Happy Birthday to 3 Horror Greats

This weekend marks the birthdays of three of the greatest horror actors of all time. Today, May 26th, is the birthday of Peter Cushing (1913-1994) best known for his many roles for hammer Studios, particularly as the heroic Van Helsing, and as the villainous Baron Frankenstein. He was also seen in the original "Star Wars" (Episode IV: A New Hope) as Grand Moff Tarkin.

Tomorrow, May 27th, is the birthday of Cushing's close friend and frequent co-star, Christopher Lee (1922-) who played Dracula in many hammer films. He's known to modern audiences for his roles in the 2 most recent "Star Wars" films, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and Tim Burton movies such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Sleepy Hollow", and "The Corpse Bride".

Also on May 27th, is Vincent Price's (1911-1993) birthday. Price brought a lot of class and a bit of ham to his many roles, primarily Roger Corman's Poe cycle, and William Castle's "The Tingler" and "House on Haunted Hill." He can also be heard in Tim Burton's "Vincent" and seen in Burton's "Edward Scissorhands."

Celebrate the birthdays of these greats with a few of their best films. For Cushing I recommend "Brides of Dracula"; Lee "The Devil Rides Out" and for Price "The House on Haunted Hill."

Announcing My Next Comic Book Project

For anyone wondering what my next comic book project is going to be, the two pictures should give you a hint. Ignore the dorky guy in the green t-shirt, and concentrate on the TV icons, Adam West and Julie Newmar.
Yes, I'm writing some Batman. It's been sometime since I've written anything with superheroes in it. Coming back to it through Batman is a real treat. All I can say is that it will be a 2-issue arc in "Detective Comics," it involves a pretty major revamping of one of Batman's oldest, and most well known foes, and that according to DC's Michael Siglain, it should be "the scariest Batman story of all time." Not that that places any pressure on me.

More details to come.

Another Appearance

I guess I'm going to have stop referring to my appearances as "rare." Though, I'm still managing to let people know only at the last possible moment. Tomorrow, May 20, I will be appearing briefly at the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Michigan. I'll be at the Wonderworld Comics booth, from roughly 1-4 pm, signing stuff and answering questions, as well as revealing just what my next comic book project is.

Most of the surviving cast of the 1960s tv show "BATMAN" will be there as well, as will John Saxon!!

Ann Arbor Book Festival Appearance

I fill like an idiot for forgetting to mention this before now.

For anyone interested in my work, or in other cool comics, I will be making a rare appearance at the Ann Arbor Book Festival today. Thanks to the fine folks at the great comic book store, Vault of Midnight , at noon, I will appear on a panel alongside Jim Ottaviani and Anders Nilsen. The two of them will dispense great wisdom, while I charm the audience with my accordian playing. Then the three of us will sign stuff, but keep in mind, I no longer sign body parts. Especially if they are just parts.

For more information go here or here

Fun With Scissors - part 100

Choosing a worthy character for the 100th post was a tough choice. I didn't know who was going to do until the last second. I'd toyed with picking some lame arbitrary character, but am glad I didn't.

Here's Red Hot Riding Hood from the classic Tex Avery cartoon of the same name.

Before you pop that champagne cork, I feel a need to let you know that this will be the last Fun With Scissors post until mid-July. When it resumes, it most likely will not be on a daily basis. The reason for this long break is that I have numerous paying projects which require my attention, and trying to juggle them and a daily collage has been exhausting to the point where I ceased having fun about two weeks ago.

I'm taking this time to hopefully, finish these various projects, as well as take some time here and there to relax, something that I'd not been doing so that I could get these daily cartoon characters done.

In the meantime, I will still be adding posts to this site, including, hopefully, some more involved collage pieces, as well as a pretty cool announcement of an upcoming writing project, once the final pieces are in place.

I thank all of you who have visited, especially the regulars. Thank you for the comments, and please continue to visit. Now's a good time for anyone who came in late to go through the archives and see what you missed. I'll move some of these pieces over to the art section of the main website, which I'm also hoping to get refurbished by the end of the summer with poor Scottra doing most of the work. It's something we've talked about doing for a long time now. I figure why put it off any longer.

Fun With Scissors - part 99

Baby Huey. Not one of my more succesful cartoon character depictions.

Fun With Scissors - part 98

I couldn't choose between Gloop and Gleep, so you get both!

I had an entirely different type of character planned for this entry, but after mentioning "The Herculoids" in the previous post, I realized I haven't collaged a member of that group in a looong time, so here they are in all their protoplasmic glory. As an added bonus for myself, these guys were really easy to make. Almost as easy as the toys I made of them out of Silly Putty when I was a kid.

Fun With Scissors - part 97

Sorry about posting this so late in the day.

Not too long ago, I said that there were a couple of cartoons from the late 1970s/early 1980s that pretty much destroyed Saturday morning cartoons, until the mid-1990s. "Thundarr the Barbarian" was one of them. Set in a mutant populated post-apocalyptic earth 2000 years in the future, it had a cool concept, and a lot of nice design, and was an action show in "The Herculoids"vein. However, for an action show, there wasn't much action. This was the beginning of the no hitting era of cartoons.

How were fight scenes depicted, I hear you ask? In a typical scenario, three lizard men would rush Thundarr, armed with spears. Thundarr would activate his lightsaber and slice the points off the spears. The lizards would drop the now pointless spears and run away. Sometimes they'd get caught in a net. Lame. I think this may have been the last cartoon I actually watched until "Batman the Animated Series."

Along with the lightsabers, another obviously influenced by Star Wars element, was Thundarr's companion Ookla the Mok (depicted here astride his nameless "equort") standing in for Chewbacca the Wookiee.

Thundarr also marks the cut off point in determining which characters will get rendered here in Fun With Scissors. Nothing more recent than Thundarr shall be seen here, no matter how good it may be.

Fun With Scissors - part 96

I was originally going to render Olive Oyl in black and white, but decided to go with color at the last moment.

Only 4 more posts until Fun With Scissors #100, and I still have no idea which character will fill the honored spot.

Under the Sea -preliminary materials

As I am often asked to show some of the process that goes into my collage work, here are some of the initial doodles I did in preperation for the Under the Sea piece shown in the previous post. I think that this is simply more evidence that while I can, arguably, wield a pair of scissors, I can't draw whatsoever.

Illustration Friday: Under The Sea

Fun With Scissors - part 95

Here's Yogi's hot girlfriend, Cindy Bear.

Fun With Scissors - part 94

Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday, This is the end of Solomon Grundy. If only it were, the members of the Justice League of America would have been spared a lot of grief.

Here's the living corpse villain as he appeared on "Challenge of the Superfriends."

Fun With Scissors - part 93

Revs is one of the misbehaving motorcycles on "Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch," another program whose characters had not been rendered here, until now.

A Question for Visitors

Dozens of people visit here daily, yet almost none of you leave a comment on what you see. That's fine. My ego is not so fragile that constant feedback and reaffirmation of any perceived skills of mine is required to get me through the day.

I'm curious though, who you silent people are, what brings you here, and what you think of what you find here. Whether you are the periodic visitor from Thailand, or South Africa, or the person in Virginia who's paid a visit nearly 50 times in the past week, I'm curious about what led you to this site, what you liked, what you found lacking, and what you'd like to see that you are not.

Don't be shy, it's all with the goal of making your visits here more enjoyable experiences, and to satisfy my own curiosity. If you'd prefer not to leave any comments publicly, here, you can email me directly using the "contact" link to the right.

Fun With Scissors - part 92

Monsters are so interesting, and Gossamer, here, is one of my favorites. As a kid I thought he resembled an apple, or a red loaf of bread, especially after Bugs Bunny styled his hair.

I've never been able to determine his true color as he seems to be as frequently depicted as Campbell's tomato soup orange, as he is a true red. I went with red since I didn't have any paper around even approximating the other color.

Fun With Scissors - part 91

One of the earliest requests made during this project, was for renditions of "The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan." Amazingly, Alan Chan here, is the first. It just serves as a reminder that even at nearly a hundred posts, there are so many untapped characters for me to choose from.

My apologies for the blinding colors in Alan's groovy fashions.