Violent Napkin with Sharks

Here we see me taking the theme of "guy being punched in the jaw" and exploring all the ways I'd ever seen it portrayed in cartoons. Then, as a palate cleanser, I throw in a turkey with the head of a man, cat's eyes, and the massive protruding fangs of a saber-toothed tiger. My father drew the shark and shrimp boat and it's possible that the mermaid/manatee thing is a collaboration. The shrimp boat is the Osibisa, a leaky old hulk that my father worked on through most of 1975 (it sank within a year or so after his departure). It sailed out of Bowen's Island, SC, where my mother and I joined him through the summer months. I went out with them several times and had exciting maritime adventures, one of which will be recounted in this spot at a later date.
The flip side is all my father's work, continuing the shark theme, plus a bonus werewolf for good measure.

War of the Satellites: the Prequel

Well...it looks like I have to slightly revise my understanding of last Wednesday's entry, which it now appears was the second panel of a narrative sequence. It seems that the space pirate's satellite-thingy was engaged in a dogfight with some sort of composite of an X-wing fighter and a Colonial Viper (suggesting that this was drawn slightly later than I'd imagined), as seen here, before defeating it in the previously-shown piece. It is likely that the off-panel assailants of the pirate craft in the other piece would be found to resemble the ship shown here. Aren't you glad we cleared that up?

War of the Satellites

I find it interesting that the ship in the foreground that I actually put most of my effort into is in fact a mere observer of the action, with the actual assault on the space pirates' ship coming from off-panel.

Hurricane Fighter Plane

While that was a snappy title to borrow, I don't think this was actually supposed to be a Hurricane. It sort of looks like a Thunderbolt, but the lack of an engine cowling on the nose rules that out. Regrettably, my knowledge of WWII-era Allied fighter craft has atrophied somewhat since 1979. I'm just hoping that this is an aerial view of a plane on the ground (the immobile prop would suggest that), otherwise the pilot has a bit of a problem.

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.

Cartoon Violence

Two different takes on Tex Avery-style violence. I'm really not sure what my imagined scenario is for the first one was, but I apparently thought it through enough to design a wheeled cart with hydraulic lifters to angle the can for more convenient punching. I recall being frustrated by my inability to render a sufficiently glasslike pattern to to the fracture lines, but I guess it did the job. It's also interesting to me that the first guy's wig and teeth are both knocked loose and shattered. That must be uncomfortable.

Scenes from a Dungeon

Another spectacular tableau of violence. I was probably frustrated by the way I just couldn't get the hanged man to work out, but I expect that I was pretty pleased with the spiderweb and the protruding ribs on the prisoner in chains. To contextualize this all for modern viewers, who might be aghast that an eight-year old would be drawing this stuff, both PLOP! and CRACKED regularly featured torture-chamber gag cartoons (as well as GHOSTLY GHASTLY CARTOONS, which seems to have been issued to every child in America got through the Xerox Book Club in that decade). And, even though I never liked it that much, THE WIZARD OF ID spent a fair amount of its time in the dungeon. Also, some very common toys of the era were a set of jiggly rubber prisoners ("Nutty Dungeon" figures, from the Brabo company) in a goofy cartoony style. Torture was just in the air in those days. Of course, it's also a popular theme now in the Gitmo era, but I suspect the protagonists in today's kid drawings aren't smiling like these guys.

Poor Stormtrooper!

This is the immediate precursor to the popular Walrus Man diptych from one of the first posts here. There's actually another one before this showing a Death Squad Commander fleeing from pursuing blaster fire, but I'm withholding that one for a later discussion of one-point perspective.

The Devil Wears Two Hats

A fairly creepy image, from the inside back cover of my second grade math book:

I assume that this developed by accretion, rather than as a single concept, so the people at the top were probably a late addition, but here's what I believe is supposed to be happening here:
The demon at the center is being attacked by the large, two-hatted demon and the horrible papoose/larva creature, while the fire sprite and evil anthropomorphic hammer creature look on. The papoose thing is attacking with a long, barbed tongue (I'm pretty sure I didn't literally intend to have him attacking the middle guy's crotch, but it does look that way), while the big guy is spitting some kind of darts. Said darts are riccocheting off and flying upwards, where some are deflected by the roof of the cavern. The gentleman at the left is, I believe, in a cave and therefore less protected by the Earth, so the darts are breaking through and injuring his feet. And that is what mathematics means to me. The End.

The War of the Worlds

Two different drawings of Martian war machines from the George Pal production of War of the Worlds. While it was always a favorite (helped along by plenty of coverage in Famous Monsters and Starlog), these were probably prompted by a 1979 showing of a double feature of WOTW and Close Encounters of the Third Kind that I attended at the Sky-Way Drive-In in Anderson, SC (about a year before it shut for good). I recall being amused at the juxtaposition of the radically different views of alien contact, giving a kind of 'point/counterpoint" approach to the theme. My other most vivid memory of the drive-in experience is from a year previous, when I dragged my parents to The Incredible Melting Man. I was thoroughly disappointed with it, and irritated with the gratuitous '70s nudity, when I was there to see melting flesh and action, and there wasn't enough of either! Phooey! I do hope to at some point get the Halloween costume, though.


To conclude our presentation, let me note that today's posting is sponsored by the letter "F".

Blood 'N' Guts

This is one of the relatively few pieces that I can date with any degree of certainty, as it's part of a sheaf of torn-out pages that I labeled "Camp Broadstone, Summer '80." It shows all the symptoms of the crappiness that infects kid's drawings around age 12 , but it still has a certain awful charm. I definitely advise clicking to enlarge this one...there are many nuances that reward close examination. I was clearly trying really hard to get this right...I reposed the monster's arms, erased unnecessary antennae, rendered shadows even! We won't discuss the fact that those shadows are running in opposite directions, or try to figure out the hapless spacemen's relative sizes, or even speculate why the prostrate gentleman's blood looks more like a necktie draped across him. Still, Rob Liefield has published worse.