Plugging myself and crap lying on my studio floor.

Anna Breslaw wrote an insightful and cool article about my stuff HERE, so thought I'd pass that along if you haven't seen it ~ thanks Anna!

Also, (and it's a little cheezy plugging myself), but i got word from DC the Batman Hater book popped on on the New York Times top ten list. I am just vain enough to say: yay. Course, being Bruce Jones WROTE it, and Batman being IN it, i''m sure all of that that didn't hurt either.

Here's a peak at the type which i cut and pasted into this very blog.. in dramatic RED highlights.. (subtle huh?)



HARDCOVER

1 X-MEN: SCHISM, by Jason Aaron and others. (Marvel Entertainment, $24.99.) Cyclops and Wolverine are at odds over the future of the X-Men.

2 BATMAN: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, by Bruce Jones and Sam Keith. (DC Comics, $22.99.) This original graphic novel tells the tale of the first meeting between the Dark Knight and the villainous Mad Hatter.

3 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, VOL. 1, by Hergé. (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $18.99.) Three adventures, one graphic novel: "Tintin in America," "Cigars of the Pharaohs" and "The Blue Lotus."

 

Okay, enough sam shamelessly plugging himself crap.. here's some ART - cool stuff i grabbed off the studio floor because i'm LATE on a bunch of comic stuff.. 

Above is the original (un-photoshoped) Secrets cover i'm sure you'll recognize... (since this is sort a 'batty' post.)  

.. also un-used poster for the comic book legal defense fund.. with a bunch of characters from the trout-a-verse all tied in together... (note the skinner Dana, before i added a little meat to her bones!) 

..and lastly, a panel from the Nola graphic novel I'm still monkeying with. 


Just wanted to add... without all your guys reading me over the years, stuff like the the Bat book,  or Anna's article, or YOU guys continued patience, comments, jokes and never-ending SUPPORT on this friggin' Blog, you guys are the reason  i keep cranking this stuff out! 


I'd like to think we inspire each other. Judging by the amazing art work many of you are all doing too, my greatest contribution may not be any one published series of comics i did, but inspiring weird wonderful artists out there, that they are NOT alone... and weird, is good. Tolerated. Can even flourish. Hey, if a madman like me can find fellow minded weirdos, then there's hope for us all, eh? : )  


Okay, THIS... will have to do (for a few days) ~  until i slay this current batch of deadline - wish me luck gang! 


- Sam 

Abandoned Abstract

I destroyed this piece right after talking these. Don't worry, the close up pics made it look a lot better than the painting actually was. 

Missing ARPIL post!

MOCK APRIL post!

Wow, is it April already? Here's two versions of an unpublished cover for my friend Vassilis's "Mr. Universe " comic that Image published a while back. I painted one darker to hide the girls face which i felt i kinda botched. Still not sure which i like better...

I'd like to eat up server space bragging about three people in my life who I've been talking to, who YOU may or may not have heard of. They will be drawing some of the Oni Trout books I'll be writing, laying out and trying NOT to draw (otherwise they will never get finished as I'm too swamped to draw more than two books a month. Tried to on Bimbo, almost killed me. Never again!).

Tim Kelly: This guy has a sweet organic style that really blows me away. He says he gets compared to me a lot in his style, but I got compared to Frazetta and Bernie Wrightson—which is who both of our true lineage comes from, and no matter how we pale in comparison, it's still a cool place to try for. Besides, by now Tim's got his own style. He can pencil, color, ink, paint like a demon. He's a compulsive creator too. He always makes me WANT to draw, because he makes it look so damned FUN to create stuff. And it IS, when he does it.

http://timkelly.deviantart.com/

Leigh Dragoon: I met Leigh years ago. Out of the blue I asked a friend if she knew any women cartoonists; she gave me Leigh’s name, and when we spoke on the phone I was stunned to find out she lives in the same town I do! She's multi-faceted too—writes, draws, paints, all of it. She's getting so much writing work, it's crazy. She doesn't just draw, she 'acts' her characters, often much better than I do. If Lynn Johnston (from “For Better or For Worse”) had a long-lost daughter who drew comics, Leigh would be it. I'm lucky to be working with her. Leigh just finished a story she wrote for Fraggle Rock #2.

http://www.leighdragoon.com/illustrations

Vassilis Gogtzilas: I only put Vassilis last because I threw him into my second sketchbook FIRST. He's someone else I felt like I've always known. He lives in Greece, teaches art and does his own comics, advertising, has directed animated music videos, has his own art books too. Insanely prolific. VERY talented, and can draw even more wild cartoony stuff than I can, yet can shift to drawing much more realistically than I can. Basically he kicks my ass, but in a good way. He's humble too. I like working with folks who make me look better than I am. He's got his own comic series called “Misery City” from blacklinecomics.

http://vassilisgogtzilas.blogspot.com

All three are tirelessly helping me on my goofy little trout-a-verse, and in turn I tell them to exploit whatever attention that gives them towards their OWN books, because they have lives beyond me. Check their stuff out when you can. It's creators like these who are the future of comics,seriously. I wasn't doing half the crap they are when I was their ages.

end of plug.

sam

Sunday Blahs & Maxx DVD comes out...

Kinda depressed this weekend, no reason i should be.

I took a bunch of pics of my studio to post, then realized it was stupid to post dorky pics of weird toys/crap i made/bought-at-thrifts made/stole/melted/drilled/beat-with-a-hammer mutilated or otherwise... defaced.

These are three imaginary friends of Nola, which is a book that's not out yet. Artists Vassilis Gogtzilas is drawing it! More on these three later...

Figure you'd much rather see a piece or ART, rather than plastic or clay goofball stuff?

(Lower left is Leigh Dragoon's drawing of Nola, from an upcoming Oni book we're doing!)

Then, I decided to draw little Trout and Bimbo FINGER PUPPETS, so people could print them out, and tape them to their fingers...

...before i realized how finger puppets are actually an inspiration about how inventively i was pissing away one's Sunday.

Then i thought, hell, maybe Sundays ARE sometimes supposed to an incredibly astounding waste of time.

I can feel the holidays are really over now, which is good and bad. Nothing like fresh steamy personal compost of CHANGE to wake yourself up, eh?

The Maxx DVD is FINALLY out. MTV stepped up for a commentary with me and the folks from Rough Draft. Also a frighteningly rotund looking short behind the scenes film of ME talking about the Maxx, drawing a budget-looking Maxx with Kleenex and markers. I was up all night so i was pretty fried by the time i flew in to Burbank, did the commentary, drew a Maxx and stumbled back onto a plane.

Got to see my old Maxx alumni friend Seth Kearsley, which was cool.

I wish my other Maxx co-hort James Dean could've got on the DVD too. Darn it!

So, since i owe a lot to the moldy old purple guy, i dug out a cover from the Maxx trade i did; it looks much different in B&W... before it was colored. So it's KINDA new ... if you don't squint.

I will always have tremendously mixed feelings about this Maxx: so much fun up front, so many lawsuits-clusterfucks-nightmarish-bottom-falling-out crap in the end, like so many books from the post-crash Image days.

But i wanna try to remember what i hope WILL last—which is hopefully, the books themselves. The cartoon was cool, but the books finished what the animated show couldn't afford too. Drawing the Maxx, once upon a time... WAS fun. silly. invigorating. juvenile. experimental.

It also inspired a generation of NEW artists like Vassilis Gogtzilas, Leigh Dragoon, Tim Kelly, Josh Halger and many more. All these artists thought "Crap. they let a goober like THAT on TV??? Heck, maybe there's room for someone like me, then!" Yeah, they'd have made it in anyhoo... but it's cool to think every weird artist who sneaks under the radar helps the Alex Pardees create their own artistic home.

Despite whatever personal baggage i carry, or create, i just wanna say, in my more lucid/honest moments, i can never, EVER be ashamed of the Maxx... if i am only remembered for that one work alone, fucking-a. Cool. I'll take it.

I'll see what else no one's seen that i can dig out that might be cool. Here's one of the last panels of the Maxx book, one of my favorites.

Almost everyone's in there, too. Kinda 'glad to be unhappy' isn't it? In the meantime, back to Trout-crap and Bat-crap. Life goes on... thankfully.