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Artwork by -3-. Yoda by the log in the swamp on Dagoba. (You know what god owns Yoda!)
25 July 2017
Breed You Should Not!
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The Japanese get all the blame
Oh, sure - they may have given Hentai a name, popularized it, and ... well, let's just say they added the in-womb cameras and leave at that, eh?
But, the basic elements were around before that happened. Urotsukidoji and La Blue Girl were at the tip of the cultural tentacle that so wetly slithered into our national consciousness and wrapped tight around the fap centers of some. That was back in 1989 - 40 years in just a couple more. By that point, however, it was somewhat familiar territory for me. Often as not, that territory was mapped by comics.
Let's go back a decade & a half before that tentacle came oozing on over - back to 1975.
The remainder of this post, featuring a breakdown of The Nameless Ravisher tale in Vampirella #40, has been moved to our Back Room due to adult content. Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post.
...
And now you know - Adult rated content isn't limited to Blue Monday, that's merely a regularly scheduled dose.
But, the basic elements were around before that happened. Urotsukidoji and La Blue Girl were at the tip of the cultural tentacle that so wetly slithered into our national consciousness and wrapped tight around the fap centers of some. That was back in 1989 - 40 years in just a couple more. By that point, however, it was somewhat familiar territory for me. Often as not, that territory was mapped by comics.
Let's go back a decade & a half before that tentacle came oozing on over - back to 1975.
The remainder of this post, featuring a breakdown of The Nameless Ravisher tale in Vampirella #40, has been moved to our Back Room due to adult content. Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post.
...
And now you know - Adult rated content isn't limited to Blue Monday, that's merely a regularly scheduled dose.
The Nameless Ravager by Flaxman Loew & Leopold Sanchez, from Vampirella #40(1975)
24 July 2017
6-Up, from the Dawn of Don
Un-Comics #001
Well, damn. No Logo. Un-Logo?
We'll have to fix that.
Anyway... What's Un-Comics?
That's whay we'll be calling comics that don't appear in comic books. Comics found in other locations, magazines, books, training manuals, etc.,. You never know what little oddities and gems are hiding outside the marked territory of comics. They're usually fairly short affairs, so when possible the complete story will run here.
Today's tale is a 6-pager from Don Lomax who, a decade later, would bring us his awesome Vietnam Journal. His wikipedia entry says his first professional comics work was in 1979 (Atilla the Frog, Heavy Metal magazine). This tale appeared a year before that in an odd little genre magazine called Space Trek Special 1978. (This was a mash-up title from back when people still remembered that Space: 1999 was a thing)
I had only just discovered 2000AD shortly before that time (we had a pretty damn good comic shop in town) and reading this gave me the feeling of what 2000AD might be like if it was published in San Francisco (home of the Underground Comix).
Here's Don Lomax's Gin Ridge Encounter:
For bonus fun, the story ran immediately following this full page ad:
Well, damn. No Logo. Un-Logo?
We'll have to fix that.
Anyway... What's Un-Comics?
That's whay we'll be calling comics that don't appear in comic books. Comics found in other locations, magazines, books, training manuals, etc.,. You never know what little oddities and gems are hiding outside the marked territory of comics. They're usually fairly short affairs, so when possible the complete story will run here.
Today's tale is a 6-pager from Don Lomax who, a decade later, would bring us his awesome Vietnam Journal. His wikipedia entry says his first professional comics work was in 1979 (Atilla the Frog, Heavy Metal magazine). This tale appeared a year before that in an odd little genre magazine called Space Trek Special 1978. (This was a mash-up title from back when people still remembered that Space: 1999 was a thing)
I had only just discovered 2000AD shortly before that time (we had a pretty damn good comic shop in town) and reading this gave me the feeling of what 2000AD might be like if it was published in San Francisco (home of the Underground Comix).
Here's Don Lomax's Gin Ridge Encounter:
For bonus fun, the story ran immediately following this full page ad:
page art by Don Lomax from Space Trek Special (1978)
What phase is the moon?
NOTE: This post has been edited to conform to the blog's new status. Part has been moved to our Back Room with a link provided at the bottom.
At one point while growing up, we lived in a 'blue' county, so called because it was subject to old Blue Laws. Blue Laws was a term used to refer to attempts to legislate morality, usually by the highly unmoral seeking power or feeling guilty. On Sundays where we lived, the alcohol cabinets in the stores were chained shut, and bars closed. It was illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the county on Sunday, so you tried to stock up friday or saturday, and hope your friends did, too, so they wouldn't drink you dry before Monday came around.
This was Blue Sunday.
In general, this worked out for most folks with only minor grousing about the situation. But for the hard drinkers, the young partiers who get cut off halfway through the weekend, it was ... well, agonizing - according to them. This led to savagely overdrinking and hard partying on Monday - the kind that leaves you waking up naked and not being able to identify the naked person(s) next to you.
This was Blue Monday.
And so we have a name for our latest feature:
Here we'll take a look at what we'll call 'Blue' comics & art for the sake of the feature.
Sometimes we'll look at various 'adult' comics from around the globe, other times we'll just look at the pretty pictures. Like today.
Here's a news flash - many artists often draw naked things. From learning experiences to expressions of passion to desperate need, the reasons vary widely. Some hide it, some flaunt it. Some do it for pleasure, some for attention, some only for money or to please others. Sometimes, it's the most obvious artists whose work is nearly erotica anyway, other times it's the last artist you might expect. (See our next Blue Monday for a potential example)
For our inaugural episode, let's not focus on any one artist - let's go with a theme. Superman Artists. I'm sure there's lots more out there. It's a new feature on a new blog, so no lengthy research is involved. Just 3x3 pics from 10 Superman Artists, ranging from Joe Shuster to Bruce Timm - the artists who brought us the first Superman, and the modern animated Superman. These are two of the most famous blue art creators among the comics pros - Joe Shuster due to publication of a book not long back calling attention to his fetish art, and Bruce Timm due to the publication of his own collection of paintings and drawings. I'm only using one example from each artist here, and zero context information for this quick review.
This post contains adult material and the remaining contents have been moved to The Other Voice Of ODD! - please follow this link to continue reading.
At one point while growing up, we lived in a 'blue' county, so called because it was subject to old Blue Laws. Blue Laws was a term used to refer to attempts to legislate morality, usually by the highly unmoral seeking power or feeling guilty. On Sundays where we lived, the alcohol cabinets in the stores were chained shut, and bars closed. It was illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the county on Sunday, so you tried to stock up friday or saturday, and hope your friends did, too, so they wouldn't drink you dry before Monday came around.
This was Blue Sunday.
In general, this worked out for most folks with only minor grousing about the situation. But for the hard drinkers, the young partiers who get cut off halfway through the weekend, it was ... well, agonizing - according to them. This led to savagely overdrinking and hard partying on Monday - the kind that leaves you waking up naked and not being able to identify the naked person(s) next to you.
This was Blue Monday.
And so we have a name for our latest feature:
Here we'll take a look at what we'll call 'Blue' comics & art for the sake of the feature.
Sometimes we'll look at various 'adult' comics from around the globe, other times we'll just look at the pretty pictures. Like today.
Here's a news flash - many artists often draw naked things. From learning experiences to expressions of passion to desperate need, the reasons vary widely. Some hide it, some flaunt it. Some do it for pleasure, some for attention, some only for money or to please others. Sometimes, it's the most obvious artists whose work is nearly erotica anyway, other times it's the last artist you might expect. (See our next Blue Monday for a potential example)
For our inaugural episode, let's not focus on any one artist - let's go with a theme. Superman Artists. I'm sure there's lots more out there. It's a new feature on a new blog, so no lengthy research is involved. Just 3x3 pics from 10 Superman Artists, ranging from Joe Shuster to Bruce Timm - the artists who brought us the first Superman, and the modern animated Superman. These are two of the most famous blue art creators among the comics pros - Joe Shuster due to publication of a book not long back calling attention to his fetish art, and Bruce Timm due to the publication of his own collection of paintings and drawings. I'm only using one example from each artist here, and zero context information for this quick review.
This post contains adult material and the remaining contents have been moved to The Other Voice Of ODD! - please follow this link to continue reading.
23 July 2017
She hasn't been promoted yet?
Just a quickie thought on another interesting bit out of San Diego this weekend.
It was announced that the Captain Marvel movie would take place back in the 90's, featuring a still two-eyed Nick Fury. San Diego Mercy General overflows with ruptured eardrums after the crowd exploded, certainly.
It's already been announced that she appears in the next Avengers movie.
This means she'll be the most experienced hero in the MCU, with two decades of super-heroing behind her, excepting Thor. If she's spent that interim time with the formation of S.W.O.R.D., she may even know more about Thanos than any of our previously established Earthbound heroes.
Interesting possibilities to contemplate...
UPDATE:
Nope. They've announced that Captain Marvel is NOT in the third Avengers movie after all. We'll have to wait for her to show in the 4th.
But, we get to watch her and Nick Fury fighting Skrulls. I'm good.
It was announced that the Captain Marvel movie would take place back in the 90's, featuring a still two-eyed Nick Fury. San Diego Mercy General overflows with ruptured eardrums after the crowd exploded, certainly.
It's already been announced that she appears in the next Avengers movie.
This means she'll be the most experienced hero in the MCU, with two decades of super-heroing behind her, excepting Thor. If she's spent that interim time with the formation of S.W.O.R.D., she may even know more about Thanos than any of our previously established Earthbound heroes.
Interesting possibilities to contemplate...
UPDATE:
Nope. They've announced that Captain Marvel is NOT in the third Avengers movie after all. We'll have to wait for her to show in the 4th.
But, we get to watch her and Nick Fury fighting Skrulls. I'm good.
Bending Reality with Bob Haney
I made mention the other day of a post Snell had made over at Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep about the Blue Bolt tale Blue Bolt #24. It's a glorious piece that not only breaks the 4th wall, but tears it down to make use of it. If you haven't already, Go Read It. This post isn't going anywhere.
This started me to seeking some other medium benders, especially with that last little remark from creator George Mandel at the end of that tale. While other interesting bits turned up (like Jack Kirby drawing Blue Bolt with Joe Simon for a half dozen stories about 45 issues before the Kirby Db first lists him working on the title).
Not too long after, a long forgotten bit of medium bending insanity dropping into my path for rediscovery. I might typically lean towards 'fun' or 'glory' or something instead of 'insanity' for our description here, but insanity is definitely the right word when we're dealing with Bob Haney. Haney was arguably the most insane comic book writer of all time. Don't assume that's meant as a negative assessment. His insanity was candescant, and willful. Logic? Reality? Sanity? These are tools for the weak! Bob Haney eschewed all such limitations and just span yarns. Nothing mattered except the narrative flow through Haney's Madworld. His stories might not make any sense the moment you stop to think about them, but that's okay. Most of the time he's not going to slow down to let you stop and think. I'm sure he'll come up again here, but (once again) just go over to Slay Monstrobot and click on the Bob Haney label. With 66 posts under that label, you'll get a pretty clear picture.
Of course, this might give you a fair picture, too:
While that exact scene doesn't happen in the comic, it's not far off the mark.
Let's take a look.
Old Man Sgt. Rock is in town again (Haney loved using him) working the same case as Batman from a different angle. He's tracking stolen military gear (1000 Super Rifles, experimental ordinance) that is being used by The 1000 to cause trouble in Gotham. (Apparently Batman reduced their numbers by 90% before they decided to relocate to Metropolis)
Batman & Rock team up, as they have many times before, and are tracking down scattered stashes of the stolen rifles. All fairly typical for the time for the first five pages.
Then this happens:
Jim makes his escape from the storeroom and flees into the night, making his way to the lighthouse residence of his artist friend, Chuck. (real person? we never meet him, so unknown) There he manages to find some of Chuck's art materials and get to work, drawing Sgt. Rock saving Batman from an explosive trap. But, now what?
Batman and Rock continue the search independently, following different leads. Both survive near death encounters (this was pre-demigod Batman), leading Rock to muse, "It's like somebody's playing Guardian Angel for the old Sarge!". Indeed:
Murray? Yep. They're dragging Murray Boltinoff, Editor, into this fracas!
"As the Editor wracks his brain to help the Brave and Bold Duo," Jim Aparo sits by the phone waiting. Meanwhile, Batman and Rock use the fear of rabid rats to extract the location of their base from a captive gang member and are soon heading to confront The 1000 in their lair. The Long Night passes while Aparo waits...
And there you have it. Sure, Julie Schwartz, Cary Bates, and Elliot S! Maggin came bopping on through here before, but they had to breach the barrier between worlds and cross over from Earth Prime to Earth One to do it. Not Bob Haney and company. Haney makes his own rules, tells his story, and everything else be damned. Questions about how and why are for lesser mortals.
And, y'know... We didn't care. We knew it made no sense. We knew he was crazy (as a storyteller). And we also knew he was going to do something we didn't expect.
And we loved him for it.
I'll tell ya, though. Never pictured him as a hairy, bearded hunter in the woods type.
This started me to seeking some other medium benders, especially with that last little remark from creator George Mandel at the end of that tale. While other interesting bits turned up (like Jack Kirby drawing Blue Bolt with Joe Simon for a half dozen stories about 45 issues before the Kirby Db first lists him working on the title).
Not too long after, a long forgotten bit of medium bending insanity dropping into my path for rediscovery. I might typically lean towards 'fun' or 'glory' or something instead of 'insanity' for our description here, but insanity is definitely the right word when we're dealing with Bob Haney. Haney was arguably the most insane comic book writer of all time. Don't assume that's meant as a negative assessment. His insanity was candescant, and willful. Logic? Reality? Sanity? These are tools for the weak! Bob Haney eschewed all such limitations and just span yarns. Nothing mattered except the narrative flow through Haney's Madworld. His stories might not make any sense the moment you stop to think about them, but that's okay. Most of the time he's not going to slow down to let you stop and think. I'm sure he'll come up again here, but (once again) just go over to Slay Monstrobot and click on the Bob Haney label. With 66 posts under that label, you'll get a pretty clear picture.
Of course, this might give you a fair picture, too:
While that exact scene doesn't happen in the comic, it's not far off the mark.
Let's take a look.
Old Man Sgt. Rock is in town again (Haney loved using him) working the same case as Batman from a different angle. He's tracking stolen military gear (1000 Super Rifles, experimental ordinance) that is being used by The 1000 to cause trouble in Gotham. (Apparently Batman reduced their numbers by 90% before they decided to relocate to Metropolis)
Batman & Rock team up, as they have many times before, and are tracking down scattered stashes of the stolen rifles. All fairly typical for the time for the first five pages.
Then this happens:
Batman and Rock continue the search independently, following different leads. Both survive near death encounters (this was pre-demigod Batman), leading Rock to muse, "It's like somebody's playing Guardian Angel for the old Sarge!". Indeed:
Murray? Yep. They're dragging Murray Boltinoff, Editor, into this fracas!
"As the Editor wracks his brain to help the Brave and Bold Duo," Jim Aparo sits by the phone waiting. Meanwhile, Batman and Rock use the fear of rabid rats to extract the location of their base from a captive gang member and are soon heading to confront The 1000 in their lair. The Long Night passes while Aparo waits...
And, y'know... We didn't care. We knew it made no sense. We knew he was crazy (as a storyteller). And we also knew he was going to do something we didn't expect.
And we loved him for it.
I'll tell ya, though. Never pictured him as a hairy, bearded hunter in the woods type.
cover & pages from The Brave & The Bold #124 by Bob Haney & Jim Aparo (& Murray Boltinoff)(1976)
Sunday Revelations
Who's Running This Show
Ayuh, the "About Me" notes are sparse. Who The Frell is running this show? A damn Number?
And yet, for the past 20 years and more, that has been my name. There was a time when I heard "Three" more often than my birth name when someone was talking to me, even family.* -3- is how i've been credited professionally in video games and comics since '97 or earlier. I'm an artist, and society allows us certain ... insanities. Up to a point. But it's not hiding behind a number as some have speculated. It was inspired by Charles Schulz, actually, and the character Five in Peanuts. (The one with the hip hop dance moves in the ancient Charlie Brown Christmas special) He and his sisters are number named. Some thought their father was protesting the system and the overwhelming amount of numbers that accumulated with identity in the 20th century. He explained that it was quite the opposite. It was his surrender to the new order of things.
Me, i'm jumping to the front and grabbing the best number before they start assigning. The hyphens surround the -3- in my signatures for another reason. With the little tail on the 3 in my signature, all the shapes are there to build my initials, too.
Okay, that still tells you precisely dick about who is me. Hmm....
Let's jump to the origin strip from an old web comic:
And there you can see all three ways i sign my work in that first panel.
These days you won't see my work often; special projects on occasion that my peripatetic mind is willing. Most of my work is simply for myself these days, or gifts. While i may be able to focus in short bursts for things like blog posts, sustained reliable concentration is beyond me these days. That's why i've gone full hermit for quite a while, with this blog being shouts from the cave. But when i did work:
Quite incomplete, but sufficient. And more to the point, all the covers that were sitting on the external drive i searched. It's funny - i've been published on 5 continents and at one point was bringing in a six figure income from the artwork. And now that i'm disabled and hidden from view, my artwork is vastly superior to that for which i was paid so well. I'm pretty sure that's another of the Universe's little jokes, i'm just not quite sure who the joke is on.
Meanwhile...
On the movie/media front, my tastes are wide-ranging with a step to the side in general. Odd films, by the very definition, bring something different with them. And, as mentioned previously, movies & shows from other countries can hold great appeal for much the same reason. For a lot of other reasons, too - like actual suspense (Heroes Die!) or genres that simply don't exist in Hollywood. (Spooky Comedies (The Jitters not withstanding. Besides, that was James Hong, not Hollywood)). Back in pre-WWWeb days (the internet was vastly different, though IRC & Usenet helped) we had to trade tapes with people living in other countries to find these things. Having access to gear that could translate between NTSC & PAL formats could make one a god.
When i inevitably start talking about "Foreign Cinema" - fight that reaction to let your eyes glaze over and mind wander through your playlist. I'm not usually going to talk about art films. I'm going to talk about demented Spanish versions of Monty Python. About Thai superheroes. About Russian superheroes that seemed influenced by Marvel's old Soviet Super Soldiers. About Eastern Westerns. About Moon Nazis. Hopping Vampires. El Santo (teaming up with Captain America to take down Spider-Man). Spanish Sci-Fi madness that looks like Richard Corben had a hand in it. (No, don't worry. Better than Corben's actual films (unless he's done newer ones i've yet to see))
Umm... anyway. Generally fun stuff. No panic, no worries.
Next Question
What is the source of the artwork for the title image of "The Voice Of ODD!"?
That would be one of my paintings, How To Start A Religion:
This image contains nudity and has been
removed from this version of the post.
To view the original content,
please follow this link to
And there's the Adult Warning label justified.
Well, that's plenty of 'revelations' for one day, eh?
But one more important thing...
THIS is my Superman:
Okay, literally in this case. (Superman: Protector Of Earth by -3- (ca. 2014))
But I'll accept Tyler Hoechlin just fine, too.
*(Now they mostly just say "RUN!!!")
Savagely Stupid or Hail Mary Play for Salvation?
One interestingly odd bit of information that came out of San Diego this weekend is that The Flash movie is going to be based on Flashpoint, the story-line in which Flash inadvertently massively changes the timeline/reality.
My first thought was, "Well, that's stupid. You're going to have him change things before we even see his world before the change? Kinda kills the impact."
Seriously - choosing a story-line that's whole point was to shake up the status quo seems like a terribly poor choice for the movie that establishes the status quo. It would be very typical of a lot of Hollywood thinking, to go jump straight into Big Events without ever giving us the character build up that makes us give a damn about the event. This holds especially true for Warner Brothers and their hurry-and-catch-up attitude towards the DCEU.
But... (here comes the deluded optimist part of my fractured brain) ...what if?
What if this will be their attempt to fix things. What if this is a plan to abandon the dark Elseworlds universe they've been trapped in since Man Of Steel? What if the reset at the end of the movie brings us a recognizable version of Superman? Fan reaction to Tyler Hoechlin's version on Supergirl must have been a hell of a shock to the WB movie heads.
Sure, they'd still have to deal with the painful stupidity part of the stories (another day), but this could be one hell of a head start if they were going to take advantage of this opportunity for a course correction, eh?
My first thought was, "Well, that's stupid. You're going to have him change things before we even see his world before the change? Kinda kills the impact."
Seriously - choosing a story-line that's whole point was to shake up the status quo seems like a terribly poor choice for the movie that establishes the status quo. It would be very typical of a lot of Hollywood thinking, to go jump straight into Big Events without ever giving us the character build up that makes us give a damn about the event. This holds especially true for Warner Brothers and their hurry-and-catch-up attitude towards the DCEU.
But... (here comes the deluded optimist part of my fractured brain) ...what if?
What if this will be their attempt to fix things. What if this is a plan to abandon the dark Elseworlds universe they've been trapped in since Man Of Steel? What if the reset at the end of the movie brings us a recognizable version of Superman? Fan reaction to Tyler Hoechlin's version on Supergirl must have been a hell of a shock to the WB movie heads.
Sure, they'd still have to deal with the painful stupidity part of the stories (another day), but this could be one hell of a head start if they were going to take advantage of this opportunity for a course correction, eh?
22 July 2017
A Far More Fearsome Manner Of Garb
It seems that i just cannot stop imitating Snell. He has a regular feature over at Slay, Monstrobot that (usually rightly) mocks bad costume design.
He's got it covered. I had no intention of running this feature. None at all. But (and there's always one of those, ain't there?), when reading this morning this outfit just leapt off the pages and bitch-slapped my eyes while that word balloon mocked my sense of reality:
"A Far More Fearsome Manner Of Garb"?!?
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Gil Kane - He rocks up in the top pantheon of my comic book world. But there's been a serious miscommunication somewhere along the way here.
Let's place the blame on M.M. Jr. there, okay? After all, he grew up alone with his father in an alien dimension after some form of divine birth? Spontaneous generation? MM trying to use that wand on his 'biological material' and succeeding? The story never makes clear HOW Molecule Man has a son. Maybe Earth's superheroes threw an infant in with him when they ousted him to that dimension? You wouldn't think they'd go along with something like that, but then - look at what happened to Carol Danvers...
Anyway, the combination & juxaposition of word and image here hit so hard, it even formed a logo:
And so a feature is born. But, damn.
Folks gonna have to work to to get their weak dren over this starting bar.
He's got it covered. I had no intention of running this feature. None at all. But (and there's always one of those, ain't there?), when reading this morning this outfit just leapt off the pages and bitch-slapped my eyes while that word balloon mocked my sense of reality:
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Gil Kane - He rocks up in the top pantheon of my comic book world. But there's been a serious miscommunication somewhere along the way here.
Let's place the blame on M.M. Jr. there, okay? After all, he grew up alone with his father in an alien dimension after some form of divine birth? Spontaneous generation? MM trying to use that wand on his 'biological material' and succeeding? The story never makes clear HOW Molecule Man has a son. Maybe Earth's superheroes threw an infant in with him when they ousted him to that dimension? You wouldn't think they'd go along with something like that, but then - look at what happened to Carol Danvers...
Anyway, the combination & juxaposition of word and image here hit so hard, it even formed a logo:
And so a feature is born. But, damn.
Folks gonna have to work to to get their weak dren over this starting bar.
From Marvel Two-In-One #1 by Steve Gerber, Gil Kane & Joe Sinnott (1974)
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