Artists I Like: Philipe Druillet

Philipe Druillet is now 80 years old. That's amazing. I hope I live to see 80.

I did not know of Druillet when I was younger, though having some access to Heavy Metal Magazine means I most likely saw something of his work without actually knowing it. Once I finally actually looked at his work and paid attention, of course I was wowed and blown away.

This French artist was famous before I picked up my first funny book. He was one of the founders behind the French adult comics magazine Métal hurlant (Howling Metal!). The success of that magazine lead directly to the American version we all know and love, Heavy Metal.

It was only very recently (this week) that I actually picked up my first Druillet books. I got the hardback editions of Vuzz and the first three Loan Sloane books from Titan Comics and Statix Press. These are nice books, roughly 9.75" x 12.75" inches... which isn't an American standard and it's not a A size either (A5, A4, etc.). So maybe it's a European thing.

So I sat down and said "Let me read a Druillet for the first time." And I popped open Vuzz... holy fuck.

Vuzz is a single volume about a single character, Vuzz. It opens with a series of 8 pages tales, often silent or nearly wordless. They are all done in exquisite line art... perhaps with a dip pen and/or brush. I'm not sure. The printing is dark blue, not black. Looks great.

Later in the book we get La-Bas, which is a much longer narrative, perhaps 48 pages or something. Then the book ends with a short gallery of covers from the original comic series.

Ok... Vuzz is fucked up.

This is rather ugly character, both in appearance and attitude. Roughly described, he is a loner warrior/rogue type... a Conan but weirder. He is not smart. He is not eloquent or wise. He seems handy with a sword, but the stories don't describe or depict him as having any greater prowess than other warriors, though he does come to lead a large gang of them in La-Bas, so it is inferred that he's a cut above the rest.

Vuzz is one nasty, amoral motherfucker. The back of the book sums up his character: he needs to fight, eat, and make love. That's it. And by "make love", they mean rape the shit out of women. Because that's what he does... over and over. Eats, rapes, kills. Usually in that order.

He dwells in a savage post-apocalyptic world of magic and weirdness. I would describe the aesthetic as very "Heavy Metal" but... ouroboros and all that. Anyway, Vuzz is the scum of the earth.

SPOILER ALERT...

Vuzz kills a lot of people, many or most of them not necessarily deserving, he rapes a lot, he steals. He's nasty. Then he dies in the end (he chooses death, actually... felt like Druillet said "enough of this guy, I want him dead").

OK, enough about Vuzz. It's a beautiful book, visually, as are the Loan Sloane books that preceded it. Well worth checking out. This guy is a legend. I don't need to sing his praises. His comic pages often look like psychedelic posters.

Get That Label Off Me

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, but you knew that already.

I strongly dislike labels. And yet I recognize their incredible utility.

If I go into a video store (in the past..) and I know I want something cool and fantastic, I can go to the sci-fi and/or fantasy and/or horror sections to find it. I won't find it in the drama section. This is very useful because I'm not in the mood to watch 2 hours about a fucked up romance. I wanna see monsters and shit.

But it's also unfortunate because those labels are boxes that we put ourselves into. Without them, we might explore more territory and be more wildly creative. If I know I'm doing a sci-fi thing then I know I need to check off a few boxes. Maybe that alone is enough to stifle my creativity a little bit.

I dunno.

Here's a label I hate: Gen X.

I'm part of Gen X. But nobody called us that until at least the 90s and I honestly don't remember hearing that term until much later. Nobody talked like that back when I was young. Today... that's all the fuck you hear. It causes us to divide up into boxes based on the year we were born... which smacks of some kinda astrological bullshit if you ask me.

Social mores and pop trends change over time and we can broadly classify them into categories if we want. But there's no bright line between Gen X and Millennials and none between Millennials and whoever comes next. The overlap is staggering, huge.

Until you TELL people which category they belong in. Then suddenly some of them start modifying their behavior to fit it. Suddenly we're being sold products and ideas created by corporations, based on the definitions they've carved out for us. We're corralling ourselves into these dumb, stupid, silly boxes that are useful only for data mining, not for living fulfilled lives.

Here's a label you might know: OSR.

This one is very useful for one big, shiny, obvious reason. It's because Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark. We can't go around putting D&D on the cover of our RPG books, even though they are 100% part of that lineage. So, for better or worse, this label "OSR" has become the stand-in. And that does serve a handy purpose. But it still means we box ourselves in.

And yeah, I know, I know. OSR doesn't just mean D&D. But cool your heels... look around at all the game books with OSR labels on them and tell me how many are NOT part of the D&D lineage, in many cases being entirely compatible with that game. Just because you use OSR to just mean "like older games" doesn't mean the rest of the fuckin' world isn't using it to mean "this is off brand D&D".

Anyway... I feel this boxed in lack of air lately. It's probably why I've slowed down to a crawl with Black Pudding, which has always been an explicitly B/X D&D-based RPG zine... OSR. I'm in a creative head space right now where I don't want to make stuff for D&D. Not at this moment. I have other things I wanna do.

Speaking of... I do have the entire Heavy Helping Vol 2 completed and have had it completed for months. The only stumbling block has been some issues with getting it ready to go up on DTRPG. I'll try to focus and sort that out soon. I know I've promised it to a lot of people. 

Artists I Like: Mark Bodé

I probably saw Mark Bodé's work for the first time in an issue of his 80s comic Miami Mice. But I'm not sure. I know I saw his work later in his 90s Tundra comic Cobalt 60, which was a massive expansion of his father's original 1960s comic Cobalt 60.

His father. So, for most artists, you can talk about their influences and maybe they draw a lot like so-and-so. In the case of Mark Bodé, he is in fact carrying on a family tradition. His father, Vaughn, died far too young in 1975 while Mark was still a child. Mark would very soon become a great cartoonist in his own right, taking up the mantle of the great cartoon universe started by Vaughn.

But it isn't correct to say Mark is just doing what his dad did. He's doing his own thing, just in that strong and unique Bodé tradition. He is the Bodé.

He got started early doing comics like Miami Mice, working with Kevin Eastman and others, and becoming both a tattoo artist and a graffiti artist. An amazing life of art. If you can get your hands on it, I recommend his Big Book of Bodé Tattoos.

Paper Again

I posted about paper here. I didn't re-read it, but I wanted to do a follow-up because I got some new paper.

For all my drawing life I've used Strathmore Bristol*, when I use Bristol at all. Strathmore pads come in smooth and vellum (vellum is toothy... not as smooth, duh). Smooth is nice for markers, pens, inks, etc. Vellum is nice for pencil... and charcoal, I guess. Come to think of it I've only used it a few times and I don't know what you vellum weirdos get up to but you keep on rocking that shit.

So anyway, Strathmore pads come in sheets of 20. Now, I'm not so god damn poor that I can't buy Strathmore. But they are more expensive than many other brands. And I wondered... is there a reason?

As I got further into this new comic project, I needed to get some more paper. I settled on 11x14 smooth Bristol and I went with Canson instead of Strathmore. Because Canson comes in pads of 25 sheets and they cost less. Not a ton less... but less.

I've drawn 5 or 6 pages on Canson now and I gotta say the differences between it and Strathmore are negligible at best. I can barely tell the difference. I do think Strathmore FEELS just a tiny bit better. Just a tiny bit more substantial. But that might be an illusion caused by the higher price point. I don't know.

My honest opinion is if you want to save a little money, go for the Canson. If you don't care about that and you want the best, go for the Strathmore. You won't be able to tell, but you might get that psychological bump from it. I dunno.

*Side note: It always bugs me that you can't type "Bristol" with a small "b" without spellcheck going "no no no". I thought that was dumb. Then I finally looked it up and learned that Bristol board is called Bristol board because it's a type of paper that used to be primarily produced in Bristol, England. Who knew?!

Artists I Like: Lee Gatlin

Lee Gatlin is an Alabama artist. I found his work randomly on IG, if I remember correctly. His comics are what caught my attention first, but his sketches and general cartooning really captured me. Loose lines, almost chaotic. No... totally chaotic! Yet somehow cohesive, coming together to form an image that we recognize or resonates with us. It's a skill I'd love to have, being so damn loose and tight at once.

 

Ghoul Prince

I drew this in a sketchbook and meant to include it in Black Pudding 8... but I forgot. Doh! 

Artists I Like: Raven Perez

Part of a series of posts in which I adore other artists for being really good at stuff. 

Next up is a comic artist who is, IMHO, synonymous with "online comics". Raven Perez started his comic Raven's Dojo in 1998 (wow) and it's still going today. That's super fucking impressive.

I should mention an important thing: These comics are NOT SAFE FOR WORK, or NSFW. They gots naked bits and straight up sex stuff.

I love Raven's wild drawings. Intricate, but loose, they are vibrant and organic in that classic noodle cartoon way. Also, Raven himself is, from what I have seen, a very cool guy. I'll take a moment here to champion the sex comic and art genre. It ain't for everyone, and it says so on the tin. So if you want to be prudish about it and say "but it's porn" or something, yeah whatever. It's not for you. Move along. It's for people who enjoy that shit, and there's plenty of space in the art world for it. Art isn't worse because it's sexual. Art is only worse because it's worse. Or because it's fascist or something.

The Dojo ain't like that.

Hellion Cross

I have spoken many times about ZSF, a space game I was/am working on. I did a metric ton of character sheets for it, just for funsies. And I have several drafts of the game written. But I needed something to get me over the edge, to help me commit to the bit.

Simultaneously I started thinking about comics again. Like, a LOT. Finally these things are aligning. I'm working on a new comic, Hellion Cross, which is set in the world of ZSF. At this moment, I have 11 pages inked. I haven't decided yet if this issue will be 24, 28, or 32 pages long. Still on the fence about that.

It has been a long time, it seems, since I dived this far into making comics. This is all I used to do. TTRPGs were a distant second in the back of my mind, though I never stopped fiddling with them. All through the 90s, 2000s, and of course beyond... always, always noodling and doodling about the elfgames.

But comics were always primary for me. I started seriously working on them in 1987 and didn't stop focusing on them until around 2012 when I suddenly shifted gears into an obsession with roleplaying games, particularly the OSR-type. Even then, the result was Black Pudding... a zine that looks a lot like a comic book.

So, what's up with the new comic? I started with a short script wherein a salvage ship finds a frozen woman who bursts out of her ice cage and sort of barges onto the ship, taking over. Much to my surprise, the character morphed before my eyes into Fawn Rainchild, the primary character of my Pan-Gea comics. I didn't expect to see her again, especially in space. But there she was, demanding to be in the book.

Who was I to say no?

So the small crew of the SS (space ship) Motorbreath comes up on a frozen Fawn, naked on a small planetoid. She comes out of her frozen spell and boards the ship, using up the hot water for a shower.

Now... you lascivious types might be going "naked", "hot shower" and thinking this is a prurient comic book. Tut-tut as they say. This is a serious comic about space adventure. The naked woman bit is just because the god damned wizard who gave Fawn the freeze spell was a pervert, most likely.

Where does the book go from here? Well, there's a secondary storyline about a robot vs. human war. At some point these two storylines will merge and we'll see a bigger picture, I'm sure. But right now I'm doing this comic the way I like to do everything: page by page, idea by idea. Hey... Mat Wagner, creator of Mage and Grendel, did it this way. So can I.

You'll know when I know.

ABOUT THE ZSF RPG

Oh yeah. So the comic title is Hellion Cross (unless I change my mind). But it is set in the Zoa Space Frontier, or ZSF. This is the wild west of the galaxy, outside the Galactic Main where everything is safe and sanitized. It's a dangerous place. Apparently, according to what I've written so far, there's a fuckin' war going on. But I feel like this is a relatively trivial matter. The robots of the RIO (Robot Imperial Order) have been warring with the UHF (United Human Federation) for countless years. This current war is just one of many, with the robots and humans fighting over resources. Perhaps they fight so much because the humans created the robots and the robots have a lot of mommy/daddy issues as a result. The humans... they just like to fight over resources. Always have.

So anyway, the game. It is going to be called ZSF, unless I change my mind. It's a space romp RPG. The setting, the ZSF, is magical space, mind you. This is not "hard sci-fi". This is pure space opera and sci-fantasy. There are wizards and shit. You will see barbarians with swords and blasters. This is my shit.

The RPG is an original system. A big part of me wanted to use GOZR as the system, so I could just wrap that setting into ZSF more easily. But I foolishly created an entirely different one. Mostly because I wanted to get away from the d20 as the core die, even though I love it and I think GOZR's system is great. I wanted to peel away from that a little bit. Right now ZSF uses a d6 pool with exploding dice and stuff. But more on that later.

First step is to get the comic done. A setting, in action, with characters and visuals... this will help establish the tone and "what you do" in the game.

But I've rambled on long enough. Back to inking.

Here's page one of Hellion Cross, y'all. Colors later.

Artists I Like: Molly Moonstone

Here's a rare one for the list. Molly Moonstone is both a visual artist who draws beautiful pinup girls and is also a beautiful pinup girl herself. Go figure. I certainly am not in that category myself.

Anyway... I found her work on Instagram, like so many others, and she kind of enchanted me with her curvy, voluptuous figures drawn in a playful style with  nice textured coloring. I really dig it more than many of the other popular pinup artists working today. Good shit, check it out.

Artists I Like: Jim Roslof

Yet another great artist, and another entry into the list that had a huge influence on me: Jim Roslof!

Roslof became a TSR staff artist in 1979. I know his work primarily from Legends & Lore (formerly called Deities & Demigods). He illustrated various mythos in that book and the ones that struck me the most were his contributions to the Finnish and the Greek, and of course his larger pieces such as the incredible Thor image from the Norse pantheon.

What I loved about his work was how the lines flowed wildly, like gesture drawings. Consider his drawing of Ahto or Aphrodite. Notice how some of the lines are incomplete, the inking almost chaotic. But it holds together perfectly and delivers a powerful form.

Ahto from the Finnish Mythos

Aphrodite from the Greek Mythos

Cover art for Lathan's Gold

Meilikki from the Finnish Mythos

Thor from the Norse Mythos