word jazz

William F. Buckley, Junior is now flaunting his expansive verbosity in the ethereal hereafter. My late stepdad rubbed elbows with him back before he dropped out of Yale.

Former Omaha native, Buddy Miles, is also taking the dirt nap. He's famous for his jazz drumming and his uncanny resemblance to Charlie Burton.

Meanwhile, I'm had a fan from the '80s come out of the woodwork and ask me to contribute to his mini-comic. While elsewhere, I've been threatened to be kicked of the Yahoo Rat Fink group. If I had to do it again I'd be less angrily defensive, but my treatment was a whole lot more inappropriate than what I posted. If an outsider music/art aesthetic applied to rowdy and ornery '80s Small Press Comics isn't on topic, it sure doesn't miss by much.

Back cover from Captain Saucer#19, 1987.

party like it's 1988!

Adjusting to the shift change and still slowly cleaning through my old pages.

A fun page from InterStellar OverDrive of 1988. We all know that the writing and rendering is a little clunky, but for some reason that poster gets a lot of kudos for something that I felt was throwaway art within the art. Also a Sonic Youth influenced Noise Band.

Oh, yeah, Flange. Gotta love Flange!

pimp my ride

Today is my first day on day shift. For the second go-around. Celebrated by eating at Runza.

Finished up cleaning up two more pages for Amazons & Studebakers and Tube Punk. Slowed down again by those "damaged stars". Still miss Stanford Cloud White Fluid anyway.

Got the Pimpmobile drawing mostly colored last night. This this was an overly detailed monster to do. Will go back for tweaks in about a week if I if remember it. It looks like you get cancer by just looking at the place.

all tomorrow's parties

Been running outside to catch glimpses of the lunar eclipse. Some wise guy just had to schedule it on the coldest day in February.

Made some progress coloring on the never ending "Pimpmobile" drawing. Started cleaning up the Leonine InterStellar OverDrive #1(1988) and got the first four pages done. Still suffering from some tone deaf pacing and I want to choke my younger self self-referential art, but it does have a lot of positives. Retro Science Fiction before fandom got that point. A similar riff to the beginning of The Iron Giant and it has a predecessor of the "Roswell plot" years before it was cliched enough to be called the "Roswell Plot". Cribbing the Velvet Underground song title of "All Tomorrow's Parties" years before William Gibson did. Studebakers, including a truck without the hood, accurately drawn from memory. And it went on to be an A+ college journalism project.

Also ran grocery errands and cobbled together a stand for a LCD monitor that was given to me minus the case.

bad science fiction art

There's good news and bad news for today.

The good news is that I got moved over to day-shift. After spending most of this decade on swing shift, I'm glad that I have from 2:30 PM on to get caught up on a bunch of projects. Or punt the projects and find my own Flexia, Winnie, Sophia, Wingding, or Thomas.

The bad news is that somebody referred to my old Small Press Comics scans as "bad science fiction art". Ouch! Over at the PVP forum, somebody said that a perceived lack in his own art would get solved when somebody shows him how. That somebody to show how was never there for me in the '80s. Belatedly saw last year's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates joint interview over at one of Wired blogs. His Royal Steveness was talking about how you really have to love something to persevere in it. Well, a lot of love got killed when dog-piled by a cancellation, a smear page, and somebody defending the smear page. Plus I have a "survival job" that's better than what Comics could give me.

Otherwise, the dentist appointment went okay. Cancelled an errand run to Soldier because of predicted 7° weather. Finished cleaning up the rest of the art for Captain Saucer #19. Excerpted is a panel from the Fanboy filler story, featuring Fanboy making a Mini-Comic.

brilliant pebbles

The title is a reference to the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was sometimes tweaked in my late '80s comics.

Finished cleaning up the main story and covers for Captain Saucer #19. Hope to do the filler and related material tomorrow or Wednesday. It's just frustrating stuff. There's a great comic trying to get out but it's so hampered by clunky execution.

Tomorrow, I go to the dentist and maybe up to Soldier.

junior's farm

Cleaned up five more pages from Captain Saucer #19.

Voted or Pat Pat Moriarity for a North West cartoonists award, in both illustration and the "Golden Toonie" categories. Here's hoping that he wins.

He says that I deserve some sort of award. Maybe I do, but I don't know what. "Greatest Shoulda-Been"? "More resilient Never-Quite-Was"? I'm almost happy with the bragging rights about acing "The Unpassable Test"....

big words hurt head....

Cleaned up four more Captain Saucer #19 pages. How I wish that I could mail a short list back to my younger self on things to make the writing less herky-jerky. And a longer short list to make the art less herky-jerky.

I also created two more fake motivational posters, both to tickle my inner four year old. Which may or may not have shown symptoms of Autism. But nobody knew about that stuff in 1965. At least I didn't phoneticize the horrible Homestar Runner speech defect that I was fighting all the way through grade school.

nuclear grade nostalgia

Cleaned up the first four pages of the 1987 Captain Saucer#19, which was sort of a warm up for the Leonine Direct Market InterStellar OverDrives. Was using a mechanical pen with a flexible nib then, which has since been long been discontinued. On the plus side, I was really going after the "Googieverse" retro look five years before the Batman; TAS retro-Deco thing and about 18 years before Brad Bird did his Googie-verse in The Incredibles. Also an early draft of what evolved into Cseworld, and I was lampooning "The Firing Line" to satnd out of the pack back when nearly everybody else in Small Press and Prodom was seemingly tweaking on Letterman. The figure rendering is still a frustration. I grabbed one of Howgarth's books at the time and was trying to apply it, but was tripped up by my own blind spot. Plus, as usual, Fandom and Prodom was resolutely never there with a tutoring hand.

my biggest fans

Started cleaning up Captain Saucer #19 today. And made some more mock motivation posters.

see you later, carburetor....

Holley has went bankrupt. I learned a lot about carburetors by messing around with their four barrels.

Passed a minor milestone by finishing cleaning up the art from InterStellar OverDrive #0. I do get a felling of sad irreversible loss brought by circumstance and passage of time. We're as chronologically as far removed from that thing as that thing was removed from the first Zap Underground Comic

Quickie art from 1987.

damage stars

Finished up the last of the interior pages of InterStellar OverDrive #0. I probably spent more time fixing those damaged stars than I did stippling them in the first place. To celebrate, I tracked through the Camper Van Beethoven, Coffin Draggers, Hawkwind, Pearl Jam, and even Pink Floyd versions of that certain song while I was cleaning up.

Nostalgia for the '80s Small Press and Indie aspirations is so tainted with a little bit of depression because those various go-arounds of Captain Saucer and ISOD are like drafts for an overture of a much greater work that lack of commercial support prevented from happening. A lot of which can also be applied to Holverson Designs.

Also a picture that has nothing really to do with this post.

another day another hassle

Ended up doing a lot of feeder and gate adjustments on DB3 and DB11 today. Plus a lot of gate replacement on DB3.

Cleaned up another InterStellar OverDrive page tonight. It's slow going when it's an outer space scene and 80% of the stars need to be touched up. Also pushed the "Pimpmobile" drawing a little farther along. Here's a detail from the other night.

going slow in overdrive

Cleaned up another page of InterStellar OverDrive#0. All that flaked off white ink is really slowing down the cleanups.

Cover from InterStellar OverDrive #0, 1987. Still doing that "I wanna grow up to be a Heavy Metal artist" thing, despite that I was starting to push 30. May do an extended color redraw as a Prog gatefold style mural for the porthole panel for when I get Explodey the Pinto repainted.

Replaced leveler belts inb DBs 3&11 and got into serious breakdowns of AFCSs 2&4.

the angels want to wear my red shoes

Shuffled the two transmissions to a guy at work to see if they would work in his car. Ran an errand to K-Mart after work. Cleaned up another InterStellar OverDrive #0 page and spent more time coloring this in-progress monster.

Sort of shows of my long running interest in Alternate and Cracked Realities and with the piebald. This is based on some '82 art. I'm a little annoyed at myself for knocking on the door of Cyberpunk before it was popular, but not going in. OTOH, that wouldn't have dovetailed with the loopy parodic stuff that I was doing then. Plus, I like the Googie groove better.

flexia lite

Another one from the vault, because it sure isn't from the light-box, a page from Captain Saucer #11.

Yet another contradictory one with attempted William F. Buckeley and George Will surrogates. I wish that my art wasn't so herky-jerky and rough. I was that my political commentary back then was more sophisticated than a long running Reaganite and hippie bash. Also with pretty Pursia, who was Flexia-lite back when ol' Fang herself was underutilized as a spear-holder/enabler for Berkshire. Pursia, a.k.a.: "Boom Boom" Bast, didn't really develop much personality until she was recast as mommy's little sycophant when I wrote "Meat is Nature's Candy".

Worked overtime today and cleaned up another page from InterStellar OverDrive #0 from 1987.

icicle built for one....

Made an errand run up to Soldier that got way truncated because I was trying to work around and through a near blizzard. Did pick up my spare Ford A4LD transmissions to sell to a guy at work.

Cleaned up some pages from InterStellar OverDrive #0. Sort of slow going because there's a lot of Sanford Cloud White Fluid on those pages that have 21 years of rubbing and flaking off. Also more of a big sense of loss here, because I was trying to good something really good but was tripped up by my own blind spots and a regional fandom that was hostile when they should have been guiding. I'm especially looking at you, Des Moines.

For some reason, since I passed the threshold of half awake this morning, I've been psychosomatically smelling that farrowing house smell that just won't completely wash out of the hair and pores no matter how many times I scrub. Both old farrowing houses have been gone for years.

Maybe it had to do with a dream from last night concerning a kiddie book villain's goofy henchmen called the Poopheads. Which was pretty much what they literally were, mindlessly grinning piles for heads.

Back to overtime tomorrow.

superbowl tickets....

Trying to get back into the hang of these.

Here's a timely panel from Captain Saucer #14, 1985.

With a guest appearance from Wilfred P. Feird. Not to mention my self-referential screwball art from the '80s.