Feckless...

It's all busy-ness here as we prepare for our big move to Milwaukee next month. But, issue #4 of ORB won't be delayed, and as a matter o' fact it's already available. By some miracle we seem able to maintain a monthly schedule with this thing. We're even selling some copies, though folks are generally frightened of the Unknown.

Not me, though--I jump right in.

More subversive Lou Feck "Inspirational" (re: Christian) Romance paperback art; observe the man's secret hand sign--which means he wants to feck the girl.

I mentioned Lou Feck a while back, and Lo and B-Holed more paperback covers came my way via the His House Thrift Store and Shelter for Alcoholic Men. Did I tell you they love the Minister Sinister comic over there? It's partly based on their operation. One of the head Reverends apparently wants to get his hands around the neck of the author.

These Southern religious types got no sense of fun.

More Lou Feck acrylic wizardry.

I could swear I saw a sign the other day that said "Church of Goo". Now even I'd go to that one.

Ease of Application...

Ya say things, and people run away. My Schultz/Gianni entry got some Blog Quitters right off. That's okay, though. I'm beginning to wonder--in light of recent responses--why some folks even come here. I naievely figgered everyone was my friend, but maybe that's not the case.

I had a phone conversation with an unnamed artist some years ago, and I was bemoaning the lack of "chops"--of hard drawing know-how, simple stuff of making the mouth come 1/3 down from nose to chin and not halfway as some do 'em. The answer, from this well-known and successful "unnamed artist", was, and I quote, "I don't care about any of that". He didn't mean my comments, he meant the knowledge and Logic part.

See how I don't even have to name names and you know exactly who I'm talking about?

On my recent trip to see Brookgreen Gardens' many sculptures.

Heck, another friend of mine recently said that he thought the "new" Prince Valiant didn't even measure up to goddamn John Cullen Murphy. JCM, as you may know, was asked to fill the shoes of Hal Foster and couldn't even manage the toes.

My gripes are not about personal attacks, as many of you may believe, although I admit I don't respect slovenliness on the job; they are about the overarching fact that this here generation has roundly and soundly failed in not only filling the boots of the previous generation, they haven't even come close to matching their accomplishments.

My goal was always to learn the chops, the craft, so that certain artistic traditions could be carried on and kept in good working order. I figgered that goal should be obvious to all, but of course we've seen that it ain't. Not at all.

What some of these others' goals are, I don't know.

A young Brazilian artist copies me--will I get surpassed?

And what's the underlying cause of Art Slackness on the part of my own generation? Were we too spoiled, to softened by everything we were given, by prosperity, suburbia, and our Institutions?

Myself, I never had it easy--constantly being uprooted, new schools, going overseas, violence and alcoholism, my own long history of drug an alcohol abuse, etc., etc., and etc. On top of all that I ain't even a college grad.

Not to belabor the point, but you've gotta have some resistance somewhere or certain muscles don't develop properly--or at all.

The next time you think I'm insulting your favorite artist, you might think about the bigger picture.

Red Corncob...

A dear friend of mine--and a non-comics reader, I might add--decided to test the 4-color waters and asked me to suggest ten of my favorite titles.

Red-- here's a few comics you might enjoy, even if ya don't it's okay too coz they're all trash anyway..................M

ZAP #4
An "Underground Comic" that caused lotsa legal trouble.

FOG CITY COMICS #1
Another Underground, I have this 'un.

Anything by Vaughn Bode
This guy died by auto-erotic-asphyxiation, but you can still hear him on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZhTUCV7I

Marvel's Greatest Comics
Affordable reprints of the best Lee-Kirby operatic grandiosities of the 60s, any issues from around 50 to 70, although up to 100is still okay (stories may be continued issue to issue).

Prince Valiant
Reprints is whutcha want, this is the largest Historical epic ever told in English and the art hasn't yet been touched. PV was in the papers on Sunday for Dad--WHO PAID FOR THE PAPER.

EC Reprints
Some are comics, some are hardbacks, the Horror stuff they did went "too far" and initiated the Comics Code Authority. Try "Vault of Horror", "Crypt of Terror" etc.

OMAC
Jack Kirby's wacky futuristic hero, get the ORIGINAL SERIES not later versions by other people.

HA-HA or GIGGLE Comics
Funny Animals were a huge trend in the 40s and 50s, thesetitles are underrated and still fairly cheap.

Harvey Kurtzman's JUNGLE BOOK
Paperback or Hardback, the satire don't get thicker than this by Mad's originator.

CARtoons
Comics for the kids who had cars, these things are a lotta fun. Also see HOT-ROD Cartoons, and the ultra-rare SURFtoons.

STANDER...

The Lancer Conan books started, I think, in 1967. I was in England and didn't get my hands on any until around 1971, though I'd seen 'em in Eerie and Creepy.

The Alpha-Motherlode to a 1970s teenage boy.

I read all that Sword & Sorcery stuff back then, and recently went back to revisit some of it. You can clearly see how good REH was, and how everybody floundered around after him. Even guys like John Jakes didn't seem to cut it, pageturner novelist though he turned out to be.

Oddly, not a lot of online REH or Conan info pages seem to give full credit to Frazetta for the resurgence of the ol' Pulp stuff. It sure became a tidal wave, and publishers scraped bottom trying to fill all those empty paperback covers.

And Nature abhors a vacuum.

Nature's vacuum sucks almost as hard as Ken.

Which reminds me of overhearing Ken Kelly telling an aspiring teenage girl artist she wasn't "serious... obviously" at a convention once. I wanted to punch the son of a bitch, parasitic tapeworm in Frank's bowel that he is.

Where was I? Oh yeah--ALL THOSE EMPTY COVERS. A few were okay, but mainly they never came close to what Frazetta had. And what's that, ya ask?

Looking at those first, original book covers wasn't like looking at some goof's "art", like monster-on-the-left-hero-on-the-right, it was like looking through a goddamn window, through Time, Space and History by Sorcery and seeing, miraculously, something no one had ever been able to see before.

Oh, really? chuckle the unimpressed Borisites.

The "Window" effect comes from using Classical Art techniques, whereas all the other goofs relied on their hopelessly tinker-toy chops. They just weren't ready or able to fill the vacuum.

I think some of Jeff Jones' cover were nice, but they were something altogether different.

Our Inheritors: Mark Schulz' illogic and Gary Gianni's paper-fillings.

Nowadays you've still got the same army of untrained Goofs trying to fill shoes they can barely polish.

I took the kids outside solemnly yesterday, and said we were going to witness something that I hoped would stay with them for years, and long after I was gone, as the most precious father-child experience of all. Now, I share it with you, too--one of the rarest events in all the World...

Dude--a STANDER!

Good, Bad & Ugly...

Sometimes my trips to the local Thrift store yields something worthwhile, like this old paperback with a cover by one Lou Feck. Now, why the heck have I never heard of Feck?

Muted color, a close value range and a careful avoidance of strict verticals.

A little online research about Mister Feck shows a disturbing trend--that image searches now point mainly to Blogs instead of real "resource" sites like they used to. Maybe mine's no different, but hopefully my analyses are better than merely strip-mining imagery from old "collectibles" and adding comments like "HOW COOL!" or "AWESOME!"

I started thinking about the differences between art from years ago versus today. Sure, there was bad art way back when, but a lot of it was good and almost all of it, good or bad, had a distinctly human quality.

I'd argue that the more "HQ" is in a work the better it is, but who am I to buck a trend?

Utterly inhuman art, i.e. digital, unredeemed by the addition of a monkey-scrawl signature.

Anyway, my Theory is this: ya got "Human" work, then ya got "Unhuman", and lastly "Inhuman". It's a scale, or a spectrum--a gamut. Its acronym is H.U.I., which sounds like how it feels--HOOOOEEEEEE!

A real hero would have the girl behind him; even the old-school illustrators stumbled in awkward choreographies A.F. (After Frazetta).

To define it, Unhuman is unconvincing or unnatural renditions of people. There was a lot of this following the Frazetta/Conan paperback explosion, and Boris Vallejo is the foremost purveyor of it. You know, the Hero facing us instead of the Monster? Don't get nervy, we ain't posting any Boris here.

A paperback smorgasbord-holocaust of illogical posings continues: Quick--do you A. stab the monster's head, B. slash the tentacle that's about to pull you off-balance, or C. simply ride away on the horse w/girl?

Finally, Inhuman is art that utterly lacks any real human dimension at all, which is a real and constant danger in almost all Digital artwork.

The Spectrum books may not be solely responsible for Un-and-Inhuman trends in commercial Fantasy art, but they sure help the whole thing along; clearly, those countless work-for-hire magic-card crap-fantasy-book artists need Spectrum a lot more than it needs them. Spectrum lovingly supplies the brothel-space, and our dear artists pay $50 each to show their fat butts in its numerous windows.

HEY, BIG BOY.

The other culprit is, of course, paperback art directors who can't attract talent they have no talent for recognizing.

"STEER" ME, BABY.

There's little doubt the world is a worse place for people than it was ten years ago, due to mounting socio-economic pressures and a staggering increase in FUD, and for the most part I feel that commercial art ain't helping at all.

It's like WWII now, and there's no shame at all in taking a side.

Whiplash!

Somewhere, a minor fender-bender occurs; actually, it's more like a tap on the bumper at a red light. Nonetheless, four occupants in the bumped car climb out in unison ALL HOLDING THEIR NECKS.

Don't laugh, I have seen this before.

Today's FUD news says that if you are tall and die you may get your legs chopped off, as in the case of musician James Hines, whose surviving spouse is hurt and angry about it. I'm sensitive to that, but myself, I'd try to maintain a sense of humor about it. The guy was 6'7" and simply wouldn't fit into the standard "box".

The man who was too big for Death.

Now he's more famous in death than he ever was in life.

Ya don't hear about ancient Egyptians going all federal because their departed got their guts put in jars or brains pulled out their noses, do ya? And their civilization lasted a lot longer than ours has--or is likely to.

Cool new cover and three sterling retro-styled comic stories.

LATEST PROJECT NEWS--we're re-releasin' all three of the fine Dan Morton stories I wrote fer him way back when we did the comic book Space 1958, which has long since gone outta print. You can preview and get a copy of this mag-sized book for a mere $8.95 over at Lulu.com

Fed Up...

Anyone ever heard of FUD? Apparently, it was perfected by IBM in the mid-70s, and has since been used to great effect by Microsoft Inc. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It's behind so much advertising it's sick, and behind most of our Politics too, naturally.

Behold the following commercial from our FUD friends at Duracell:

Duracell Corporation--FOR SHAME.

The message here is crystal clear--only our product can save your children from being raped and slaughtered. Did you notice the white getaway van?

World's first cardboard box Computer--my 12-year-old son built this from spare parts for $1.

Duracell originated a commercial with toy rabbits running down, and their competitors at Energizer actually stole the bunny concept. Duracell had negelected to trademark it, you see. This battery business is cutthroat.

Child Safety or Parent Paranoia?

What happens when advertisers--or any media outlet, for that matter--steps over the line to clobber you with FUD, they are technically invading your space. Even an obnoxious asshole breathing down your neck in the grocery store line is insignificant compared to the scale of the advertising and media world's constant, unyielding onslaught of FUD.

FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD.

I think people have enough legitimate fears without everything else getting ratcheted up for a slimy buck. OOH--WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Today's News says the family cat may get butchered. That is indeed frightening.

It also says 71% of Republicans are ready to vote for Sarah Palin as President--which is frightening on a massively different scale. Huger, even.

I for one refuse to be intimidated.

The Element

Somebody recently asked me what Comic artists I liked, assuming I didn't really like any of 'em. I replied that there were plenty that I "liked", like maybe Dan Brereton or Bill Sinkiewicz, but the trouble is that none of them will ever surprise me.

Think about that, and what a tall order it is--when was the last time your favorite artist really surprised you. And whether they have or haven't, do you really want them to?

"Surprise" might be because you're really not sure it's even the same person. Most cases, you are always quite sure who's who, and naturally that's what makes the world go 'round--like Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry.

A favorite illustrator of yesteryear, Mitchell Hooks managed to surprise me with this one.

Personally, I maintain that artists must change. But, fans, or Fandom, doesn't really want that. They want everything to remain exactly the same. Preferably, just as it was the day they cracked open their first Spiderman comic. That's okay--it's the way some people find meaning and continuity in their lives, but art-wise it's something else entirely.

The pressure on artists not to change is a big reason for the mediocrity out there; an artist develops a style for himself and might as well be digging his own grave. Then the fans help you step down into it--for good.

I've also found that usually the first thing and artist should do is the last thing he does do. See, we're just as guilty of staying safe and comfortable as the fans are--sometimes. How many guys are all over the landscape with commissions, sales, prints, blahblahblah, being so goddamn "professional" when really they should just work on their anatomy for a few weeks?

Or months? It could spare everybody a lot of pain.

Wouldn't that be a big surprise.

Myself, I am just loopy enough to keep doing projects that keep me broke and anonymous. Not that I'm blaming anyone, or that I need to blame anyone. There are enough brave souls out there to follow me if I lose it completely and go "Phase III", or release Comic books without a snowball in Hell's chance of ever paying. I knew Super Clowns would flop, but went ahead anyway. Minister Sinister #1 ain't doing much better. I have more flops in the works.

A surprising illustration of a Japanese Totoro. Will this artist manage to surprise me--and himself-- again in the future?

Then there's the Rigidity. That's when an artist is so self-assured, so convinced they're absolutely inerrant, that nothing new can get in and they become totally fossilized. This is what comes from having rigid codes, rules or dogmas that must be followed at all times. What starts off as a rebellious, iconoclastic statement to the World winds up becoming a self-made prison. Or a labyrinth that leads nowhere.

I read recently that truly great minds are Androgenous. That doesn't mean they're fags or dress like women, it means that they refuse to commit permanently to any one camp, method or philosophy. It's a rare kind of freedom.

So what'll I do today?

The Pits

I recently bought--at some expense, I may say--a ton of stills from the 1965 Italian movie Bloody Pit of Horror starring Mickey Hargitay, a bodybuilder/actor who was Jane Mansfield's husband. He plays "The Crimson Executioner".

Crimsy as direct inspiration for the Octavia comics.

Those of you with a copy of ORB2 already know about the parallels between the film and my Octavia comics--heck, the issue explores that in depth. I scanned 'em all, kept some of the stills and eBayed the rest.

Dungeon thrills with Octy and Crimsy, from ORB issue two.

I decided to throw in some free Octavia TPBs with the stills I sold, and here's what I got in return:

Thanks for the comic! Very nice to see BLOODY PIT honored in such classy fashion! Your art is fabulous and very appropriate for the topic. You draw some hot women! I was lucky to first see BLOODY PIT in a grindhouse theater in San Francisco way back in 1973 with a couple of stoner friends while cutting class during our senior year of high school. It blew our minds. We went around for weeks muttering, "My perfect body...!" No one knew what the hell we were talking about.

It's nice on account of it being so ridiculously tough just to get a simple review anywhere.

Do You Mind?

What would it be like to spend some time inside someone else's mind? If you could listen-in to their innermost thoughts, feel their emotions fully whether you liked it or not, experience their sensate, nonverbal lives as they do, would it change you as a person?

Would it be like going to the Moon--an astronaut in catharsis--and you'd return better and wiser than you left?

More on Gene Ray later...

Don't laugh, there are stranger things undreamt of in your Philosophy.

There are myriad mental disorders around these days, and schizophrenia cases have been steadily rising for decades now. Other disorders like D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and what some call Multiple Personalities embody the idea--in fact--of separate identities in one head.

You may doubt all this, but someone speaks to you in a clear voice, you hear it. It's as real as you are, mainly because you can't prove that your "self" is real, either. Nor can any Psychoanalyst on Earth prove he really exists.


I stumbled on this book yesterday because I was drawn to its cover. Additionally, mental health--and illness--is a recurrent interest of mine. My own brain, scarred and battle-weary, is more precious to me than ever and I want to keep it hummin' in spite of plentiful war-wounds.

Without giving away the whole story, it's a woman's overnight descent into schizophrenic delusions and then later safely out of them. Being a good writer with a fine mind helped in producing this book, which reads like a novel and which I found fascinating.

Barbara O'Brien's (a pen name) system of delusions and hallucinations is complex, logical and even somewhat believable--especially if solid beings appear to tell you so. The "Operators" control the "Things", which could stand for the subconscious and the conscious minds. Her hierarchy is enriched with regulations, a currency, and even a bus line--run by the Operators. Operator regulations vary state-to-state. They have meetings and conferences. "Things", like you and I, are bought and sold. Such details abound, due to the fertile mind of Barbara O'Brien.

Researching online leads to booksellers (the book is rare and quite valuable) and to websites dealing with Schizophrenia, and of course the nature of the internet has determined many will be "entertainment based".

In other words, they ridicule the Schizophrenic.

The core tenet of Gene Ray's delusions.

You wouldn't laugh at a broken leg, but a broken mind is funny to some people. Let the sister, wife or best friend go mad and they'd probably change their tune, but that's another subject. Heck, some people think all "crazies" are just faking to get out of work, anyway.

Protective Mimicry at a sculpture garden.

On a related note, we went to Brookgreen Gardens yesterday, one of the few cultural landmarks to recommend in South Carolina. It's all sculpture and gardens, and most of the work is from the 30s to the 60s and has what I call "Universal qualities".

Universality imbues a piece of art with a timelessness so that it will alway be appreciated by someone. Using current events, politics, trends, fads, fashions and jargon usually will doom Art to a limited lifespan. We may still know John Held, but his career ended along with the movement of a hemline.

Jeremy Davis' award-winning sculpture.

We saw, at Brookgreen Gardens, the winners of the National Sculpture Society's 76th Annual Exhibition. They've been doing these a long time, which makes it hard to stop. Some of the work was quite good, but much of it showed no Universality at all.

More inspired sculpture at Brookgreen, presented by my current girlfriend Lydia.

The worst culprit was one of the biggest winners--"Soft-Serve" by Jeremy Davis. Accompanying the work was an artist's statement I can only describe as emotionally and intellectually immature. We're told the ice-cream man represents our consumer culture's trend towards obesity, which, in spite of being a horrific oversimplification of a complex problem, shows a total ignorance of the nature of obesity itself.

Just as it might the nature of schizophrenia.

In other words, they are both illnesses.

Doctors these days are actually being trained in Empathy and to listen more closely to patients' stories. The patients get better a lot faster with doctors who listen and feel.

You can probably take it from here.