Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 31

Art and Appearances

A couple of things --

- We have a new batch of original art up on eBay, including a color Milk and Cheese pin-up, a page from Dork, cover art from Pirate Corp$!/Hectic Planet (two covers, one page), a One Punch Goldberg piece from Biff Bam Pow!, that Spider-Slayer/J. Jonah Jameson pin-up I posted a few weeks ago, some work from Mad and Mad Kids magazine, and some production stuff from Yo Gabba Gabba! and Welcome to Eltingville. You can see the auctions here. Thanks in advance for looking and of course for any bids you might toss our way.

- I'll be a guest at Midtown Comics' "Not At Comic Con Party" next month, a one-day store event taking place on Saturday, July 23rd, right here in NYC. As you may have guessed, this is an event for folks who are not heading to the Big Carnival in San Diego this year. The other guests who will be doing signings include Larry Hama, Amy Reeder, Rebekah Isaacs and MC Chris (the voice of Ward Willoughby in the Welcome to Eltingville pilot, as some of you might remember). There's going to be a store sale, prizes, some contests and other stuff. Should be fun. All the scuttlebutt and schedule information can be found here.

- And now, a little drawing of Superman:

Our Team Cul de Sac Piece

App. 10" by 13". Colors and some digital stuff by Sarah. The Uh-Oh Baby appears by request (via Emily).

I originally thought about doing a one-page comic for the Team Cul de Sac project, then I realized anything I would do would pale compared to Richard Thompson's amazing strip. So I settled on trying to do a pin-up that attempted to simply convey my respect, admiration and fanboy love for Cul de Sac. If you haven't read the strip, by all means, give it a try. It's wonderful, beautifully-drawn and funny as hell. At least I think so -- well, a lot of people think so. Richard Thompson's blog is pretty neat, too.

The original b&w art will be auctioned off for Team Cul de Sac, which is a fundraising effort for Parkinson's research. You can find out more about the Team Cul de Sac book and auction here.

All for now.

Hey

I wanted to say thanks for the kind comments regarding our cat, Crushy. They were appreciated and helped a great deal while I was feeling pretty low. I'd been meaning to post my thanks earlier, but things have been pretty crazy around here and I'm crazy enough in the best of times. So, again, thanks.

Anyway, here's what we've been up to lately:

- Sarah and I have a one-page strip in the just-released Bart Simpson #60, which features a story by the one and only Sergio Aragones.

- We also have a bit of art in the new issue of Mad Magazine, #510, the one with the Green Lantern cover.

- Earlier today Sarah finished up the colors on our Team Cul de Sac contribution, which I hope to post here shortly. The original art will eventually be auctioned off as part of the fundraising project, fyi.

- Here's a recent interview Newsarama did with Eric Powell and I regarding The Goon #35, due this August.

- And here's a Wired interview with Jill Thompson that covers Beasts of Burden along with her other recent projects, with a quote or two from me, in a very positive mood for a change. 

- I drew 10 Milk and Cheese sketch cards for the CBLDF Liberty trading card set.

- We have some new art for sale on our site, a few new Milk and Cheese pin-ups as well as a comic page, and a batch of art from Dork, Hellboy: Weird Tales, the Yo Gabba Gabba! Comic Book Time anthology, and Mad Magazine. The M&C art page can be seen here, the main art list is here.

Finally -- R.I.P. Gene Colan. I was a fan from childhood, first from his work on Daredevil and Iron Man, then Dr. Strange, if I remember correctly, eventually falling head over heels with his work on Howard the Duck. He and his wife were super-nice to Sarah and I when we met them at a local convention and bought a page of artwork a ways back. Sarah had a cough and they gave her a throat lozenge while we talked. He seemed like a great guy. He definitely was a superb artist with a unique style that prevailed at Marvel and DC seemingly against all odds, considering what the prevalent house styles were like. He was good enough to not be told to draw like anyone else, and he didn't. There is no mistaking a Gene Colan-drawn comic, they're like dreams on paper, real yet surreal, glimpses to a world only he could provide access to. Wonderful, just wonderful.

All for now.  

A Post About a Cat

Yesterday we put Crushy to sleep. He was my favorite pet of the four I've had, no disrespect to the others. But he was special for me, we rescued him from the street in our old neighborhood after neighbors abandoned him.

He was taken in from a shelter, but the people who gave him a home booted him outside for reasons that changed over time. The dog hated him. The daughter was allergic. We never met these people, the information was conveyed via another neighbor who knew we liked the little orange cat that played in our yard. Who we fed and played with and looked forward to seeing every day. He ran through the long yard at a gallop when we'd come home, outpacing us as we hauled groceries to the house, waiting for us by or on the tiny back porch that was basically a large step and entrance. He was a happy cat, easily bullied by the local strays, including Spooky, the aggressive black cat that smacked him around. We feared but liked Spooky, I fed him with gloves on because of his belligerence, it turned out he was de-clawed and put up a great front everybody bought into (Spooky was eventually adopted by the neighbors across the street). Crushy would roll around on the floor or the step when we'd come home. We fed him and came to think of him as our "outdoor cat". We built a little shelter for him when the weather got cold, and I sneaked him into the house a few times, only a few feet in from the back door,  knowing Sarah would give me a lighthearted hassle over it.

I desperately wanted to adopt Crushy. We had two cats at the time, Mr Jinx and Pixel aka Pixie. We were renting a large house at the time, a thrid cat didn't look like a problem. But Crushy was wearing a flea collar, and we learned he was an erstwhile member of the mysterious neighbors who seemingly never took him back inside. One day we came home to find him hobbling along, one paw stuck inside his flea collar, a pathetic little orange cat wandering in the rain. I think that's when I really lost my heart to him.

One day I wrote a small note and slipped it inside his collar, basically asking whoever owned him if they were interested in letting someone else have him, and wondering if he was abandoned or not. In polite terms. The neighbors let us know, via a third party, and in fairly snippy terms, that things were fine as they were, and that their cat wouldn't be in our yard so much, appearing abandoned,  if we weren't feeding him. let me add here that while outside, Crushy was a skinny animal, slightly underweight, to say the least. He acted like a hngry stray, not a well-nourished pet that was allowed to roam the neighborhood.

Anyway, to make a long story short, because I wasn't planning on writing a belabored post and I'm tearing up and pet stories are usually about as interesting as "Hey, look at what my kid made at school today" type indulgences -- eventually we ended up taking in a third cat, a kitten we found through a message board flyer at the Japanese shopping center, Mitsuwa (then called Yohan, iirc). Mimsy is a beautiful cat looks-wise exactly the kind of cat Sarah had always wanted. Long haired, Maine Coon-type. beautiful. Personality-wise, she didn't turn out to be ideal -- she's still fairly wild even though she was rescued from the street as a kitten, and she's got the brains of a peanut -- but we love her anyway. We couldn't adopt Crushy, as I probably was calling him by then (his "real" name was "Crushinto", my mistaken memory of the name for the Mexican mascot for Orange Crush, who is actually called "Crushito"), but Mimsy filled the bill of third cat just fine. She was a swett kitten, crazy about Pixel, and wasn't the nut job she'd later become.

Shortly after we took her in,  we found a note on our car's windshield that let us know that "that little orange cat you like is available for adoption", or something very similar. I'll always remember the first part, though, "that little orange cat you like". We still have the note. The rotten neighbors were moving away, and they planned to abandon Crushy to the street. They told our other neighbors, who left the note for us. Shortly afterward, Crushy was ours. He proved to be one cat too many, and a difficult fit for the household, especially after we moved into a smaller place with less room for him to be sequestered or hidden away from Mr Jinx. Jinx hated him, it took a long while to acclimate Crushy into the house proper, things never really settled down until he filled out some (regular feedings did wonders for him, go figure) and became a bit bolder -- and Jinx grew too old to cause too many problems.

Crushy was with us most of his life, we never knew out how old he really was, his previous owners were not looking to discuss him in person and we never approached them for information on him. He was perhaps a year old when we took him in, give or take. He was around 15 or 16, we assume, when he grew sick late last year. At the time, some folks responded to our offer of art and commissions to help pay for his exam and initial treatment, for which I'll always be grateful. We thought we were losing him then, but he responded to the high blood pressure medicine they put him on. Still, he was visibly aging and getting thinner and running down, all we hoped was he'd make it, in good health, until Emily's birthday in late December. Which he did, with flying colors. Then we hoped he'd make it to the new year and bit beyond, and then my birthday in April, etc. We knew time was against us, but were grateful for any time we had with him. We spoiled him and tried to make his last days happy. I'm grateful for the six months "extra" we had with him, it meant a lot to us.

This past week the usual awful signs appeared, the ones you wait for and dread, and when we got back from a short vacation he was flat-out refusing food and water and his breathing had become ragged. We didn't want him to suffer, didn't want to keep him propped up like a zombie even if we could finance it, we went through that with Jinx and especially Pixel, sometimes you can keep a cat healthy through medicine and treatment, sometimes you're just making a sad puppet out of the animal because it's too damned hard to say goodbye, and you keep hoping, even against the facts. Because it is hard to say goodbye, which is why I'm starting to lose my shit and I can't see the keyboard through the blur of tears.

So I'll end this, after succumbing to a final burst of sheer, unapologetic emotionalism and sentiment to say that I loved Crushy very, very much, we all did, he was a wonderful cat and part of the family, and I'm thankful he was ours and we could take him off the street and give him a home and a good life filled with love and affection, and I'll miss him like crazy. And I thank you for the indulgence.

Goodbye, Crushy. R.I.P. You were awesome.

As Sarah Put It, "The Cat's Out Of The Bag"

It was announced today that the film rights to Beasts of Burden has been optioned by a bunch of people who say they want to make a motion picture based on it. You can read the announcement at the Hollywood Reporter here. MTV Splash also wrote about it (I remember they suggested it should be a movie a few years back. How Magic 8-Ball of them!) and several comic book websites have posted something about it, as well. 

As you know, most movies don't get made. Options are an almost everyday occurrence, they option a lot of stuff out there in Hollywood, and most of it sits, or is sat on, in some sort of development hell, or purgatory. Despite the fact that the headlines read "Beasts of Burden headed to the big screen", you have to remember to take that PR stuff with a grain of salt -- the same thing was said about Nexus, Elfquest, Madman, Reid Fleming...the list goes on and on. There's no telling what will happen. We have a lottery ticket. That's how I see it.    

I congratulated Jill Thompson via Twitter and thanked our editorial team and a bunch of folks at Dark Horse who have been involved with Beasts of Burden --  I was going to repeat the whole thing over again in this post but it just looked ridiculous, like I was accepting an award. So, please understand why I'm not mentioning everyone by name here. I also have a terrific headache right now and need to get off the computer asap.

Before I drop off, let me just say that if anyone's worried about the Beasts of Burden comic, they shouldn't be. We'll have 3 new short stories in Dark Horse Presents later this year, and we're trying to put together a schedule for another limited series. The comics, for me, are the main thing.

All for now.

All for now. 

Heroes Con

Heroes Con is this weekend, June 3-5th.

We'll  be set up in Indie Island at tables AA516-517.

We're bringing a batch of art for sale, some Milk and Cheese pages and pin-ups (like the one below), pages from Dork, Hellboy: Weird Tales, Yo Gabba Gabba! Comic Book Time, Captain America Red, White and Blue, Bart Simpson Comics, et al. Some Mad and Nickelodeon illustration stuff, some comic book layouts and roughs and maybe some layout and production material from Yo Gabba Gabba! and Welcome to Eltingville, if we can get it all together in time.





I'll be doing free quick sketches as well as paid commissions. Might bring the markers to try to do some color stuff, maybe Sarah will help out with that, not sure. We'll see how it goes.

We should have copies of Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites for sale as well as a few copies of Yo Gabba Gabba! Comic Book Time.

We're also going to be bringing a box or two of what's left of our overstock of older work, much of which we'll be selling on the cheap. We're hoping to blow out what's left of our various SLG books and comics (M&C, Dork, Hectic Planet, Action Girl Comics, Biff Bam Pow, etc) as well as our extra file copies of work done for other publishers such as DC, Dark Horse and Bongo. Which means a batch of SLG stuff and some odds and ends like copies of World's Funnest, a few Supergirl Adventures issues, some Bart Simpson comics, that sort of thing. Some of the M&C comics are early printings, if anyone cares, all will be sold for cover price or less. This is the one and only time we're doing this, after this we'll have no more copies of these things for sale at any conventions (well, unless we find another goddamned box we didn't know about). Whatever doesn't sell will likely be recycled back home. Any extra merchandise we dig up will likely be brought along as well, a M&C lunch box or two,  vinyl figures, some beer mugs if we can transport them safely, etc.

I always kept more of these things than I should have, we do very few shows, and there's no reason to keep all this stock on hand. So, out  it goes, and Heroes is where we're taking it all. if you're interested, stop on by.

Otherwise, I'll be on a panel on Saturday with Richard Thompson and Roger Langridge.

12:00 PM - Approaches to Humor

Room 209
Sure the convention is HeroesCon, but let’s never forget the funny side of the comic book world. Join The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald as she sits down with three of the very best cartoonists in the business. They are able to me us smile and even laugh out loud: Richard Thompson (Cul De Sac), Roger Langridge (The Muppets, Fred the Clown) and Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese, Yo Gabba Gabba!) are three of the wizards who put the comic in comic.

Yep, that's us all right, three wizards.
 
Guess that's it. Here's the link to the Heroes Con home page.

Here's the guest list as it stands.

Really looking forward to the show, hope to see some of the H.O.F. faithful there this weekend.

I Don't Know What This One's Officially Called in the Marvel Universe

At some point every kid reading the old Spider-Man comics had to have been slapped upside the cranium by the startling realization that Spider-Man's number one villain wasn't The Green Goblin, or Doctor Octopus, or the Kingpin -- or any of those other wonderfully-costumed crackpot criminals stirring up shit in Steve and Stan and Jazzy Johnny's 1960's NYC. No, the honor of  #1 chief prick antagonist goes to J. Jonah Jameson -- newspaper man, comedy relief crank and plot-kickstarter supreme.

You can add to that obsessed lunatic, jealous bastard and Bona fide criminal. However you want to classify him for your revived Sunday Champions game, there came a time when you had to face the fact that the oh-so-hilarious J.J.J. was our beloved hero's Doctor Doom, his Dr. Sivana, his Mort Weisinger. Jameson ranted, hated, harangued, libeled, sweated, shouted, rabble-roused and personally plotted to capture and/or outright kill Spider-Man. That's not fucking normal behavior for your average supporting cast member. That's cruddy Norman Osborne shit. Can I get a witness?

Even more galling, unlike most of the guys Bowen Studios makes busts of, he's also a hypocrite. He says he hates Spider-Man for being a costumed vigilante, then bankrolls the creation of a costumed vigilante to go after him, then uses a dangerous robot to go after him, then sends his own super-powered astronaut son (?) to go after him. Well, I call bullshit on that. Bullshit on that! The Vulture isn't fooling himself, he's not playing head games with himself, justifying his behavior -- he wants to steal stuff, he hates Spider-Man for kicking his splintery old ass.

Jameson, he's just a big fat liar. He no good. He bad man. And everyone let's him get away with it! Good ol' J.J.J.! Can you imagine going to work for an asshole boss who gives you shit all day, and then chases you with his space-juiced son or a robot rental during your off-hours? That Peter Parker, what a maroon. I'm sure at some point in the comic he gets hep to his ridiculous situation, maybe there's a stab at explaining away the fact that Jameson should be in jail, several times over. I'm sure more recently there have been stories taking this very silly situation very, very seriously, trying to make sense of it all, very serious, mature, adult sense. I'll take the nonsense. It's a lot more fun.

Which brings us to today's drawing. The Steve Ditko-designed robot up there represents Jameson's second go at catching Spider-Man via super-iffy means. First, he was involved in the creation of the Scorpion (a pretty bad idea on the face of it: insert raging asshole into  Halloween scorpion costume complete with action tail, set loose, cross fingers). That worked out about as well as the Sega CD game system, so a few issues later he gave this clunky little tinkertoy a spin. It was invented by one Dr. Spencer Smythe, an enterprising inventor who knew how much Jameson hated Spider-Man and offered him Mr. Clanky to go play robo-vigilante with. I don't see that as a very good idea, either, but it does get a comic book going, I'll give him that. Anyway, at first Jameson isn't up for it (he says something about it "not being enough of a transgression against God", iirc), but after a demonstration of the Ditkoid's patented Spider-Man-catching features --

1) Senses the presence of spiders!
2) Extendable ropey- tentacle grabbers!
3) Telescoping arms and legs!
4) Cleverly imitates the look of an open Japanese toilet on legs!

  -- and some stupid prodding from Dummy Parker (he has some stupid idea about embarrassing Jameson, it's stupid, let's not get into it), Jonah gets all fired up for the idea.

What probably seals the deal for our boy is that his face will appear in the robot's viewscreen as it tracks Spider-Man, meaning Jameson can see out of it, and taunt his victim, basically offering him a creepy POV snuff porn experience. If he actually succeeds in snuffing Spidey-Man. Which he doesn't. Oh, sorry, should I have put SPOILERS there? I fell asleep in class when they covered SPOILERS. It's not much of a plot point, anyway. Spider-Man only starts losing big-time in the 90's.

Anyway, I guess there isn't much more to say about this one. It is what it is. I was going to type some about Ditko's design work versus Kirby's, his singular, bizarre organic approach and all. Maybe later. I could kibbitz a little about that Smythe idiot, he comes back (don't they all) and has something to do with the friggin' Molten Man (he who cannot wear clothes or hide himself well or anything), and I guess he learns to hate Spider-Man, too, because I think Smythe's the guy who makes the Spider-Slayer robots. Every year or so he comes out with a new model, he has a Spider-Slayer show at the New York Coliseum and shows the robots off and all. I think the J.J.J. T.V. robot is the first official Spider-Slayer. Unless I'm wrong and the (Terrible) Tinker makes those things. Actually, I think the Tinker made the Spider-Mobile. Oh, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about anymore.

Anyway, it's pretty creepy seeing J. Jonah Jameson's leering face screaming and yelling out of the porthole of a hentai tentacle rape matryoshka doll. It's actually fairly terrifying, and yet another Ditko triumph of inky craziness. The man slays me. He Spider-Slays me!

Under The Weather

I've been sick and overwhelmed, but I figures I'd duck in to say hi, for those of you who are still with me here.

Dark Horse sent out a brief press release on The Goon #35, which I wrote and which series creator Eric Powell is probably working on as I type this.

We finished up a series of six really small spot illos for an upcoming issue of Mad.

Started my entry  for Team Cul-De-Sac, but the deadline was pushed back, so I'm juggling that around. Along with another round of commissions, trying to get those done asap.

Working on the cover layout for the new MC Frontalot CD.

Working on one...two...projects I can't discuss publicly. Bo-ring.

Totally unprepared for Heroes Con. A few of you folks have written regarding commissions at the show, I'll get back to everyone asap. Not sure if I'm sketching at the show or not, I'm leaning towards it, mainly because I can't work on anything else while manning the table.

Speaking of shows, I had a really nice time at the Hawthorne HS event last Saturday. I was going to write up the show in detail but things have been crazy. Missed seeing my friend Ken (he showed up while I was in the teacher's lounge, eating and gabbing and looking out the window at the flawless, all-American football field across the street), but it was nice, as always, to get a chance to talk with Walt Simonson. Appreciate the H.O.F. faithful who stopped by the table. I was kept pretty busy for a laid back school show, very surprising. Sold a few books, a few small drawings, did a bunch of freebie sketches, and on the way out traded some artwork for a 40's Lee Elias Black Cat page. Nice day, all-around.

Not- H.O.F. related, but we were really happy to hear that Andi Watson has done three new Skeleton Key stories for Dark Horse Presents.

Ditto, that first Alex Toth book from IDW is amazing. Wish I had time to read it. As well as the Shigeru Mizuki book from D&Q.

Finally, Sarah's started a new blog called Tumbling Tumbleweeds, stemming from our family's growing interest in Gene Autry B-westerns and cowboy/girl culture/pop culture. Which I guess grew out of listening to a lot of Western Swing recently, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Tex Ritter, The Light Crust Dough Boys, et al. Which grew out of listening to a lot of The Maddox Brothers and Rose after Sarah read about the group on The Hound's Blog. I think that's how this all started. Anyway, Emily has been a driving force in all this, she really took to the Maddox Brothers and Rose tunes in a big way (we all did, actually), and for Christmas she wished for (and got) a Jessie doll from Toy Story 3, and at the moment she's becoming horse and cowgirl-crazy. Yee-ha. We started watching a lot of Gene Autry B-flicks recently, they're fun and silly and often less than an hour long, I can sketch in front of it and watch for re-used plot elements and gags. Unfortunately, Emily won't watch The Phantom Empire with us, she finds the SF elements and serial death traps too scary. I love that serial, I saw it as a kid on T.V. and it's as nuts as I remember it. it is bona-fide insane and has one of my favorite plot contrivances ever -- Autry is facing an underground society bent on destroying him, as well as some evil scientist-types who also have it out for him. He's also up on a trumped-up murder charge. While tangling with all this, he must broadcast his radio show daily -- which includes singing at least one song -- or lose his contract and his ranch. That's better than whatever it is you're watching. Sort of. Well, it's stupider. The underground super-science sets and models are great/ridiculous, there's also a swell twelve year-old trick rider named Betsy King Ross (who unfortunately does almost no trick riding, but she's awesome nonetheless), it has a kid gang on horseback in homespun crazy costumes (emulating a group of enemy "Thunder Riders" who wear "authentic" crazy costumes), Smiley Burnette doing what Smiley Burnette usually does (comic relief, novelty songs, froggy sounds, general goofery), Champion, the Wonder Horse (unbilled), a secret kid's lab/hideout, and the semi-infamous worker robots with blank faces and tin hats stumbling around doing stuff (bored stuntmen in left-over suits from a Clark Gable/Joan Crawford musical, no less). And a lot of bad acting, and crazy stunts, as this is a 12-part serial made by maniacs on a budget with little time for niceties. This is called entertainment, kids. The copy we borrowed from the library is pretty much no-frills with bargain basement extras, but there's a new, authorized version of the serial due out on DVD next month. 

Also -- before I forget,  thanks to those out there who bid on our recent auctions, we appreciate it. We sent a few packages out already, a few more are going out asap, I was too sick to get out to the post office yesterday. Expect some additional auctions in the near-future.

All for now.

Beasts of Burden in Dark Horse Presents

Not necessarily news to some folks, but now that an announcement has been made, here's an upcoming project I can talk freely about, at least to some degree.

In a nutshell, there will be three new Beasts of Burden stories from Jill Thompson and I running in Dark Horse Presents . The first story is scheduled for DHP #4, which ships in September. Subsequent stories will be in issues #6 and #8. These will be stand-alone stories, taking place shortly after the events seen in the Hellboy crossover from last year.  

The Dark Horse press release can be found here.

All for now.

More This And That

The Goon #35 from Dark Horse Comics has been solicited for August, art as always by Goon creator Eric Powell, script for the first time ever by yours truly. I enjoyed writing this comic very much and I can't wait to see what Eric does with it. Should be a hoot.

Forgot to mention this earlier -- The latest issue of Mad Magazine is out (Facebook cover), Sarah and I contributed a 2-page illustration for it.

Beast of Burdens: Animal Rites has been nominated for an Anthony Award, which is given out in connection with The Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, being held this year in St. Louis. How we got nominated is certainly a mystery to me, but I'm not complaining. The graphic novel category is newly minted, and it was nice that Jill Thompson and I nabbed a mention, even if I expect all and sundry to be severely trounced by Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptation.

Finally, we've put a new batch of H.O.F original art up on eBay, including  some of the pin-ups I've posted here recently (the Demon, the Hulk and your favorite mutant and mine, Peeper). Also on the chopping block: a Super Martian Robot Girl page from the Yo Gabba Gabba! comic, a Bart Simpson gag page, a page of Fun strips from Dork, a Hectic Planet illustration from the third trade paperback, a chapter illustration from I Love You, Beth Cooper, and several Mad illustrations.

You can see the art and bid on my doodles here.

As always, thanks for your time and attention.

Back to work.