how deep it gets

Hello,

My schedule has been pushed to that crazy point where I’m waking up
at 10 pm. So good morning/night.

I’ll do more inkstuds.com stuff soon but tonight I wanted to get into it here.

Stokoe let me do a cover for his Orc masterbatory masterpiece:

I’m excited to do a back up story for it sooon.
I think after me he’s going to have his misses, Marley and Marian, Mr Sheldon Vella etc etc. all doing covers.
It should be cool to see.

Here’s a sketchbook drawing i did of my lady.

and a less classy sketch–some girl wearing an Ozma hat and that might be Aslan she’s hanging with.

I think this is the awfuk thing that hapens when you raise a kid on Oz and Narnia and
they grow up to be sleeazy comic artists –sorry mom.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the culture of comic books.
Comic book ethics.

There’s a good talk between my old Meathaus homie Dash Shaw and Paul Pope up on inkstuds:

F4u1

Somthing that Pope brought up got me thinking. Basicly he was saying that one reason he did his Batman 100 was in order to get the DC readers. Kind of hits a sour note with me –i mean I have mixed feelings about it– I fully believe that living off of your art is a hustle and you have to pull some scams and do shit to get by but then there’s the idea that I think it kind of hurts the culture of comics that so many good creators live in the shadow of DC/Marvel

And there’s so many Garcia-Lopez, Warren Ellis guys who do amazing work at DC/Marvel
These are guys I respect making books I enjoy so I’m not trying to shit on anyone. But I’d like to talk about this.

I do like the above page without the colors.

And even if I’m less hyped on Popes batman than his other work, maybe it was something he really wanted to do and I’m sure it payed better than self publishing. I just think Pope is a lot better than Batman and where a lot of dudes can do a decent batman comic he’s the only can do that specific mix of cool enough for girls thick black batter ink comix that I miss on the shelves. That’s a big part of this rant, I wish Batman 100 was years more THB or another Buzz buzz.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think creators have a lot more power than waiting for DC/Marvel to call. I always joke that if I needed them to cosign my career I’d still be waiting.

There’s this KRS-one song Health, Wealth, Self that I take a lot from
it says:
"MC’s should have OTHER WAYS of gettin money
That’s to say learn other things beside music
Make money elsewhere, Hip-Hop you won’t abuse it
Too many MC’s, just emcee
so their longevity, is based on an Uncle Tom
at the record company"

On a simmular kick I saw Frank Santoro, on Comics comics bring up the idea of cartoonists who have let the industry crush them–

"the creators who have done amazing work for the “industry” – literally created masterpieces and future corporate properties – who as employees of said “industry” were then cast aside, CRUSHED. Oh, y’know, Siegel, Shuster, Simon, Kirby, Ditko, Whitney, Rude, and then all the freelancers who were popular once, or just “got work” forever but now haven’t worked for years – like Tom Grindberg who can’t get work these days because his Neal Adams-like style is just out of style…"
http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/06/random-riff-roundup.html#comments

The great thing about the internet and comics is it gives a place where we can talk (in between looking at ninja high school porn) I think about this a lot, my whole life has been comics and I want to be still doing this evey day when I’m an old man.

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So I’ve been looking at some books this week that make me want to draw more.

This Katsuya Terada car book written by Dave Shigihara:

This stuf is so exciting to me. It’s just a whole book of car comic/diagrams. Terada is one of those dudes that I din’t even want to
like but he’s just so fucking good and clearly having so much fun that it turns that cold stone in my chest to a living breathing heart.

"lub dub"

And I also got this Otomo book that I hadn’t seen before.
I’m always amazed how something like this can slip by my radar with how
much Akira and Domu is loved you’d think everything he did would be
next to Bone in librarys.

It’s Kibun wa mo senso–the Otomo Kaba art book describes it as 330 page documentry style , about the battle experience of young japanese caught in a Sino-solviet war– writen by the novelist toshihiko yahagi.1982

It’s a cool book, it seems to jump all over the planet, I thought it was short stories at first. Here’s some Akira style action–I like the covert takedown of this
tank solder "sleeep"

and a good sex scene and hippy van

My favorite parts are the scenes set in NYC. Like these panels where he’s showing
the characters in their reflections on the bar.

I like how he pulls off this page–with you only seeing the cops hand in reflection.
And then when he’s stabbed how Otomo tones just the skin.

Going through this I was thinking about how a lot of what Otomo does isn’t specific to comic book storytelling. then I got to this scene where to show how fast shit is going down he puts the panels close-withnogutters.

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And Mr harvey James sent me a bunch of files of this old Akira Toriyama comic he did between Dr Slump and Dragon ball– The Adventures of Tongpoo.

I love this shit–ass wiping machine

And he’s got the same capsule from DB but youhave to boil them in this.
and I like how he has these underwater birds to show how alien the planet is.

Something I like a lot about Toriyama is how he makes kids comics but doesn’t seem to
censor his work at all. So you never feel like you’e missing out or it’s been dumbed down.
also naked ladies.

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I’ve been getting back into looking at the old Oz books that I grew up on.
My mom has a whole shelf of the old Oz hardcovers.

I think I was seriously influened by how baum would put just a ton of weird fun ideas in his books. I’m all about the John R. Neill blonde Dorthy. She’s like a flapper.

And here’s a drawing Neill did of the Oz characters playing fucking hoop stick.
"23 skidoo!"

This stuff is getting me hyped about the idea of doing something with magic set in the 20’s.


You can read all of Glinda of Oz here:
http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/BookReader?bookid=bauglin_00950005&twoPage=false&route=text&size=0&fullscreen=false&pnum1=1&lang=English&ilang=English

And here’s some manga I thought were cool–nice tat bra!

And an old Appeseed photoshoot book. I remember a friend of mine having this years ago
i don’t think we ever figurs out why they did this-but I’m glad they did.
more nerdy comic book photoshoots please.