Tales from the Scratch Pad: Anger Beast! And the show (s)

Hey there sport fans Al here with the latest:

Well there are those times when you start to look at a project and say to your self "Damn, that's a good idea!"
In this case "Last Monster on EARTH!" was exactly that.

My inspriation for this was from picking up the Jack Kirby "Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth." Obvisously that's where the title comes from but there is much more than that to this story of absolute over the top outrageness.

MUSICAL MASH UPS seemed to the all the rage with the kids these days and I thought that maybe a visual mash up would have the same kinda effect. So the image of Robby the Robot and the Robot Monster would be kinda fun to do in a a knock out drag out kinda of movie poster extravaganza. I've been going through old B-movie posters that have been posted on line as well as watching these crazy over the top bad Sci-Fi flicks for ideas.
Still to this day I still find little gems that are embedded in these movies that stick out to me a lot that I think are absolutely fantastic but the budget and the direction just couldn't do it
(the film) justice.
So I figured that if I were able to transpose all those ideas and put them into a comic book format where everything is looked upon equally and redered with the same attention to detail - holy shit you could have an absolutely amazing book of fan favorites all together.

SO with the monster mash up in mind I started working on a rough draft for an idea that would be done in scratchboard because I know that medium can really bring forth these character to life again- equally.
It also allows me to play as well. I've had such a time making things way to serious for a long long time and this was a fun way of making my art loosen myself up.

SO I WENT ahead posted here 4 rough page layouts to show what "Last Monster on EARTH!" would look like. Now the way I have been looking at these pages is really Jack Kirby inspired.
When I have visualized in my mind I keep thinking "How would Jack have drawn it?" It wasn't till I picked up the Kamandi Omnibus that reading was really fun again.

AND that's what I think is missing from these comics that are coming out these days. They are all to damn serious and just not fun. And of course I got swept up in all these changes starting back in the mid 80's when Alan Moore with the revision of the Swamp Thing and Frank Miller with Daredevil (and to a lesser degree Chris Claremont with the X-men and Howard Chaykin with Amreican Flagg!) Who wouldn't when you could still collect these.

At the time all these were ground breaking series because it began to introduce some realistic concepts into the comic world. Now mind you I said some, NOT ALL. Not like the comics that are coming out right now. And almost every comic I have picked up has to have something shocking about it because we need to hold the attention of the youth today if were competing with freaking Grand Theft Auto - Whatever the fuck.
Fantasy is about sparking of the imagination, to think about something in bigger in the context of the real world not how many points you can gain by slapping the shit out of a bunch whores! I know that might sound kinda preachy but when was the last time you pulled a comic off the shelf and actually really got a smile on your face saying to yourself "Wow, that was cool!" not "Hmmm meh"
Okay enough of the soap box. DO people even know what that is anymore?
Anyway....

88 STRONG ART SHOW

Well truth be known I had already agreed to this show not realizing that later on that within a week and half that my older sister would pass away from natural causes. This was, as you can imagine, a major damper on me for turning out work as real life spilled over into my creative energy flow.

It took the wind out of my sails as I had family obligations to attend to and all that entails. But I wasn't going to let it stop me from doing what I have loved to do- challange myself to a project and not of my own making. Fun times to be sure of.
Thanks to Gods or whatever, I needed it!

I think that I was able to really go with some of these working titles. In years past I have had a tendency to throw shit on a panel and call it art. I think we artist do occasionally find ourselves just wanting a project over and we do exactly that just to say "I (We) did it. It may not be the best but it's done."

Out of the 88 different terms that were posted this year by Chris Habberman and Jason Brown these four title terms were the ones that stood out the most for me.

"SPAGETTIO WESTERN"
"BUNNY WITH A JET PACK"
"MR. SPOCK"
"THE EYEBROW GAME"

With these terms I usually go with my first impression of what I am envisioning with these but once in a while I change it up like SpagettiO Western. I thought of dueling cans with can openers but it was to much over the top and so I had to rain it in.

With Bunny with a jet pack I just kinda let that one spill out. Anthropromorphic images and I have been old friends for sometime now. This was just one that came out.

Mr. Spock was an ode to Leonard Nimoy whom had recently passed beyond the veil and of course Spock was his most famous on screen character. But since the character himself has had a younger actor to assume the mantle of Spock, Zachery Quinto, my subconsciousness I melded the two actors together form this version of Spock.

My version of a mind meld if you will.

The Eyebrow Game came to be the one of those images that bothers people because of it's surrealistic look. Personally that was not what I was going for with this but I guess the intenstity of the eyes transscribed here made all the difference.
If this piece sells I will be absolutely surprised.

HOWEVER IN SEPTEMBER....

Richard Parker goes forth with only two more 9"x12" pieces left to make and go. This will be making a total of 15 new images to mat and frame. And all these will go right along with my previous 16"x20" that I still have from last years show.

In the image you see up above 12 (1 being of Sasquatch) pieces that I have shown separately on line but when you see all of them together and story that I am telling with Richard Parker you really do see the scale of the story and the artwork to back it up.

I have techinally only 2 more images left to go and one poster design for promotion. With the promotion I am thinking about doing a large scale image like what N.W.I.P.A. has done for there tap take overs over the last couple of years.

And when you see the big scale images like that in a glass window it looks preety cool!

There is ALSO talk about a comic book show taking place in my old stomping grounds. Did I mention "old"? Yeah MY home town of Eugene.
Eucon.

UP to this point I had been thinking that the only reason I would go back would be a death in the family but since that has already happened I figured that I might bring some current art down and take a run at selling my newest work with the prints and the like. Because local boy makes good with art. So many old friends have said in the past that I would be back well guess what mother f'ers, not the way you think.
This show would be the first major comic book convention that Eugene has had. It's been nearly a decade since a show of this scale has been done there. That's kinda a big deal AND having been part of that scene it would be kinda fun to see a lot of old friends and maybe impress some new fans at the same time. I'll fill you in on more as time goes on.
Well that's about it for the kid at the moment.
And for anything else that pertains to the box check out these sites as well.
Etsy

Big Cartel

Storenvy

And of course I still have my comics that I have worked on here at Indyplanet.

And mind you there is website