Ben Towle

Author's posts

I’m on Sound Opinions Talking About The “5” Royales

A week or so ago I made my second appearance on the call-in segment of NPR’s music show/podcast Sound Opinions. You can find the show here. I’m at the very, very end of the show–around 59:30 minutes–talking about the influence of Winston-Salem’s own “5” Royales on James Brown’s band The Famous Flames, who were discussed …

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AlphaBooks Post-Mortem

Phew… AlphaBooks is over–twenty-six weeks of alphabetical literary characters. First off, thanks to everyone who participated–especially co-administrators Andrew Neal and Rich Barrett–and a big congratulations to everyone who finished a full alphabet! I’ve assembled all of my illustrations into a single gallery that I’ve posted below along with a few post-project thoughts. (And you can …

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Z is for Mi (Dr.) Zaius

OK, before you call me on suddenly deciding that last names are now legit for my Alphabooks entries, note that “Mi” in the novel Planet of the Apes is a fictional honorific, like “Dr.” or “Mrs.” In the book, the character is referred to as “Zaius” or “Mi Zaius” throughout. Anyway… Z is for Mi …

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I Draw Some of My Favorite Female Characters from Comics

I’ve never been a very confident drawer or designer of female comics characters and I’ve always struggled with them. One of the main characters in Oyster War, Lourdes, is a design that I’ve gotten less and less happy with as the story goes on and I’ve pretty much decided to re-design her head/face and redraw …

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Illustration: (Swedish Band) The Amazing

Here’s yet another illustration I did for the Aquarium Drunkard music blog’s Lagnappe Sessions–this time of the Swedish band The Amazing: You can check out The Amazing covering Tim Buckley and R.E.M. at the blog here.   The original art for this is for sale here.