Jan 08 2009

Ron Asheton: RIP

When I read last night that Ron “Rock Action” Asheton was dead, my first thought was to crank “Down on the Street” or “TV Eye” really, really loud… but, my second thought was that it was 10:30 at night and since both my wife and daughter were asleep with bad respitory infections, that’d be a really inconsiderate thing to do.  So, instead, I put on “Fun House” much, much more softly than I wanted to and instead drew a picture of The Stooges in my sketchbook, which I prestent for you here with a minimal bit of Photoshop coloring:

stooges

Like most folks who become interested in American rock and roll, I’ve had a “Stooges phase” and the passing of guitarist Ron Asheton is a sad occassion.  It’s a cliche to point out that a Stooges record like “Fun House” really does sound as fresh today as when it was recorded… but what’s just as relavent is what a record like that sounds like relative to, say, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkle or Chicago’s first record, both of which topped the year-end album charts in 1970, the year “Fun House” was released.

Ron Asheton was a fabulous guitarist in a seminal rock band–and he died far too young.  He’ll be missed.

Jan 06 2009

Sketchbook 1/06/09

sketch_010609

Jan 05 2009

Sunday’s Rex Morgan Freakshow

Even if Rex Morgan, MD were a top-notch plastic surgeon, I doubt he’d be able to do much to fix this bizarre beast that appears in the opening panel here:

rex_morgan

Look, I know kids can be hard to draw.  Even really, really good artists can occasionally draw some wanky-looking kids sometimes–for exmaple, Jeff Smith’s recent Shazam series had some really odd-looking kids.  But this Rex Morgan panel is really beyond the pale.  Aren’t there editors that are supposed to catch this kind of stuff?

Part of what’s going on here is that the girl’s head is way too big.  Yeah, kids have bigger heads relative to their body height, but she’s getting into MODOK territory here.  Also, children’s faces fall lower on their heads, with the eyeline below center and the face overall taking up a smaller proportion of the front of the head.  In this case, though, exactly the opposite is going on: the eyeline is actually above center, higher than it should be even for a full-grown adult.

In conclusion: One of us!  One of us!

Jan 04 2009

Sketchbook 1/04/09

sketchbook_010409

Jan 01 2009

Midnight Sun in PLAYBACK:stl’s Best of List

In a bit of a surprise, my historical fiction graphic novel, Midnight Sun, has turned up in PLAYBACK:stl’s best of 2008 graphic novels list.  What makes this surprising is that the book was actually published in 2007–albeit in the last two or three days of 2007.  The list’s writer, Steve Higgins, shoehorns me in, though, since he reviewed the book at the beginning of 2008.