Benjamin Hall

THE LAST POST ON THIS BLOG!!!!

2008-11-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!!! Thanks for reading this thing for so long, but I'm ending this blog due to a redesign of the main website.

I'm relaunching my NEW blog over on the home page of our site: WWW.HAUNTEDFIRE.COM, so if you've linked to this page or subscribed to this blog's RSS feed you'll need to update both!

Thanks again for reading and I hope you will continue to come back at the new site.

I am unsure if I will archive this old blog or obliterate it, so grab what you can while you can.

Thanks!!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2008-10-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Little bit of Bela for the holiday. Hope everyone has a good one!

I'd also like to thank Horror Remix for coming to Arlington and putting on a free show!

Horror Remix takes older horror films and cuts all the boring stuff away, slimming down a full length feature to 30 or 4O minutes of just the good stuff. Last night they showed "Sole Survivor", "The Dark Power", "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" and the very end of "Orloff against the Invisible Dead"... all this plus hilarious puppet Epilogue in 2 hours. Go to their website and beg them to come to your town. It's well worth it.

SCREAM AWARDS 2008

2008-10-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

Did anyone else watch the Scream Awards on Spike last night?

This was the first time I watched them and I have to say I was pretty impressed. An award show devoted to Comics, Horror and Sci-fi? Is Spike TV living in my brain?

There is something iffy about the fact that Comics are being treated as a genre now... (Comics, Horror and Scifi?... Wouldn't Horror and Sci-fi been enough?) but I suppose I'm happy that they got a separate, more attention getting, billing.

The funny thing was, it seemed as though the awards themselves were not super important, it was really just a big excuse to celebrate melodramatic fiction. Anthony Hopkins, Tim Burton, Wes Craven and George Lucas all got awards for just being mind blowing bad asses.

All in all, it was REALLY cool and I had a blast watching it... which is more than I can say for most award shows... and I'm glad it spotlighted comics.

But looking at that glass of half full water, I'd like to see the comic creators, get a little more attention on the show. Mike Mignola was on stage with the cast of Hellboy to accept an award for Del Toro and only Ron Perlman said anything. Not necessarily the awards show's fault... but jeez the guy created the character and, I believe, was mentioned in the opening credits! Stan Lee appeared on the stage to award the best comic award and mentioned something about how these comics are the blue prints of the next awesome movie. GAH! Why do comics have to be made into movies to be taken seriously... and blueprints? Nobody has every called the Harry Potter books great blueprints for AWESOME movies. Movies that are adaptions should not be seen as the "final product". Yeesh!

...

Maybe it was his script... I don't know. I guess I was jazzed to see a comics related award show on my TV only to have Stan "the face of superhero comics" Lee put them back in the creative ghetto.

Maybe I'm making too much of it.

Is there room for one last gripe? The entire show was filmed with a haze effect on the cameras that made me feel like I had glaucoma for three hours. For an award show devoted to people who will eat Ramen noodle soup for four years to afford an HD flat Screen TV, a blurry screen was not gothicky and cool, it was just really annoying.

BUT!... I really did enjoy it... it was a little geeky, the audience scared the pants of Anthony Hopkins, and it may not pave the way to comics being taken seriously... But I do think it will sell more comics.. and maybe that's really what is important.

As long as I have cable, I'll watch it every year.

GAS!

2008-10-15T13:49:00.001-07:00

I was filling my car with gas yesterday and the trigger lock slipped on without my knowledge so that when I pulled out the nozzle I hosed my ENTIRE car in $4 gas. I looked like a complete ass, it was hilariously stupid.

I also received the first script for the Bluewater Productions comic. It was a great read and I'm excited and nervous about starting on it.

ON THE WEB

No Smoking in the Skull Cave posted some cool Halloween pics from every year of the 1930's

Dark Horse Comics opens the Country's first University Comic Book Archive in Portland with every single Dark Horse comic produced, past and future.

Super detailed He-Man figures are being released only on Mattycollector.com

Putting the "Spirits" back into Alcohol Dan Aykroyd presents the coolest Vodka EVER.

HAPPY OCTOBER!

2008-10-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Good stuff going on at Haunted Fire. The first cover of the book we are doing for Bluewater has been approved, as soon as a press release has been sent out about the project, I'll share that cover here.

Also ramping up and finishing off other projects. Marlena is hard at work on a redesign of our website. Our separate blogs will be removed in the redesign, replaced by a single blog on the home page.... the home page that we are currently not doing anything with. So remember to update your RSS feeds soonish... if you stop hearing from us..

I also did this desktop to celebrate the beginning of October and get me in the Halloween mood. Click on it for a download if you like and share in the festivities.

NEW PROJECTS!

2008-09-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Since the last post, I have gotten a ton of work done with my new working method. Drawing digitally on the couch feels right to me, it's relaxing and non-stressed. I hope this continues because I've just strapped a whole new workload on my back. I've agreed to do a new 4 issue series for Bluewater Productions and recently Viper Comics contacted me about throwing in my hat for some possible contract work.

I've got about five pages of Filthy Habit left to do and intend to get back to Knucklejelly very, very soon, as well as my second project with Filthy Habit writer extraordinaire Dave Justus. After such a long stretch of inactiveness, it feels good, albeit a bit stressful, to be so productive.

ON THE WEB

Brian Eno and David Byrne release their web only album "Everything that Happens Will Happen Today" If my blog was a better width, I would post a flash player of their album... this is something I will be fixing soon.

ON THE SHELF

Here's some cool stuff coming out today.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars #1

Army of Darkness: From the Ashes TB

Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash TB

T-Bird and Throttle #0

The Bomb TB

Good Neighbors Vol. 1

EUREKA!

2008-09-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

Things are going really well with my digital drawing now. I had a mini breakthrough over the holiday weekend that has made things A LOT easier on me.

I was having trouble drawing smooth long lines on my Cintiq... I thought it was because I was drawing on my couch with the tablet on my lap, so I tried placing my wacom on a tv tray that pulled up to my couch. That table proved to have a bit of wiggle to it as well, so I moved everything up to a small space on my rolling computer desk and sat in an uncomfortable metal folding chair.

This set up worked, but I felt really cramped and uncomfortable. My new drawing space affected me in such a way that drawing was becoming a chore.... a chore I did not look forward too.

Then I read a short piece somewhere on the web that mentioned how speeding up the motion settings of your mouse can lead to choppy drawing.... Which is a setting I had recently screwed with.

So I set my mouse settings back to a speed that is similar to the speed of my hand and, low and behold, my lines went back to being straight and smooth like I wanted.

Guess who's drawing on the couch again and knocking out pages like mad?

This guy!

ON THE WEB

Want to read and/or sell your comics on the ipod?

J. Scott Campbell offers a pin-up step-by-step.

Scambaiting as a hobby? Holy crap... sounds like more trouble than it's worth, but an interesting idea.

Monkey Journey to the West comes out on the states on the 23rd. I can't wait.

BLACK DIAMOND TP!

2008-08-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

The Black Diamond Trade Paperback hits shelves today. Marlena and I illustrated a five page Ken Lowery yarn for one of the single issues... who knows if the back-up stories made it into the the trade, but if they did... there you go.

*edit: It appears the back-up stories are sadly missing from the collected edition... oh wells...

ON THE SHELF

Here's some other cool stuff scheduled to come out today.

The Middleman Complete Collection

SHARKNIFE: DOUBLE Z!

Buckaroo Banzai: The Prequel! #1 (of 2)

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY!

2008-08-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

Things continue to gain speed for me. I just completed a page of Filthy Habit that was all establishing shots and cars and neon signs... it took me three days to ink, but I'm glad to be done with it. If I can ink a page every two days I should have this book wrapped up around the beginning of next month... which would be really cool. I'm looking forward to having another finished project to add to the pile. I'd like to get some of these sequentials off my back so I can do some straight up illustrations. I've been getting a lot of great inspiration and I'd like to put some to paper. But the sequentials are on a bit of a time table and really need to take precedence in order for them to ever see the light of day.

There just are not enough hours... why do I have to sleep?!

ON THE WEB

I love Stan Lee but I think he may have finally lost touch with what the comic buying populous wants these days... or maybe he just doesn't realize Paris Hilton was soooo 10 minutes ago.

Triumph the insult comic dog rips Comic-con attedees a new one... including Dallas' own webcomic guru Scott Kurtz.

MST3K's Joel Hodgson posts a prototype video of a new way to recycle old films for your veiwing pleasure. In the video there's a few minutes of a the opening of a movie then the same footage is run throgh Hodgson's "Jollyfilter". It's good stuff.

Alan Moore gives advice to young/new artists.

David Byrne posts a free track from his upcoming album with Brain Eno.

ON THE SHELF

Here's some cool stuff scheduled to be in stores today!!!

The Mask Omnibus Vol. 1 TP

The Complete Zombies vs. Robots TP

Essential Man-Thing Vol. 2 TP

Vendor

Creepy Archives HC

SPIDEY-BUTT

2008-07-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

I updated all my programs to CS3 this week. I am now up to date with the cutting edge of super awesome graphics programs.... and I don't know how to use ANY of them. So I'm still working in Photoshop CS until I feel comfortable that I'm not going to royally screw something up.

I'll probably have it figured out just in time for CS4 to come out.

My digital inking is picking up speed though, my new chair/computer desk combo is working out well. My digital Ink lines are much sharper and more flowing than when I was sitting on the couch and I've even updated my custom brushes to speed up my work flow (Photoshop is a lot easier to use if you ACTUALLY learn how to use it). And yet I'm still slower than I want to be. Maybe I'm taking to many breaks or I look up at the TV too often, but even though I'm forcing myself to draw on a regular schedule, I'm still not producing work as fast as I'd like. At least I'm happy with the quality now and that is really important. Maybe speed will factor in later on.

The folding chair I'm now using is incredibly uncomfortable... that may also have something to do with it. I have an awesome Spider-man pillow for my butt that sort of helps, but when I eventually get up, there is a rush of feeling and pain straight to recently numbed tailbone. I'd like to get a comfy rolling chair, but there is just NO ROOM for it in our house. Every square inch of floor space that is not for set aside for walking has some sort of space eating baby apparatus in it. Maybe in a few months when our son starts walking we can store some of this stuff but until then all of my art will be brought to you by severe butt pain.... and the letter "F".

In any case, work on Filthy Habit is rocketing on and Thomas is turning in his pages so fast it's making my head spin. I will keep up!!!!! I must keep up!!!!!! The book is looking really great though! I'm super excited about it.

ON THE WEB

Hey look some news about actual comics came out of Comic-Con. I thought it was all about movies now. Well, What do you know?

It appers Dark Horse is starting up the horror magazine Creepy again. This isn't reprints either, it's all new stuff!!! I really hope it turns out as good or better than the original!

ON THE SHELF

Here's some cool stuff scheduled to hit stands today:

I've never read Little Nemo before, but I've always been facinated by the art.

I'm not as excited about Scorchy Smith as I am about Noel Sickles. If you have never heard of him, his illustrations are mind blowing.

I found some issues of Journey in a quarter bin as a kid and really enjoyed them, I looking forward to learning the whole story.

Popgun is an anthology of the newest talented folks in comics. The first book was really good, but I would have enjoyed more self contained stories. I'm not a fan of using your five pages in an anthology to give me the first five pages of a series that may or may not ever come out. Tell me a whole story dammit! Hopefully there is less of that in this one.

COMIC-CON AND THE MAN FROM PLANET X

2008-07-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is the second year I've missed Comic-con. I hope to change that next year.

It's good to take some time off from the "big con" so it doesn't wear you down... and it CAN, but I'm pretty sad that I am going to miss all my friends that do show up.

If you end up going, I hope you have a good time... be sure to swing by the Ghostbusters booth and the MST3K booth for me... *sniff*

ON THE WEB

Robert Kirkman is named an Image Partner! Pretty sweet to know they are still adding folks to the roster. Congrats to an excellent creator.

Kenny Caperton is building a replica of the Myers house from the movie Halloween in North Carolina.

The difference between an illustrator and a cartoonist is about $500

ON THE SHELF

Good Grief! Look at all the cool stuff coming out this week!!!! You'd think there was a comic convention going on or something.

Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails

Apocalipstix Vol. 1

War Heroes #1

SCUD: The Whole Shebang!

Nocturnals: Carnival of Beasts - One-shot

Madman Vol. 1 TP

Liberty Comics

Monster Pile-up #1

The Astounding Wolf-Man Vol.1 TP

World War Robot TP

Complete Popbot TP

GENRE-XPLOSION!

Genre-xplosion is a short, spoiler free introduction to some of the strange and obscure movies and comics that I enjoy. Some of them are brilliant masterpieces... some of them aren't. All of them are entertaining.

THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951)
football-headed, asthmatic aliens
Directed- Edgar G. Ulmer
Written- Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen
STYLE: ****
SUBSTANCE: ****
BLOOD/GORE: ****
NUDITY: ****
Scale built on quantity, not quality.

SET-UP:
An unknown planet, nicknamed "Planet X", is hurtling towards the earth. Professor Elliot (Raymond Bond) believes it will come the closest to a small island near Scotland and asks his old friend John Lawrence (Robert Clarke), a newspaper reporter, to cover the story. Unknown to them, an alien with a mind control device has just landed on the same island with motives of his own.

SEX AND VIOLENCE:
There is none of either.

THOUGHTS:
This is one of those great old 50's sci-fi movies that is a little bit hokey and a whole lot of fun. The Man from Planet X has everything you would expect in a 50's invasion movie: a newspaper man, a feisty dame (Margaret Field) and two scientists. One who is looking to advance the field of science and the other who is trying to advance his bank account (William Schallert). As these types of movies go, this film is pretty cohesive and has a fairly intriguing plot and characters. It is well shot and, once you get past the wordy opening, moves along pretty nicely. It's yet another one of those genre movies that makes you wonder who the real bad guy is, the mutant from space... or us. If this sounds like your type of movie, I suggest you check it out.

MONSTERS, COMICS AND LINGERIE

2008-07-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Things are going well for me, I'm knocking out some pages, losing sleep and having fun.

I'm still trying to get all the kinks worked out of working digital... I have the tools now, just not the space. I have these awesome little tables that pull up to the couch so I can be with my family in the front room while I work, but the tables are not completely stable and every little tremor causes my digital ink lines to quiver a little. To fix this I'm working really big and shrinking the image down, just like a real comic page, but I think I need to move my wacom back to a real desk to completely solve it because I find myself drawing the same line over and over again trying to get it right. I guess this marks the end of couch drawing for me... at least no more "inking".

ON THE WEB

The webcomic Ugly Hill sums up exactly how I feel about comics. If you are not reading Ugly Hill I vastly recommend it.

Entertainment Weekly does some of the best video interviews with Bruce Campbell I've EVER seen!! Hilarity ensues!

Brandon Graham is posting the second book of his Eisner nominated series about everyone's favorite Cat Master, King City, on his blog for free... Tokyo Pop completely dropped the ball on a stateside release. Please put your eyes on it... I think you'll thank me.... At least you should... This stuff is amazing.

E3 and G4 provide a look at one of the new Ghostbusters games currently in production and I gotta say I am completely blown away that the designers put this much care into the design of a property they don't own. I have been dreaming of playing this game since 1984. Is it sad that I have an Xbox 360 just for this game?.... yeah... It probably is.

ON THE SHELF

A Sparrow box set is scheduled for release this week collecting the Sparrow art books of Ashley Wood, Phil Hale, Kent Williams, Shane Glines, and Phil Hale.... Glorious!

GENRE-XPLOSION

Genre-xplosion is a short, spoiler free introduction to some of the strange and obscure movies and comics that I enjoy. Some of them are brilliant masterpieces... some of them aren't. All of them are entertaining.

FEAST (2005)
Horny, Hungry Monsters
Directed- John Gulager
Written- Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton
STYLE: ****
SUBSTANCE: ****
BLOOD/GORE: ****
NUDITY: ****
Scale built on quantity, not quality.

SET-UP:

A group of strangers find themselves stuck in a bar fighting for their lives when a bloody man, carrying the head of some type of creature, bursts into the establishment and starts barking warnings about a group of murderous monsters that are headed their way.

SEX AND VIOLENCE:

Considering the monsters motivations you may find it surprising to learn there's no real nudity in this picture. There is, however, a lot of monster wang, monster spooge and enough breasts almost spilling out of shirts to qualify. While it's not the goriest movie I have ever seen, the uncut DVD features enough blood, guts and maggots to satisfy the most serious of gore hounds.

THOUGHTS:
This is a beer and pizza movie of epic proportions. Part of HBO's Project Greenlight series where they find, fund and follow the production of an independent feature, Feast is a flick that will satisfy hard core splatter fans for years to come.

The characters in Feast are fairly insignificant since they are basically cows lined up for the slaughter... EVERYONE in this flick is up for grabs. To drive this point home, each character gets a stat sheet at the beginning of the film listing their generic label, a fun fact about them and their characters' usual life expectancy in a movie like this. Considering that, the film makers lined up a pretty impressive cast, including Henry Rollins, Judah Friedlander, Veteran Actor Clu Gulager (also the director's father), Krista Allen, and Jason Mewes as, believe it or not, himself.

The most engaging thing about this picture is it goes way out of it way to be over-the-top and play with the usual worn out, cliche horror movie plot devices that you would expect in a film like this. In fact, some scenes are so over-the-top, even I was offended... and then later impressed that they actually offended me without putting me off the movie completely. It's a very tongue-in-cheek film that takes itself just seriously enough to keep the suspense rolling in. Much of the taboo comes from the monsters which only have two motivations: humping and eating. These things are either going to kill you or violate you (or sometimes both) and there's nothing you can do to stop them, short of running away or killing them.

All in all, Feast is a movie that I had very little hope for when I popped it in the DVD player, but ended up being glued to the screen the entire time with my jaw firmly on the floor. If this sounds like your type of movie, I suggest you check it out.

WORKING AWAY!

2008-07-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

As you can see we finally got our interwebs back up at Casa Haunted Fire. It feels good to be back online, though I'm saddened to learn what a vital part of my life it has become. I need the internet to get almost anything done now a days... I'm glad I've incorporated it so much into my life because the internet IS the future... but man it really sucks to rely on it for soooo much and have it go down.

I just finished laying out all the pages from my newest project with the awesome Dave Justus which made me want to get back to our original project (which I had almost finished when my son arrived) Filthy Habit. Here's clip from a page I'm currently inking.

I'm going to try a post a clip of whatever I'm working on that week every week... I may not always say what the project is though, for fear of pimping something too early... I guess that will be for you guys to figure out.

UPDATE!

2008-06-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

They've been repairing the cable wires on the telephone pole outside my house for the past month or so... what was once an intermittent connection to the web has now been completely dead for over a week. Time Warner Cable has no idea when this will be finished or when our home will be blessed with the internets again.

I continue to work and maybe one day I'll blog again from the comfort of my own damn house.

Maybe....

Bitterness brought to you by the fine folks at Time Warner Cable... the only cable game in town. :(

KENDALL

2008-05-19T08:57:00.001-07:00

Meet Kendall. She is one of the characters in the newest project I have taken on. I'm not going to talk about the project until we have a publisher lined up... I think I've finally learned my lesson on that... But I think everyone will enjoy it if it ever comes out.

Things are good for me right now, I think I've got a good handle on my new Wacom and how to use it and hopefully will start to wrap up some the projects I've been blabbing about like Knucklejelly and Filthy Habit.

THE END OF AN ERA!

2008-05-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend the local comic shop I managed and spent most of my young life at is closing down and moving to a different location, and while the store is doing fine and it's merchandise will all be moved to a nicer store front to live on forever, the building that holds all of my memories will be sadly left behind. I was talking with my friend Chris about the good times we had in that store and he came up with the idea of us making lists of the top ten most memorable things that happened.

I apologize in advance if there are duplicates.

10. Little Ben

When I was a young man and just getting into comics in the late 80's, I had a lot of catching up to do on all the comics I had missed from the previous decades. I was well versed and up to date on my TMNT, Real Ghostbusters and Transformers comics, but the superhero comics of yesteryear seemed endless in their volume. My earliest memories of this comic shop are of having my Mom drop me off and leave me at the store for hours so I could go through the back issues and teach myself the history of comics. Every time I thought I had seen everything in the store I would find a hidden box of magazines or a box of quarter comics I had not seen before. The inventory was overwhelming and I was not satisfied until I had seen it all. It was a comics Valhalla. (This actually happened at the VERY first store location. The one I worked at was the second location of this same store, but I thought I'd include it because these memories of rummaging through back-issues all day and annoying the employees are what made me love comics so much and eventually want to work there.)

9. All Night Porno Party

When I first started working there, my future buddy Chris was the manager. Chris was organizing a birthday party for another manager in the chain named Jeff. Jeff's birthday party consisted of dinner, drinks (for those of us of age) and a visit to the porno store. We were actually looking to rent Peter Jackson's cult adult Muppet tale "Meet The Feebles" and had been told we should try checking out a video rental place call "New Fine Arts" that carried odd movie like this. This info turned out to be dubious as we drove all the way out to Dallas to learn, once we were in the store, that all they carried was porn. This was the first time many of us had been in such an establishment and after we were done giggling at the wall of whips and dildos, Chris decided he had to buy Jeff some birthday porn. This particular store had just recently had a in-store signing by porn star Chasey Lain and had a discount bin of her videos set up, which Jeff made his choice from. It was then decided that we all HAD to watch this thing. Understand this was way before the Internet was an easily accessible 24 hour porn portal and you could have counted the number of completely nude women we had all seen most likely on one hand. The only problem with this plan was many of us were still living at home and the only place with a vcr/tv combo and relative privacy was the store which we had closed down for the night. So we went back after hours ordered some pizza and the group of us (I think there was actually a couple of girls with us... I remember becoming very embarrassed) sat and watched a porn from beginning to end while leaning up against the high dollar comic lock box. It's was a lot of fun at first... but once we ran out of vagina and penis jokes, it dwindled down into lots of fast forwarding, clearing of throats and a hilariously awkward tension in the air before we finally went home.

8. Stalker Girls

For whatever reason, guys working at funny book stores will always have at least one stalker girl customer. I even had a few stalker men... which was weird, but we are talking about good times here so I will share a story about my buddy Pat.

Pat was alone in the store and had a young girl who was trying to get his attention by flitting around the behind him as he did his best to ignore her and stock the comic shelves. Apparently she thought the best display of her beauty was to dance around like a fairy princess or ballerina. When she finally left and we returned from lunch, Pat informed us of what had been going on and we all went to the security tapes to catch this mating dance in action. To all of our great amusement, during one of her twirls, she lost her balance and completely ate shit in the comic aisle, quickly checking to see if Pat noticed her crash (he did not) she picked herself up and resumed her pixie dance. This became even funnier when frequently rewound.

7. Sewer Water

Let nothing come between the customer and the product.

One hot summer day, the plumbing in the walls between us and the shop next door backed up and began flooding out into the floor, soaking the carpet with the foulest smelling sewer water you could ever imagine. The entire store stank, but it was manly concentrated in the 12 foot of wet carpet just under our display of lead miniature battle figurines. Most of our customers fled the store in disgust as I wanted to do, but not all of them. Some valiant soles tried to stretch across the soiled area, braving the foul stench in order to complete their elf army... and some, to my amazement, just stood right in the middle of it as though nothing was different at all! It was all I could do to keep from screaming at them, "That's fucking shit water! YOU'RE STANDING IN SHIT WATER!!!"

6. Sam Jackson Drinks Pee

One of the many great things about having a fun crew work at the store is you attract a crowd of regulars that become more than customers. One of these regulars was a man named Sam Jackson. Sam is a great guy and was the elder statesman of our group because he had a family and was a bit older than us. Sam got in a large special order at the store and to just have a laugh, Pat scribbled in Sharpie marker "Sam drinks pee." in large letters on the side of the plain cardboard box it shipped in. Sam laughed when he saw it and took the box home with him paying it no further mind. Later that year at Christmas with his wife's family, his holiday eggnog was ruined by the screams of his nephews repeating "Sam drinks pee!" Sam's wife had unknowingly used the same box for Christmas gifts, causing him to spend the rest of the his holiday trying to explain to his family that he did not, in fact, drink pee.

5. The Finger Trap

We had a clear plastic display box of trading cards with a flip front/top on it for accessing the cards. When the flip top was open, the hinge left just enough space for you to fit your fingers in. Chris was behind the counter playing with the flip top while talking to Sam, who was in front of the counter. Chris's fingers slipped into the space the hinge left open and then he accidentally dropped the flip top, pinching his fingers in the hinge. Trying not to let Sam know he was stuck, Chris searched with his free fingers for something to grab on to, but the box was too wide. He was completely imprisoned but continued his conversation with Sam as if nothing was happening. Sam went on gabbing with Chris, pretending not to notice his swollen digits until Chris started to turn red in the face. He finally asked, "Do you want some help with that?" to which Chris whimpered, "Yes please"

4. Child Endangerment

Every once and a while a kid is gonna get hurt.

One year yo-yo's were really hot and the owner of the store wanted all the employees to learn how to yo-yo so we could teach the kids that bought them. This command was also followed with the decree that employees should be yo-yoing when walking around the store to show how fun it was. I had just graduated to a solid wood yo-yo with no extra springs or gizmos to help it work and was pretty proud of my limited yo-yo skills. A man, who had come in with his son, was leaving out the door in front of me and called for his boy to join him, who was standing somewhere behind me, as I thrust my wooden yo-yo up and down while standing in the middle of the aisle. The boy quickly stopped what he was doing and ran to join his father running right under my hand as I unknowingly released my solid wooden yo-yo smack on the top of his head. There was a hollow THUNK and then a surprised look from the boy, who was now halfway to his Dad, when he turned around, rubbing his noggin, wondering what the hell just happened.

3. Tits in the Comics

This happened before my time, but was too funny to let slide. I don't even know the poor girl's name only the legend of her. Apparently she was short in stature, but well endowed in the chest area.

We had a large lock box in the store in which we kept all the high dollar funny books. It had a large plastic lid that swung open like a coffin lid and when someone wanted something out of it, you had to stand there like a moron, holding the lid up, as they shuffled through the books. The box came up somewhere around my waist and just below this woman's breasts. In fact, when the box was open she had to lay her boobs on the comics in order for her arm to be long enough to hold the lid up, much to the delight of our silver age customers. One day, the lid slipped out of her hand and slammed down on her mammaries with a horrendous WHACK, creating an uncomfortable comics/tits sandwich and leaving an angry red welt across her visible cleavage. Ouch.

2. My Circle of Friends

The number two most memorable thing that happened there was of course meeting all the people who shopped and worked there, most of whom I still talk to today. I worked at that store for nearly 5 years and it had a profound effect on my social development and the sort of folks who I hang out with today... most of whom are from that store.... in fact, pretty much ALL my friends are from that store somehow.

1. Marlena

That's right, that same damn store is where I met my beautiful wife and the mother of my child, Marlena. I try not to delve into our personal life too much on this blog, but when she first walked in that door looking for an application, I was immediately hooked. I knew she was the one.... and almost 9 years later I'm just as enamored with her as I was then, if not more so.

So thanks comic shop. Seriously.

I will dearly miss you.

CAPE!... sort of...

2008-05-05T12:22:00.001-07:00

How was your Free Comic Book day? Was it good? Did you enjoy your Free Comics?

I didn't....

I didn't do anything this year because I have all too many projects in the works and nothing with a definite publishing time. No artbooks, nothing to pimp, no reason to leave the house. It was my first time to not attend CAPE!, Zues Comics' Free Comic Book Day event

I did however go to meet my partner-in-crime, Dave Justus, for dinner as he had driven all the way up from Austin to attend CAPE! I did not realize the dinner he was going to was an after party to thank the folks that participated in CAPE... Of which, I did not this year. So I was a little embarassed to be there and felt a bit like an interloper. I did not partake in any of the free food to punish myself for this crime.

It was really good for me though. Having my baby boy slowed down alot of stuff that was in the works for me, so getting to see old friends and meet some amazing professionals was really fun.

Excuse me while I name drop....

I got to meet, and hang out with Matt Sturges, Tony Bedard, Paul Benjamin, Paul Maybury, Kristian Donaldson and Chad Thomas.

I was really fun!

For some reason, my other buddy, who was supposed to hang out, completely ditched.

That's right Thomas P. Reidy III... I'm looking at you!

GENRE-XPLOSION: SUPER-POWERED CANNIBALS!

2008-05-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Genre-xplosion is a short, spoiler free introduction to some of the strange and obscure movies and comics that I enjoy. Some of them are brilliant masterpieces... some of them aren't. All of them are entertaining.

RAVENOUS (1999)
Super-powered Cannibals
Directed- Antonia Bird
Written- Ted Griffin
STYLE: ****
SUBSTANCE: ****
BLOOD/GORE: ****
NUDITY: ****
Scale built on quantity, not quality.

SET-UP:
Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is transferred to Fort Spenser, a place for unwanted misfits in the military, during the Mexican-American War. Soon after his arrival, the inhabitants of the fort find a man (Robert Carlyle) outside in the snow who has come to the them for help. His traveling party has been trapped in cave for three months with no food and their guide, the heinous Col. Ives, has begun murdering members of the party and eating them. Several members from Fort Spenser travel to the cave to rescue any survivors and deal with Ives, whom the local Indian believes has become a Wendigo, a man who eats the flesh of another man and gains his strengths, steals his spirit and becomes insatiable.

SEX AND VIOLENCE:
There is very little nudity in this film besides a quick shot of naked man rump. On the contrast there are copious amounts of blood, bone and guts, all of which are handled in a very realistic manner and not played up for exploitive reasons.

THOUGHTS:

Ravenous is a brilliantly unique type of film. As soon as I got halfway into it, I realized I had never seen a movie like this before. It flawlessly weaves together a satirical commentary on man's selfish desire to consume, regardless of anyone or anything else, with a very thrilling and well paced storyline peppered with small bits of dark comedy. All of this is accentuated with a haunting score by Damon Albarn (Blur) and Michael Nyman that is repeated throughout the picture. I can only imagine that this movie is not more well known because of its trailer, which portrays the film as a goofy comedy about cannibalism. It really has much more depth than that. It's an amazing movie with a rich, wonderfully portrayed, cast of characters. If you like brainy horror films that deliver sharp wit along with biting terror, I suggest you check it out.

BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY!

2008-04-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

Here is the final version of the movie poster I did for my Buddy Barak Epstein's newest film Blood on the Highway

It's my first actual horror movie poster and I'm pretty proud of it.

MST3K COMES TO DALLAS!!!

2008-04-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend I had one of my all time geek fantasies come to life. I got to meet most of the cast of my favorite TV show, Mystery Science Theater 3000! They came to town touring under the guise of a 20 year reunion and performing as their new group Cinematic Titanic at this years USA Film Festival. It was a night I will remember for the rest of my life.

From right to left Josh Weinstein, Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, Joel Hodgson, Frank Coniff, and "RAD" Mary Jo's husband. Click here for a larger photo.

Whenever you meet someone you've idolized for most of your life you get hit with two separate feelings:

Holy Crap this can't be real, there he/she is!!! In the flesh!

and

Man, I hope he/she is not a douche in real life...

Luckily everyone who was involved with the Satellite of Love was a genuinely nice person and really, really off-the-cuff funny. I was a little disappointed to learn they all are in fact human and there were apparently some quarrels and bumping of heads behind the scenes, that they were all too gracious to talk about while the show was still airing, but I appreciated their candor. This is apparently what led to so many changes in the cast over the years starting with Josh Weinstien in season one. During the panel, we learned why each of them eventually left the show, except for Trace who joked he was fired at one point. Only Frank Coniff left to pursue other things. Fortunately, all of the group that appeared at the Film Festival seemed to really get along and enjoy each others company.

The night started with a Q and A panel in which the audience asked the cast a number of dumb questions, which somehow always resulting in revealing and entertaining answers. Even though I had a million questions, I couldn't come up with just one. Once I had one question answered, I would not have been satisfied until I had all of my questions answered... preferably over dinner and drinks, but since that was not going to happen, I sat back and watched in glee as the icons of my youth returned questions like "which was a worse movie this or that" or interesting, but unrefined questions in which the subject of the question had to be discussed at length before an answer could be made. One goob even had the cojones to stand up and accuse them of stealing a skit he sent them on video. They quickly reduced the man to a spineless puddle of goo like a pack of highly trained ninja let loose on a doddering old man. It was hilariously awkward.

I'm am always amazed at my fellow geek's inability to operate in a public setting. This activity was brought up again when we filed out of the theater after the Q and A to let them clean up, and then piled back in to enjoy a live performance of them riffing on the Roger Corman classic "The Wasp Woman". We enjoyed our original seats, having gotten there an hour early just to secure them, and wanted to return to the same seats for the movie. So instead of going to the bathroom or getting something to eat, we got right back in line, damning our aching bladders. When we were let back into the theater, the people in front of us took our old seats... no big deal, the other side of our aisle was still open so we quickly grabbed seats over there. When I sat down I noticed a small paperback novel someone had left behind and sat next to it. I did not realize that that one paperback was a beacon to any newcomers that the ENTIRE ROW OF SEATS was saved until we were verbally accosted by a group of nerds who accused us of stealing their place. When we apologized, and tried to explain that we tried to return to our original seats but they were taken so we sat in the next available chairs, their nerdish eyes glowed white hot with the fires of Mordor. They argued with us for a while (actually thinking we would move), cursed us in what may have been Klingon, begrudgingly took back their novel and found seats elsewhere in the quickly filling up theater. After the show, having finally gotten over their immature indignation, one of them finally apologized to us by telling us he hoped we enjoyed the seats and kindly waving both his middle fingers at us as he stomped to the restroom.

We, of course, did enjoy the seats... thank you kind sir.

As far as the actual show went, watching them perform live with a large audience was more enjoyable than any tv show that ever aired. I kept having to remind myself that they were doing this live and were actually in the theater with us. The audience howled and cackled at every single joke. Every... Single... One. And I felt like I was twelve again, laying on my belly in my parents front room as my whole family howled and cackled at Joel and the bots and the retched movie Dr. Forrester and Tv's Frank had forced them to watch.

It's was an amazing night.

The one and only down side of the event was the hilarious Kevin Murphy, who was scheduled to appear, canceled due to sickness. I've would have really enjoyed to see him, Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett as well (who were not scheduled to appear but have formed the equally hilarious Riff Trax ), but I count myself lucky I got to see as many of my favorite actors as I did. Afterwards, the cast shook hands and signed autographs out in the hallway. I stupidly didn't bring anything to sign, nor did I go talk to them. Instead I snuck a few photos and slunk back into the night with my memories. In my mind these people are legends... and you just don't meet legends.

VAMPIRE SKETCH

2008-04-16T07:37:00.001-07:00

WACOM CINTIQ

2008-04-14T13:29:00.001-07:00

I bought a Wacom Cintiq this weekend.

That's right...

Jealous?

Even if you can part with the Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars it takes to buy one of these things, just purchasing one can be a challenge in itself.

I went to buy it at at Fry's Electronics who put on a fairly big production for a single piece of hardware. When I first walked through the door, I had a hard time getting an employee to look directly at me. Once I cornered one, like a frightened rabbit, and asked for the expensive bauble, all of the sudden I had changed in their eyes from a bum with no money, to an unstable character who at any moment could explode into a parade of testicle-kicking and hardware thievery.

As if I didn't have enough guilt about purchasing it already, the utter freak-out involved in getting the damn thing out of the store made me start to think twice about the financial burden I was putting on my family. (It's really not all that bad, we have the cash, but the never ending flow of random medical bills from the baby are STILL rolling in which makes me jittery about large purchases)

In any case, the thing was not even out on the shelves, nor was there any type of sign saying they even carried it among the cheaper wacoms and knock-offs. I actually had to find someone and beg them to point me towards the man in charge. They took me to the "guy with the keys" who then sent some poor sales associate into the "cage", as they called it, with a key and a flashlight to fetch the locked up item. Once the young girl came back, lugging both the heavy 20 inch and 12 inch wacom because she didn't ask me which one I wanted (I had a hard enough time explaining what a Cintiq was), they still wouldn't let me have it! They printed me out a ticket with my name on it and then raced it to the check-out aisle so it would be waiting for me. (I'm sure I was not that hard to beat as I unfortunately chose the path jam packed with sweaty men in ill-fitting shirts, pricing Cat 5 cable and external hard drives on my way to the front of the store. I finally broke free of them as they fell, one by one, to the sweet promise of caramel nougat at the candy aisle just before the check-out counter.)

When I finally tried to pay for the tablet, there was much curiosity displayed over what it was exactly I was buying and why anyone would pay that much for such a thing. I began to rub my head and worried some more that I was wasting my new family's hard earned cash.

Once they begrudgingly gave me my receipt I ran to my car as though I had a suitcase full of gold bricks cuffed to my wrist and would be jumped, beaten and robbed at any moment in the parking lot.

Of course, once I got it home, it was totally worth the price! It has taken a little getting used to, but man.... It's great. I really believe my productivity will double with this cool little gizmo.

...

Least I hope it does.

I'm still learning how to use it. I'll post some Cintiq work on Wednesday for review.

NUN SKETCH FROM FILTHY HABIT

2008-04-09T07:30:00.001-07:00

WEBCOMICS AND STUFF

2008-04-07T10:22:00.001-07:00

I'm getting back into the swing of things now. Yay!

Dave Justus and his lovely wife came over this weekend and we talked about getting Filthy Habit among other things back on track and out the door. I did some sketching, he did some bitching and we all learned he freaking blows at video games. Not just a little bit either, he's like the Sultan of Suck at it... at least that's what we heard. He did not give us a demonstration of his horrid abilities.

Webcomics...

I've got so many comic projects I want to do and so little time to do them, I've been giving a lot of thought to turning one of my projects into a "long-form" webcomic. A subject that is currently being discussed at length on the Panel and Pixel forum. If you are interested in this stuff at all, there is some very cool info in this thread.

The very same thread made me check out Wowio.com again. I've been there before, but couldn't figure out the pricing structure. Most everything was free, but I didn't understand how long it would be before I had to pay to download a comic. The answer is NEVER. Wowio has a whole list of completely free comics to download. They are paid for with ads and you can only download so many a day/week, but they have some really good stuff on there. If you like comics, you should really give it a look see. I mean... it's free quality comics. What's not to love?

Also how long has Amazon been selling subscriptions to comics? Am I completely in the dark on this?

WHAT IS GOING ON?

2008-04-03T09:10:00.001-07:00

I finally got a chance to draw last night!

This is a part of a project I am currently working on. Hopefully, I will be able to share it with you when it is done.

Half of her body disappears into blackness in the final, so I didn't find it necessary to draw her arm... and yet I still found time to draw her hip/butt... I wonder why that is.