DINO DILEMMA

Sure, Dinosaurs had lizard brains, but big huge ones... and who's to say they weren't puzzled by the prehistoric world around them?   A doodle done whilst at the OUTCAST offices...

HANNIBAL's influence on this fall's new MUPPETS SHOW

HANNIBAL IS OVER. LONG LIVE HANNIBAL

When NBC announced it wasn't picking HANNIBAL up for a fourth season, I drew this cartoon strip as a final send-off... but waited until the series had officially ended before publishing it here.  Whether it was to your taste or not, nowhere on network television could you find a headier, more stylish or daring show...

NEW GIG -- OUTCAST

HANNIBAL is halfway through its third season, but alas there won't be a fourth.  I'm happy to report that I'm now on the new Robert Kirkman series, OUTCAST.  The super-cool poster (which I DID NOT illustrate) is above... and you can watch the trailer at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJzVP_4HYT8

Look for the series in 2016 on Cinemax...

'EMPIRE STRIKES BACK' AT-AT WALKER BEATS THE SUMMER HEAT

 

 

The model is planted in real, honest to goodness Minnesota snow.  Using photos from ESB as reference, I built this ATT out of cardboard, balsa wood and styrene McDonalds burger containers (the feet and head.)

Remember McDonalds styrene burger containers?  Your great grandchildren will -- as those burger pods will still be bio-degrating a thousand years after they're gone...

SH-SHAAARK! JAWS forty years after its big splash...

 

Spielberg's second feature came out forty years ago this summer.  JAWS introduced the concept of Boffo Summer Box Office -- and you can see it again on the big screen!  June 21st and 24th, TCM is screening the film in movie theaters around the country.  Check if your city is one of the lucky ones! 

 

The above is a decades-old photo of a billboard a friend and I reworked to honor the film...

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS #46

HANNIBAL SEASON THREE PREMIERES JUNE 4th

 

The entire season three staff wishes you a happy season three viewing, June 4th on NBC -- check your local listings...

IN HONOR OF GAME OF THRONES, SEASON V, EPISODE TWO...

...Which airs tonight, I offer this old sketch I came across.

GARY v DEMON

 

A storyboard panel I did for a WEIRD SCIENCE episode back in the day

'EMPIRE' IS HOT, BUT DAVID CASSIDY WAS HOTTER...

ASSORTED DOODLES

From top to bottom: 1) Back in my Minnesota script group, often people reading their script pages aloud would describe a contemplative character's action as "kneading their forehead..." I drew a pic of what came to my mind, 2) an easily impressed earthworm and 3) An amalgamated marriage -- I had drawn the telephone-antlered moose and on the same page I'd drawn the cranky old man and, seeing their juxtaposition, I completed the doodle so that the little animal was peering over the fellow's head -- his pet, or his muse... or a parasite.

WHERE THUNDER COMES FROM...

Death's Head Script Cover

Years ago Scott Nimerfro and I came up with an idea for a feature -- what happened to Ebenezener Scrooge AFTER his visit from 3 ghosts?  Anyway, the title, for about 5 seconds, was taken from the last chapter title in A CHRISTMAS CAROL -- 'The End of It',  Naturally, I felt compelled to draw art for the script cover (a no-no in scriptwriting).  Clearer heads prevailed and we later changed the name -- but the artwork survives...

THE GANGSTER

Drew this while at The Minnesota Daily.  What's funny is it predates Stevie Van Zandt on the SOPRANOS, who looked pretty much exactly like this.  What May Day had to do with it, I dunno...

ABSTRACT, DOG

Two drawings for an art class in high school.  A "realistic" dog and its discombobulated abstract counterpart.

CHRISTMAS POST -- "THE REVENGE OF RUDOLPH (or how misfits get even)"

Happy Holidays... See you Next Year!

SOUTH PAW SCRIBBLE

My mom always said she was so right-handed, her left hand was all but functionless -- "it's only there for show."  Every once in a while I try drawing with my left hand... with pretty sorry results (see above.)  Still, the lines in the picture do gain a certain energy of unpredictability... 

Whether you're a lefty or a righty, try it -- and surprise the non-dominant hemisphere of your brain.

THANKSGIVING...for THE LIST OF 7

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for, among many things,  great books I've read...

In the 90's fellow Minnesotan Mark Frost (of TWIN PEAKS and other TV/movie fame,) wrote THE LIST OF 7.  It follows a young Arthur Conan Doyle M.D. who is teamed up with a brilliant, super-deductive crime-solver (a character who clearly inspires the Doctor-turned-author to create Sherlock Holmes.)  Super-fast paced, enormously rich in period detail and a great story, this book's out of print, but available used.  Look for it anywhere and everywhere but Amazon.

As for the picture above... I doodled it at work and later realized it was inspired by Frost's novel.  (The book's better, trust me...)

CLASSIC JACK DAVIS

Before MAD Magazine went black and white in the latter 50's, the mag was in comic book color.  This panel is from the 1954 classic "BOOK!  MOVIE!", wherein the Mad guys compared a story as told in its best-selling novel form versus the glossy movie adaptation version.  In the book the troubled protagonist meets up with his mousey mistress and they get it on -- in the movie version, the protagonist simply wants to dance (in a safe-for-viewing-audiences way.)

I particularly love Jack Davis's trademark loose and incredibly vivacious style in this panel.

DRAGON AND M&Ms

Ah, to doodle with a ballpoint pen...

STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

Princess Leah shows what's she made of when Luke Skywalker tries to rescue her from her Death Star cell in in A NEW HOPE.  [From the collection of STAR WARS strips Craig McNamara and I drew long ago]

MUMMY FOR HALLOWEEN

A few storyboards I did for a movie idea a long time ago: KID CAIRO MEETS THE MUMMY. A 1930's story about a Detroit boxer who travels to Egypt and runs afoul of a mummy.

 



ZOMBIE FOR HALLOWEEN

A close-up from my previous "zombie road-trip" entry... just in time for October 31

WEREWOLVES FOR HALLOWEEN!

Just a couple of lycanthropes for the season.  The rough one was a production sketch for REAPER.  The other was just fun with colored markers and Corel...

THE 'REAPER' SPIN-OFF THAT NEVER WAS



The CW series REAPER was, and remains, beloved and admired during its two season run.  At that time I figured, in the event that somehow GOSSIP GIRL and the reboot of 90210 stumbled, we should be ready for the next logical step: a little kid friendly spin-off of the show.  Ben, Sock and Sam would lean on a brick wall and ruminate about their lot in life, ala Charlie Brown and co., but would have to maintain their respective beards to look enough like their real-life counter parts. 

Oh, and every cartoon needs a dog -- hence 'Rufus.'

A FUNNY JOKE THREE OR SO YEARS AGO COMES BACK TO LIFE!

A few years ago, my good Minnesota Daily fiends and I were yukking it up over the titles of the (then) recent sequel books to THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by the late Steig Larsson -- THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST.  We laughed that with such titles, the series was never-ending.  Off the cuff, the group tossed out potential future titles: THE GIRL WHO WORE WHITE AFTER LABOR DAY or THE GIRL WHO RAN WITH SCISSORS or this one, which I then I dummied up...

 

Putting this post together, I contacted the guys trying to recall any other funny titles and an e-mail chain began... and is still going, with everyone coming up with new ones.  Among the hot-off-the-press favs: THE GIRL WHOSE FACE STAYED THAT WAY... THE GIRL WHO ATE POTATO SALAD LEFT OUTSIDE ON A VERY HOT DAY, THE GIRL WHO TEXTED WHILE CROSSING AN INTERSECTION and one for American history buffs: THE GIRL WHO STOOD TOO CLOSE TO WM. MCKINLEY ON A MID SEPTEMBER DAY IN 1901.

 

SUMMER BOX OFFICE BLUES

The number-crunching is drawing to a close and it seems the summer's movie box office take failed to impress.  It's easy to see why -- do the math: if a film costs 100 to 200 million dollars to make and costs more than twice that to advertise and promote, it's hard for any film to see a profit.

 

Studios must follow the example presented in this New Yorker cartoon I cut out twenty years ago.

RISE AND SHINE...

Trevor's first day of school is next Tuesday and gone will be the mornings of sleeping late.  This picture seemed appropriate --  a rendering I did of Craig McNamara's proposed production company logo Monday Morning Productions.

WHO DOESN"T LOVE A DANCING ROBOT?