DRAG'ON

Here's this Rodd Racer homage, the nefarious villain Drag'on. Rodd Racer is an amazing creator owned comic by this maniacal dude Toby Cypress, that kills it. It's incredible because it's a chase comic about these bonkers OG car racers in this sprawling weirdly Hugh Ferriss-ish cityscape, but has this great gangster ass noir overtone that sets up the business that is the chases/races/disgraces. Published by Image earlier this year, in July. It's definitely still available, and I give it my highest possible recommendation. RODD RACER IS THE GOODS!

I had every intention of posting this a long time ago, but it slipped through the cracks. So now I'm trying to catch up and get my blog chops back. I may post the original for sale in the Shiner Comics Store, but that won't be for a couple days.

Anyway, Toby Cypress is also doing a crazy webcomic blog thing called KURSK, which you can check out here: http://kurskcomics.blogspot.com. As of this post, he's got 12 pages up, but hasn't posted any since July, right before San Diego Comic Con this year. So, here's me calling him out and saying GET ON IT, SON! I want more KURSK!

I can't fault him too hard though, being as he's one of the artists behind Blue Estate, another Image comic that blows my mind. It's a collaboration between a fistful of artists including Viktor Kalvachev, Nathan Fox, and Robert Valley. Also credited are the writer Andrew Osborne and Kosta Yanev. I've only really read the first issue, but I've got the Vol. One trade in the mail. I ordered that shit off Thwipster!

Okay, more sooon!

World in Shambles

All the way from Tokyo, Melt Banana returns to the Grog Shop later this month, with Tera Melos and Cave Bear.

Hey, it was really fun to draw this. For real, guys. I kind of wish those Samurai half-face masks, called Menpō, would catch on as a fashion accessory, where like, mid-western suburban teenagers were all wearing them to high school football games and parents and teachers would freak out about it. Fox News could do a campaign to get them banned from schools and then it would become a big election issue. Teenagers would take to the street rioting, the National Guard would get called in. The Great Menpō Craze of Fall 2011 would leave the world in shambles.

Also, BPRD patch. Goddammit, I love the BPRD Comics. There's a new Abe Sapien series out called The Devil Does Not Jest that has some of the most awesome comic pages by this dude James Harren. The action sequences in particular are fucking great. Harren is the strange/compelling combination of Paul Pope and like, someone like James Stokoe. I hope the Dark Horse can hang onto him and keep feeding him more and more comics with monster fight scenes to draw.

More posters on the way, I promise.

This Pile of Skulls

As far as heavy music goes, Kylesa's Static Tensions is one of my favorite records so far this year. It kinda really reminds me of Disengage at times. That's a good thing. I know nothing about Saviours, but I think Red Fang might be totally awesome. You probably couldn't make a pot brownie big enough to get me into Lionize. Sorry dudes.



It's cool how people fucking flip out and love the living shit out of Converge. However, as maniacal as fanatics get about them, my motherfucking jam has always been High on Fire. I listen to The Art of Self Defense at least once a week, every week. I recently revisited Surrounded by Thieves, and it kills me how far out ahead of the pack these dudes were then.

Speaking of dudes way far out there ahead of the pack, KEELHAUL absolutely slayed on Friday. You can tell they've been touring, as the set was so tight and crafted from start to finish. Triumphant Return to Obscurity is absolutely fucking awesome. Grip that shit as soon as you can.

Here's the black and whites, if you were there on the 21st, or hit The Grog this week, you either gripped them, of still can probably grip prints of these. There weren't a lot. I didn't keep any, so... I dunno. Booya:





Speaking of being high on things like fire and pot brownies, I recently had a strange request. I was asked if I could draw on my friend's 16 year old niece's back brace that she has to wear after an injury sustained from a near fatal car crash. So, being a paraplegic, and having had to wear a back brace myself at one point (the second time I broke my back), I guess I kind of jumped to the conclusion that she was paralyzed in the accident. So, for two weeks I mentally prepared myself to talk to a girl who was newly paralyzed at about the same time in her life as when I initially broke my spine. It was a pretty strange feeling, and I was sort of slightly apprehensive. Not that I was worried about it, but I definitely felt odd. I thought a lot about that time for me; about returning to high school after and how that felt, how little I actually cared about it. I was pretty absorbed in relearning how to live my life and figuring out the parameters for everything. It's such a drastic change, depending on the circumstances.

Anyway, this friend and her niece were both getting tattoos/piercings, respectively, so we set up a time to do the drawing at a Tattoo Parlor, Addicted Body Art Studios, in Parma. Holy shit, I can't tell you how relieved I was when the niece showed up WALKING around in her back brace. It was so weird. I had built this tension in my mind and it turned out to be for nothing. Probably a question I should have asked in the beginning. Hell, my friend may have even TOLD ME she wasn't paralyzed and I maybe just didn't listen, due to being a dummy and hearing "near fatal car crash" all at once. I was so relieved that she's not paralyzed. What a trip.

The niece is a big Bob Marley fan, which I knew from my friend, so I drew this jam on the brace. Kind of a crummy blurry photo, but it's the one I got:



No, you're right. I'm a shitty photographer. I should really only be allowed to draw things. At all. Here's me and a cat in my lap in The Cave:

Six for the Price of One

Flyer Month continues, drew all these at once. Feel bad some of these shows are like, tonight and tomorrow. Not much for promo time. Anyway... yeah:

Samurai

Wolf Eyes, Emeralds, Skingraft.

I like drawing shit that I then cover up with text. Also, recurring characters. This and the Nunslaughter jam are my first two pieces for the Flyer Month. Right now I'm furiously scrambling on a couple others. I'm really pumped for my poster for March 1st.

Andy Mech

Big Congrats go out to Andy MacDonald for his Marvel Comics debut as the artist for Punisher War Journal #26:



He did not draw this cover, but his name is ON it. It's a really good issue though. Matt Fraction, y'all. Great colors by our pal Nick Filardi, too.

Here's a piece. Andy drew it. I colored it:

Newtonian Political Gorillazilla

Been trying to stay nailed to my drawing table lately, but it's a lot harder that you would think. Short of actually physically NAILING myself to the table, which would create a lot of other complications and make it impossible to draw anyway, I don't know what else to do to maximize the time I have available for draw my brains out. I find that listening to Lightning Bolt is the best way to stay on task for hours at a time.

Here's the line art for this thing. Mostly inspired by my homie Brandon Graham. There was an instance in a coffee shop on Avenue A when he gave me these 11x17 photocopies on a brown card stock of pieces from his sketchbook. It was one of the highlights of my goddamned life.



The Samurai shit continues. I recently caught Kunoichi: Lady Ninja, Slaughter in The Snow, Kibakichi 2, and Samurai Resurrection.

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja is about a group of lady ninja called Kunoichi. From 1998 it's one of the newer samurai movies I've seen as part of watching all Samurai movies ever made. Honestly, this isn't exactly a Samurai movie in the strict sense, it's more of a "martial arts" "ninja" movie. Then again, Yagyu Jubei is one of the main characters and there is a lot of samurai sword fighting, so... I'm putting on the list. Anyway, this movie is basically like if when you were a teenager and on a lazy boring summer weekday you went to 7-11 and got 44 oz. Slurpies and bags of candy then hung around the parking lot of that 7-11 talking about all the crazy shit you would put in a ninja movie if you ever got the chance... yeah, it's basically this movie. There's a lot of violence and nudity and funny things that are only funny in Japanese movies. Totally ridiculous and really noticeably of the 1990s.

Slaughter in the Snow is the third, and my favorite, of the epic Mikagomi Trilogy of Samurai films (The pother films being Trail of Blood, and The Fearless Avenger). This series is also deeply a product of it's time, the early 70s, with the pop-jazzy rock score, and the fountains of opaque orange blood. These were also more action oriented "martial arts" movies, rather than the long play dramas of this genre. The fights are really cool, but seriously... it seems like aside from the heroes and maybe the main villains, every other samurai, of which there are hundreds, is a total fucking pussy. Anyway, I get the feeling this wasn't a trilogy, or wasn't planned as such. Mostly because it's a revenge quest story about this guy, Jokichi, wandering around trying to kill these two evil yakuza bosses that were the ones who ordered that his wife raped, then her and their child murdered. That's one of the unique things about this series, the authority figures are yakuza, and not government officials. Most samurai movies deal mostly in politics and shoguns and shit. This is pretty much about criminals fighting. ANYWAY, my original point is that he never actually kills the last guy he has to kill to get revenge! They just leave it with him walking off into the mountains as his theme song plays! Very much like the last Lone Wolf and Cub film.

Kibakichi 2 was WAAAYYY better than Kibakichi. Just leaps and bounds all around. Also a "martial arts" action movie, not too much drama. Actually, untrue, there is more drama in this one than in the first, but... it's better told. There's just more likable characters this time around, being as Kibakichi himself is kind of vague and abstract. Anyway, you probably don't need to see the first to get the sequel, and I recommend the sequel way more than the first. Samurai Werewolves is a really good idea though. Seriously.

Northern Popsicle Guardians

The quest to watch every Samurai movie ever is going well. I've been on a good streak the past couple weeks after a long lapse just being super busy and kinda lazy.

I finished all the Lone Wolf & Cub features, and am probably just going to opt out of the Shogun Assassin double threat being that all the source materiel is from the series. My favorite was the fourth installment, Baby Cart in Peril. It opens with a close up of a tattooed set of breasts that leads into a female samurai chopping up a bunch of retainer cogs of this one lord. There's also a samurai that somehow lights his sword on fire.

After that I caught the last two Akira Kurosawa samurai films I hadn't seen: Kagemusha and Ran. Kagemusha has one of the most beautiful and ridiculous dream sequences I can remember. I liked that movie a LOT, the colors in particular. VERY inspiring use of color. If I'm ever in a position to be using color in my storytelling career, I think I'll spend a few weeks studying Kagemusha. Ran is a retelling of King Lear. I didn't like it as much as Kuroawa's Throne of Blood, a retelling of Macbeth. Maybe I just prefer Macbeth in general, but I'm not positive. It's been so long since I read it last. I liked Ran, but it's not even in my top ten of Kurosawa's films. It's really creepy though, in a lot of ways.

I just watched The Twilight Samurai, which was surprising. It's about this low level Samurai who's wife dies of illness and he's left alone to cope with raising two young daughters and the care taking of his old senile moms. However, it's no thing, as he's a pretty passive guy, and has never really been into ladder climbing or maybe has lost the components that drive a dude to want to stick a sword into a motherfucker. He's satisfied and content to just count dried fish and do his piece work on the side. Then he has to duel to defend the honor of his best friend's sister, and it's revealed that he's actually a pretty tricky bad ass. The story unfolds and he eventually has to chose between killing some other guy and leaving his samurai status in shame. Anyway, the movie examines some of the more human aspects of the Samurai. It's not all just wandering around chopping up enemies or posturing and face saving. There are bills to pay and little girls to feed and sometimes the simple pleasures are more valuable than having a high reputation or going out drinkin' with the other samurai.

Red Lion is actually a really funny movie. It starts Toshiro Mafune as this farmer turned soldier taking on the task of going back to his home town to bring word of the impending Imperial Army's arrival, only to find that the same evil thug goons that were making the peasants lives miserable when he was literally thrown out of town ten years past,/ are still making everybody's life miserable and worse. He liberates the whores and cancels all debts and proclaims the taxes will be halved and becomes the impromptu leader of a small band of farmers and prostitutes that wrestle the political sway away from the deputy and his bumbling crew. It's all pretty comedic (no small part of which due to the giant red military wig worn by Mifune) until the end when the tragedy of being double crossed by the imperials ensues. It ends pretty badly, but in a very inspiring way. I was really into this movie, so I drew this:



Andrew mentioned in the comments a few posts back something about the difference between black and white and color art... and I sorta feel like, shit, like I never really wanted to get into color because it was just so vast and the infinite possibilities. How every decision has multitudes of consequences and it's just this huge huge thing when you think about it too much. So I stuck with black and white and the plan was to master that with some level of capability before even venturing into the realms of color. Also, printing b/w is insanely cheaper. Well, anyway, it didn't work. I haven't mastered black and white, and here I am dipping my toes into color and I feel insane, but I think I'm ADDICTED to color now. Everything I draw I think in terms of how I would color it, or what it would even look like with colors. This piece I knew I was going to color because of the RED FUCKING WIG. Still, it wouldn't look as good in b/w.

Here's a list of all the Samurai movies I've seen so far.

Sword of Doom
Samurai Rebellion
Sword of The Beast
Hari Kiri
KILL!
Samurai Saga
Three Outlaw Samurai
Bandits Vs. Samurai Squadron
Seven Samurai
Hidden Fortress
Ran
Samurai Spy
Shogun Samurai
Roshomon
Throne of Blood
Red Lion
Chushingura
Kagemusha
Samurai Assassin
Incident at Blood Pass
Yojimbo
Sanjiro
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
Samurai Banners
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
Samurai II: Duel at Ichijon Temple
Samurai III: Duel at Gamryu Island
Hanzo The Razor
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at The River Styx
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in The Land of Demons
Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)
Samurai Fiction
Ronin Gai
Shingenshu: Assassins of Honor
Kibakichi
The Twilight Samurai

Some other notes of interest:

Paul Pope did a cover and wrote this piece for the third issue of the apparently amazing LVHRD, a magazine you can download the pdf of here: LVHRD MGZN #3

I'm not sure how old this is, probably pretty fucking old, but the other day while I was ordering my second set of Jordan Crane's Uptight All Night post cards over at reddingk.com, there's a pdf available for download called "Reproguide". It's a guide to reproduction. It's pretty cool, and informative and like I said it seems maybe old as fuck, it contains some good tips and tricks for making printed things. Also, the Uptight comic and those post cards are also really great great buys.

Ivan Brunetti's Misery Loves Comedy has completely blown my mind.

Speaking of Samurai movies, Eric Skillman posted the design process of the Criderion REBEL SAMURAI box set over on his blog: Cozy Lummox.

I think that's it for today. Shit, I hope that's it for today.

Neolithic Phantom Goblins

Another two weeks, another Free Times, another installment of The Joint, by Lidge, another illustration.



MAN, do I love sneaking in the old Skullface mask to these when I get the chance, and I actually think to while I'm working on them. That rat mask is new, but maybe it'll become something I go back to. There's enough rats in these stories to warrant it, and I'm actually surprised it took me this long to figure that one out. I spent some time with this one, shooting to get it done early but then opting to just work on it a lot longer than usual. So, yeah, go pick up a Free Times.

My Samurai Movie watching experience is going well. I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. I had seen it before, in the theater actually (with Big Granny and Noony!). The Cinematheque had a Kurosawa series a few years ago. It's a fairly amazing film, with what has to be the best spear fight ever. It also has a pretty happy ending. There was a special feature of George Lucas talking about how influencial the film was to Star Wars, and he even mentions how Toshiro Mifune was considered for the role of Obi Wan Kenobi. What a different world we would live in if that had actually happened.

Next was Incident at Blood Pass, which also starred Mifune, this time as the very familiar Yojimbo character. It ALSO stars one of Japan's other awesome Samurai actors, Katsu Shintaro, and a third recognizable Japanese cinematic legend Ishihara Yujiro. The movie takes place at a tea house on the pass over a mountain road where these characters all converge for an incident. It's sort of a convoluted plot that ends in buckwild disaster, but I liked just watching the characters all have at it.

The third of my recent quest to watch all Samurai films was the first of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Sword of Vengeance. Holy Fucking Shit. I've only read a couple of the comics by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima that this is based on, but from what I can tell it's really faithful. I'm glad I opted to watch this instead of the re-edited version called Shogun Assassin, eventhough that's where the Rza got a lot of samples for Gza's Liquid Swords.

Anyway, back to the drawing board for a couple more flyers, and finally some motherfucking comics.

Never Post Gratuitously

This first thing is a Samurai Ferret that I drew for Dara Naraghi's Ferret Press. I long minute ago he sent out a mass email and asked for contributions for an artbook or FERRETS. I totally spaced on it and then didn't read the email before I just busted this out between ridiculousness adventures. Turns out the deadline was a couple days ago and the dimensions were square. Goes to show that I am a dumbass, even when I have nothing but noble intentions. Maybe even more so then? Anyway, Ferret Press is the home of Panel, a comics collective from Columbus that have put out NINE themed comics anthologies so far. They've been consistently rocking at two a year, and show no sign of slowing down. Go HERE, and buy them up. Actually, I think I'm missing a bunch so I think I'll have to place an order myself soon (Sadly, the 9th issue isn't up yet, it's got a 3-D cover and is b-movie themed, it's easily my favorite thing I got at SPACE this year).




So, I'm back on a full nasty Samurai Movies kick. THIS TIME IT'S DEEP AS HELL. There's no going back until I've seen every goddamn samurai movie ever made.

I recently grabbed Big Granny and we sat down and watched The Samurai Trilogy about Musashi Miyamoto in a marathon viewing. These movies are so goddamn good. They're long, but it was totally worth it to view them all at once. The epic scale of the features really blows my mind in a way that I don't think happened when I watched each of them autonomously. There's something about investing that amount of time and energy into watching this story that really makes it more intense.

After that I watched Hideo Gosha's Sword of The Beast, which is pretty awesome in it's own right. I've got to watch it again before I send it back to Netflix, but I really got into this one too. It wasn't as enthralling as the trilogy, but it's not really supposed to be. It's the tale of a whole lot of outsiders all going after the same score of gold on this mountain, with the hope that it will set them free from... whatever makes them outsiders. There's also a revenge plot and a subversive political plot, but that's all thrown in with the game that is afoot and turning samurai into beasts.

The last thing I watched was Samurai Spy. It's much more of a political espionage thriller than anything. It takes it's time getting there, but once the stage is set and the plot starts to thicken it gets really thick, really quick. Ninjas and samurai fights; spies vs. spies vs. corrupt cops! Mysteries and deceptions and characters all going buckwild for who knows what reason! A festival turned riot! Sword fights on a huge bridge! Anyway, I'd like to watch this again too, before I send it back. It's really good, but after the first viewing I still have no idea what happened and who was what. It's a very convoluted piece that has a lot of backstabbery and traitorous behavior. It actually takes place around the same time as The Samurai Trilogy.

One of my favorite parts on the DVD was the special feature of an interview with Masahiro Shinoda, the director of Samurai Spy. He talks about film making in Japan at the time of the movie, and his career. Then he talks about Absurdity, and I was pretty floored with what he said. Here's an excerpt from the interview (uh, I transcribed this myself so if it's inaccurate, I apologize to Criterion and Masahiro Shinoda, and y'know... you):

Absurdity.

I don't believe anyone is born merely human. I was born Japanese and I didn't have any choice in the matter. But being Japanese at the time meant Japanese militarism and emperor worship. And when we attacked Pearl Harbor, I was just a young 12-year-old boy. I was 14 when we lost the war. After we lost the war, I saw American soldiers for the first time, and wondered why I hadn't been born an American. At the time, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be proud or ashamed of being born Japanese. I found that the sense of absurdity, the absurdity of not knowing, is what was most real to me. Various people, including various historical figures, talk of their human experience differently. But one can finally see the real person in the context of political absurdity.

Here I was a Japanese man facing an American. And we, as the ones who lost the war understand the true nature of war. I thought the Americans, who won, didn't really understand the reality of war. The Americans wouldn't be able to grasp Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And also, to expect post-war Japanese to understand the suffering of those Chinese women who were raped during the war is impossible.

The political absurdity results in this miscommunication. I think this tendency throughout human history that has been the major factor in deciding our destinies. By being able to understand those things that are hard to describe, those inexplicable things that result in these absurd situations, I think that we are at last able to face what human reality is about.

And I also see poignancy in the absurdity of the countless unknown soldiers dying on the battlefield and consumed by the soil. And a sword fighting scene, the winner strikes a heroic image, but I think the ones who get struck down express a poignancy that captures the true nature of an absurd reality. The one doing the cutting will certainly be splattered in blood, so the blood splattered form of the victor looks more like the one that was killed. I see it more like that sometimes.

I see the absurdity of humanity as one of confronting violence. And I think there is a certain poignancy that comes out of this desire to confront violence. I think that I can bring out the human reality through that sense of poignancy in my films.

I thought that was really great, especially the part about how miscommunication is the major factor in deciding our destinies as humans. Oh, I added the paragraph breaks to try and present it better here. In the interview it's all Shinoda talking in Japanese and when you read the subtitles it's broken up by the text and his gestures and cuts to segments of the film. I wish I knew how make it a video to post on youtube, but I'm both too lazy and I already TYPED it out for you. Anyway, good stuff that makes me want to be a better writer, and pay more attention to what the hell is going on around me.

Here's a flyer for a show everybody should absolutely go to. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is probably something you'll want to see in your life. I hear that Stinking Lizaveta rocks too, so... this should be great. It's in the Ballroom too, so you know it'll be loud and hopefully nuts. I am absolutely going to color this too, so... keep checking back for that.



I've got a couple more flyers on my desk at the moment and a SHITLOAD of comics to get to. So I'll hopefully be back to posting regularly.

Non Practicing Greintologist

Been a minute. A long long ridiculous lazy bummed out minute. Still, here's a flyer for The Unsane. I'm listening to their new CD right now. It's pretty heavy and harsh and on point. I don't think I've ever listened to them before. Not with any lasting comprehensive discretion. I do remember they had a video years ago that was just all footage of skate boarders eating shit. That was a pretty awesome video for it's time. Anyway, should be a good show. Especially if you're a Metal Dude. OH, and 400 Blows is playing!!



If I owe you flyers and you're reading this, I assure you they are on their way. Sorry I flaked out so hard recently. Been an interesting bunch of weeks. Anyway, I think I'm cool now and I'll get that shit to you as soon as it gets done.

Keep checking back. I'll be posting a bunch of new stuff soon, and hopefully it will actually be good!