A CAUTIONARY TALE....

The tale of a misguided alien invader who lacked the foresight necessary for happiness.  Rendered in trusty dusty pantone markers in the Minnesota Daily advertising department when I should have been doing work.  

PLATYPUS OF ALL TRADES

Like every cartoonist that ever lived, I thought it would be great to start a daily comic strip.  My brilliant idea, something I hadn't seen before, was to feature a duck-billed platypus as the main character (this was before the invasion of Australian talent here in the US).  With the comic strip friendly name of "Scooter", my paneled protagonist 's thing was that he worked lots of different jobs, hence the name of the strip "SCOOTER FOR HIRE".

In about ten minutes I scribbled thirty two vocations my guy could try out.  You will note that some are not truly paying jobs ('ski bum', 'victim' or, arguably, 'writer') but it I had this stream of consciousness thing going...

COMPARING PROTO AND GOTHAM RATMAN IN A 21ST CENTURY CONTEXT

 

I drew RATMAN number one when I was twelve or so, rendered with a trusty ballpoint pen.  I loved the outrageous,absurdist idea that Commissioner Gordon would replace Batman with the super-powerless, inept Ratman and considered the comic book to be my finest work -- a project I began that I actually finished.

Years and years later, Tom Spezialy gave me The R. Crumb Coffee Table Book wherein Crumb reprinted a comic he'd done when he was a kid -- and the version he re-drew as an adult.  So I did the same thing.  When I was living in Manhattan working on a Glen Gordon Caron show, I spent my evenings redrawing RATMAN number one, replete with the exact dialogue, sound effects and exclamations  ("Yeeooo!") and, for the most part, the same panel composition.

 

Two comparative pages are posted above (guess which were the originals...) 

AHEAD OF HIS TIME

Some years ago, Kathy and I were in Tucson visiting my late grandma.  My mom was there too, from Minnesota and she was going through her parents' old photos when she came across this picture.  Not a photo of an old family member but one of my great-GREAT grandfather's classmates from Cornell University.  Like when I was in high school, evidently at Cornell in 1881 students swapped senior pictures for posterity's sake. 

That's right.  1881. 

Which is what makes this photographic remembrance -- and Frank Ramsey Luckey who conceived and "starred" in it -- all the more remarkable.  The Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison didn't introduce the world to motion pictures for another fourteen years, yet this guy, in a jokey keepsake for his buddies, created this -- twenty three different pictures of himself (the "serious" acceptable, portrait hovering in the center)via a visual, flip-book kind of sequence.  But unlike a flip-book which conveys a single action, here Luckey shows all moods and expressions and even cross dresses (which seems to never go out of style).

Certain that Luckey was a drama student with ambitions exceeding the mere theatrical stage, I did a web search to see what noteworthy and creative heights he achieved... only to learn that he went on to become a Congregational minister in New England.  I was disappointed at first -- I had expected more -- but Kathy reminded me that a clergyman (particularly of the non-dogmatic, open-minded Congregational stripe) is at once a writer, an actor and a source of inspiration. 

Still if the guy had only hooked up with an inventor and a late-nineteenth century venture capitalist, who knows... maybe FDR and Churchill would've been Tweeting each other...

BIG BUNNY... one for the kids

One day, while working at the show WEIRD SCIENCE I decided to take a break from the complicated , soul-searching tales of two teenage boys and their adventures with a computer genie and decided to take a shot at a children's picture book. 

I wrote the simple tale and roughed out the art more as placeholders than anything.... but ended up liking it enough to color 'em in.  The basic story:  Big Bunny wakes up to find a rockset ship parked outside his kitchen window.  He and his neighbor friends (second page) postulate what the traveler inside might be like, B.B. has a dream that it's a green bunny like him with shared interests.  In the morning, the ship is gone.  A nod to the old adage: "If you find a spacecraft in your yard and you let it go..."

LIKE A ROCK

One of the monsters-in-cars series of acrylics I did, inspired by Big Daddy Ross's Rat-Fink and the Odd Rod bubble-gum cards.  Driving top-down is the only ride for a gargoyle.

MY BRUSH WITH A SPY

Scott Nimerfro and I had this series idea, right?  About spy planes secretly being built in Burbank in the fifties... and the bad guy was a Russian spy (above), with an American accent and the all-American, above-suspicion vocation of Fuller Brush Salesman.... able to enter every home in the city and sweet talk the wives of the aero plant engineers... before running off to a pay phone to relate his findings to Moscow via long distance operator.

A SPECIFIC RESUME IS REQUIRED

Inspired during my days of riding the MTC bus to campus.  En route from downtown Minneapolis to the University of MInnesota I saw a door on the side of a building marked 'PLANT ENTRANCE' and, well, it sorta grew from there.

OLD TIME COP

12 o'CS sketch.  Just another big city copper, circa 1936,  trying to figure out what the hell is going on after midnight in his city...

STAR WARS -- A NEW HOPE - LUKE'S FIRST LESSON

This strip was selected from starwarsstripz.blogspot.com, your one-stop-shopping for an irreverant (and occasionally violent but always humorous) take on the 1977 STAR WARS film.   

http://www.starwarsstripz.blogspot.com/

NO MYOPIC BIRDS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS CARTOON

An oldy but goody that always brings a laugh.  Re-colored with my trusty Corel 11. 

Charles Darwin might have had a cartoon like this on his wall if he had a computer to open it.  Then again, if Charles Darwin had a computer, what a different world it would be now... which gets one to thinking: if Jules verne had driven a Chevy Volt back in his day, imagine what kind of even wilder stories he would have come up with.

RAT DAZE (or How To Stop Worrying and Love the Bell)

This little animated film of mine had its world premiere at the animation fest segment of the 1st ANNUAL PASADENA COMIC CONVENTION.   The true highlight of the convention however was reknowned comic artist/illustrator Bernie Wrightson being there.  The guy even signed my (battered, well-read) SWAMP THING #1.

SELLING YOURSELF... THE HARD WAY

A 12o'CS picture based on  an actual photo from the Great Depression.  I love how even if a guy was out of work and hungry enough to wear a sandwich board to sell himself, he still wore a hat and tie. 

E-GAD, HOLMES! THE GAME IS A FOOT... AND WEARING A BOWLING SHOE!

A page of random doodles that unexpectedly came together as a Sherlock Holmes kinda piece.  You have the unidentified guy sneaking past, a mad genius villian cackling maniacally and a pensive and pondering Holmesesque character being pensive while pondering. 

Now if someone can explain to me what the bowler is doing there...

STAR WARS EPISODE VII: IMPATIENCE OF THE DARK LORD

Did this single panel cartoon for USC's student paper The Daily Trojan.  Kinda interesting 'cause I did it in brush and ink -- a departure from my trusty Sharpie Marker.  Also interesting in that I drew it before anyone had seen Darth Vader's face (pre RETURN OF THE JEDI) so the "mystery" was still there...

For more handrawn SW laughs, I would be remiss if I didn't plug Craig McNamara and my SW blog:

http://www.starwarsstripz.blogspot.com/

For the true SW enthusiasts check out an animatic of one of the Star Wars Stripz at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-74vkHozy1U

OH MY GOD -- WE TOPPED 500!

That's right -- the month of January 2012 saw THE MOST visitors to this site ever.  Over 560!!  Not bad for a little homegrown blog spot. 

Thank you to everyone around the world who checks out Vlam-ink (or just happens to stumble upon it).  Tell all your friends -- and enemies!

(Picture is another panel from Twelve O'Clock Somewhere.)

STEPHEN COLBERT'S ANIMAL SIDE

Any resemblence to persons or pundits living or dead is purely intentional.

When my son Laird and I did the RATMAN comic, Dr. Leopold the mad scientist/bad guy/half-man-half-tiger was visually inspired by TV show host and former candidate for President of South Carolina, Stephen Colbert. 

Now that Colbert has lost that election I wanted to do my part to keep him prominent by reprinting this, my favorite page from the RM comic.

ROBOT!

No story... just a couple of robot sketches. 

Actually, did you know that the term 'robot' comes from a Czechoslovakian play from the early twentieth century?  I'd offer more details but Wikipedia is dark today.

A WESTERN SAGA (WITH IRONY)

Back in college, one of my intrepid super-8 filmmaking friends, Kirk Mathison and I embarked on filming a western.... in Minnesota.  We shot it at the sand and gravel pits on the southern side of Edina, the suburb where we lived.  It was arid enough in mid-July, with lots of sand and scrub grass but without horses or an old western town the story was about a good guy and a bad guy hunting each other under the unforgiving sun, sans modes of transportation.  The film turned out pretty well, considering, and that was that.

Jump ahead to 1995.  I was working at Warner Bros. in Burbank, CA and one day, during my lunch break I fired up my super-8 camera and shot a bunch of footage (complete with horses!) in the studio's old western town located on their back lot.  Little shots to add production value and scale to Kirk and my homespun western.  One new shot featured the above WANTED poster of Kirk.

The end result is a shining example of irony -- what started as a genre film, shot almost entirely in a Minnepolis suburb, became a visual record of the WB western town... that was ultimately torn down to be replaced by, yes, a faux subruban neighborhood.  

To view the film: 

http://youtu.be/1FxAeZgEqiU

T.U.F GUYS OF THE EIGHTIES

Years ago,(as lots of the postings on this blog begin) I gave my brother Jonathan a 4x6' piece of foamcore with a one-of-a-kind comic strip drawn in rapidograph and colored with Pantene markers. 

I pre-drew the panels, all of equal size and started filling them in, making up the story as I drew it, hoping against hope it would wrap up by the end of the panels.  Shown here are some of the panels, featuring the ensemble of characters, including a panel of them filling up the gas tank of their jeep -- padding in the event I came up short.  

As it turned out I didn't -- as shown by the rush to tie everything up in the last few panels of the big board.  This strip still hangs (leans) on prominent display in Jonathan's laundry room.  Funny how much the border marker faded so much over the years.  Grimaces over the typos.

OTR DOODLES

On the road in Minnesota for the holidays, I didn't forget to pack a page of doodles for this week's offering. 

Someone pointed out that I have a lot of werewolf drawings in this blog.  Guilty as charged, I guess... but at least the one here is happy and full of youthful exuberance.

I'LL HAVE A (NYPD) BLUE CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU...

Back in the late nineties, the cop drama NYPD BLUE, while popular, was constantly adding and losing actors.  I drew this holiday card reflecting what cast additions the yuletide season might bring about.  As I recall the inside of the card read: "Don't make me bring in Sergeant Rudolph... 'he's not half as pleasant as I am..."

HO, HO, HO-ly Partridge in a Pear Tree, it's December!

WOW...A PAGE FROM 12 o'CLOCK SOMEWHERE!!

At long last, a complete page from the opus.  But jeez, putting a comic together via computer IS NOT easy. 

When I was a kid, I'd grab typing paper (or buy some -- my mom charged me half a penny for each sheet as we had plenty of scratch paper and typing paper cost money)and off I'd go, careful not to use markers that bled through the page.  

Flash forward to now and, hey, computers are fun to do comics with but there is lots of grunt work involved.  For this single page, I drew the pictures and colored them (the fun part) and then I used Word to size 'em and add the word balloons and dialogue.  THEN I had to save the panels individually as PDFs so that I could use Photoshop Elements to collect and arrange each of the panels on a page, drop in a black background and publish it.

Whew.

I admit I am not the most computer savvy, especially in using my PC for this sorta thing, so if you have any tips as how I can remove a step or two from the above process, your advice would be greatly appreciated. 

EN GARDE! MORE DOODLES!

Waiting around for
meetings to begin (or end)
offer more than ample time
to doodle. 

Here are a few such Ds
done while at THIRTEEN GRAVES.

A PUZZLE (and classic art) FOR TURKEY DAY

Arnold Roth was one of the 60's great illustrators and the author of my favorite book as a kid, PICK A PECK OF PUZZLES.  for Thanksgiving Day I submit a puzzle from that book -- and thanks for his trmendous artisitic influence on me as a seven year old.  

The X-FILES... something to cry about

In HELL MONEY, one of the X-FILES epsiodes I wrote, there was this sequence where a guy loses an eye in a game of chance and likewise doesn't get the cash to treat his daughter's (Lucy Liu -- yes, that Lucy Liu) lukemia. So he weeps and I had this GREAT idea -- tears stream out of his remaining eye but BLOODY TEARS come out of the orbless socket.

I was so sure the shot would be overlooked or misinterpreted that I drew the accompanying sketch, replete with color. As it turned out, the scene was shot just as I'd drawn it -- but the director incorporated a moody, dramatic sidelight so you see tears on one side and... while the other half of the man's face is in complete shadow.

ADVENTURES IN NURSERY RHYMES: AFTER THE FALL

Hindsight is 20/20, even for humanoid eggs.

Little-known info on the subject: "The theory that Humpty Dumpty was a "tortoise" siege engine, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War, was put forward in 1956 by Professor David Daube in The Oxford Magazine, 1956.

Another theory posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England, depicted in Tudor histories, and particularly in Shakespeare's play, as humpbacked and who was defeated, despite his armies at Bosworth Field in 1485."

SIGNED IN BLOOD

Originally this was a storyboard panel in a series of boardsI did to pitch MONSTER RALLY.  Later when after I embarked on the always-enjoyable yet never-ending TWELVE O'CLOCK SOMEWHERE project I comandeered this and various other storyboard panels, colored 'em and used them for that. 

Originally this was done in B&W in India ink with a pen and brush.  Colored with Corel Painter 11.

COWBOY & ALIENS? HOW ABOUT LAWYERS & CROCS?

Okay, with a headline like that you can fill in your own joke. 

This mash-up of ideas came about back when David E. Kelley's uber popular ALLY MCBEAL was on TV and a feature Kelley wrote, LAKE PLACCID, had just hit movie theaters -- a feature that featured, yes, a giant gator.  Kelley's work was so amazingly hot at the time I figured I should be the one to combine the airwave and box office power of both! 

This was the result.

NOTE TO INTERESTED PARTIES: This was colored, like almost everything else on his blog, with Corel Painter 11.  I've never worked with Photoshop but have been told the programs are similar.  I don't work with photos or illustrations other than my own so as an artist PAINTER works great for me.  It's intuitive, it has lots to offer (I discover new cool things all the time) and, if recent research still stands, it's FREE if you buy a a Wacom drawing tablet (also very cool) -- even a little bitty tablet.  Okay.  That's it.  End of unsolicited plug.