Comics
Birthday Hulk Sketch
For Steve’s birthday…
Of course, Hulk and Darkseid are my timeworn go-tos when doing sketches, so I get 0/10 for imagination…
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Darkseid & Hulk
Follow-up to this post, as a bonus to go along with Bernard’s Jack Kirby portrait, I drew him some quick sketches of Darkseid & Hulk!
Jack Kirby Portrait
A commission for Bernard Brannigan. Am really happy with how this came out—and buyer is too!
Here’s an in-progress shot:
And here’s the finished article!
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Paul Gravett’s Brum Visit
A very good day, today, as I caught up with old comics pal Paul Gravett for the first time in aeons.
After meeting up at New Street (sorry, Grand Central, the station’s been a New York Wannabe since 2015 now!!), we went to the new-ish Wetherspoons there for a long lunch. We had fish & chips, and I had two or three of those refillable coffees (Paul stuck with tea! Very English!).
This was a great opportunity to pose for an awkward selfie with me squinting at the camera screen…
Note my Darkseid badge! I brought Paul one too. After eating, I had a “commission” to do…
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Jack Kirby Draws Arnold Schwarzenegger
As many of you will know, comics legend Jack Kirby worked for the Ruby-Spears animation studio from 1980 to 1987. This commenced with production design for Steve Gerber’s Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-81), after initial design man Alex Toth left the project.
As well as generating original ideas such as Thundarr, R-S also dabbled in licensed properties—Kirby worked on conceptual art for possible comics-related shows involving Thor (1981), Wonder Woman and Hawkman (both 1983), amongst others. None of these went into production, alas. In 1988, just after Kirby left the studio, they did do a quite well-done Superman show, which sadly lasted only one season, but boasted Marv Wolfman as script editor and Gil Kane as production designer. Kirby may have worked on this if he’d stayed a while longer.
R-S also licensed a series of shows which used real-life celebrity likenesses—Mister T (1983-86), Rambo: The Force of Freedom and Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (both 1986). Kirby did indeed draw production art on all three.
Sad to say, in the last couple of years he worked for R-S, Kirby’s work was in serious decline—several years of struggling with essential tremors had taken a heavy toll on his ability to work, and his art had become quite rudimentary, even crude at times. One reason Gil Kane was brought on board was to develop and refine Kirby’s designs, which frequently were deemed unsuitable at this point… Kane gave the ideas, as he put it himself, a better “representational” value.
Towards the end of Kirby’s R-S stint in 1987, it appears that they were trying to get an idea off the ground involving Arnold Schwarzenegger! It makes sense, after doing Rambo and Chuck Norris—Arnie was one of the biggest action guys of the era. The show never happened, but there’s some interesting Kirby art in support of it to peruse…
Let’s overlook the fact that Jack didn’t know how to spell Schwarzenegger…
What can we gather from this? Arnie is a good guy (natch), and he sports some interesting gadgets—his badge has a “time wheel” powered by his belt, which presumably enables him to teleport across space and time.
More Arnie art below!
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Behind-the-Scenes of Tik & Flea
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.
At work on the second version of the first TIK & FLEA strip!
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About Neil
(Also Known As: Overrated Writers I Hate #1. Maybe.)
I have no idea whether or not the allegations against our beloved, saintly Lord Neil of Gaiman have any validity. It wouldn’t necessarily surprise me, but I’m happy to be on the fence.
However, it’s not the worst time to indulge my view about his character and his work. I believe the two, being more or less inseparable, are best summed up with the word charlatan. I’ve spent 30-odd years being astounded (and quite disappointed) by the amount of praise and gushing idolatry directed at this insufferably smug, annoyingly fey, all-appeasing goon. His work is, without doubt, amongst the most shallow, meaningless, insincere and vacuous ever to be published to significant acclaim.
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Underrated Artists I Love #2: Herb Trimpe
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…
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Alan Moore Is Effing Insane
Alan Moore’s recent interview with IGN is causing the usual kerfuffle & arguments, about which I frankly do not wish to comment… except… EXCEPT… for this one astonishing remark he made…
“Now they’re called ‘graphic novels’, which sounds sophisticated and you can charge a lot more for them. What appealed to me most about comics is no more, and these innocent and inventive and imaginative superhero characters from the Forties, Fifties, Sixties are being recycled to a modern audience as if they were adult fare.”
This man is an absolute loon.
Where do I start?! Firstly, I agree 100% with this statement…
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