Atomic Robo and EC Comics

New art posted in several of the galleries. I’ll let you figure out which ones.

ATOMIC ROBO #3 is done and I’m wrapping up pencils for ATOMIC ROBO #4 as we speak. AR3 was a bitch and a half. Now I’m okay with one or two challenges a month; they’re good. They help me grow as an artists. But it seemed like NOTHING was easy in AR3. A lot of that comes down to experience –specifically my lack thereof.

Robo’s “Science-tank” alone would have been fine. Or the Tesladyne C-27 Spartan transport plane. Perhaps a smaller team of Action Scientists accompanying Robo into the field. Or maybe if I hadn’t had to draw the internal workings of a giant, steam-powered, clockwork mummy infested, super-pyramid. And what comic has EVER featured Egyptian President, Hosny Mubarak, I ask you!?!

Because AR3 involves mummies and pyramids I turned to classic horror for inspiration. Unlike with AR2, where I searched in vain for some decent THEM reference to compliment the giant ants, finding something to base AR3’s cover on was easy.

Thanks Boris Karloff!

AR 4 features a double-celebrity appearance; my two favorite scientists ever –Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. Just be forewarned –caricature is NOT my strong point. You’ll just have to take my word that the nerds I am drawing are the nerds I sez they are. Aside from these two celebs, the only difficult part has been drawing the Viking probe that went to Mars (especially since there is very little photo ref for what it looked like enroute to the Red Planet). That and figuring out how to cram Robo and another space vehicle into that Titan Rocket.

In other news, I think that BrianKane is one of my new favorite people. I’ve been watching his website for quite some time and it never fails to make me laugh. What I really like about him is that he seems to be very “Independent” in his politics. He is not afraid to rag on either side, nor does he hesitate to pat them on the back when they do something right (. . .I’ve heard it could happen).

I also learned from Brian’s site that you can actually watch cheese age on the intenets. My God. Cheese. Fantastic.

I picked up some fgreat books this weekend. I was at a used bookstore and picked up “Weapons of the Eighth Air Force” and “Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos” for $20. The Eighth airforce book has some great technical reference for aircraft . . obviously. Also it has more pictures of the .50 cal machinegun than any other book I’ve ever seen.

The Basil Gogos book is crammed with gorgeous full color artwork. Its not just monsters either. There’s a man-sized helping of more mainstream commercial art as well as a lot of work from his “Men’s Adventure” years. I know, Men’s Adventure sounds gay as hell. Any maybe secretly it was. But generally speaking, MA refers to a genre that dealt with war stories and Indiana Jones kind of stuff. Lots of sex with the natives and blowing away the commies. It was Diane Steel for WWII and Korea vets. Titles included “Man’s Conquest”, “Man’s Illustrated”, and “Original Men’s Adventure” magazine.

Okay, fine. These are just man meat magazines. Don’t tell my wife I have this, ‘kay?

Speaking of wife, she came home yesterday after her twenty-five year missions to Grad School (or was it thirteen days?). She brought me home a fantastic book about Harvey Kurtzman by The Comics Journal Library. Writing, editing, and art is wht he did. Harvey is probably best know for his Mad Magazine work, but I love him best for his EC Comics work on Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. While these were steeped in the macho melodrama of their day they were also unique I think in how they approached their subject. The art was amazing –that great old skool attention to detail mixed with really loose line work (if you can imagine that). And in general these war stories did two VERY unique things, (unique then and unique today).

They first and foremost showed America’s enemies to be people. North Korean soldiers were not faceless Lucasfilm Stormtroopers. They were still the “bad guys” but there was a certain moral ambiguity to the whole notion of good and bad. The soldiers were just men stuck in world events that were neither good nor bad –just shity for them.

The second thing about the EC war stories that I love is that there are no clear winners. Even when they won, the soldiers still lost, because at least some of their friends had died, or the thing they were fighting over was pointless. It’s the whole futility of war and the things that men will do to survive in times of war that has fascinated me since I was a kid.

Partially this is why I’ve always been more drawn to comics done in the same vein as EC’s early work. I don’t mean the art style is the same, but the way in which the stories treat the various worlds in which they take palce. The manga APPLESEED or GREY, Marvel’s THE NAM, Bendis and Oeming’s POWERS, and the old DHP anthologies. I could go on with Ellis’ MINISTRY OF SPACE, and Moore’s TOP TEN, etc. These always appealed more to me than the moral certainty of Superman, or the unchanging world of Spider Man (though in terms of design and ability Spidy will ALWAYS be the best ever superhero IMO).

And how come no one ever dies in X-MEN? I mean sure, they get killed, but then they always come back. And there are no consequences for anybody’s actions. How many times can the Xavier mansion be destroyed before someone goes to jail? Or gets a construction bill!?! How often can the Fantastic Four mix it up in downtown Manhattan before the public sees them as bigger threats than the monsters they fight? Its soap opera for us middle aged dudes.

I mean really. This Marvel CIVIL WAR thing? Of course these psychos should be registered and controlled. This isn’t the SPIRIT, or the GREEN HORNET we’re talking about. These wacko’s can bent metal with their minds, and shoot lasers from their testicles and shit! Knock that off!