“WAR”

This being the sixth anniversary of the US attack on Iraq, I thought I’d share a few of the photographs I took leading up to the invasion, taken at a variety of protests and gatherings about the city of Seattle. These were all originally part of a small book entitled Invading the Senses (photographs from both sides of the barricade), which I self-published in 2004.

Mr. Magoo, starring in “Myoptic”

The following trio of rough approximations of early 1960’s UPA studio production art – from pencil sketch, to inked art, to an acetate cell laid over a preliminary pencil sketch of the intended background painting – depict scenes from an imaginary Mr. Magoo short, entitled “Myoptic”.
To read the scripted form of this tell-all pretend parody/interview, go to Story, J.W.E..
You can also find the art, all in its original form, for purchase at Shop, J.W.E.. It is also available through Comic Art Collective.

Strange Collaborations

Most strange, perhaps, in the sense that I rarely collaborate.
Having earned a living as an illustrator and cartoonist for the past twenty-plus years, I have almost always shied way from melding my talents and sensibilities with those of other artists. A few early, less-than-satisfactory experiences led to this condition, but I’ve since come around and have learned just how illuminating the right mixing of diverse styles can be. Below are a few examples of collaborative undertakings that have produced rewarding results, even when they didn’t come to their desired fruition. See many of the original art pieces presented here, available for purchase at modest prices, now at Shop, J.W.E. You can also find them at Comic Art Collective, along with much more of my original art.

The Adventures of Whitecop: P.C. Misogynist

The following six pages (cropped to fit on scanner) make up the entirety of a cartoon story I created with Chelsea Cain, author of The New York Times bestselling thrillers Heartsick and Sweetheart. A humorous romp, light on its carnality, but filled with a high octane sense of its own inherent silliness, it was commissioned for the first edition of Dirty Stories, Fantagraphics Book’s Eros-imprinted anthology of sex-themed comics, published in 1997 and edited by Eric Reynolds. My memory fails me when I try to recall who suggested the collaboration – Chelsea, I, or Eric – but it all went very smoothly and is a product of no regret, a feeling I know is mutual. As Chelsea recently claimed “I’m proud of my porn.” Me too! I do still owe her lunch though, something she hasn’t forgotten all the years since. Chelsea? Give me a day’s notice and that meal is yours, next time you’re in Seattle.
Interested in owning these half dozen pages of historical comics-lit import? A fan of the best thriller writer going? Go to Shop, J.W.E. now, where you’ll find them, priced modestly, perfect for framing in the den, or your bondage playpen – you decide – after all, you’re the consenting adult.

Triangle Man Kicked My Ass

This lone preliminary drawing, penciled by myself and hastily inked with a Sharpie by titanic cartoonist Al Columbia, was the gestation of a collaborative story, first formulated in 1996, an idea that never got off the ground. Al, creator of the much-revered Biologic Show, and other masterful comic works, wanted to do something atypical to both of us and I suggested that a Jack Kirby-inspired superhero comic might fit the bill. This drawing offers just a little of what might have been, showcasing my absurd sensibility, entwined with Al’s seemingly endless delight in physical mutilation and gallows humor. It would have been the graphic novel to end all graphic novels. If only! I have to wonder if Al even remembers this drawing, or the conversation that led to the proposed project.
This rare piece of conceptual art is now available for purchase at Shop, J.W.E.

It’s Gretch n’ Archie!

“Just five panels of erotic torture.” That’s what Chelsea Cain suggested, just last week, in a joking e-mail concerning Gretchen Lowell and Archie Sheridan, the torturing/tortured stars of her best-selling Heartsick and Sweetheart, the first two components of her thriller trilogy from St. Martin’s, to be concluded this fall with Evil At Heart. She was imagining a comic strip version of her gripping novels, one suitable for wrapping about a coffee mug. Having already prepared myself for the production of an upcoming series of daily strip parodies, I found an afternoon to indulge her fancy and came up with the following ode to her characters, as well as the tenuous existence of the daily newspaper strip. First is the actual finished art, salvaged from the art department of The Oregon Herald (wink, wink) followed by a printed version, on antiquated newsprint.
The original art is now available for purchase at Shop, J.W.E.

A Bad Case of Everything

Below are four stages of the development of a recently-created cover to A Bad Case of Everything, the debut album from North Dakotan psychedelic duo, The Lousy Tycoons. A unique collaboration between myself and illustrator/cartoonist Eric Reynolds (also chief of promotions at Fantagraphics and all-around vanguard of the alternative comics scene), it proved to be a project of instant alchemy, I providing the initial pencil sketch and Eric giving it his fine, lush embellishment, which I then colored on the computer and gave the full-blown treatment of my antiquating technique, resulting in the finished image, one that does a fairly good job of evoking the unhinged, acid-tinged rustic vibe so in evidence throughout the 35-minute record. Nice work, Eric – it was a blast!

Cartoon Jumble Remnants

The following gallery features preliminary pencil studies leftover from my earlier paintings in the popular Cartoon Jumbles series, plus an alternate version of Little Audrey meets Spiderman, which utilizes colored pencil as well as watercolor, an approach I abandoned in favor of the more ruminative softness of paint alone. To see the finished form of each pencil study, go to my earlier post, A Scholarly Jumble. These prelims are available for purchase at Shop, J.W.E.. They are also available through Comic Art Collective, along with many other pieces of my work.

Little Audrey meets Spiderman. India ink and gouache watercolor on heavy manila drawing paper. 9” x 12”.

Bullwinkle tangles with Mark Trail. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Betty Boop flirts with Andy Capp. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Beetle Bailey battles Prince Valiant. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Casper unearths Deadman. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Little Lotta out-eats Galactus. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Daredevil eyes Mr. Magoo. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Asterix tangles with The Mighty Thor. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Antman ruins Atom Ant’s picnic. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Fred Flintstone gets primitive with Alley Oop. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Dick Tracy walks the beat with Officer Pupp. Pencil on copy paper. 8 ½” x 11”.

Comic Panel Cut-Ups

Here are four inaugural pieces in my new Comic Panel Cut-Ups series of cut paper and gouache paintings, offering my own spin on the oft-used pop art perspective. What I hope comes through in these initial attempts is the fact that all are taken from comic books I have owned most of my life, some childhood favorites. The chosen panels have stuck with me through the years, odd and curious images that have, undoubtedly, informed much of my other illustration work. See them now, at Shop, J.W.E., priced at a healthy discount. They are also available through Comic Art Collective.

SKIDDD.. BAM! One of my all-time favorites, Hot Stuff, uses his horned noggin to move a mountain. From Hot Stuff #88, February, 1969, published by Harvey Comics, original artist unknown. I always preferred the “little devil” to the “friendly ghost”, Casper’s role as a dead child in limbo far less appealing than the child so “wicked” he’d been sent straight to Hell for his errors in life.

FIND THE MAN WITH THE SOUTHERN DRAWL! Another of my childhood favorites, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, busting down some slumlord’s door, an enigmatic glass drinking flute waiting to greet him. From Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #15, November, 1973, published by Marvel Comics, original art by Billy Graham. For one of my personal Cage memories, see Septimius Versus Power Man on the Living Room Floor at Comic, J.W.E.

ARRR! Uh-oh, it looks like the teenage Clark Kent is playing Fay Wray to a King Kong-sized Superboy. It’s hard to beat just about any issue of the Superman titles from the 60s for their sheer lunacy and constant desire to reassign the familiar Super logo. From Superboy #142, October 1967, published by DC Comics, original art by George Papp and Frank Springer.

ZIING! RROAR! RRIIIP The justifiably forgotten Jigsaw, Man of a Thousand Parts, does his best Mr. Fantastic impersonation, ensnaring an escaped lion. Oh, those accident-prone circus trains! From Jigsaw #1, September, 1966, published by Harvey Comics, original art by Tony Tallarico.

Dark Brown Renderings

The following half dozen pencil sketches, based on a trenchant little soliloquy from everyone's favorite egg-headed loser, are currently available for purchase at Shop, J.W.E., the brand new consumer-minded wing of the ever-growing J.W.E. enterprises.

The Incidental Cartoonist

“I yam what I yam!” Albert H. Eaton at home, enjoying a smoke.

My paternal grandfather, Albert H. Eaton, was born in England, in 1899, one of five boys, three whom died in the muddy trenches of World War I. A fourth, Merlin, having survived the terrible war, soon thereafter fell to his death, having been perched high on a factory chimney.
Albert was a man of limited stature, strutting about on bandy legs, always a cigarette, cigar, or pipe wagging beneath his bulbous nose. Given to larger-than-life episodes, he found himself a semi-professional tennis player, a golfer, an operatic tenor, a stage singer, even a yodeler in Harry Lester’s Hayseeds, an American novelty cowboy band. Once, in a newspaper review of a local singing engagement, he was referred to as “the man with the voice of an angel, but the face of a clown.” A devoted Mason, and man of the church, he spent much of his working life driving about the countryside in a van, delivering meat to the homes of Cheshire, a small city located in the industrial north of the country, a short distance from the seaside town of Liverpool and the Welsh border.
Mainly through his own embellishment, my grandfather was a larger-than-life character, his physical likeness to Elzie Segar’s famous sailor barely a match for his cartoon-worthy histrionics and habitual boasting. Born with a deep depressive inclination, and a short temper, he was often at the center of many a conflagration, some humorous, some not. As a young child, I witnessed him standing drunk in a neighbor’s flowerbed, attempting to serenade the lady of the house, a soap opera actress. Another time I witnessed him leap the width of a ping pong table while chasing my older brother, angry blood in his eyes. I also recall him shutting himself in his room for days, lost in the dark throes of his undiagnosed malady. This was early summer, 1989, only a couple of years before he died, leaving the world as a vibrant, yet emotionally-scarred ninety two year-old.
It was during this time, a final visit to see his only child’s family in the United States, that I encountered him one afternoon, sitting on the living room couch of my parent’s home, the Sunday paper spread across his lap. Open before him was the color comics section, specifically the fan art portion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature. He was regarding it like some unrecognizable weed taken root in his vegetable patch. I sat down and began to engage him in a discussion about newspaper comics, what he remembered from his youth, what he didn’t. Soon, with only a little encouragement, he and I were drawing our own versions of the popular pizza-eating characters, he with a shaky hand, his pipe held fast between his National Health dentures. From there, he was off, drawing characters of his creation, some which I later realized were portraits of himself and his newest granddaughter. I asked him to label them and then carefully slipped them away in an envelope, which I’ve kept to this very day.
I’d now like to present these uniquely primal cartoon drawings, the only art I ever knew my grandfather to create, beyond his broadly-drawn life, that is.

Albert's Leonardo, line reminiscent of late-period Schulz.

An old man, with beard and cigar. Apparently not a self-portrait.

A rendering of his great granddaughter, Jessica.

A self-portrait, revealing the deft insight of an untested cartoonist.

Finally, the man himself, in his natural element, singing for guests in his home.