Burnt Fashion Sandwich: Unseen Legs Crap!

psst - skip down below for my comments on... YOUR comments.. on the last post!

Burnt Fashion Sandwich is directly inspired (ripped off?) from Frank Zappa's Burnt Weenie Sandwich Album, which had various eclectic mixture of Frank's music sandwiched between two 50's Doo-Wop song, starting and ending the album. For this post it's a a Burnt Fashion Sandwich. I call it burnt because my fashion doodles don't always go down smooth, and also because it's usually the stuff between the bread people wanna get too.. now to the 'meat' or the post..

My old buddy and fellow fine artists, Josh Hagler, ( 'fine' both as in swell, and someone who's made the leap into fine art galleries) sent me this piece he painted.. using Legs .

It's mind blowing to know this painting was exhibited in a giant castle called Castello di Carlo V, in Italy, and is in Maimi re-stretched for a solo show Josh is having there.  I was surprised and flattered Josh would use my goofy little Legs critter for his such a piece.

It's not just Josh's skill which astounds me, but his imagination ideas... and for lack of a better word... conceptual work. Check his stuff out here.

And just in case you never saw it... here's a few panels from the comic which Josh painted the Legs from.

As I've mentioned before, Legs was a one-shot comic, and sort of a false start for me. It never got the fare shake I intended it to have.  Everyone told me it seemed like a longer story crammed into 22 pages, and it was. In fact, Legs it was a screenplay first, then as some know... later a limited edition Figure too.

But I never really did it justice. Maybe someday I may get back to it, but until then.. here's a few interesting tidbits.

There was a bigger version of Legs too, a big-ass blue one, called Diablo.. which was nastier than the smaller orange-brown one in the comics. Diablo Legs dated back to the early 1900s. 

The original idea was for a series of kids.. in different areas of the country, finding different versions of the Legs creature... each kid would have personal struggle inside which the creature would somehow help them become aware of. There was a baby legs that a little girl discovers too. Water based swimming  Legs and ones that took flight. 

But I worried tying some childhood personal or collective crap into the Legs Mythology was... just too much? For a simple little idea? Was I over thinking it? 

As usual, it can never be a 'simple' idea with me, can it? : )

So, for now, the Legs Mythos.. sits on a back burner.. as more pressing ideas and stories await instead. Like cute chubby girl stories.

..and  that brings us to the bottom half of our sandwich...

COMMENTS:
Thanks to all the thoughts/comments on a possible chubby-girl Dana Toy figure, and Taboo body parts in general.  Lots of ... ahh... food for thought? (sorry, had too)... Anways, I agree Dr. VeganMike, serious obesity problem vs. acceptance of one's body flaws are always a balancing act. But I'm qualified or interested in the social or health issue, that's (duh!) the individual person's territory.

Megan, Kai, Squeaky, Phonosexual, cody (sorry to lump you all together) thanks for reafirmed I am right to trust my fans, (and my gut) about not under-estimating our appetites for the flawed, quirky and just plain weird - be it in art, toys... or whatever!

Thanks Hazard.  Far as reading more about Dana, I have crap load of unpublished stuff on her, which I'm trying to decide how much to drain out online what to hold back and publish. The sheer number of folks who can check out out on line will be greater, but I still have affection for printed books too. So, probably a little of both?

Andy, cool you dig my realistic ( do i have a 'realistic' guy? maybe you kinda mean buffed looking?) look hot too.  I think when we're all teens, body image looms, no matter what we look like. Proud if that small scene with Julie's scale and tummy struck a cord. Again, weird we don't see more of it on TV, outside of diet or chocolate ads.

Why a Trout?

A lot of people ask me this... what's up with all this Trout crap? Well, if you're  inside my head, and don't know the 20 graphic novels and four art books and all the trout history clogging my brain (most of which aren't published yet),... then it's totally understandable to wonder. Hell, I'd ask too. 




But before I get into the Trout, first up goes back to how I draw... and think... in general. I notice I tend to unconsciously reduce everything I draw to shapes, like in Zero Girl. Nothing special there: most artists think in circles, squares, etc. In my mind all three of the examples above are all pretty much the same skeleton, only with different 'skin'. Here's what I mean: 

Legs was Maxx, who, before that, was the Magic Trout. While compiling stuff for the art book, I came across an old page that shows this pretty well. The Trout was just a side-ways S shape and so was Maxx... still unformed. Just doodles in dozens of sketchbooks. 

I layed out a crude story of the Trout as a grit salesmen, as a sort of joke. 

This idea was based on a frame from an old rare short film (that's long been lost) which supposedly shows one of few existing photos of the Trout. 

I used this 'mute man' from the film later in my Ojo comic. The Mute man was one of hundreds of folks dating back to the 1900s who (along with Annie), had a profound experience when they saw the Magic Trout. 


My sketchbook doodles of the trout are kinda like the source of everything, all of it... everything came from it. Nothing to do with actual fish or fishing for trouts.  It's just randomly evolved into this whole universe, which bookends my whole career. I tried to keep it separate from the Maxx universe, but, like everything I dream up, it's part of a 'family of everything' I create. For me the Trout world is already as fully formed as the Maxx world. All that remains is the act of patiently laying it down in print and online.  

These crude panels from the Ojo comic show that whenever the Trout 'speaks', it's utter nonsense to human ears. Yet we process it as what we want to hear. In the 1900s people tended to hear a weird noise from the Trout that sounded to human ears like the words 'cheese and garbage'. 

I have no idea what it means either, it's just another mystery of this Trout world. 


So why should you give a crap about all this? No reason. I don't know why believe in imaginary things like a big purple super hero. Or a skinny guy in black that Neil called the Sandman. It only exists because somebody doodled in a sketchbook or wrote in a note pad. 


Here's an old vintage Trout Balm advertisement for Balm from the turn of the century. Something people don't even remember anymore. 

All this Trout nonsense will make a little more sense as various books start tumbling out. Trust me. Creations are goofy things; creator and readers conspire to pretend something unreal happened, matters, and emotionally moves them. It's totally organic, starts inside, then pops out. Totally stupid.



Yeah, I know. I don't get it either.