Last night I was moving all of my portfolios of old artwork into some awesome new shelves I’ve just had built in my studio and I decided to go through them (the portfolios) and ditch as much stuff as possible before I stored them again. Mainly what I got rid of were tons and tons of the originals for several years worth of freelance work. This stuff was just taking up space, and I’ve got it all on my computer anyway–so, other than a few pieces that turned out especially well, the bulk of this stuff left this morning for parts unknown via the Winston-Salem recycling pick-up.

One thing I stumbled across that I had almost forgotten about were the originals for this two page story about baseball that I’d been hired to do by GQ Magazine in 2005. The strip was intended to appear in the magazine’s 2005 year-end roundup issue, but got first pushed to a possible spring issue (to coincide with the start of spring training), then was ultimately killed before it got to the ink and color stage, and never appeared in print.

I’m not sure what I make of it at this point, other that a lot of it seems somewhat forced to me. My natural “mode” is not really the introspective/expository tone that the editor wanted, and I had a hard time getting what he was after. My original pitch (pun intended) was a Ken Burns documentary parody that went over like the proverbial lead balloon.