It's Casper Day!

That's right, "Casper Day"! I'm not entirely certain when Casper Day is supposed to be observed, nor why I felt it required commemorative plates, but here they are...featuring what I imagine might be the crummiest drawing of Nightmare ever. The Ghostly Trio don't fare so well, either. Still, I feel that, all technical quibbles aside, I captured the true holiday spirit . On behalf of the entire staff and management her at "Early works", I'd like to wish you and your loved ones a joyous Casper Day. Boooo! BOOOOO!

Sandwich

We just came back from a delicious feast of sandwiches at the home of Drew Weing and Eleanor Davis, so I brought those of you who could not attend a virtual sandwich as consolation.

Beware of the Black Hand!

Everyone likes receiving greeting cards...unless they're from ... The Black Hand!

The jail-cell bars on the inside of the card are made of some sort of thick cardboard packing form, affixed with cloth first aid tape. I believe this was all inspired by some kid's book I read, and isn't actually Mafia-inspired (La Cosa Nostra generally don't use prison time as part of their arsenal of threats). Also, I think that the "Alex" referred to may be a character in said book, as I don't recall having a friend by that name at that point.

Some People Might Call This a "Space Cowboy"

Few, if any, would call it a "Gangster of Love", however.

Komic Kharacter Kwiz

Can you identify these popular characters just from seeing their left arms? I'm betting that the answer is probably "Yes".


ANSWERS: (A) Popeye, (B) Batman, (C)Wonder Woman
I'm surprised at my misplacement of Popeye's tattoo, and I have no idea what's up with Batman's pinky.

A Day That Shall Live in Infamy

A brief treatise on the "General Sherman" tree, the biggest living thing in all the world. Mostly notable because, according to my mother's note on the back, it was my first homework assignment. Also, I suspect, my last one to be turned in on time.

Droid With a Bad Motivator

Yes, it's poor old R5-D4, hanging out with another droid that I apparently decided wasn't worth finishing. Back in the period between EMPIRE and JEDI, when there was much speculation as to who the other potential Jedi that Yoda had referred to might be, the best theory I ever heard of picked R2-D2. The evidence for this being that, when Uncle Owen passed over R2 in favor of today's star attraction, R2 beeped angrily and shook a bit, and KERPOW!! Poor R5-D4's head blew up... just as if R2 had used "Jedi mind tricks" to sabotage him! It was obviously a stretch, but it still could have made for a better film than the cinematic cow patty that we wound up with.

Thunder Lizard

This tyrannosaur's legs are so small, it almost makes me wonder if he's really a Komodo Dragon standing on his hind legs for a biscuit. Who will give this good boy a treat?

Me Little Swee'Pea

It appears that this was drawn with a Sanford felt-tip calligraphy pen, for some reason.

Abridgement of Free Speech

My first thought in attempting to interpret this is to question whether it is the man or the hat that's talking (the position of the balloon's tail is ambiguous). Moving on past that, we see a word balloon under siege,(from a lobster and an archer-less bow and arrow) already having suffered injuries that have been bandaged, though leakage of air (?) is forming separate balloons expressing their distress (though the primary message remains a friendly greeting). Actually, on further inspection, I think it's possible that what I initially perceived as a plumed hat is instead a catapult, which would account for the lowest bandage and the flying rocks. A strangely metatextual work of allegory, indeed.
And as long as we're talking about comics and free speech, it might be a good time to point out that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has a lot on their plate right now, and could use all the help they can get. As a currently-unindicted comics retailer in the state of Georgia, I'm kinda taking a particular interest in their current case.

Ten Toes and Three Mouths

The second drawing featuring someone with snakes for arms here at "Early Works", though I wouldn't consider it a running theme in my work or anything. I don't know if those are lightning bolts or merely jagged antennae on his roll of neck-fat (which might actually be a loose-fitting necklace). This piece was a little tricky to reproduce, being drawn with what I imagine to have been a fairly hard (6H?) red colored pencil on green school paper, so this is as clear as I could get it.

I got a perfect score on my quiz on the obverse face, though I was apparently too eager to get down to important monster business to take the time to sign it. Mrs. Ashworth seems to have been able to figure out who was responsible easily enough, though.

Dracula's Bride

Dressed in a less sexy manner than usual (it looks like one of those quilted "granny" nightgowns that were popular at the time, but I assume it's just my attempt at 19th century ladies' attire), and oddly reminiscent of an undead Little Lulu, here we have one of the Count's "close personal friends" striking a threatening pose.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now!

This is from one of the scenes with John Belushi as a Death Squad Commander that were cut from the final released version. Okay, so technically speaking, that's what is known as a "bare-faced lie", but there is an undeniable resemblance.This is the last to be posted, but the first-drawn of a series of images of Star Wars folk getting shot that I drew in the spring of 1979. This is unique among them in that the protagonist hasn't actually gotten shot yet, and there's an attempt at a background (with rudimentary perspective, even!).

Mouse with Bat-Balloon

And we return from the unannounced summer vacation with... well... whatever this is. I mean, it's obvious that it's a mouse and a balloon shaped like Batman's head. But why? Good question. Are they supposed to be part of the same image, or just two drawings sharing a sheet of paper? Dunno. It seems that the mouse is reacting to the balloon (he seems pleased to see it, if startled), so I guess it all relates...but, as with so much of this stuff, the rationale is lost in the past.

DOGGY!

Maybe it's Snoopy, maybe not. The first two dogs I had were both named Snoopy.

Battle of the Dinosaurs!

Here we have a rather oddly composed fight scene between a tyrannosaurus and a pterodactyl. If you were a child at any point in the last 30 years and had any interest in dinosaurs (and who doesn't?), the odds are pretty good that you drew these exact dinosaurs (Use "Search Inside" and you can find the actual pages referenced). Yep, it's all thanks to good old Lee J. Ames --the noble king to whose throne the vile Christopher Hart pretends (I'm really interested to see how Jay Stephens' new instructional books turn out). I actually only had the dinosaur book and the comic character one, but I made a lot of use of them both. As you can see, though, I had some trouble figuring out how to take two different pieces and make them work together.

Three Happy Fellows

I'm impressed that they can keep their spirits up with only one nostril apiece.

Christmas List (?)

Maybe a Christmas list, or possibly just writing down stuff that I liked (I think that I already would have gotten the farm by this point). From the window after I'd developed the ability to write (sort of), but still was shaky on the whole spelling thing. I was reading very early, but my motor skills were a little slow catching up.

USS Enterprise NCC-1701

I might have done better if I'd rotated the paper 90º before I started drawing. If only I'd thought of that 31 years sooner!

Possibly Rabid Robot with Eye-Tentacle

That interpretation only holds up if you interpret the underside of the top part as a frothing robot mouth and the round bit as a slitted eye, rather than some sort of glowing grating and a joint held by a screw, of course. But it sounds more exciting than "Two Camera-Headed Robots", wouldn't you agree?

The Doodle People

Kibbles and Bits

Random doodles, of which the three on the lower right were drawn by my father. Why did I draw a vampire whale? Who can say?

Something Concerning Bats

I'm pretty much at a loss to explain what's going on here, unless it's a cutaway view of a vending machine that dispenses live bats. Which actually seems like it would be a pretty cool idea, except for the potential liability issues. I put a "Batman" label on it, but I'm not convinced that he has anything to do with it.

The Genie of the Lamp

There was a lot more of this than this (but, of course none of this) inspiring this piece.

Vocabulary

Here, transcribed for you by my mother, is a rundown of my arsenal of words at the age of 14 months. Only two verbs, but I already can already request two types of beverage. "Tusie" was my beloved cousin Susie (who recently became a mommy for a second time, and will be needing to write this sort of thing down herself), and "Ga-Ga" was as close to "Grandfather" as I could manage. I'm surprised that "kitty" apparently wasn't on the list,as we had cats pretty much my whole life. I'm not surprised that I already knew what books were, though. If there's one thing that my family has always been about, it's printed matter, and plenty of it!
It appears that I failed to notice that yesterday was the 100th entry in this log. Happy birthday to me. It would have happened even sooner if I hadn't forgotten to post on Sunday.
Tomorrow: more deranged scribbles.

Running the Gamut of Emotions

Those of you who are under thirty won't remember it, but in the pre-internet days, when having conversations, we had to express emotion by means of hand-drawn "emoticons such as the above. At appropriate times, one would hold up the piece of paper and point to the face that best represented one's emotional state. A few years later, a new approach came into vogue, whereby conversations would take place near mainframe computer terminals, and, when emotional disambiguation seemed necessary, people would hand over to the technicians previously-composed stacks of IBM punchcards, which when fed into the card reader in the proper sequence would eventually produce a crude image of the chosen cartoon face rendered in numbers, letters, and asterisks on large sheets of tractor-feed paper. This was a slow and cumbersome process, so most folks just kept to themselves. One reason that Star Trek's "Mr. Spock" was such a popular role model among college students in those days was that emulating his cold, emotionless speech patterns eliminated the need for these prehistoric "emoticons".

Giant Robotic Caterpillar Vehicle (Cutaway View)

Actually, the title pretty much says it all.

Grand Theft Auto

Quick, Martha...call the Mitchells! Dennis has finally gone too far! While there is a face drawn on his belly in such a fashion as to suggest that it was originally the driver's head, that cowlick leaves no doubt in my mind that this is intended to be a Dennis the Menace cartoon. Unless it's a girl with a ponytail. Or a clown wearing a hat with a big musical note attached. Nonetheless, I say it's Dennis. So there!

The Purple Monster Strikes!

No relation to the villain of this serial. Perhaps I should just say that a purple monster strikes. This was done as classwork in Mrs. Jamie Corrigan's art class (I'm pleased to see that she's still teaching, but a bit distressed to discover that they closed my old school six years ago). At some point around this time, I made a pretty decent Godzilla paper-bag hand puppet that I'm still trying to locate. Watch this space for details! For the (likely nonexistent) curious, the "5-G" next to the signature refers to my being a member of Mrs. Garrison's 5th grade homeroom.

Bird-Man

No, not Birdman! Just a bird-man. Drawn with felt-tips on July 30, 1977, and signed twice with a dying pen, just to make certain that its provenance was unquestionable. In case it's not clear on the scan, his crappy bent spear is tipped with some sort of large gemstone, and, while he's shirtless, he is wearing a stylish white belt.

Where's My Pulitzer?

For whatever reason, I drew an editorial cartoon about the November 1978 invasion of Cambodia. What possessed me to do so, I really can't say. School assignment? Copying out of a newspaper? I don't recall having a strong interest in Southeast Asian affairs that year. Apparently, though, I felt strongly enough to draw this somewhat offensive political statement, which is (I believe) my only work in that field. I've drawn plenty of Nixons, but that's just because he's a funny-looking cartoon character.

Evel Knievel, Part 2

Today we present a sequel to the entry of March 14th, from a deeper stratum within the same jumbled box. These are probably from the same week, if not the same day.


Here we see another view of Evel's Snake River Canyon jump on 9/8/74. Again, it's not particularly accurate in depicting the Sky Cycle, but I did correctly portray his failure to make it across.


I don't know what he's jumping over here, but I think that it's a shark tank (does that look like a fishtail coming out of the water to you?). He did attempt (and fail) to jump over a shark tank in the winter of '76, but I don't think these drawings are from that late.

In an Old Western Saloon

Yes, they're whooping it up in the old tavern tonight! Zeke and Clem are playing a friendly game of pinochle, a rowdy is throwing a bottle at nothing particular, and the piano player picks out a melody to accompany the lovely girl singer. Suddenly, into this lively scene, a stranger bursts through the swinging doors! Will those guns (slung backwards in their holsters, for some reason) soon be spitting hot lead at someone?

Ben and Me

Like our subject of April 15th, this was part of a book report, this time of a more well-known book (also a Disney short), though one that I remember nothing about that one couldn't deduce from looking at the video box. It's interesting that I selected a scene that doesn't include the mouse narrator---I wonder if I perhaps didn't actually read the book, but just drew Franklin's experiment, which I already knew about?

Optically-Illusory Frog

This seems to have been referenced from a book I had exhibiting this classic optical illusion as a drawing of three frogs, each of whose mouths was one of the designs, except that I apparently just thought it looked cool and drew one of the frogs, embellishing it a bit.

Who's the Leader of the Club?

When the syndicated version of the Mickey Mouse Club was re-released in 1975, I was glued to the TV every weekday after school (Match Game '75, Mickey Mouse Club, and Batman, all in a row...how could going outside to play possibly compete with that?). I already had a couple of Little Golden Books and some View-Master reels featuring the Mouseketeers, but this was the real deal!
Thusly, I was inspired to create this piece on some sort of paper that I can't identify-- the texture is somewhere between a thin paper towel and crepe paper. I don't know if I transcribed the entire "Mickey Mouse Club March" on the missing part of the sheet, or whether it just petered out. Note that in the drawing, "me" takes top billing over "you". It's actually a pretty fair self-portrait, given my rendering skills at the time. I don't think the girl is any particular Mouseketeer, though it might be Karen. Of course, Annette was the one I thought was the cutest (which has caused me to watch some truly dismal movies in my life), but Karen was my age (well, at least at the time they filmed the show...she's a year older than my father), so I felt a certain kinship with her and Cubby.
I was thoroughly displeased when the reruns were withdrawn in favor of the wretched New Mickey Mouse Club, and was gratified to see it crash and burn, though not before it give us the always-annoying Lisa Whelchel. And as for the '90s incarnation, I never knew that it happened until it had already laid its eggs of evil in our culture.

Hembeck Style

Fred Hembeck was (and still is) one of the most prominent star artists in comics fanzines, though he has done a fair amount of work for the major publishers through the years. I would first encounter his work in the form of short gag strips in the backs of various DC comics in the late '70s (archived here). I've always enjoyed his work, but 1980-85 was the height of my interest. I still remember riding back from a Charlotte Mini-Con in the back of my friend Jerry's mother's car, while we performed a radio play-style performance of the Fantastic Four Roast. Looking back, I can say that Fred was probably the single biggest outside influence on my taste in comics in those days. If not for him, I might not have known how much I needed Brother Power, the Geek or Mysterious Suspense. Thanks, Fred!
These drawings are an approximation of his earlier, clunkier style (he's since streamlined the lumpy elbows and knees, while retaining the trademark knee squiggles). One can criticize that early work for its overuse of a basic stylized design that is customized to suit one's needs, like a Zwinky or a Qee, but the upside of it is that a 13-year old can apply the design rules and produce a reasonably presentable imitation of it. Of course, that's not at all the same as being able to make actual comics of note, which Mr. H was doing all along, and continues to this day.

The Justice League

...or at least a subgroup thereof. Not drawn to scale, obviously. Don't know where Superman left his cape.

INSECTON!

I think that this may be in some way related to these drawings, in that it seems to be a design for a toy, and the lettering is not my own. On the other hand, it's executed in different media, and it's a different sort of figure, so maybe not.Our friend here is very much in the mold of the Micronaut Aliens, particularly Kronos, but I gave him magnetic joints, like these guys. I actually think this would make an okay toy.

Dentist

I've got an appointment in an hour with my dentist, Dr. Jack G. Newman (whose services I strongly endorse), so I thought this might be a nice tribute to his profession. The dentist portrayed has an unusual method of acquiring patients, though clearly one that is effective if one's preferred clientele are roller-skating lumberjacks. At first, one assumes that the snake is just there to make the pitfall even scarier, but a closer examination reveals that the snake is in fact a patient, himself. I really can't account for the syringe protruding from the snake's side. Another possible interpretation is that the snake is in fact the dentist's confederate, but while lying in wait, the dentist , out of boredom, decided to do some work on the snake just to pass the time.
I'm fairly certain that none of Dr. Newman's dental techs and hygeinists are in fact reptiles, so I feel pretty good about today's visit. But I'm still keeping my eyes open for suspicious rectangular seams in the office carpet. He may just be biding his time before he swoops in for the kill. You know...a "Sweeney Todd" kind of thing. We'll see.

Goofy-Looking Fellow

This didn't sca very well, but he's a happy-looking fellow, isn't he?

Space Guy Swinging on Rope

Well, this guy's kind of an odd mix-and-match of source material...the "swinging on a rope firing a ray gun" bit is coming from the STAR WARS scene where Luke and Leia swing across the chasm, but the pose here is more akin to Spider-Man, particularly as depicted on the Bakshi cartoon. His mask is kind of a fruity Mardi Gras version of the helmets worn by the Spectrans on BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, crossed with Zoltar's mask from the same show. That part I definitely remember. Unlike the aforementioned characters, I conceived this guy as a hero, but I don't recall naming him. I do recall being very pleased with this drawing at the time.

Bruto

Say...you remember this from last week? Well, it turns out that at least one of the scenes depicted in it was part of an actual story. I don't think there are any more pages to this...but I didn't remember this one, either, so who knows? I advise clicking to enlarge this (which is an option anytime with these, if I haven't made that clear in the past). "El Barko" has become "Bruto", but he's obviously still Snoopy.If you still can't make out the dialogue, it's as follows:

Panel One

BRUTO: I feel mean

Panel Two

BRUTO: ROWR

UNSEEN VICTIM: OUCH

Panel Four

BRUTO: I'm getting out

I haven't really staged this well---there's no sense of place,Bruto's crime occurs off-panel, and the mechanics of his recapture are entirely glossed over. Additionally, most alarm systems produce more than a single "DING". Still, it's a complete narrative. I'm pitching it to a New York publishing house as a graphic novel as soon as I figure out how I can tie it into some sort of obvious talk-show-friendly topical issue. Maybe Barko has cancer, or the unseen victim is a refugee from a war-torn country, or the broken leash is gay, or the pound is a ham-fisted metaphor for something. I'll figure it all out as soon as the contracts are signed.

Get Well

I don't know who in the family was sick, but a note on the back of the page tells me that they were sick on February 10th, 1975, and the internet tells me that it was a Monday. Also note that this "germ" is apparently actually an arachnid, judging by a quick count of his limbs.

Clipboard

I was reading before my third birthday, so I had a real head start on the whole spelling thing (though penmanship was an issue up through junior high school, basically until I abandoned cursive script), and you don't find many misspellings in my work. This, however, is evidence that I had my occasional lapse. I don't recall the details of "Devlin's Desining Studio and carpentry shop", but I commandeered this ancient enameled metal clipboard (backed with felt, even) as an integral part of the studio's equipment. I can't figure out what sort of pen I labeled it with that would stick to painted metal, but it's survived admirably for over three decades. I juiced up the color a bit in Photoshop, but this is a pretty accurate representation of wat 's sitting next to my desk on the scanner It's actually going to get pressed into service in my current carpentry shop...I've got a pegboard hook set up for it already. My "Desining Studio" is upstairs in the living room, though.