General
March 22nd, 2007 | Posted in General
What fictional character has been portrayed most often in film? Tarzan? James Bond? Adam Sandler? Sherlock Holmes, the great 18th century fictional detective holds that title by a landslide. More than 75 different actors have portrayed Holmes, in well over 200 movies. Holmes was the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an author of novels, short stories and poetry from Scotland. Born in 1859, Conan Doyle led a very interesting life. He was many things including a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where some of his fellow classmates included Robert Louis Stevenson and James Barrie. He served as a ship’s physician on… READ MORE
March 20th, 2007 | Posted in General
“You just can’t trust hunchbacks!” Thursday night I went with some pals to see the movie “300”. I’d heard a lot of good and bad things about the film, but even it’s critics agreed it was visually stunning, so I knew I was in for some eye candy if nothing else. I’ve read several reviews where the political intentions of the film are questioned… in fact it’s a hot topic in middle eastern countries where it’s apparently widely believed to be US government propaganda to gear the US citizens up for war on Iran (modern Persia). The movie, in case you live under a rock,… READ MORE
March 19th, 2007 | Posted in General
I’m kind of busy right now so here are just a few links and thoughts about various relevant subjects from the news: King Features Syndicate Editor Drowns- It was a sad day in the cartooning world on April the 16th, when news of the death of King Features editor in chief Jay Kennedy began circulating. The report says he accidentally drowned while on vacation in Costa Rica on April 15th. Jay was the person who was instrumental in choosing what new submissions would be taken on by King, so hopeful cartoonists were as familiar with his name as pros in the business. I did not… READ MORE
March 13th, 2007 | Posted in General
Comic Book Day this past weekend brought Number One Son Tommy and myself to our local comic book store and netted a few issues we enjoyed over lunch. I bought two Conan books that were not bad, but the only thing I could find I was very interested in was The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #2. I am a big fan of the Stephen King Dark Tower books, and the comics were something I looked forward to with some trepidation. I wrote a brief review of the first issue last month, where I basically said the jury was still out. I was much more… READ MORE
March 9th, 2007 | Posted in General
Wednesday night I treated myself to an HD-DVD movie in the home theater. I saw “Troy” which looked gorgeous in HD but really dragged in places, and I would have given much to get to punch Orlando Bloom‘s foppish “Paris” character in the face. I’m glad that was a rental. Eric Bana’s performance as Hector was the best thing about that film. But I digress… after the movie was done around 11:00, I checked my TIVO listings just to see if there was anything fun recorded in the last week to watch and I was surprised to see a new episode of “Lost” on my… READ MORE
March 8th, 2007 | Posted in General
I was digging through the studio yesterday and came across some old sketchbooks I thought long thrown out. It’s always fun to find that kind of thing, because I can page through them and wince at the drawings I did years ago. It keeps things in perspective and makes me feel good to see I have improved in my art over the years. One thing I noticed was a number pages filled with life drawings. Being a cartoonist, I don’t get much of a chance to work realistically. About 8 years ago I got involved with a life drawing co-op in Minneapolis which met on… READ MORE
March 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
After a few hours of some revisions on that MAD Kids job yesterday and the usual catch up stuff, I was finally able to reward myself by watching Monday’s episode of “Heroes” in glorious HD. That show is ridiculously good, and it just keeps getting better. I keep thinking that if someone told me there would be a comic book hero style ensemble prime time TV show on a major network that would be this good and this popular, I’d have said they were crazy. Yet here it is, a testament to great writing and casting making the unbelievable believable. SPOILERS AHEAD! The story keeps… READ MORE
March 6th, 2007 | Posted in General
Whew. It’s almost midnight on Monday and I’ve been about 5 days straight with very little sleep trying to wrap up multiple projects that all came due at once. The biggest was the MAD Kids job, which was actually two jobs and since both were quite different from my usual MAD work they ended up taking far more time than I had anticipated. Working “without a safety net” can be stressful, and sometimes results in hours being wasted when some experiment to achieve a certain effect ends up not working and you have to backtrack, trying something else. On the other hand, those kinds of… READ MORE
