...of Burgers & Bimbos

First: Vintage Burgers. 

Here's the controversial 'Hamburger In Space' page. Before I drew comics, I inked them. I'd ink anything to get into comics... Hamsters… Lame indy comics. Anything. I was shameless. Desperate. One job i had was inking an American comic version of a Robotech series that I did just an an *awful* job on. I often added weird crap in the background for the licenser to catch, just to amuse myself. So that's how the hamburger rebellion page was born. Kinda in your face: How could they NOT catch this? 

Lowly inkers trying to be 'bad'. Childish stunts that now, in retrospect, I'm rather proud of. The brown sketches on the left were what I did in sketchbooks to keep from going CRAZY while stuck inking. 

Needless to say the book's editor, my old friend Diana Shutz, was NOT amused (can you blame her?) and promptly sent the page BACK to me just so I would ink black OVER the dreaded hamburger (which, i agree, WAS wildly out of place, given that it's outer space). How cool would it have been it if made it through and got published? Think of the shit-fit the anima fans would have thrown, too.   

Plus, I worked really hard on that burger - lettus, onions, everything - and it doesn't even exist now, it's covered in ink. Thus, no one's ever seen it for like twenty years, until Today! Glad I made a photocopy of that sucker before I inked over it… whew! Quick thinking saved it from obscurity. 


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Now: Vintage Bimbos. 

You may (or may not) remember an over-worked version of this Antique Bimbo in one of my sketchbooks, but here's a version before I got so overworked… 

I love drawing the Bimbo in a historical context, like one of those old mermaids in sailing maps… all hand-drawn here, obviously, no layers or anything. It's funny how enjoyable it is to rip up paper and re-past it in again. So raw and unfinished. My old pal Vassilis is a master at this rough unfinished look, 'course he can illustrate like a mother too, so that helps. 

I also did this with this Unpublished Venom Cover which both Marvel and I felt was too abstract.  Note this was during my "black tape on the borders to save ink" phase. 

I ripped it all up, then pasted it back. I admit it doesn't make a very strong cover here; I think I was still too timid with color covers back then. Learning still. So I gave them a 'normal' version of this same cover which they did publish, then 'fired myself' as cover artist. Happily so; after all, I was pretty much repeating myself by then. I liked my early Venom covers, but time to move on. 


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Yet More Dana doodles... 

So many drawings and pairings of this girl clogging all corners of my studio. This painting almost looks better distorted than it does straight on. Working on paintings that are so BIG... sets off whole new parts of my brain, than comic pages do.

I get lost in her hair and helmet textures...  warm rusty browns and olive greens... I wish I would have added moss to this painting; you can never have too much MOSS in a comic page, can you?

The Great She-Elephant, once again, clamps Dana  safely in place. 

I am obsessed with moss. I hope I can ferment into moss after I croak—how cool would that be? Becoming moss? 


Okay, time for this weeks budget sharpie finger puppet, which I may have already posted, (but hopefully not) .. a little Chibi-esque looking little face to wrap it all up, eh? 

Eggads - I have wasted enough of your morning! —go do something worthwhile!     : )