From the Archives 17

I haven't done one of these in nine years, so I figured it may be time for another run. Having recently moved, hads given me reason to tuck into some boxes that have been stored away and inaccessible. I came across this house ad for the original run of Xombi from Milestone Media that ran in the other titles back in 1994.

Ask Me Anything #64

With the new year I thought it might be worth putting up another Ask Me Anything Post. It's been a while since I've done one, and I have no idea if there's still any interest, or if anyone even looks at this blog anymore.

Blogging seeming to be on the wane as other, more immediately gratifying, forms of social media have taken people's fancy, and readership has shifted elsewhere. Meaning that my own posting efforts, just like most people's, have shifted elsewhere more and more as well.

I've always preferred Blogger over other forms simply because it allows me to cover things more in depth than other delivery services, and to delve into somethings that I wouldn't really think felt at home on say, Facebook, or certainly Instagram.

This blog was set up primarily as a means of promoting my work, share some of my process and inspirations and, hopefully, steer people towards some things of interest and enjoyment I've found along the way. For the past few years I've broken away from monthly comics and have been working on longer range projects that I can't share yet, which means that this blog has not really had the content is was designed for.

So, while "Ask Me Anything" is meant for you to ask anything you are curious about regarding my work, inspirations, opinions on anything, or pretty much any other thing you may want to know from me, I'd like to also start by asking you what sort of content you'd like to see here so that it's not months of empty space, and returns to something worth checking in on. Certainly feel free to ask me anything as well.

Questions can be posted in the comments section below, and I'll either answer them there, or in a separate post sometime later in the month.

I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones, all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13, #14,  #15 , #16, #17 , #18 , #19,  #20,  #21, #22,  #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #28, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #39, #40, #41, #42,  #43, #44, #45,  #46, #47,  #48, #49,  #50,  #51, #52 , #53, #54, #55, #56,  #57,  #58,  #59, and #60 , #61, #62 and #63

Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month under Ask Me Anything.

Now ask away. 

From the Archives - 16

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted a "From the Archives" entry. Here's a little something from the mid-late 1990s.

This is presentation material for a proposed graphic novel written by me with art by J. J. Birch, my artist from the first incarnation of Xombi.

The project began as a multi-part serial story for a proposed comics magazine along the lines of Heavy Metal, which never came to be. The first ten page installment was completely written, drawn and lettered. The material was then used as a starting point for a potential graphic novel being shopped around to investors by the same individual behind the magazine. Nothing wound up coming of it, but the material is still relevant, and if I can ever locate J. J. Birch, I may still try and do something with it, which is why I'm not including the actual story material here.

Instead, here is some more of the presentation material.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

Welcome to my 7th annual Halloween Countdown. Every day throughout the month of October I 'll be dropping treats into your virtual Halloween bucket through a series of posts pertaining to the spirit of Halloween.

While the Countdown is transpiring, I'll be suspending any posts here that don't support the mood of the Halloween season. Regular posting will resume in November, though my regular feature "Ask Me Anything" won't return until the first Monday in December. For those of you new to this blog, or who only venture here during the Countdown, "Ask Me Anything" is something I run on the first Monday of every month (except October) and is meant for you to ask me anything you want about my work, inspiration, this blog, or anything at all. Feel free to revisit in order to do just that.

This year, my Countdown posts will cover a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from pictorials to longer essay pieces, comic book stories, artwork, costumes, monsters, reading recommendations and more. I will also be continuing with my tradition of daily horror movie watching throughout the month (something I've done since way before the internet) and will provide my reactions to what I watch, hopefully providing some new titles to add to your own viewing queue.

What else will you get?

Last year I also posted FREE daily print and cut out paper masks. people seemed to have enjoyed those, so I'll be running more of them each day this year as well.

For those of you who are friends with me on facebook, (feel free to friend me if you're not -- just mention the Countdown) I'm going to attempt to continue providing a short Halloween related video each day.

Be sure to visit my companion blog, The Grim Gallery, where I'm slowly posting my thousands of monster related images at the rate of one per day. There are monsters, ghosts, ghouls, and creeps there every day 365 days a year, but during October, the images tend to be more relevant to Halloween.

If you like what I post this year and want more, be sure to check out my previous Halloween Countdowns by visiting the October archives for the years 2006-2011. The Archives can be found in the column on the right side of this blog page.

Finally, for more Halloween than you can handle, please visit The Countdown to Halloween where you will find links to hundreds of blogs also participating in the Countdown this year. Everyone involved works incredibly hard to bring you the best treats possible all month long. It would be almost impossible to visit every one of the blogs involved every single day, but please try to get to each one at least once and leave them a comment to let them know their efforts are appreciated.

Happy Halloween.

4 Questions, 4 Answers

Ben Z. asks...

1) Supposing you are in the deep woods of Michigan, how are the ticks this year? Do you have struggles with ticks, and if so, how do you approach the struggles? 


That biographical information about me on my website was not entirely true. I did live in Michigan for a time, but not in the deep woods. That photograph that allegedly is me was chosen because it looked nothing like me and that man looked like a real character. I live in New England now pretty well surrounded by woods and the ticks are a huge annoyance. You can't walk outside without picking at least one of them up. The deer ticks are not much bigger than this: .  so it's not easy to find them on you and they are the ones to worry about. I blame the mild winter. 


I usually deal with them by staking a small child down to the ground and once all of the ticks have attached themselves onto he/she, I know it's safe to go outside. 

2) Do you feel the scripts for Kobalt #17-19 could be successfully reconfigured to feature new characters (other Company characters or ones that you own)? Or were the scripts only viable with the Kobalt character and in the context of the 16 other issues?


I don't think it would be impossible to reconfigure those scripts for other characters, but there isn't as much point to doing it. They were really meant to serve Kobalt. One of the stories I did reconfigure as what would have been Midnight, Mass. #9. Sadly that series ended with issue #8. It worked really well for Midnight, Mass., and was probably truer to that particular series, but it was actually a stronger issue of Kobalt. I've taken the villain for that story and decided to include them in a young adult novel I've been slowly pulling the pieces together for. Don't look for it anytime soon. 

3) Have you ever considered a creator-owned series that used your ideas for the post-Morrison Doom Patrol as a starting point? 


Not really. Most of the ideas I had for that series were very specific to the Doom Patrol and its characters. Some of the material was cannibalized for Xombi, and some of it was going to wind up in Midnight, Mass., had that series continued. Some of it may end up in something else I'm working on, but it's really pulling out bits and pieces and applying them to other material rather than using them as a starting point to develop new characters and a new series around. 


The way I approach writing a comic book series is to start with the characters first and then come up with plots that bring out some aspect of the characters, or serve to change or develop them. Because of this, most of the plots I come up with are designed to be strong stories for the characters that would be taking part in them and not necessarily plots that could easily be transplanted to another character. 


When I come up with a new series I usually start completely fresh, developing characters that will serve the idea I have for a series, and then coming up with stories that will drive both the idea of the series and the characters created for it. If an old unused plot happens to be something that can serve that purpose, I'll retool it and use it on a new project, but usually it's in a form that is very different from the original plans for it.


4) Would you be able to endorse any current comic series being published outside of The Big Two?


I don't have a comic book store closer than about an hour away, so I'm not really seeing anything unless it's collected in book form, and most of what I'm buying that way are archival reprints such as the Creepy and Eerie archives, the Little Lulu collections and the Dell/Gold Key material such as Turok: Son of Stone and The Mighty Samson coming out of Dark Horse or the Carl Barks and Mickey Mouse reprints coming out of Fantagraphics. I have been keeping up with Hellboy/B.P.R.D. in book form, which I am always happy to recommend.


I'm also regularly following Drazen Kozjan's  The Happy Undertaker which I also really like. 


I see so little new stuff that I couldn't even recommend anything from the big two at this time. 

From The Archives 16

I had originally planned to post this when I learned that the brilliant French artist, Moebius died several weeks ago, but could not find the image.

This is a poster that Moebius created for Milestone Media back in 1994-1995 for the comic book series, Xombi, which I wrote. The poster features Xombi, David Kim holding a wooden staff/walking stick which was featured in some of of the concept art and because of that on a number of covers and this poster. The staff never featured in the comics (though I think artist J.J. Birch drew it leaning against a wall in David's apartment in one issue as a joke. We toyed with revealing that it was one of those rain sticks that sound vaguely like rain when you turn them over on end. I think Dwayne McDuffie said that the original idea was that it was part of a caduceus that was meant to appear as a visual element meant to indicate that David's healing powers were activated.

Another weird bit about this poster concerns David's appearance which is very unlike his appearance in the comics. It turns out that Moebius was working from some old sketches for the character when he was meant to be African-American, David Saunders. When a request was made to correct this Moebius elected not to redraw David's face, but simply to color his skin with a different palette.

I know Dwayne was really disappointed with how this turned out and, admittedly, so was I. On one hand it was amazing to have Moebius depicting a character that was very much mine, but it would have been even more amazing if the artwork actually looked like the character it was meant to represent.

I don't know how well this poster sold at the time. Probably not that well would be my guess. It does show up on ebay every now and then which is where the above image came from. I do own this poster, but have never felt compelled to get it framed.

From The Archives 15

It's been a while since I've put up a "From the Archives" post. This one comes from the dawn of time and is something of a super geeky origin story as well. Below is one of the first professional bits of writing I ever did -- professional in the sense that I received money for something I wrote.

The piece comes from the January 1980 issue of Boy's Life magazine, the magazine for Boy Scouts of America, of which I was one. This issue came out when I was in Junior High School and all of thirteen years old. It was a tiny tidbit that was part of the monthly "Stamps and Coins" column. I actually wrote a number of these which saw print, and am not sure if this is actually the first one I contributed. It's the only one I could find though.

Yes, it was an unassuming, humble beginning, but I applaud the editors for encouraging kids to research and submit these little entries by paying them for the work. It was the first money I'd earned that didn't involve yard work or washing dishes, and while $5.00 doesn't seem like a lot now, back then I could buy two books or a record for that money.

So, without further ado, here's my contribution to the January 1980 "Stamps and Coins" for Boy's Life.

I like to think I've improved since then.

Ask Me Anything #16

As everyone slowly recovers from the holidays, it's time once again for "Ask Me Anything." This feature runs on the first Monday of every month and gives you the opportunity to ask me anything you might be wondering about me, my work, my favorite stuff of 2011, or anything at all.  I've already said this twice previously and failed to deliver, but this month I swear I'll also be responding to a couple of questions from previous editions of "Ask Me Anything" that I've been remiss in answering, and had intended to get to before my work schedule and the holidays got the best of me. 

Head down to the comment section and post your question. I'll either post my answer in the comment section as well, or answer it in a special post all its own sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones. all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13, #14 and #15.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month.

Now ask away.

Ask Me Anything #15

It's time once again for "Ask Me Anything." This feature runs on the first Monday of every month and gives you the opportunity to ask me anything you might be wondering about me, my work, or anything at all.  This month I'll also be responding to a couple of questions from previous editions of "Ask me Anything" that I've been remiss in answering, and had intended to get to last month before my work schedule got the best of me. 

Head down to the comment section and post your question. I'll either post my answer in the comment section as well, or answer it in a special post all its own sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones. all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13 and #14.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month.

Now ask away.

Ask Me Anything #14

After taking a month off in order to make room for the annual Halloween Countdown, "Ask Me Anything" returns. This feature runs on the first Monday of every month and gives you the opportunity to ask me anything you might be wondering.  Whether it's a burning question about one of my projects, something I've said, or did, or even if you're just wondering what books I'm reading now, this is your opportunity to ask.  This month I'll also be responding to a couple of questions from previous editions of "Ask me Anything" that I've been remiss in answering. 

Head down to the comment section and post your question. I'll either post my answer in the comment section as well, or answer it in a special post all its own sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones. all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1, #2 ,  #3, #4, #5, #6 , #7 , #8, #9,  #10,  #11,  #12 and #13.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month.

Now ask away.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

Image source

Welcome to the 6th annual Halloween Countdown. Every day throughout the month of October I'll be posting a variety of tricks and treats for your enjoyment. This means that it will be a month long holiday from the usual business at this blog such as "Ask Me Anything" which will resume the first Monday of November.

What you'll find instead are a wide range of posts pertaining to all manner of creepy seasonal things. I'm continuing to do post about my daily movie viewing throughout the month. Hopefully you'll find more recommendations of horror movies to watch than horror movies to avoid at all costs. There will be one new feature added this year, which will continue into next year. People really responded to the daily Halloween riddle that ran during the 2007 - 2009 Halloween Countdowns. I really wanted to add something again that unified the countdown here as a themed regular daily feature. So this year I bring you...

Free Halloween print and cut-out masks. Every day this blog will feature one, sometimes more, Halloween masks that you can print out at home, cut out, and wear. This is perfect for those last minute costume parties you aren't prepared for.

Finally, for anyone who wants to join me on facebook I'll be featuring a different Halloween related video there every day throughout October. Be sure to mention the Halloween Countdown if you choose to friend me there.

New this year is my companion blog The Grim Gallery a place where I'm posting all of my thousands of weird photos and images of monsters and other strange beings at a rate of one a day. This month's posts all lean towards being relevant to Halloween.

You can also peruse my past halloween Countdowns by checking the October archives from the years 2006-2010 in the archives to the of this post.

Also be sure to check out Countdown to Halloween where you'll find links to hundreds of other blogs and websites participating in this year's countdown as well as contests and cool merchandise to spook up your home for Halloween.

Now for the first treat I'm going to drop in your bucket.

I'd like to recommend to everyone who is enamored with Halloween Lesley Bannatyne's book Halloween Nation. Bannatyne has written, or edited several books about Halloween (including this one).  Halloween Nation takes an in depth and fascinating look into what Halloween means today to all of the adults who celebrate it with exuberant devotion. She interviews artists, musicians, spirit mediums, parade organizers, prop builders, yard haunters, zombie walkers, collectors and others in her entertaining and enlightening quest to document Halloween in the modern world.



    

The Countdown to Halloween is Only One Week Away

At Midnight October 1 I'll begin my 6th annual Countdown to Halloween with daily posts of season appropriate material leading up to the holiday itself. You can check the October archives to the right for each year beginning with 2006 to see material from countdown's past. Also by clicking on the surprised face of Vincent Price at top right you can visit the official Countdown to Halloween site to see all of the other blogs and websites which will be taking part in this year's countdown. You can even register to join in yourself while you are there if you are so inclined.

From the Archives 14

This goes back to sometime between 5th grade and 8th grade based on the art "style." Starting in about 4th grade, perhaps a bit earlier, I drew hundreds of covers for my own line of comic books, but only bothered to complete the inside stories for a couple of them. Looking through these covers, there was definitely a kind of continuity and implied storylines, crossovers, and shared universe implications.

Most of the characters were obvious ripoffs of established characters from Marvel, DC, Charlton, and even Dell/Gold Key, but some of the original characters seem like they might still have some potential. Spike Man is not one of them.

If you're curious to see more of these than take a look here and here.

This Blog Turns Six Today

Six years is hardly a milestone, but it's the first year I happened to notice when the anniversary of this blog took place. Initially begun with the intention of solely promoting new work of mine as it became available, this blog quickly morphed into something not quite so commercial and a bit more personal.

While many of the posts were announcements that the latest issue of a comic book series I was working on was now available for purchase, or that a television episode I wrote was airing, more and more of the posts ended up connecting to things that have influenced me and my work over the years, particularly the stuff that shaped me as a child, so suddenly there were posts on children's books that had an impact on me as well as posts celebrating the birthdays of figures whose work had their own influences on me, and the dark reverse side of that coin, posts marking the deaths of those who meant something to me whether I knew them in person or only through their work.

I also began to give a look back stage into the processes that I go through in producing my own work, which led to a companion blog aimed at kids which introduces them to as much material as I can come up with connected to visual storytelling. With that spirit of sharing in the process behind why and how I do things to create my work, for this anniversary I've decided to direct you to some of the material that I've posted here from the past six years that I think is most significant to the evolution of this blog.

1. Fun with Scissors - While 2005 had no posts worth revisiting (or even initially visiting), in January 2006 I began a series of posts that would slowly peter out to a halt at 121 in November 2009. Most of these posts happened in 2006. This was a daily collage of various tv cartoon characters that I created in real time each day until I got too busy with other things and had to let it fall by the wayside. This proved to be a popular series, and if you search for any random cartoon character, you are likely to find one of my collages as an example (sometimes the only example) which made it something of a useful resource. It brought in a regular stream of visitors, some of whom still stop by on a regular basis and led to some sales and some commissions. Many of these collages are still available for purchase at very affordable prices here.

2. The Children's Book Display - I created for the now, sadly, defunct Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor,  Michigan. This was the first time I'd ever constructed anything like this and I pretty much made up how to do it as I went along. I also took the time to record and share the process here from start to completion. This was the first time I shared the process of how I did anything. I did many more installations and illustrations for Shaman Drum which can be found here.

3. Countdown to Halloween - In 2006, myself and a handful of like-minded individuals independently posted our own 31 daily posts counting down the days to Halloween (my favorite holiday). Some of us were already in contact with each other, others found us (or vice versa) as the month progressed. The following year a formal list of links of participants was put together, followed by an official blog of its own. It is now an annual online event attracting over 250 participants last year and countless visitors. I'm proud to be one of the founding fathers of this event and to see it grow in popularity year after year.

4. Star Wars 30th Anniversary - In 2007, Star Wars (or as it's now known Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope) turned 30 years old. When that movie was first released I was at exactly the right age for it and it had a huge impact on me mostly because it was the first movie I'd seen set in a non-existent place that presented it that location as completely convincingly real. Unlike the usual gleaming, new, sterile white locations of most science fiction, in Star Wars everything looked, and sounded, like it really worked and had been used, and repaired a lot. This was a universe that real characters lived in. Every editor I've worked with, and many of my fans, have praised my world building abilities in my work. Thank this movie for it. For the entire month I put up a daily post on some aspect of Star Wars. In 2010 I did the same for the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back no doubt I'll carry on in 2013 when Return of the Jedi turns 30.

5. Semi-Regular Features - Throughout the years, I've tried to settle into a schedule of regular posts of a particular type with mixed results. The first attempt, Random Objects in my Office never came close to having any regularity.  The second of my regular planned features, From the Archives grew out of my occasional postings of odd, or interesting items associated with some past project of mine. I later decided I was going to run this feature every Thursday, but didn't stick to that either. Right now I'm hoping to get it at least on a monthly schedule, and hopefully, bi-weekly. The most successful in both terms of regularly keeping to a set schedule, and usage, is my ongoing Ask Me Anything series, where visitors can literally ask me anything and I will answer. This post goes up on the first Monday of every month except October. My answers follow any time during the course of the month the questions are asked.

6. My second most popular post far above any other in terms of visits, except for this one which brought in more traffic over two days than this blog usually sees in months. Thousands of people stopped in to take a look at that collage thanks to Pee-Wee Herman himself, who kindly shared that collage on his social media sites including his facebook and twitter accounts.


So now, for the years to come, and in an ongoing effort to improve this blog, I ask you what you'd like to see that I haven't done yet, what you'd like to see more of that I have done, and what you'd like to see less of. Brutal honesty is best here.

From the Archives 13

Continuing with the lead up to the release of STATIC SHOCK #1 on September 7th, I thought it was time to bring out a look at the cover to Kobalt #7 from December, 1994. Published by Milestone Media, this issue features the first time I wrote the character of Static. This was a done in one story in which Kobalt's bumbling sidekick, Page, sort of teams up with the much more competent, Static to deal with the aggressive, Blowfly. The story was very light, and comedic in tone and played off some of the cliches of the teenage superhero as well as some of the drawbacks of being a hormonally activated teenage boy wearing a skin tight costume. Blowfly wasn't really a villain per se, but a student who had been transformed into a disgusting human fly and was more of a danger because of his condition and less of a threat through ill will.

The art was by Jamal Igle, who has grown tremendously as an artist and become one of today's superstar comic book illustrators.

I'd always wanted to revisit the character of Static, and this story was supposed to generate a sequel about a villain who was disappointed that the future that was promised him was never delivered as we approached the year 2000 and didn't have flying cars, moon bases, or underwater cities. When the kids at Static's and Page's high school decide to put on a production of Hair, the villain snaps and decides to punish the play. With the cancellation of Kobalt and the winding down of Milestone, the story never came to pass.

Again, this was to be comical in nature. The story could never happen now. Not only was it really tuned towards the upcoming millennial change and the traditional notion of the year 2000 always having previously seemed so futuristic, but now with aggressive litigation and rights issues, we'd never be able to use a real, known musical, such as Hair as a central plot element.

From the Archives 12

Here's something from the dawn of time, or at least April 1996. This is the one issue of Daredevil I wrote where my instructions were to make Matt Murdock/Daredevil lighter in tone, which made him essentially Spider-Man. I don't know if that lighter condition of his lasted longer. At the time I wasn't reading a lot of comics. Marvel editor, James Felder invited me in to do this. I don't recall the circumstances, but at the time I wrote a number of fill-in issues for Marvel because I was known as someone who could come in at the last minute and deliver a decent story fast. Because of this my memory regarding these issues is pretty lacking (as evidenced in this 2001 interview with me for Man Without Fear). Shawn McManus provided the lovely art.

It was one of the last things I wrote for Marvel. I ended up leaving because this was during the time that Marvel was going through a lot of turmoil with bankruptcy and changing ownership, including a time where Toy-Biz was dictating what characters could be used in stories based on which action figures they had scheduled to produce. This was what got me to leave them. No list was made available of which characters could be used. You simply had to pitch a story, which was then run by them for approval. it was too much work with almost no return.

From the Archives 11

The above is a portrait of Lydia Lunch created by J. K. Potter whose strange photographic illustrations were created without the use of a computer which makes them all the more remarkable. I met him when I was buying a large photographic print of the above piece at a gallery show of his work in New York City in the mid-1990s. He was a very likeable guy, and was pleased when I informed him that this piece inspired the creation of two characters from the then current original run of Xombi (he was more pleased to discover that I'd actually credited him in print for this); Manuel Dexterity and his sinister sister Manuella.

Manuel Dexterity and Manuella were two of the more popular creations from the original run, though their appearances were brief. Manuel was the focus of a single issue, while Manuella was seeded through a few subsequent issues in the same storyline. As characters there wasn't much to them. Both were bizarre assassins, and neither spoke their own words. Manuel only spoke the innermost regrets of his victims. But as visual elements, these hand-centaurs were pretty cool to look at. They would have made some truly creepy action figures.

The scene depicting their birth led to the only real incidence of censorship that I encountered while working at Milestone, but that as they say is a story for another day.

From the Archives 10

Just like my Brooke Shields: Agent of Fury the above were my rough pitches for Marvel's humor comic book, What The...? and were done somewhere around 1989. This was for a pitch titled "Team-Ups That We'll Never See." I think this was the extent of it. I don't remember doing any others. At any rate it was not used, and my guess is that it was likely because of legal issues in using Calvin and the Blondie characters. For Marvel's humor comics it was easier to just pitch my ideas in cartoon form rather than typed out even though someone else ended up drawing them (sometimes not as well). The idea and humor was more successfully conveyed in this manner as well.

From the Archives 9

   

It's been a while since I've visited the archives here, hopefully I'll get this feature back on track on a regular schedule here. Here's a little something from 1994. This comes from DC Direct Currents #75 with a June 1994 cover date. This was a free publication that was available in comic book stores before the internet. It showcased all of the titles published by DC for a given month. This information is now available on DC's website.  

This particular issue ran a two page feature promoting the titles in Milestone Media's "second wave," introducing these three titles to potential new readers. The three titles were Xombi, Kobalt (both of which I wrote), and Shadow Cabinet (which I did not). All the Milestone Books that month featured a cover by John Byrne. 

Old Image Files Rescanned and Reposted + Cartoon Collages for Sale

About a year ago I discovered that the images from a whole bunch of posts were gone because I'd stopped using the account that stored them leading to the tedious process of rescanning and reposting those images. Most of these were of cut paper collage portraits I did of various animated cartoon characters which were under the heading of "Fun with Scissors."

Tonight I came across a bunch of these collage portraits which needed rescanning and reposting. They are listed below.

I've also decided that I need to clean house to make room for a large number of new collages that I'll be creating for three group art shows I'll be participating in in 2011. So, I'm putting most of the cartoon character portraits that I have left on sale. Most will be for between $30 --$50, with a few for even less, and a few for a bit more. Shipping will be a uniform $6.00 (in the U.S. only. Over seas will vary by location, but it won't be inflated beyond actual price) no matter how many you buy. The shipping price might seem high, but I find that if I use expedited shipping there tends to be less time for chances of damage to occur.

I'll be putting a price list up in a few days, but if there's anything you're interested in and want to make a claim, or inquiry as to availability and price, please let me know. Most of these collages are on 81/2 x11 inch backgrounds, which in most cases can be matted as 8 x 10. If you check "Fun With Scissors" entries from 2006 in my archives you can see the entire series.




Ookla


Ant and Aardvark


Droopy

Captain Caveman

Inch High, Private Eye

The Phantom Shadow

Blip

Dino Boy and Bronty

Cindy Bear

Tornado Man

Yankee Doodle Pigeon

Bugs Bunny