Random or Focused?

For quite some time I feel like I've been in a "slump". Typically, for the past few years more than ever, I draw a lot, sketching something almost every day. Usually multiple somethings. But maybe a month ago I slowed down and was immersed in RPG thought. I went a full week without touching a pencil.

The past few days or maybe since last weekend the trend has shifted. I'm drawing a lot more, starting to feel like my old self.

This is good. But it also means I need to address one of my biggest hangups: Lack of focus.

Namely... is lack of focus a problem or not? It feels like one, because I badly want to finish projects. But at the same time I'm happiest just doing something - anything - creative. So if I'm drawing my ass off all weekend and none of the drawings are "for a project", is that really a problem?

Something for me to ponder.

Here's some recent work.

Vaughn Bode or Weird Al?

Status and Doomslakers RPG Notes

What's going on with me right now?

Life is happening. Family life is pretty good. We're dealing with the dystopia of the United States one day at a time. How fucking hard it is to get rid of an obvious existential threat to your own nation? Pretty god damn hard, it seems.

But I digress.

Creatively: I'm in a weird place. I have not been drawing very much. I doodle here and there. But my main energy has been going into creating the Doomslakers RPG. That progress stalled a bit a few weeks ago as some drama creeped up, but I started running a playtest of the rules last Monday and I'm excited for that. I'm running The Gardens of Ynn by Emmy Allen using the Doomslakers rules. The setting is completely different, but this playtest kind of happened suddenly and I wasn't ready to run the full game with its own setting. Since I had been wanting to run Gardens for years, I seized the moment.

Here's a quick and dirty overview of the Doomslakers rules:

It's a d6 pool. Basic roll is an exploding 1d6 (1d6e). You add dice based on the skills you have, tools, and other factors. You need at least one success. A success is either 4, 5, or 6, based on difficulty and all that. It's a fairly standard success-based pool system.

Instead of hit points, you rack up damage. There's no upper limit for damage. If you take 6, you add 6 to your running total. At some intervals, you have to make an impact roll. This is a 1d20 roll + current damage. So if you have racked up 12 damage, you roll 1d20+12 on an impact table. The results range from minor hindrances (usually reduction of pool dice) to death.

So you can die in one roll from one blow.

There is a meta currency. Luck points are earned when you roll your lucky number in an action roll. Since the number is 1-6, it will come up pretty frequently. You will earn luck points multiple times per session. I hope that leads to players being willing to spend luck freely instead of hoarding it.

One of the things you can do with luck is defer your impact roll. Ultimately you must make the roll, but luck can put it off. There are other mechanics that can reduce damage. So the idea is you might be able to reduce your damage total before being forced to make an impact roll, thus giving you a better chance at not being killed or knocked out.

One of my concerns is that the impact rolls will be too frequent. I mitigated it by having thresholds for when they are made. You don't make one every time you get hit, unless you get hit pretty hard. But there are triggers that force the roll no matter what.

At the end of a fight, if you have any damage, you have to make that impact roll. Luck can't prevent it.

Anyway, that's the core mechanic of the game at the moment. It applies to all actions, not just fighting.

But I am toying with the idea of changing it to a d12 pool. The only reason for doing that is to get some granularity out of the numbers, which is just another tool in the kit. But that also makes luck points less frequent, so it might not be worth the trouble. I need those luck points flowing because they do a lot of heavy lifting.

The Doomslakers RPG itself is based on the setting (implied and explicit) of Black Pudding. It is an original system and has no direct basis in D&D... so it isn't a Black Pudding RPG, directly. Black Pudding zine remains a classic D&D based zine, at least for the first 8 issues. This game is a riff on the ideas within where you play the role of an agent of the Doomslakers Adventure Company, taking nasty, dangerous jobs in the seedy city of Seapath. If you see it in Black Pudding, you will probably see it in Doomslakers in one form or another.

Mighty

This blog is about me, the stuff I do, the things I like, and whatever else I want it to be about. Today I want to talk briefly about something that happened yesterday, completely unrelated to anything I normally post here.

Our dog Thor has died. He was a very small chihuahua. He was about 12 years old.

For the past year, he was very slowly declining. It started when he stopped being able to jump up on things. We got a dog ramp, which helped. But lately he was even struggling with the ramp.

But he was still pretty spry. He had a healthy appetite and barked a lot. He was fully mobile other than vertically.

He was my pal. If I was on the couch, so was he. He was not a player... he didn't have toys. He only had his people. The other dogs are toy fiends, but Thor couldn't care less about that. He wanted the treats and the snuggles and to bitch about the neighbors.

I loved him. It was a sudden, unexpected death. Based on our timeline, he was barking at the neighbors and doing his thing, then he was dead less than an hour later. When I found him, he was still quite warm.

Rest is peace, you annoying little friend. The house feels emptier.  

End of the Year Message

Looks like 2024 is just about over. Every year we say the same things at this time, don't we? I can't believe the year is over. I can't believe it's almost [insert new year]. Etc.

I'm 54 years old. It's very strange when I think about it. I'm a grown ass man with a wife and two kids. I've been married since 1991. My kids are late teens. I've held down the same job for longer than I care to say. I'm incredibly stable. But inside my brain is a bit of a wandering storm, sort of like that monster on Jupiter that scares the shit out of me.

Eh, I won't get into that too much here. It's just me whining about what I've done with my life and what I haven't. But look... we do what we do and we can't change anything we've done. I'm happy with and proud of my life. My mom was proud of me, and that makes me feel great comfort. She often visits me in my dreams. Which is weird, but true.

For example, just the other night I dreamed I was in my front yard naked in the snow at night. I don't remember why. But I could feel my phone vibrating, even though I was naked. I looked around and saw the dim light under the snow. I dug it up and answered. I didn't read the screen because in dreams I can't read or maybe the text isn't legible. But it was my mom. She said, very clearly, "Are you ok?".

Then I woke up. And it was incredibly comforting. I don't believe in supernatural stuff or souls, but I take joy and comfort in memory. I can still remember my mom's face, her voice, the way she walked, everything. And I treasure it when she appears in my dreams.

This has been a mostly good year. Nothing crazy or exceptional, personally. I've been creative, I've been ok. Sure, the planet itself is in a bad way. We elected a fascist again. I don't know what the future looks like. But I'm hopeful. You have to cling to hope and stay positive. It's not to say things aren't bad... but giving up is just not on the menu for me.

Here's some art I did this year. I selected ten drawings I really like. I love you all and I hope you are doing well.

Earl Norem Was Old Then

Earl Norem did his first Savage Sword of Conan cover in 1976 with issue 14. He went on to do 48 covers for that comic up through issue 218 (that's when I stopped counting). The only other artist to even come close to that many covers for SSoC was Joe Jusko (he did 33 in the same run).

Earl Norem was 53 years old when he did his first SSoC cover. I'm 53 RIGHT NOW. I guess the message here is life does not stop until you're dead. So don't buy into any bullshit about being out of touch or too old to do awesome things.

I really only know Norem for his Conan covers, though he was well-established as a respected and popular artist long before then. It's some old school sweaty barbarian and women lying around kind of shit but I'm into that stuff. Like a guy who goes to model airplane shows. He gets a lot of strange looks, but it's fine.

Aside: Here are the top 10 SSoC cover artists from issues 1-218, based only on number of covers they did.

Earl Norem 48

Joe Jusko 33

Bob Larkin 14

Ovi Hondru 13

Joe Chiodo 11

Doug Beekman 9

Boris Vallejo 8

Dorian 7

Michael Golden 7

Nestor Redondo 7

Poor ole Ernie Chan is just out of the top 10 with 6 covers. But he did a TON of comics pages for that book.

File the rest of this post under "was avoiding doing anything useful, distracted by the pretty shiny things".

While we're on the subject, here's a list of all the artists who did SSoC covers up through issue 218. Issue number on left, artist on right.

1 Boris

2 Neal Adams

3 Michael Kaluta

4 Boris

5 Boris

6 Alex Nino & Frank Magsino

7 Boris

8 Frank Brunner & Bob Larkin

9 Boris

10 Boris

11 Ken Barr

12 Boris

13 Richard Hescox

14 Earl Norem

15 Boris

16 Earl Norem

17 Ernie Chan & Earl Norem

18 Dan Adkins

19 Kenneth Morris

20 Earl Norem

21 Earl Norem

22 Val Mayerik

23 Earl Norem

24 Earl Norem

25 Steve Gan & Dino Castrillo

26 Jim Starlin

27 Bob Larkin

28 Earl Norem

29 Ernie Chan

30 Frank Brunner

31 Howard Chaykin

32 Val Mayerik

33 Earl Norem

34 Ernie Chan

35 Ernie Chan

36 Earl Norem

37 Earl Norem

38 Earl Norem

39 Earl Norem

40 John Buscema

41 Earl Norem

42 Bob Larkin

43 Bob Larkin

44 Bob Larkin

45 Nestor Redondo

46 Earl Norem

47 Earl Norem

48 Nestor Redondo

49 Nestor Redondo

50 Nestor Redondo

51 Earl Norem

52 Nestor Redondo

53 Earl Norem

54 Earl Norem

55 Earl Norem

56 Nestor Redondo

57 Nestor Redondo

58 Earl Norem

59 Clyde Caldwell

60 Earl Norem

61 Joe Chiodo

62 David Mattingly

63 Joe Jusko

64 Joe Jusko

65 Joe Chiodo

66 Joe Chiodo

67 Romas Kukalis

68 Joe Jusko

69 Joe Jusko

70 Earl Norem

71 Joe Chiodo

72 Joe Jusko

73 Joe Chiodo

74 Joe Jusko

75 Earl Norem

76 Joe Chiodo

77 Joe Jusko

78 Earl Norem

79 Joe Chiodo

80 Earl Norem

81 Joe Chiodo

82 Bob Larkin

83 Jeff Easley

84 Joe Chiodo

85 Joe Chiodo

86 Earl Norem

87 John Pound

88 Steve Hickman

89 Bob Larkin

90 Earl Norem

91 Michael Kaluta

92 Bob Larkin

93 Michael Kaluta

94 Val Mayerik

95 Earl Norem

96 Joe Jusko

97 Gaetano Liberatore

98 Michael Golden

99 Joe Jusko

100 Joe Jusko

101 Michael Golden

102 Bill Sienkiewicz

103 Bob Larkin

104 Joe Jusko

105 Michael Golden

106 Michael Golden

107 Earl Norem

108 Joe Jusko

109 Steve Hickman

110 Earl Norem

111 Steve Hickman

112 Joe Jusko

113 Earl Norem

114 Steve Hickman

115 Joe Jusko

116 Bill Sienkiewicz

117 Michael Golden

118 Joe Jusko

119 Ernie Chan

120 Bob Larkin

121 Joe Jusko

122 Ernie Chan

123 Ernie Chan

124 Michael Golden

125 Thomas Kidd

126 Doug Beekman

127 Peter Manko

128 David Mattingly

129 Doug Beekman

130 Joe Jusko

131 Joe Jusko

132 Joe Jusko

133 Doug Beekman

134 Joe Jusko

135 Doug Beekman

136 Doug Beekman

137 Bob Larkin

138 Joe Jusko

139 Joe Jusko

140 Joe Jusko

141 Bob Larkin

142 Joe Jusko

143 Joe Jusko

144 Joe Jusko

145 Roger Stine

146 Daniel Horne

147 Joe Jusko

148 Doug Beekman

149 Doug Beekman

150 Michael Golden

151 Earl Norem

152 Doug Beekman

153 Earl Norem

154 Joe Jusko

155 Dorian

156 Joe Jusko

157 Dorian

158 OVI

159 Joe Jusko

160 Dorian

161 OVI

162 Dorian

163 Mark Caparosa

164 Earl Norem

165 Dorian

166 Earl Norem

167 Earl Norem

168 Earl Norem

169 OVI

170 Joe Jusko

171 Earl Norem

172 OVI

173 Nick Jainschigg

174 Earl Norem

175 Dorian

176 Earl Norem

177 OVI

178 Joe Chiodo

179 Earl Norem

180 OVI

181 Dorian

182 OVI

183 Doug Beekman

184 Lou Harrison

185 OVI

186 Lou Harrison

187 OVI

188 Earl Norem

189 OVI

190 Earl Norem

191 Joe Jusko

192 Bob Larkin

193 Earl Norem

194 Earl Norem

195 OVI

196 Earl Norem

197 OVI

198 Bob Larkin

199 OVI

200 Joe Jusko

201 Vince Evans

202 Earl Norem

203 Vince Evans

204 Alan Rabinowitz

205 John Watkiss

206 Bob Larkin

207 Michael Kaluta

208 George Pratt

209 John Watkiss

210 Vince Evans

211 George Pratt

212 Julie Bell

213 Jim Hoston

214 Julie Bell

215 Tim Conrad

216 Toni Taylor

217 Tim Conrad

218 Earl Norem

And here's how many covers each of these artists did for the comic. Name on left, number of covers on the right.

Alan Rabinowitz 1

Alex Nino & Frank Magsino 1

Bill Sienkiewicz 2

Bob Larkin 14

Bob Larkin & Frank Brunner 1

Boris Vallejo 8

Clyde Caldwell 1

Dan Adkins 1

Daniel Horne 1

David Mattingly 2

Dino Castrillo & Steve Gan 1

Dorian 7

Doug Beekman 9

Earl Norem 48

Earl Norem & Ernie Chan 1

Ernie Chan 6

Frank Brunner 1

Gaetano Liberatore 1

George Pratt 2

Howard Chaykin 1

Jeff Easley 1

Jim Hoston 1

Jim Starlin 1

Joe Chiodo 11

Joe Jusko 33

John Buscema 1

John Pound 1

John Watkiss 2

Julie Bell 2

Ken Barr 1

Kenneth Morris 1

Lou Harrison 2

Mark Caparosa 1

Michael Golden 7

Michael Kaluta 4

Neal Adams 1

Nestor Redondo 7

Nick Jainschigg 1

OVI 13

Peter Manko 1

Richard Hescox 1

Roger Stine 1

Romas Kukalis 1

Steve Hickman 4

Thomas Kidd 1

Tim Conrad 2

Toni Taylor 1

Val Mayerik 3

Vince Evans 3

Cataloging Yourself

I did my first paid work as an artist when I was in high school way back in 1987 or so. It was a drawing of a girl writing for the cover of a poetry zine that one of my teachers published. I think it was called Promise. Since then, I've done work for hire, work for trade, and work for fun for many, many people. And I absolutely never bothered to keep track of any of it. At all.

For years now I've promised myself I would make a real effort to catalog all this work spanning decades and put it into some kind of big, fat list. Why? To remind myself of what I have accomplished. Because I get down on myself a lot. I berate myself for not doing enough. I'm a lifer amateur, by choice. I work a day job to survive and pay bills and support my family. I do art because I'm an artist. So... often I don't take my art as seriously as I should. I don't categorize myself with other artists who make their living with their craft. At best, I augment my living with my craft.

Anyway, self-deprecation aside, I realize it will be nearly impossible to catalog all I've done. Hell, I've done art for people in the 90s that I mailed to them and never saw again. I didn't have a computer back then, no camera in my pocket. I don't have pics or scans of that work. It's just gone. And I don't even remember much of it.

But I can make an effort to do what I can. This Spring I hope to dig through the boxes in my storage shed and work on some kind of catalog of my small press comics work, at least. I spent over a decade doing that stuff and I never show or talk about it. I tend to do a thing, then move on to something else. Which is fine, I think, and perfectly healthy. But you also have to remind yourself that you've done something lest you forget your own efforts and achievements.

Don't Ask Me, James Why Do Ya Cuss?!

It's a god damn undead.

I have these mental partitions in my social media posting. On my blog and Twitter I just say whatever I want, fuck it. But on Facebook I tend to dial it back a tiny bit and I try to be more broadly agreeable. I think this is because I have family who follow me on FB (at least a few).

But I do cuss like a sailor at a whorehouse and I do it because that's just how I am and because I don't want to cater to children. That last part is very important to me. I do not do stuff for kids. I don't want children browsing though a lot of my stuff, though I feel like it's mostly completely OK if it happens. It's just weird. Kids have tons of cool shit, they don't need me. And I need to be as unfiltered as I can possibly be.

In fact, I need to be more unfiltered and unhinged than I already am. Why the fuck would I even self-censor at all? I'm not famous, I don't make much money doing art, and I don't have much clout to lose. When no one is looking you can do what you want, creatively.

I actually need to loosen the fuck up.

The Memory of Comic Book Times

Herein I'm going to take a stab at remembering and recounting my personal journey with comics. I'll approach this like a scientist (on drugs). This is long and rambling. You've been warned.

FUNNY FUNNIES

When I was 7, my parents divorced. My mom and I moved from Louisville to Somerset (where I was born and where she was born) into an old shack without a bathroom or running water from what I can remember. I do not remember any comic books prior to this time, though it is possible I had a few here and there. I mostly remember TV shows like Shazam and Hulk and cartoons like Quick Draw McGraw and Bugs Bunny.

Sometime after the divorce, before I turned 9, someone in the family gave me a stack of comic books. These were legit funnies. I had some Casper, Hot Stuff, Wendy, Donald Duck, Archie, and probably Uncle Scrooge and Richie Rich. My memory is very old, of course. This was the late 70s. I was born in 1970, so this would have been 1977-1978. I'm guessing the stack of comics was about 15-20 in number. They were beat up, well-read, and came from a cousin who was kind of a blacksheep and died far too early. He would have been a young man at the time, probably 18-20.

I read and flipped through those comics quite a bit. I'm guessing several of them survived and were carried from home to home by me (we moved a lot between 1977 and 1984).

Perhaps it is largely this exposure to silly fun comics like Hot Stuff that lead to my lifelong love of cartoon art. I do credit Hot Stuff as the progenitor of Zarp, though he wasn't based on that character explicitly.

FOOD LION AND THE DIX RIVER CONNECTION

My mom and I lived in the red shack for about a year, I guess. I have lots of memories from there. I remember the nasty outhouse (I tended to go in the woods instead of going into that thing). I remember a dog named King and another dog whose name I don't remember. I remember a bicycle that got ran over, much to my dismay. I remember getting some toy cowboy guns for Xmas and my little cousins crying for them. I also remember coming home from school one Friday eager to watch Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, which was heavily advertised on TV for that Saturday. But our cable had been cut off that day due to non-payment. I was crushed. Perhaps, in hindsight, I was spared.

We were less than poor. We had fucking nothing. We relied on charity from family and on a welfare pittance of about $90 per month. My mom, may she rest in peace, was in over her head and had no prospects.

Anyway... she met Lee about 1978, winter. I was 8 at the time. I know it was winter because he was a ramblin' man who was making a meager living selling truckloads of coal. He would go to houses and ask if they wanted to buy coal. He would then go load his old white pickup truck with coal, then charge the person for the coal and the labor. My mom must have met him through a friend and he brought us some coal.

They hooked up for the next 30 years until his death on May 12th 2008. Lee was, by all measures, my dad. My biological father, kind of a lazy asshole, was never around. Lee was around.

Ok, let me steer this back to the road...

Lee came, he helped us out, he bought me strawberry ice cream, which was super nice. He, being a rambler and a piddler, didn't have a job. We moved around... all the time. Lee "ran off" multiple times and my mom would leave me with this or that aunt or uncle and go off chasing him. She always found him and they always ended up back together. It was a wild time to be a kid. (Remind me to tell you stories about garbage dumps and living in a van later).

So we eventually moved to Standford into a trailer in the Dix River trailer park. I was in 4th grade, so it would have been 1980 or so. I was held back in 3rd grade. Anyway, here we were and I was having a good time and met a few friends. One of them, a black haired toothy kid named Danny, was a nerd. He was into Star Wars and comic books.

I do not remember the exact order of events so I'll do my best to jam it all together.

We lived in the Dix River trailer park twice: once when I was in 4th grade and again when I was in 6th grade. My journey into "real comics" happened during this period. I'm guessing Danny showed me some of his comics and I showed him mine. All I had at the time were probably funnies.

It was the second time at Dix that I got serious. I was in Food Lion with my mom and I immediately gravitated to the magazine rack where my eyes fell on Amazing Spider-Man #238... which happened to be the first appearance of the Hobgoblin. I didn't know shit about shit, I just knew that was an awesome looking comic and I begged for mom to buy it. To her great credit... she did.

This is how I learned about "monthly comics". Every month from then on I would make it my mission to ensure that I ended up at Food Lion or Mac's Village Pantry or some other store and feverishly search the spinner rack for the new issue of ASM (eventually expanding to Spectacular and Web Of). I proudly took my comics to school where Danny and a few other pals (a curly headed kid with chubby cheeks, a fat kid, and a black kid - I do not remember any of their names, sadly) would sit in the stairwell and read them.

Beyond reading comics, Danny and I wanted to draw. We had this thing where we would put a sheet of paper under a comic cover and then use a BALLPOINT PEN to trace over the art, leaving an impression on the paper so we could then "draw" it. We savaged a lot of comics in those days. But I attribute this time period to a substantial leap forward in my interest in art and my ability to draw.

Thank you, Danny, wherever you are. You were a friend and I wish we could have stayed in touch somehow.

THE STANFORD FLEA MARKET VIETNAM VET

There was a tiny flea market very close to the Dix River trailer park. My folks were heavily into flea marketing and auctioning (it was our primary income). So I basically lived at flea markets and auctions between 1979 and 1986.

There was this guy at the Dix River flea market. I believe his name might have been Doug... but somehow that seems wrong. We'll call him Doug, though. He had a slightly oversized head and mom would say there was something wrong with him (in a kind way... she was very kind and compassionate to him).

Doug was a Vietnam vet and even I, as a kid, could tell he was troubled. But he was super nice to me and he was into comics. He had boxes of them he sold at the flea market and he let me pick from the boxes and read what I wanted. He gave me a few Incredible Hulk comics. Probably the very few Hulk comics I ever owned. They featured Woodgod and those guys. I would sit next to Doug and absolutely burn up his ears talking comics and I'm sure I was an annoying little shit that he tolerated.

Thanks, Doug. You were instrumental in setting me on my path and I hope you found peace for the rest of your life.

FLEA MARKET FINDS AND BUDDING CREATOR

Lee was always finding these oddball things he could try to sell. He got his hands on a few cases (CASES!) of Marvel Super Heroes bubble gum and rub-on tattoos. He gave me a whole box (the kind you'd see in the store for display). Naturally I used them all.

He also got hold of some kind of DC Comics shit because I had multiple copies of these little miniature comics featuring the retold origins of Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, etc. I was a Marvel snob even then, but I loved those little comics. I just didn't care enough about DC to actually pick up any DC comics.

It was those mini-comics that gave me the idea to make my own. So I did. I do not remember what year it was. Both the tattoos and mini-comics were sold in 1980, and 1980 was my first time living in the trailer park. But I don't know if Lee would have picked these up at the time or 2 years later. I think it was 1980... which means this was happening prior to my entry into collecting "real" comics.

I drew Hulk and Spider-Man and, I think, The Thing. I folded two sheets of 8.5x11 paper in half and made a digest comic out of them. I'm sure it was pure trash... but it laid the groundwork in my head.

THE SUMMER OF 1983: CARROT STYLE

We moved away from Standford again. We were in Somerset, possibly in one of its sub-areas like Nancy or Burnside. I can't remember. But I remember Flo's Flea Market. I lived at Flo's.

Flo was an indoor/outdoor setup. Indoor there was something truly amazing... comic books. They were a quarter each. Flo got them, apparently, from overflow from local stores. I have no idea how. But her bins were filled with multiple copies of fairly-recent comic books. If a book was on the rack in January, Flo might get multiple copies of it in Feb or March.

And a quarter wasn't so much money that I couldn't swindle a handful out of my mom. So I haunted those boxes day after day and therein I discovered one of the greatest treasures of all time: Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew!

I remember stumbling upon the Captain and thinking "WOW!". I dug through the boxes and managed to find the first issue, which I immediately bought. I carried it off, read it, and came back ASAP with more quarters. I hunted like a god damn predator through those boxes of unorganized comics until I managed to piece together the first 5 or 6 issues of CC. Happy as a pig in shit, I read them over and over.

During the following few months of summer, I scored every other issue she acquired, which brought me up to issue 16. That's it, that's all she had, and that's all I was able to get. But it was more than enough to fire up my imagination for years.

Thanks, Flo. I hope your remaining years were fruitful and pleasant.

THE SAVAGE CIMMERIAN

Time passes. We moved around a little bit more. I eventually happened upon an issue of Savage Sword of Conan at Mac's Village Pantry. It was more costly than other comics and it was black and white. But it was awesome. And it had women. Sometimes... they were naked. But also, lots of violence and muscles and monsters. It was MY JAM. I made it my mission to pick up SSOC every month from then until I was an adult.

My first SSOC, that I can remember, was issue #104 with its sweet-ass Joe Jusko cover. I drooled and drooled over that book all day and night. This was 1984.

My cousin Charlie, younger than me, had picked up a copy of Conan the Barbarian, the regular color series. I read it but was not impressed at the time. It felt like it was meant for kids. What's the "comics code" anyway? Where was the nudity? The neck-to-navel disembowelments? Nope, not for me. I snubbed it. I never once collected that book... what a silly asshole I was. I wish I had got into it.

But then again: poor. Limited funds, you know.

OF DUNGEONS AND MAYBE DRAGONS

It was about this time, the Conan time, that I got into D&D. It was by accident. Kids at school were playing it and I heard them and was observing with curiosity. I was invited to play an elf with a +1 sword. It was amazing. I did a lot of trading with this kid named David, the Dungeon Master. I gave him some of my comics, he gave me the 1981 D&D Expert book. My uncle bought me the red box at the same time. I was SET UP.

We all know that many artists working on those game books were into comics. Willingham and Dee alone were enough to make my mental connection complete. My life went on the comics/RPG path from then on.

APAS AND DIGESTS AND SMALL PRESS

I won't go into this in detail here. It's a whole other story. But by 1987-1988 I was making my own comics and publishing them with friends. This was the natural progression of what I've already told. It was the influence of my good friends in high school that set me on this path. I learned of APAs (Amateur Press Association publications) and digest comics and people who self-published. I wanted in! I got in. I created and published a few dozen comics and contributed to dozens and dozens of other folks' comics through the 90s and into the 2000s. I had a good time.

ENOUGH RAMBLING

That's about it for now. There's a lot more to say, of course. Just how did these events affect me? Which individual comic issues made the biggest impression? Who were my favorite creators? What other comics did I encounter? We all have our stories, don't we?

Love the stuff you love. Be critical of it where merited, but love it nonetheless. These are treasured memories of times long gone. They live in our hearts. I still tear up when I think of me and Danny sitting next to each other in class tracing our comic book covers. I'll never let that feeling go. 

TMC

Not my normal blogging topic, but this is a nice place to put shit.

I haven't found a lot of scans of the old TMC guide. For a brief time in the very early 80s we had TMC and got this monthly guide. In total, it was probably only 2 or 3 months. I remember the movie Excalibur was on TMC at the time.

I have strong memories of sitting on the couch just looking through the guide. I was fascinated by it. There are movies I have never seen before that I remember fondly just because of reading their description and seeing little thumbnail images in these books.

The time period I'm talking about included the films Excalibur, 1941, and The Postman Always Rings Twice (good viewing for a 12 year old).

50

Oh yeah... THIS SHIT happened too.

Not-Inktober + Life Size Life

What is going on, you ask?

I made a pathetic attempt at Inktober, but quickly abandoned the foolish idea. I did the entire month 2 years ago and that was fun and timely. But last October I was neck-deep in Supercalla and my mom's declining health and this year my spirit is just not in it. I'm busy with GOZR and just surviving.

To be honest, I'm in a lull. I get this way from time to time and it sucks but it's just part of my artistic journey. It happens. I get in the lull generally on the heels of some creative high - probably completing Cozmic Metal Heads. Then I eventually come out of it and hit some new creative high. And that's fine with me as long as I keep creating. That's really all I care about, as an artist. I want to keep working. I'm happiest when I'm creating. Games, comics, random drawings... doesn't matter.

And that's the most urgent thing I would tell any creator who is struggling with any aspect of creativity. Just keep doing it. It is the act of creation that matters more than anything. You can dream about creating, and that is fun and rewarding. You can look back fondly on what you created, and that is also fun and rewarding. But nothing compares to the pleasure of being in the act of creation. Especially if you have confidence and faith in the thing you're doing.

That's probably my biggest weakness. I lack faith in my own work. I find comfort and strength in peoples' comments, though they are rare. It is lonely work doing this stuff. Any signal that I'm reaching someone is like fresh air, a cold drink, or a hot meal.

Bit of a rambly post but it's on my mind and I wanted to share it. Now I'm off to noodle about a new game idea. But aren't you working on GOZR?? Yes... but there's room for other ideas to germinate. I love having multiple ideas cooking at once. Though... if I'm honest... I'd prefer to have 100% focus on one thing at a time. Just not in the cards for me, I'm afraid.

State of the Random Address

Hola! What have I been up to during the global pandemic?

Y'know. This and that. I have been consistently working from home for my job, which both a blessing and a curse. I dislike having the realities of the day job invade my creative physical space. But alas, these are strange times and I'm just thankful to be employed.

On the creative side, I spent a few weeks working on GOZR, which I'll talk about more at a later time. It's a fairly time-intensive project because each page of the game is art, fully lettered by hand, illustrated, etc. Plus the creation and writing of the game's mechanics all wrapped into that makes it a slow, slow process with a lot of revising and tweaking after the fact. When I'm done, I'll have something like a 24-32 page game book in comic book physical format (it's not a comic... it's just that I'm planning to print it in the physical form normally reserved for comics).

I took a step away from GOZR a little while back and started drawing a lot of more detailed pinup art. I went on a kind of pinup art spree actually, both in terms of drawing and collecting it. I have been obsessively gathering images from the web and organizing them into folders by artist. It's been a fun distraction, almost a passion.

Hell, it is a passion. Always has been, though. Thinking back, I remember my first real D&D character. Her name was Catina Catrid. She was a black-haired warrior-thief who wore a tiger-skin bikini and had magical claws as weapons. I drew her a lot. Fast forward to my early 20s and I was collecting and drawing adult comics. I have been into sexy fantasy art pretty much since the moment I laid eyes on the back cover of X1: The Isle of Dread. Damn you, Willingham.

Here's a REALLY OLD drawing from the 90s.

But of course friends of this blog will already know that I frequently go off on rants and tangents about this topic.

I have been gaming quite a bit. In addition to gaming every Monday night as I have for over 5 years (!), I have been running DCC RPG once or twice a week and playing in a Call of Cthulhu game once a week or so. And I've been running Psi World, which I don't think I could have seen coming. It's been a blast.

Moving forward, more of the same, I suspect. I'm in a mood to improve my craft. So I've been spending a lot of time studying and appreciating other artists' work and practicing my own craft. I've been thinking about what it means to be an artist and what I want to leave behind. Perhaps I'm more aware of my age and mortality these days. I dunno.

I haven't been in an OSR mood for quite some time. I wrapped up Black Pudding #6 and haven't touched anything related to OSR or D&D in general since, other than playing it every Monday. I don't think this means anything important. It's just part of the natural flow of my  mind. I go through long phases, and I often repeat them. The things I love the most repeat the most often. I have been a lover of D&D and RPGs since 1984 very consistently so I don't see myself "quitting" it, just stepping back a little from time to time. When I think about RPGs right now I am thinking about original systems, not OSR games.

That's it for now.