March 26, 2007

i-freakin' spy

I'll say it: this topic sucked with a capital UCKED. I mean it, I almost blew it off I was so miffed, but Sweet Enemy and Andre Zero talked me into doing it. Because of the existence of the game, an illustration could be about literally anything. I suppose it's a gimme to those who just drag out any old work they've got lying around; now they won't have to work so hard to retro-fit the work into the title. So, I figured I'd do just that. Doodling at work again, I came up with this unicycle robot and decided to just throw him at the topic. Luckily, he also has a single giant eye, and could also be a spy-bot. So, there you go.



I also did another just for this. I think in the future, if another cheesy, vague topic like this rears its ugly head, I think I'll be forced to use an equally cheesy weapon: soft-core pornography. I spy with my little eye something that begins with 'B':



This could be She-Hulk, but if Marvel Comics calls, it's a Martian.

Ok. To show I'm not completely angry, here's a funny story. In the early eighties, my mom and her friend were hanging out in a diner with her friend's seven-year-old son. The kid, who was pretty damn funny little kid, started playing "I Spy" and the adults played along. Because it was a seven-year-old, it was pretty easy to stump him. It was, until he announced that he spied with his little eye "something that begins with 'V'!". They looked around. They could see nothing in the diner that started with 'V'. Finally, they gave in. The little guy beamed triumphantly as he raised his Fisher-Price action figures in the air and exclaimed: " 'Venture People!"You'd only get that if you're over 35 or so.