Tik & Flea is a newspaper-style strip I’m working on, which I’ll be posting on my Patreon page periodically (please consider signing up—even better, joining a paid tier to help support me doing this stuff!), based on the fab adventures of Tikki and Kila. I recently wrote a behind-the-scenes piece about it for an aborted e-zine I was playing around with; I decided to repost it here…
At work on the second version of the first TIK & FLEA strip!
Following up this post… I did a Tod Slaughter commission back in April, and the postal service lost it in transit. So, I started work on a replacement.
Anyhow, shockingly enough, the postal dopes eventually found the original, and sent it back to me! In doing so, they did manage at some point to damage the well-packaged artwork (albeit fairly minimally), just to add extra insult. Cue rant about incompetence and overpriced services.
So, I completed the second version last week (a few obstacles in recent weeks slowed things down), and will be remailing TWO pieces to the commissioner shortly. Perhaps a steel envelope is needed this time. As it happens, I think this new one is better.
This has been a long time coming, and, for me, an obvious choice! You can see #1 here.
Ah, Herb Trimpe. Some people actually don’t like Herb’s work—and some people dismiss him simply as a “Jack Kirby Clone”. These people are horribly & completely wrong. I found Herb in the mid-’70s, as a little kid, in UK reprints of his Hulk stories via the weekly Mighty World of Marvel. In spite of initially reading his last name as “tripe” (yeah, yeah, those people above would agree!) (I was just learning to read at the time), I immediately took to his work—and I’ve never changed my mind.
Incidentally: as any real fan knows, Herb’s last name rhymes with shrimpy.
If you’re with me thus far, I’ll assume you agree that Herb Trimpe was an awesome Hulk artist. Here’s Herb’s back cover for Marvel Treasury Edition #5 (1975), which is a fine example of how good a match H & H were…
Someone made him angry…
I still have vivid memories of seeing this book, bearing a striking front cover by John Romita of Hulk charging through a brick wall (see it here), displayed on a newsstand inside the Mander Centre in Wolverhampton, while out shopping with my Aunt Winnie sometime in ’76. The Hulk—the “sympathetic monster” version—had a lot of appeal to me as a Monster Kid and a huge King Kong fan. Anyhow, more about Herb…
Couple of recent commission pieces: David Bowie and old-time horror icon Tod Slaughter!
Worth noting: although the Bowie one says January, it sat around for a while and the background rendering & colours were added later. I had considered it finished, but I decided these additions would improve it… I think I was right.
The first in a series? Also, coming up: Overrated Artists I Hate! 🙂
Frank Robbins. He’s that Invaders guy. He’s that weird artist who drew rubber-limbed, contorted figures with insanely distorted, grimacing faces. Everything he drew looked bizarre & wrong, didn’t it? He wasn’t very good, was he?
No. He was GREAT! I mean, come on, get a load of this…
Cover of THE SHADOW #7 (DC Comics, 1974).
As this idiot is still in the news, somehow, I present an old strip pertaining to The Man With No Comb… which references the UK’s supremely annoying NLP three-sting “COVID” mantra (Hands! Face! Space!).
Thought I’d give a quick mention to John, who passed away aged 93 on June 12th. His death is no tragedy—he had a very long life, well lived—but a sad loss nonetheless, especially as the Silver Age greats of comics are dwindling rapidly now.
John was, of course, the third best Spider-Man artist.
Newly scanned pieces—firstly, Shatner as Kirk, for Steve on the occasion of his birthday… a portrait of 1940s Bogart… and finally, a nice scan of the Moe Howard piece I posted a photo of here.
I am indeed a Three Stooges fan, although I like Laurel & Hardy better—but for some reason have never drawn L&H. Go figure. Must rectify this soon. Anyhow, this is just finished on my drawing table, in the newly revamped studio space. Which, BTW, is actually helping my work quite a bit. Let’s not talk about the cramped working conditions I had previously! It wasn’t good, but I’ll leave it at that.
So, this is a mixed media piece, and a first (but it won’t be last) attempt at a slightly different approach. I thought perhaps the pen & ink portraits just look quite comic booky, and pencil-only is a pretty common approach, and a lot of people do it better than me… but this, I think works a little better for me. The basic outlines are done using my trusty Uni brush pen, but I kept it to a minimum. I left a lot of the toning & modeling out. The background is simple ink-on-sponge—something I have not done in about thirty years! Finally, the tones are done with grey watercolour pencils. (Mostly a couple of darker ones.)
