Still trying to draw more Marvel characters and more villains. Spider-Man has one of the best rogues galleries, second only to Batman. Flash comes a close third. Not a fan of Venorpion. Not really a fan of Scorpion either, but it’s a classic look.
This week on Gutter Trash: Other Lives
Just wanted to do a weird. I should re-draw this one, amp the weird.
If you would have bet me 100 dollars that Telly Savalas was not in the movie Annie, you’d be 100 dollars richer. I swear to Christ I thought he was in that movie. So when our new Ok, PANIC! topic was revealed to be Little Orphan Annie, all I new about the character was Daddy Warbucks – as played by Telly Savalas. In my head. Apparently that isn’t so, and that made this drawing pointless to the topic. So here we go, one of my few attempts at a caricature of a (formerly) living person, in his most famous role (since apparently he never played Daddy Warbucks), Kojak! Who loves you, indeed?
This week on Gutter Trash: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
I’ve noticed recently a disturbing lack of supervillain art in my blog. Good villains make good comics. This is a trend I need to reverse. I also noticed an imbalance of DC characters vs. Marvel characters. Also a lack of indie characters, but whatever. I like all comics, and I abhor “fans” who are loyal to one company and badmouth another simply due to – I dunno – being simple minded idiot asshole fuckshits. I really really hate comic book fans. You know who you are, assfucks.
Anyway, Doom.
I’ve been Covered. Again.
Check it out, as well as all the other awesome covers too. But mostly mine.
Shaft from Youngblood. At the time, I wanted to streamline, and sorta take a “realistic” approach to Liefeld characters. Now, I wanna go the opposite direction.
I’m jus’ talkin’ ’bout Shaft.
This week at Ok, PANIC! we’re celebrating the life and work of Rob Liefeld. I have a feeling that we’re doing this ironically. I’m not a fan of ironic enjoyment of anything, but it is incredibly hard to like Liefeld on any level other than irony. But I am going to try.
In Defense of Rob Liefeld.
He is not a good artist. That needs to be said off the bat. I am not a fan of his work, and via interviews and whatnot, I’m certainly not a fan of the man either. I don’t hate the man. Never met him. If I were to ever meet him, I would shake his hand, tell him that it was nice to meet him and then make every attempt to avoid conversation. Incidentally, I do this to everyone.
And I don’t hate his work. Again, it’s not good by any means. But Liefeld is such an easy target, I do try to look at his work critically and find some good. Believe me, it’s there, and that is the greatest crime Liefeld has committed. He’s never lived up to his potential. There are flashes of artistic brilliance in his work at times, but it’s few and far between and surrounded by manure. If you look at his early work, you can see the influences of John Byrne, George Perez and Art Adams – all masters of the medium. Somewhere along the line, with the popularity of Todd McFarlane (whose art I love) and Jim Lee (whose art I don’t), Liefeld started incorporating their styles into his work. Instead of refining and trying to create his own voice, he became a mish-mash of styles, coupled with youthfull energy and enthusiam, you get steaming hot piles of New Mutants and X-Force. And once he became an A-Lister, he got complacent, and his art never evolved.
Which is a shame. I think if he had been able to focus on one thing, instead of trying to buckshot the industry with everything he ever thought of, he might have been able to turn around the bad taste he left in fan’s mouths when he began dropping projects left and right, never to be completed. He might have refined his art to be competent and perhaps even visionary. It’s there. You can see it in the crap he churns out. There’s gold in them thar turds. Or maybe just a chunk of corn.
My other theory is that he’s actually very awesome and is fully aware of what he’s been doing and how he’s been doing it. He’s simply fucking with us all and laughing at us for loving and hating it.
The above drawing is a parody of his worst attributes. When Rob Liefeld was revealed as the topic for this week’s Ok, PANIC!, I drew two pieces. The more respectful companion drawing is over at www.ok-panic.net. I had fun drawing both for different reasons. I’d actually like to draw some more Youngblood characters in the style of the piece on Ok, PANIC!.
We’ll see.
This week on Gutter Trash: John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Peter Milligan is one of my favorite writers*, Mike Allred is one of my all-time comic heroes, and together they created a run of X-Men related books that were so unique and so different and so “Fuck You, X-Men fans” that it will never be topped. Even Grant Morrison’s run on the X-Men couldn’t do it (comes really close, though). It’s also pretty much why me and maybe five other people actually liked and read the book, and all other X-Fans out there hated it so much. Well fuck ’em and their ways, and fuck the X-Men franchise until even a fraction of their former awesomeness is injected back into the line.
Here’s Doop. Along with the band ROCK SUGAR, he epitomizes awesomeness.
* There are two Peter Milligans. The first Peter Milligan – Awesome Peter Milligan – is the guy who wrote Shade the Changing Man, Enigma, Girl and X-Statix. That guy will always get a free pass with me. Unfortunately, that means that sometimes I have to deal with the other Peter Milligan – Awful Peter Milligan – who wrote crap like Greek Street, Toxin, Namor, X-Men, and JLA Classified.
This week on Gutter Trash: Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth.
The first Ok, PANIC!. I stole this joke from The Simpsons. Done entirely in Adobe Illustrator.
2021 Update: Ok, PANIC! is long dead, my contributions to it long before that. It was a stupid experiment that I tolerated a lot longer than I should have. No offense to the other artists who contributed. The ones I was directly involved with anyway. I have re-homed my Ok, PANIC! artwork elsewhere on the blog.
Look for the Ok PANIC! Category and Ok PANIC! Tag.
I draw myself a lot for someone who generally dislikes autobiographical comics and cartoons. But there is a purpose for this version of my self-portrait. A guy decided to form a conglomerate of his favorite local artists, give us a theme and let us run with it, and present a gallery of our work. This self portrait was for my bio page on Ok, PANIC!
Ok, PANIC! was myself, my podcast co-host and fellow artist, Jason Young, our pals Pat Kain, Jeff Potter, and eventually Kurt Dinse.
Every two weeks, we were given (or would create) a topic, and then draw our takes in our own distinct styles. Every week was not a competition, but it was always a competition.