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 Sideshow Collectibles is selling a Predator statue that's apparently based on a character from a comic Derek Thompson and I worked on a ways back called Predator: Bad Blood, published by Dark Horse Comics. Which is pretty crazy to see, as Predator: Bad Blood isn't one of my gigs that pings back to me...ever. I stumbled across the listing on a German site because it mentioned Derek and I and the comic series. Which I thought was pretty cool of them to do. Looking for information on the statue, Sarah dug up what appears to be a bit of a kerfuffle in Predator statue circles (!), the statue was an expensive, limited-edition, numbered -- and unlicensed -- kit made by a guy who does that sort of thing as a hobby or side-job, whatever the case he does this for money and people cough up quite a bit to own one of his kits ($400 per, apparently). Some Predator statue enthusiasts are upset because, if we have it right, he re-issued the "limited" kit and now the built-and-painted statue is coming out, licensed, from Sideshow (and cheaper, to boot). I could care less in some ways about their problems, making and buying unlicensed resin kits and the like is dealing in bootlegged stuff, even if the bootleg is a handsome and professional-looking job. Crying that your bootleg kit is a rip-off is a weird position to be in, y'know? "Hey, my expensive pirated copy of The Avengers is grainy!". What are you gonna do, it's a crazy world, you can't trust anyone. I can understand a customer being upset, but, hey, you're dealing with a guy who's making unlicensed statues, he just might also not play kosher with how many unlicensed editions he produces. It's the murky world of bootleg kits, baby. It's Chinatown. Anyway, my niggling little stake in this Eltingville-like tawdriness is that the original sculptor/bootlegger pushed the idea that the character concept (rogue Predator that preys on his own kind -- hardly anything super-original by my own admission, and apparently used several times after Derek and I did it according to this post) was his idea, and Sideshow isn't mentioning the comic from what I can see. A number of sites have written up our work on Predator: Bad Blood as the inspiration for the statue, perhaps that's trickling down or copied from the German site, I dunno. What's funny is that the "Bad Blood" logo was used on the original kit, which is a bit of a tip-off. Not that folks follow comics, or anyone cares. But it would have been nice to toss us a tiny credit somewhere on the box beneath the important credits. There's no money involved or anything, I'm not yelping, this has nothing to do with me from that end of things, it's another licensed product from a licensed property based on material owned by Fox. Some acknowledgement of Derek's original design and my ideas might be nice, but I can't get worked up over it. I do think taking credit for stuff you didn't come up with is crappy, though. Predator: Bad Blood is collected in Predator Omnibus vol. 3 from DHC, if you're interested in that sort of thing. Fun Fact: I've worked on two Predator mini-series. I've had a weird career. Think I'm gonna fire my manager someday. |
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Hey, folks. Just a heads up to let you know that the Team Cul de Sac book is out in a few days, and the auctions of the original art pieces that make up the book are now live. The book is a celebration of Richard Thompson's wonderful Cul de Sac newspaper strip, and all proceeds from the book and the Heritage auctions will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation to aid in Parkinson's research. Sarah and I contributed a piece to the book, as seen below, you can bid on the black and white line drawing here. You can also bid on originals by such world-class cartoonists as Bill Watterson, Gary Trudeau, Pat Oliphant and Sergio Aragones, as well as many other folks from the comic strip and comic book arenas. Like a lot of folks, I can't wait to see what the Watterson goes for, it's clearly the grail of the auction.  The Team Cul de Sac blog can be found here. Any attention folks can bring to the the project would really be appreciated. |
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 Hey, folks, just wanted to let you know that if anyone out there was thinking about picking up a copy of the Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad collection, now might be the time to jump on it. At least if you want it soon, or care about first printings, because as of now the hardcover is unavailable through Diamond and is technically out of print. There are obviously still copies sitting on comic shop shelves and the book is listed as being in stock at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Dark Horse sells the book digitally, for those folks who like magical ghost books, it's also available on the Nook (which I wasn't aware of until now). But they're gone as far as Direct Market re-orders go and Dark Horse is also out of stock. I know this because we picked up the remaining stock to bring to Heroes Con. We'll have news on a reprint as soon as there's news on a reprint. My thanks to those out there who picked up the collection, we really appreciate the support. |
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 Dark Horse Presents #12 ships tomorrow (actually, I guess it already shipped, Diamond ships them thar funnybooks to retailers on Tuesdays now, don't they?). The House of Fun ends a three-issue run with a new Milk and Cheese one-pager and the return of The Eltingville Club in a 7-page story taking place at zombie crawl. I think this is the first Eltingville Club story in...gah...ten years. And the first extended story in color. Alert the neighbors! There haven't been any preview pages of the DHP #12 H.O.F. material up on CBR or anywhere, I'm thinking it's most likely due to the foul language employed by the boys, so I thought I'd share the title page with folks, which is peachy-clean for everyone to enjoy. Unless some someone doesn't enjoy cartoon people in corpse paint lurching around with pig's intestines glued to their t-shirt. DHP #12 will also feature the return of old-school indy comics icons Mr. X (by Dean Motter) and Nexus (Mike Baron and Steve Rude), along with more episodes of Finder (Carla Speed McNeil), The Black Beetle (Francesco Francavilla), Criminal Macabre (Steve Niles and Chris Mitten), The Creep (John Arcudi and Jonathon Case) as well as the debut of a new Aliens arc (with art by Sam Kieth (!)) and other stuff you might enjoy. Here's a link to that CBR preview mentioned before. If you're thinking of picking up DHP just for my stuff I appreciate it, but if you're cash-strapped please keep in mind there will eventually be a H.O.F. one-shot with the DHP material in it (similar to the upcoming Beasts of Burden one-shot). That being said, this looks like a really fun issue. 80 pages, color, no ads, $8 - a buck for every 10 pages of material, less than what folks ask for with a 20-page $4 comic. End of spiel. New spiel! We have some art up on eBay starting today, including two sketch cards (Milk and Cheese and the recently posted Abomination), a Mad illustration, two Nickelodeon Magazine gag panels, a piece from the second Dork collection, a T.A.N.C. piece from the first Hectic Planet collection and 24 pages of thumbnail layouts for The Thing mini-series I wrote (and did a lot of thumbnails for), Night Falls on Yancy Street. Also, we're offering up the last of the Murder Family Zippo lighter prototypes we had on hand. Guess that's it. As always, thanks for your time and attention. I hope folks who check out the Eltingville story enjoy it. I think it's got some funny stuff in it and I actually had a lot of fun drawing it, despite deadline anxiety and not having time to actually script it. I haven't worked off notes and thumbnails in a looong time, improvising on the page and rewriting as the art progressed. That's how I used to work. Hopefully it worked. Speaking of work, I gotta get back to work. Drawing some of my characters tonight for a cover. So far, so good. Latersville, kids. |
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 Here's an old Marvel Comics villain I have fond feelings for even though I've barely read any comics featuring the character or know much about him. Despite his looks, he wasn't designed by Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, which would have been my first (and second) guess. Actually, The Abomination is a Silver Age bruiser first drawn by Gil Kane, a guy who could do most anything well and wasn't a bad designer by any means but isn't someone I think of as a chunky-clunky monster artist (although he was always good with snakes and serpents when he tackled the sword and sorcery/Barsoom/space adventure crap). I know Kane shares co-creator status on oddball C-Listers like Morbius, The Living Vampire (kinda surprised that weirdo hasn't had a major resurrection/movie deal/TV pilot on the name alone. Or has he? I honestly am not Mr. On-Top-Of-That-Stuff.), but besides a lot of Green Lantern stuff, I can't rack up too many trivia points for knowing his Marvel design work. Six-Armed Spider-Man? I guess that counts, if he did it. Whatever. I have a feeling I confuse a few 70's Romita designs with Kane designs. And vicey-versey. Anyway, the Abomination, co-created by Stan "I Could Have Been Wealthy" Lee, was a Hulk villain, as I'm sure you kids know. Another Gamma-Gamma-Hey! goofball, green-skinned and rippling with the muscles. He was a slob named Emil Blonsky, I believe (I checked Wikipedia to doublecheck the Lee-Kane connection, but not the guy's traveling papers. If I'm wrong, deduct ten geek points from my score and e-mail Mark Waid to let him know I suck at comic books), and I think he was a Commie Spy, and then he got real gamma-gone and started fighting people for the next thirty years or however the hell long it's been. Basically, the appeal of this guy was that he was a monster, strong enough to give the Hulk problems, and he had funny bumps and ridges on his head and those nutty ears. It's really not much of a design, it got refined, for good or bad, over the years (more bumps and ridges, I think he changed underpants a few times, green, blue, back to green, back to blue, darker blue, off-register blue...), but man, I dug those flappy ears of his. I used to constantly draw those ears on characters when I was a kid, I must have been obsessed with those ears the way I was obsessed with Sal Buscema mouths and Don Martin noses (some childhood, huh?). I'm sure I still toss those Abomination ears on background monsters without knowing it, maybe even on background people, milkmen, cabaret dancers, proofreaders. Those ears! (Also -- he's called THE ABOMINATION. No effing-around there, I mean, that's a villain name for you, huh? I bet DC wouldn't have called anybody The Abomination back then. No, sir, not the house of The Penguin and The Cheetah and Talk-Down-To-Children Man.) I actually know the character best from appearances in the 70's Hulk comics, I'm betting Sal Buscema drew those comics (those screaming mouths! My unhappy childhood!), but the version of the character that stayed with me was actually from the covers. I don't know who drew them (I could look it up, I know, but I'm a very complex person with a liquid intellect that requires constant challenges in order to function), I do remember one had The Hulk and The Abomination doing something monster-related atop a rollercoaster. This was back when showing and using specific locations mattered a lot more in superhero comic books, although amusement parks usually didn't factor into things all that often (which is a bit of a shame, really). The plot of this two-part storyline involved the Abomination pretending to be The Hulk's friend or something fascinating like that, a very special ABC Afternoon Special kind of sad thing with pathos and shit, as well as extreme violence and monsters and rushed inking. And maybe a Marvel Value Stamp (oy, don't get me started). Don't know what happened past the rollercoaster. Maybe The Abomination took the Hulk to the amusement park and the relationship unraveled naturally or there was some gamma-infused funnel cake to blame or the Leader or Crackajack Jackson ruined things, I just know deep in my heart's mind they threw down, beat up, and moved on. I'm sure I can go buy this in a $100 hardcover or look it up online but, y'know. I'm complex and shit. So, the Abomination. A favorite of my childhood, pretty much unearned, a character with presence and a bit of a push but with no real personality or excitement. A character I liked looking at, although seeing the Kane version while referencing the sketch card didn't knock me out at all. Just a bunch of lumps and bumps, not a very cohesive design, a bit like Ditko tracing Kirby on a weak lightbox with only moments to spare, gone over by Kane with a felt-tip while he was talking on the phone and eyeing some art sitting on a pile in the back of the mailroom ("My boy..."). I know from Previews and the statue shelf at my local shop that in recent years the Abomination's been souped up, enlarged and bad-assified to the Marvel Max and I'm sure used to great bloody effect. I understand the intent and all, but the results just look like Killer Croc's streroidal cousin, nothing really reads from the character other than size and badly-organized muscles and veins and teeth and the fact a lot of folks are still influenced by 90's Image books. He's edgier, obviously, and the kids dig him, or at least someone does, because, according to the All-Seeing Myopic Eye of Wikipedia: "In 2009, the Abomination was ranked as IGN's 54th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time". Thank goodness we have folks with the spare time, grit and determination to help us out with those burning questions, I salute you, IGN, you whose initials must stand for something ridiculously brash and edgy and pathetic. So says the guy drawing ol' #54 and writing paragraphs about his friggin' ears. |
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The "Cartoonist Goes to Hell" comic I did for Dork #8 is available for a limited time as a t-shirt from Comic Strip Tees. Here's a short interview with me about Dark Horse Presents, Beasts of Burden and the House of Fun material at ComicBook.Com. Speaking of Dark Horse Presents, issue #12 ships on May 23rd, with a 1-page Milk and Cheese strip and a seven-page Eltingville Club full-color zombie crawl story. You can see a CBR preview of the issue here, but my stuff's not there. NSFW reasons, I think. A little too much cursity-curse-curse action. F-Bombs, S-Missiles, that sorta thing. But, hey,the return of Mister X, the return of Nexus, and the return of The Eltingville Club, as well as Finder and a lot of other stuff. Go look, why don't you? And, speaking of Beasts of Burden, Jill Thompson and I apparently won an award in Norway for the translated version of the series being that's being serialized over there (under the title "Dog Guards"). All for now. |
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We had a great time at the Asbury Park con. Sold a bunch of books, got rid of the last of our Milk and Cheese mugs, drew for kids, drew in people's books, all while they played old punk rock and new wave at Asbury Lanes. Would definitely go again. Thanks to the folks who stopped by the table and kept me busy the entire day, thanks to the folks who picked up something, special thanks to Chris for the Mr. Blue statue. Also thanks to Cliff Galbraith for the invite, and dinner afterward. Nice seeing him again, meeting his wife, talking comics, Jack Kirby, etc. Nice to see Jamal Igle, always great seeing Stephanie Buscema and Rob Harrigan. Emily chose to hang out with them all day and ignore her poor old dad. Sob. Anyway, nice time, easy drive, good business, good people. Good time. Emily came down with a cold/fever afterward, unfortunately. Then I got it. Getting a lot of reading done (Twin Spica vol 2-4, Saturn Apartments vol 4, some Spider pulp nonsense, the Roger Langridge collection from Boom, etc) and playing some video games on the couch with Em. She kicks my ass at Godzilla: Unleashed. We don't fight one another, we just destroy cities. Our monsters are friends. Finished up a 3-page Mad illustration job last week, in case anyone's wondering what we've been up to recently. Starting a cover when I'm back up and running, and getting back to a script. And some other stuff. Hectic month. Over and out. |
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This Saturday Sarah and I will be appearing at the first-ever Asbury Park Comic Con in Asbury Park, NJ. The show will be at Asbury Lanes, a place, like Asbury Park itself, I've heard a lot about but have never been to. Asbury Lanes is a bowling alley that has been turned into a rock club and bar (although apparently some bowling still goes on there). Which of course sounds about a hundred times better than most places I've gone to to hawk comic books. Other guests at the show include Michael Kupperman, Jamal Igle, Stephanie Buscema and Danny Hellman. We'll be signing and I'll probably be sketching, although most likely I'll be doing quick freebies and not commissions. We'll have copies of the Milk and Cheese book, the Beasts of Burden collection (not too many, though), a batch of Dark Horse Presents issues (I'll probably sell them at less than cover), copies of The Goon #35, The Guild one-shot we did the cover for, a few copies of the Hellboy/Beasts crossover signed by Jill Thompson and I and some other odds and ends. Probably some copies of Action Girl. I assume I'll have some art for sale. We're also thinking of bringing some old merch we've dug up depending on how much time we have to pack stuff up (crazy-serious deadline this week), might bring a few sets of Milk and Cheese beer mugs. Might not. Glass, and all. Maybe the bartender would fill 'em with beer if you buy them. I dunno. Probably not. Anyway, sounds like a fun comic book thing. If it stinks you can get stinking drunk and give up on comics forever, which sounds like a decent idea sometimes, doesn't it? More information on the show can be found here. Perhaps we will see some you there. |
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