E.C. With E.C. & C.C.

Making good progress with getting set up to work again. Everything looks good and ready to go - with one slight snag.
I have no clue what my son's password is to access the system, and he's off on long haul trucking runs. No telling when messages will catch up to him. And so we wait...

But, while we wait, let's get an early start. 

Xmas is coming, only ten days away. And only a week until the first night of Hanukkah this year. Maybe it's still a bit early to start doing holiday comics, but these guys got started in July!

Further fuel to the legend that Pat Adams was Ellis Chambers.

I'm gimping the prep work on this little laptop with the tiny screen - so that's all for now. 
My eyes hurt.

page art by Ellis Chambers(?) from Wotalife #11 (1947)

The Future Knows

The sparsity of new posts has been due more to internal shutdown than anything else. The all-too-usual system death killed forward momentum on things and i seem to have been cruising to a stop. Lately doing little more than zoning out to a mental dial tone (do they still have those?) when not watching old episodes of WKRP In Cincinnati or Futurama.

And then Matt hits me with this one -

Well, damn.

Guess i should be trying to get things working again...

screen from Futurama S03E03, of course (ca. 3000)

P&B's Harlequin

So, there's a new cartoon series for those who live in a world without heroes...

Since this country's definition of 'Hero' has been warped by movies like Rambo to mean 'the psychopath who kills people we don't like,' Harley Quinn makes the perfect hero.

Of course, for her to be the hero and to work as a series, it's going to have to be an ugly world. They establish this quickly in her introduction, along with a solid hint of the blood and violence to follow...

Oh, yeah...  did i mention the language? This isn't Batman The Animated Series (where Harley got her start).

There are stark differences...

...to wit...

By yon by - one of the delights of the show for me is hearing Diedrich Bader back in the role of Batman...

And we've got Alan Tudyk as Joker -

Add some lovely sets, including a B.S. inspired Joker's Lair...

Toss it all with a smattering of explosions and a bucket brigade of blood filled dark humor along with a side of personal revelation and by the end of the first episode...

Yeah, i think i might give the show a look and see what happens.

But i'm a twisted old f  k.

BTW - I personally find it interesting to note who gets a creator's credit -

Harley Quinn created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. 
Oh, yeah - anybody who loved Batman The Animated Series and all that's flowed forth from it loves their work. (Actually, i've been a fan of Timm's work since Whisper)

...Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger.
About damn time that the Kane family relented to allow a more truthful credit. They've been doing nothing but adding shame to the Kane family name for years.

...and Killer Croc? Interesting. Created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton.
Well, you know we love Don Newton around here. Somehow, despite a fairly amazing body of work as both writer and editor, we haven't visited with Conway as yet. (Even more surprising since i was a big Mack Bolan fan, too) I wonder if they got a creator's credit due to when Killer Croc was created, or if it was keyed to Conway's contract if he was editing at the time?

Either way, it's cool to see their names up there.

screens from Harley Quinn S01E01 (2019)

Moving Pictures

Still thoroughly degumptionated around here. I need to do some cleaning, clearing, rewiring and furnituring before i can put the alternate system into service.

Maybe today - we'll see.

Meanwhile, since there's nothing doing in these parts, let's step out and look somewhere else on the net.

Are you familiar with comic artist Kerry (or even Terry) Callen? We've seen his Super Antics here once previously, but have yet to get back to him. Every now and again, he likes to play with old covers. The results can be entertaining...

If you like those, you can find more of them, and some animated interiors as well, available on Kerry's blog - along with a variety of other things, including unpublished artwork. He doesn't post often, but it can be entertaining.

And i like those covers.

Oddly enough, there's also a strong connection between Kerry and the artwork seen in the Maintainance Report <sic> a couple posts back. Maybe the ol' peripatetic brain will wander over that way...

cover art animated by Kerry Callen for Kerry Callen Does Stuff (2014, 2016)

Progress? Report

Well, i thought we had things in hand - yesterday things seemed all good with the main system. It ran fine all day while setting various drivers and watching movies and such.
And then this morning i tried to prep pages for a post. System died within 10 minutes.
And now it's looking like the motherboard 
may be the most likely culprit.

Man, i miss those days when i used to keep a render farm running.

There are two more components slated to arrive in the next day or so, and a potential replacement system, after i get that new desk into place. So, hopefully we'll be back to operational status by the end of the week - one way or another.

Meanwhile, we need an image!

Last night was the anniversary of John Lennon's murder. So, here's a painting that i posted once before, but somewhat larger this time. Still greatly reduced from the 6000x9000 original, but at least anyone interested has a better shot at sorting out the quotes at this size. You can even kind of make out my signature, if you really want to waste your time...

(That pattern in the background on the left is actually the titles to the songs he wrote)

Dear John by -3- (201? I'd have to hunt. somewhere between 2011-14, i think)

Maintainance Report

Meanwhile, lurking in a dark alley...

While the main system and i are down in the dark, i'm in the right state of mind to be doing drudge work. Some less visible happenings are going on currently.

A while back, Google/Blogger decided to freshen things up a bit. One of the decisions they made at that time was to change the default size on displayed text. It flipped from Normal to Smallest. So folks viewing old posts would see the small credits at the bottom of the post at twice the size of the actual post. Some readers may recall when i was trying to sort out what had happened. Eventually i realized that normal wasn't Normal, and i've hand set the text to normal size since that point. But that left hundreds of posts at the tiny text size.

So, i've been going through and setting each post by hand. We've caught up to the end of 2017, with the exception of one post from the King Kirby 100. Blogger will not allow me to edit that post unless i delete part. So, it stays tiny.

Only another 500 posts or so to go...

Commenters will notice that there is now a verification delay before your remarks appear. Unfortunately, a rabid seeker of child porn has issues, and so we're filtering to keep you readers from having to step in it.

So, what's the pic at the top? I wanted to include an image, as is my wont, but only have access to a scattering of old material at the moment. I believe i ran a Pulp Fiction Cover previously for Urban Zombie Tales. That's the painting without the text.
And, in case i'm misremembering, here's the texted version -

art by -3- (2014)

A Necessary Reminder

Somehow, it seems like a good time to repeat this Public Service post from 2017.

(This image is sized for 8x10 printing at 150dpi for easy distribution. Click for full print version)

Children In Charge

Just in case anybody had any respect left for the office of the President, a pathetic child's Rocky fantasy was posted this past week. And he didn't even have the decency to use the one where the Russian beats Rocky around for the source of the pic.

Well, i got the desktop system running for an hour, and here's what i think of the sad silly postings.
I captioned one, and left the other blank for you to caption.

Can we PLEASE get some adults back into the mix?

Yes, feel free to circulate them since you know i don't do that social stuff.

Rocky Trump Trump As Rocky Deluded Trump Fantasy Fat Boy Rocky Fat Trump Delusional Donald Infant President Trump Fat Baby

Pacific Northwest Hermit Visual Reference

As you may have guessed, main system still down. Or down again, to be more accurate. It's gone through a couple fixes, and it seemed to be good - ran for a couple of hours doing everything from test renders to games and vids without any issus.

But 5 minutes after i tried to resume work, the system went dark again. The Universe really hates the idea of me producing new artwork. It's been doing a damn fine job of preventing it for the last few years.

New components will hopefully arrive in a week. In the meanwhile, i believe i'll be putting another system into service soon. My oldest son is currently on long haul trucking runs with his lovely lady, so his desktop box sits unused.

The question becomes, will my hardware curse transfer over if his system goes into service here? Oh, the suspense...

Meanwhile, the previous post on the History murdering villain Paul Termann to the contrary, i do prefer to include at least one image with every post. With that in mind, here's a bit of chicken scratching from a few years back - a fairly up-to-date and accurate visual guide to the Pacific Northwest Hermit Artist in the wild. 

Just in case you spot it wandering outside the cave...

chicken scratchings by -3- (2016)