In the (Dead) Zone

It's weird, people think of Stephen King as a guilty pleasure.. I almost feel guilty that I never enjoyed him as a guilty pleasure as much as some people do. I want/wanted to be one of those people who read his books as a guilty pleasure, you see. They loomed up on my horizon, as a little kid, as a fascinating teenage thing to be into, those massive well-worn tomes, full of edgy, slightly illicit material. And I did read his short story collections, and a nonfiction book of his about the horror genre. But somehow I never made it to the books that he's known for, especially the early ones. In high school I got _Needful Things_ from the library, and it was okay, maybe, but I never felt like I was in that Stephen King "zone" that I imagined the teenagers of my imagination had been in. I almost read it like a chore, like a book on a school reading list. It was on my guilty pleasure curriculum I guess, and thus not much of a guilty pleasure after all.

GoldBug #1 cover

(Right-click on image and "open in new tab" to view at full size)

Peak Fun Comics presents "GoldBug - the Man with the 24-Karat Kick"

A 12-page Superhero Comic in Lush, Feathery Black & White Brush-strokes, Just the Way You Like It

Peak Fun is pleased to announce that our somewhat lengthy publishing hiatus will be undergoing a temporary reprieve as we release pages from the Goldbug's sterling new adventure, "The Bug Keeps Cool" (which joins such obscure and long-forgotten classic tales as "The Bug Maintains His Composure," "The Bug Holds Up with Aplomb" and "The Bug Never Sweats.")

Many readers perhaps missed Goldbug's original adventures, which were published in obscure periodicals during the 70s, and then faded from the scene as his creator, Ed Skeets, descended into a personal hell of unimaginable depths. Now with Ed's return to the ol' cartoon biz, we find he's thankfully none the worse for wear, and the Bug is just as besotted with all that glitters as he ever was.

Please SCROLL DOWN to read the first page, and click the "read more" link to see the whole story!

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post #50

 I think my numbering is off somewhere, but I think this is #50...

Art for "Turkey Trot 5k" t-shirt and "Halloween 5k" (unfinished.)

Staedtler Brush Pen Tip

I saw in comments where some guy talked about extending the life of his Staedtler Mars Graphic Duo 2000 brush pen ("The brush pen with more names than any other") by removing the plain tip with a pliers and somehow switching the ink supplies. He gave no details so I wasn't sure how that would work. But I pulled of the plain tip end (the pens have a plain tip on one end and a brush tip on the other) with pliers and, indeed, it had a little foam ink supply, fat and juicy with ink.

The brush tip end pulled off easily as well, and it was bone dry of course since that's mainly all I use. It's a simple matter then to switch the foam stick things. And re-insert the tips. It worked brilliantly, the brush tip was instantly back in fine fettle. What a boon this will be to humanity (or at least cartoonists.)

ps. Chris Garrison (who writes/draws "Our Heroes" on dummcomics.com) put me onto these great pens, that you can't buy in your local art store, for the most part, at least if you live where I do.

"Slob-oids" (now with color)

I wasn't going to color this, but then my pal DMS suggested we make it into a "book & record" style comic, with an audio soundtrack and camera pans from panel to panel (the way some book & record comics are presented on YouTube.)

I still wasn't going to color it even then, because we have many ambitious plans that don't all come to fruition. However, now, it looks like this one may actually happen since we're at least 90-95% done with the audio. (And it sounds really good! Mr. Smith has done a fantastic job mixing the voices, music and sound effects together.)

So, with all that going on, I felt it should definitely be in color to make a better presentation. Some of the b&w panels were a bit muddy, so hopefully the color helps clarify things somewhat.

post #48

This T-shirt design is for a school drama dept. It will say something like "Don't ya wish ya knew the code?" And then the large sheet of paper will have a list of "codes," i.e. slang terms particular to the drama dept.

For this one, a school band wanted a James Bond theme featuring their bulldog mascot. That presented the unique challenge of trying to turn bulldogs into Bond girls -- sort of hard to be a simmering, sultry babe with jowls like that.

post #47

some recent freelance jobs:

More Mascot vs. Mascot cartoons

Rah rah rah!
We are the Tuff Guys!
Y'all are the Puff Guys!
Rah rah rah!

Smoke 'em if you got 'em...

Cullman, AL Cartoon Map

Just what the title says... The whole thing is really too big to view properly on most computer screens, so I'll just show several close-up sections.

Game-day T-shirt drawings

Some recently commissioned football-related merch... It always cracks me up how "our team" is these big bad-ass tough guys and "their team" is these shrimpy losers who just can't get it together... :-)

"Planet of the Slob-oids" 4-page comic

Not bird, not plane-- SuperElgin!

A recent caricature commission... Turned out a little looser than what I would have liked, but I thought it was a cute/fun idea for an "assignment."

color pencil appreciation

Back in the day when I was taking art classes in school, color pencils were not my favorite thing. I remember drawing still lifes on huge pieces of art paper, endlessly filling large areas with these tiny stupid pencils. There was nothing graceful about these marks, just big slatherings of parallel lines, indifferently applied. I don't think it ever occurred to me that this was a hopeless way to use color pencils. I just felt that color pencils were a hopeless medium.

But I returned to them today, looking for something faster and more convenient than watercolor, and less unforgiving than black brush pens with color markers. I was surprised to find I actually enjoyed using them. It helps to work at a more reasonable scale obviously. What were my art teachers thinking --- keeping us occupied with a Sisyphean task, probably. Used at normal scale, you can appreciate the buttery softness of the leads, and the wide range of light to dark lines possible from any one pencil. They do still have at least one black mark against them, though: they don't scan particularly well.

The "collected edition" cover

I guess I will try to collect this 3-part tale in a single volume and put it up on IndyPlanet. Here is the cover I came up with for that version:

Holy Nib pt. 3 (of 3)

Finally finished this 3-part series. Part 3 is 10 magazine-sized b&w pages, so all told it's around 33, 34 pages (Parts 1 and 2 each ran a little longer.) Quite a relief to be able to get on to other projects, other ideas. Here's the cover and some selected (non-consecutive) pages:

piddling: the 9th top secret for making top comics

Forget what you thought you knew about piddling - this essay blows the lid off all that came before and gives you an insight into the piddler's inner zen (or inner pid if you will.) Note: if you're looking for information about puddlers, see our section on the early 20th century steel industry.


I think it was an essay by Joe Bageant (most famous for his book "Deer hunting w Jesus") that first made me give some thought to what piddling was, and whether I myself was a piddler. At that time I concluded that for the most part, while I had nothing against piddlers or piddling, it wasn't really something I had a natural affinity for. You have to be slightly older than myself maybe, more at peace with the universe and (perhaps most importantly) have a garage, in order to spend time out in the garage sorting one's trout lures, or whatever else the piddler does when he piddles.

Nevertheless I realized today that there may

The Extraordinary Wonderosity of Science

I just did some illustrations for UAB Magazine, a local university publication. The article was about various programs UAB and other institutions are starting to try to spark an interest in science among kids.

And here's a partial sketch of one before color: