A Dog on a Journey Past a Volcano

The Friends of The Cleveland Kennel is throwing their annual Art Fur Animals art show auction that raises money to keep cats and dogs alive long enough to find them homes. Pretty great event, pretty great organization. There is bound to be a LOT of great art at this show, and a multitude of other offerings are up for auction. One year I won a Spa Day, and that shit saved my life. This is the first actual painting I've done in a super long time. Just, whoa. I'm rusty, to say the least. It's just watercolors and ink. I like it though. It was fun, and this is something I want to get further and further into. Drawing is fucking fun. Painting is a challenge. You should go to Art Fur Animals, bid on this painting, take it home and hang it up!

Roll for Initiative

Getting back on the blog horse after a drastic fall. Here's a poster for this incredibly neardy doom metal show. Bring your d20s, son. We roll for initiative early- it's a Thursday after all. Witch Mountain is from Portland, Oregon. I maybe should have included that they're on Profound Lore Records... do people still pay attention to that? What label bands are on? As far as labels go, I feel like Profound Lore is pretty great. I think I screwed up the name Lord Dying but if there's anything better than one lord dying, it's plural lords dying, so... sorry dudes. Better luck next year! Mockingbird is from Akron. Should be a good show. I'll probably go to this one. I'll be the guy in the druid robes.

RACEBANNON, MURDEREDMAN

I didn't know anything about Racebannon until Zip hipped me to them, and assured me that it was one of the greatest live shows he's ever seen. So, I got stoked on this piece and felt like getting wild with the gasmask/helmet revival. There's something fun as shit about drawing a helmet with a bunch of pins, stickers and damage, plus sticking stuff in the band like smokes/lighters/bullets. It's a good time, I bet it's even more fun to do that to an actual helmet! I would love to try it out some day.

This is my new favorite band, MURDEREDMAN's first show. As you can see on their facebook page that it's David from Jerk, John from Cave Bear, Ron Kretsch and Rich Raponi from Self Destruct Button. I don't want to call it a "super group", but goddamn, what a crew.

I couldn't find a website for Vortex. I don't know anything about them. Dead Peasant Insurance is also playing, pretty great line-up. Great show.

Two Sixes X Nines

Here's a couple recent 6" x 9" drawings I'm shipping out with some copies of The Lake Erie Monster for some valued Shiner Comics customers. The first one, Fantasm Jones is a character from one of the Ten Imaginary Movies. The second, the minotaur, "heavy", is just another minotaur.

I haven't had as many orders for the ol' 6" x 9" commissions, but they're always a blast to draw. These were pieces where I was simply left to my own devices to come up with imagery, but I'm more than happy to take requests.

Beachland Ad

Just a quick post today. I've got some more posters and some things to post tomorrow, but I just wanted to get this up before I got lost in the work on my desk, or the hyper-fun that is cleaning the studio.

This is an ad for the Beachland Ballroom & Tavern I recently drew for The Lake Erie Monster comic book. I really liked drawing this. It's a cleaner, more simple style, with the limited palette: three tones of the same earthy brown color and that green.

There's a archive of all the ads Jake Kelly and I drew for The Lake Erie Monster over at the site, HERE.

Rusty Saddle Bike Night to Now That's Class

The Rusty Saddle Bike Night to Now That's Class is tomorrow night! The Big Ride starts at 7pm at Blazing Saddle Cycle, 7427 Detroit Ave, and ends with a raffle at Now That's Class 11213 Detroit. This is co-sponsored by Blazing Saddle and Rust Belt Welding. Even though I do not ride a bicycle, and it would be insanely frustrating to be driving a car on that street at the time, I would still love to see Detroit flooded with bicyclists riding westbound. There's something awesome to me about seeing a huge group of people on bikes traveling in a pack. I blame AKIRA.



I did this black and white version because it was taking me a long time to get this finished and Paul at Now That's Class really really needed it to get the word out about the first one, which as I mentioned above is TOMORROW, April 5th, 2012! So I blasted this version out and I hope it made it to the hands of the people that need it! I saw some up at Gypsy so I know it's at least out in the hood.

Here's what Paul sent me when he hired me for this one:

The idea the Blazing Saddles guys wanted was something like was like

"Zeus on top of a mountain or something crushing a scorpion or some type of animal in one hand and either stepping on or crushing a bike or a pile of bikes. Maybe with lava and fire in the background"

If you've seen any of my previous work, you should know that this is a completely ridiculous, but right in the center of my wheelhouse, request! It's funny, sometimes I really like when a client has a pretty specific idea in mind, but on the whole, clients have pretty odd ideas about what's even possible to do in a drawing. Paul is always a total blast to work with and the Blazing Saddle/Rust Belt dudes are all rad so I would bend over backwards to make sure this work is as ape-shit-bonkers as I can make it, and it visually represents the event and vibe of what they're doing here. I hope I did that!



Which brings me to my next point. Even though I like the b/w version fine and it get's the info out as well as it needs to, I really really wanted this to be in full color that burned off the page. I could almost see it on the page as I was drawing this, how it needed to be to really set it off. So, I took the extra time and really went bananas on the colors on this one. Also note that under the text is a very rough, crusty version of Blazing Saddles on the bottom left and a very rough, sketchy version of Now That's Class on the bottom right, with a much much windier version of a path between the two. I don't really mind that this got covered with text at all, but I like to think that it plays out pretty well even with the text.

So, hey, if you ride a bike in Cleveland and want to get involved in this, DO IT. It's probably going to be a ton of fun, and hey- you get a free beer if you ride your bike to the bar!

The Lake Erie Monster #1 Available NOW!

Just a quick note to all those that haven't yet seen this posted over on thelakeeriemonster.com, the first issue of The Lake Erie Monster is now available for order online in the Shiner Comics Store! Also available is The Lake Erie Monster Movie Poster, and a smattering of other gems. There's only one copy left of Jake Kelly's Spacefighter Z comic UPDATE: Spacefighter Z is SOLD OUT!, but there are plenty of Stormbringer Preview Mini-Comics.

Another note, I only have 3 Skeletonwitch posters left, but I do have more All Dinosaurs posters from the video premier show. I also dropped the prices of the two 6 x 9 drawings I have available, FUR and BUDS are each now only 20 bones. Get them while they're still LUKEWARM.

UPDATE: I added Jake Kelly's KING KONG Poster to the store, we got 5 of them left!

April: Your Beast is Corny!

It's APRIL. That means it's the return of The Corny Beast at Melt bar & grilled! Here's the description from the Specials Menu:

The Corny Beast

Our wicked version of the almighty corndog! An ultra jumbo all beef dog char-grilled then stuffed inside the sandwich with double American cheese. Slathered with our special cornbread batter then deep fried. The result is pure carnival goodness! Chipotle ketchup on the side for dipping.

The initial idea for this was to somehow incorporate a corn maze into the poster art, which, I had never heard of corn mazes before, or if I had I don't remember- anyway, at first I thought it was pretty clever of the originator of this phenomenon because corn is also known as maize, I thought it was a play on words or... something... but, I don't know if that was the case. A corn maze is corn grown in the shape of a maze, sometimes with bonkers images or words incorporated into the pattern.

I tried this idea and it was confusing and looked like it was going to difficult to understand that that's what the image was, plus I wanted to make the maze actually possible to get through, and that was super hard to do while making it also look like corn. SO, I decided to just draw a maze for the poster.



Here's the rough draft, which I draw these at 50%, 5.5" x 8.5", so it's kind of small. I just drew a grid of 1/8th inch squares and got started to lay out the maze. I also knew I wanted to draw a cartoon dog. Drawing dogs is super fun after you get past the awkward stage of them looking wrong. They're pretty hard to draw, because even though you can include the stuff that makes up a dog- it still sometimes just looks not right, but once you do that enough times, something just clicks and you figure it out and BAM, you're a dog drawing machine. Also, there are a billion types of dogs.



So, after I did the rough, and got approval from Our Great Cheese Überlord, Matt Fish, I redrew the thing at 11" x 17" in ink on a piece of Bristol drawing board. I really like the way the dog looks, I wanted him to be ultra cartoony. This may be the cleanest, most streamlined and straight forward thing I've drawn in ages. I didn't even splatter this with ink.



The maze does work, I think there are even multiple paths to get from the top left to the bottom right, but I had to cover some of it up with text, obviously. Maybe I'll offer a limited print run of the poster with no banners? I dunno, that just occurred to me as I was typing this.

Color-wise, I think this came out pretty good. Nice and corny, following through on the simplified cartoon dog.



This coming weekend, April 6th and 7th, is The Parmageddonator, in honor of The Terminator midnight screening at The Cedar Lee on Saturday the 7th. The sandwich is 2 Potato and Cheese Pierogi, Smoked Kielbasa, Potato Pancake, Barrel Aged Sauerkraut, Horseradish Mustard and Sharp Cheddar, vegetarian option available. Yes, it's for real, a 2 potato and cheese pierogi AND potato pancake. On sandwich. That also has Smoked Kielbasa on it.

I actually had to draw this one twice, and I still feel like it's less Arnold-ish than I wanted it to be. He's a hard nut to crack, that Termintor. I like the final version tough. Simplified it again, which took just as much time as doing a more complex poster, if not more.



Saturday Night Fever is screening at the Capitol Theatre on April 21 at Midnight. Melt is going disco with The Tight Trousered Travolta; Ohio City Pasta Cheese Ravioli, One Big Spicy Italian Sausage, Marinara, Provolone, vegetarian option available. As ridiculous as that name is, I bet this sandwich will be freaking delicious.

This one, oh man, this was a mess in the coloring stage! This took a really long time to color and layer in all that texture. It was challenging for sure. I had never seen Saturday Night Fever before, but it's way better than I had imagined. I'm not a huge disco fan, but I gotta admit- it's pretty infectious.



Lastly, but not leastly, here's the dessert card. I kind of wonder if anybody pays any attention to these drawings at all. Have Melt regulars notice I keep up with these characters every month? This time we get to meet their pets. I have no idea why I did that, other than I thought it would be fun, especially for the bear to have a fish. At any rate, these desserts all sound dope!

The Lake Erie Mosnter #1 Release Party TONIGHT!

Firstly, Jake Kelly and I have a new website, thelakeeriemonster.com! Which is the main site for our new ongoing quarterly horror anthology comic book, oddly enough, titled The Lake Erie Monster. The first issue is finally ready to hit the streets, so we're throwing a release party. Here's the announcement, as it was posted over on thelakeeriemonster.com:

Announcement for the Release of The Lake Erie Monster #1, the new comic book by John G and Jake Kelly

A little over a year ago, local artists John G and Jake Kelly collaborated on an art show called TEN IMAGINARY MOVIES. For the show Jake created ten full size posters for made up films: z-grade horror flicks, 70's sci-fi trash and giant monster movies. John was responsible for creating the phony ephemera that heightened the illusion of reality: movie stills, VHS boxes, action figures and comic book adaptations.

The fake comic book adaptations were for the Cleveland-set THE LAKE ERIE MONSTER, and once the show was over the pair decided to continue their collaboration and turn this imaginary comic book adaptation, of an imaginary film, into a reality. Jake scripted a toxic waste monster story set in 1970's era Cleveland and John created appropriately dark and compelling artwork. They are serializing the epic tale over the fist five issues of the ongoing series, each also containing brand new supplemental horror stories by the artists. The result is a Rust-Belt horror anthology, complete with a cackling host (a zombified Commodore Perry) and presented in full, eye-gouging color.

To celebrate the release of the first issue, the duo are having a party at BLUE ARROW RECORDS (16001 Waterloo Rd.) on Saturday, March 31st from 6-9pm. There will be a limited edition art print for the first 30 who buy the book. John Neely (of "the BIG O" radio show, as heard on 89.3 WCSB) will be spinning Cleveland and greater Ohio punk rock records.

The Lake Erie Monster #1 will be available in area stores and for mail order online at the Shiner Comics Store in April.

For further information or preview pages contact:
John G: jgritty@gmail.com
Jake Kelly: coloredcondor@yahoo.com
Website: thelakeeriemonster.com

Those are the details. If you're in Cleveland TONIGHT, please come out, hang with us, buy a copy of the comic, a poster, listen to some jams, shop for records and old magazines and paperbacks. Maybe mosey over to the boutique and check out some fancy vintage clothes and jewelry. We'll be getting some pizzas, some punches (spiked and un-spiked)(it's first come first serve so get there early).



This is the cover. We did release a black and white version of this comic in November at the last Genghis Con. However, there were only 50, and they were gone that day.

The version we're releasing this evening is the "official", full color, version. It features a bit more content than that Genghis Con version, including a bunch of original ads we created specifically for the book (which you can check out over at our Advertiser Archive on thelakeeriemonster.com. We're also offering a free poster for the first 30 people that buy the book tonight, as well as stickers and buttons and all kinds of other stuff!

I've got a couple other updates to post soon, so stay tuned. Tomorrow is April 1, so all new Melt specials for you and all your fancy friends!

Full Melt Pager

This is the Melt ad for the Best Of issue of Scene Magazine, which appeared all over the Cleveland area this week. This is kind of a departure from our usual bigger full page ads that have traditionally been one big image. However, I think this still has the same feel and unique qualities of the overall Melt visual style, and it pushes what we've been doing in a new direction without completely abandoning the way we've done things in the past.

This was something I never would have done had I not just spent a good part of the last few months putting together ads for The Lake Erie Monster #1. I just recently created an Advertiser Archive for the ads Jake Kelly and I designed for the first issue over on our website, thelakeeriemonster.com.

Here's the ad I drew for Melt featured in the comic:



As you can see, it's a riff on the old Hostess ads from older comics. The Lake Erie Monster is an ongoing quarterly comic, so you can expect many more adventures from The L'il Big Cheese Club!

MELT, Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Well, I kind of botched it getting these posters up on the blog later than is probably reasonable. I have a good excuse: I was making more posters and other awesome things for you! More about that later.

THIS MONTH, at MELT bar & grilled, the special is The Reuben Melt! It's a very delicious sandwich. What makes it so delicious? Is it the Fresh Lean Corned Beef? The Barrel Aged Sour Kraut? The Zippy Russian Dressing? The Swiss Cheese? Is it the wonderful combination of all those things to create a flavor sensation? Pick one, you will not be wrong. I actually really love this sandwich, and have had two of them so far this month. I'll be going back for my third before the month is out!

I drew this poster as an homage to the opening sequence from CHEERS. I recently finished watching ALL 11 seasons on Netflix, and I gotta say, that was an amazing show. It's a really astounding thing, to watch it all. I remember when it was on, and I had definitely watched reruns, but I never understood just how great it was until I watched season 1, episode 10, "Endless Slumper". If you've never seen that show, or don't remember that episode- that's the one.



Back at the beginning of the month, Fletch screened at The Cedar Lee as part of The Late Shift series. Melt offered up The Underhill's Chicken Fried Steak Sandwich and Steak Sandwich Melt. I like Fletch, but I didn't get out to see the movie. Also, I watched it a on of times before working on this poster. This movie coincidentally screened on Grilled Cheeze Czar Matt Fish's birthday, so I included him with a birthday party hat on in the bottom right panel of our Fletch Panel Grid.



Lastly for March 2012 at Melt bar & grilled was A London Style Fish & Chips Melt In America, to celebrate the screening on An American Werewolf in London as part of The Late Shift. This one was tricky to approach. The movie is great, but there seemed to be very little to grasp onto visually for me. I really really wanted to use the sign for The Slaughtered Lamb, the tavern the two American travelers stumble upon right before getting attacked on the moors. I just couldn't figure out a way to do it and make it look as compelling as I wanted to. The other images I felt could work well, on of which is exemplified in Jake Kelly's poster for this screening, is the protagonist's red parka, the other is the actual drawn out transformation sequence where he changes into the werewolf. I decided to mash the two together and run with that, also including The Slaughtered Lamb into the background.

Of course while watching the movie in the theater I thought of maybe another 1000 ideas for visuals that could have been awesome as posters. At the very least there was the scene where the main character looks in the mirror, and another scene where there's a guy running from the werewolf in a train station with all kinds of colorful posters covering the walls.

I can't believe how long it's taken to get this blog post up. I've really let me blogging chops get rusty again. I've got another couple posters to post, and some more stuff soon. I'll be posting at least one other thing today, announcing the launch of the new comic I've been cooking up with Jake Kelly, The Lake Erie Monster!

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON by Jake Kelly

This Saturday, the 1980 cult classic horror masterpiece An American Werewolf in London is screening at Midnight at The Capitol Theatre in Cleveland (corner of W. 65th and Detroit) as part of the Melt bar & grilled Late Shift.

As with the poster he drew for King Kong, Jake Kelly did a poster for this screening. Beautifully printed on a nice heavy matte card stock at 12" x 18", it will be available at the showing for a mere $5.

We know it's St. Patrick's Day, and a Saturday, and people are going to act a fool. However, the screening is at midnight and by then all the fools will have fallen over into the sleepytime drunk tanks of the City of Cleveland's Division of Police. So come on out and watch a killer scary movie with some other people that aren't foolish. Eat some popcorn, drink a soda, and buy a poster!

I should also mention, and I will post the poster separately, that Melt is offering a special sandwich, A London Style Fish & Chips Melt in America, this weekend only!

Alpaca Buddy 6x9

This is a drawing of an alpaca, one of the 6" x 9" commission pieces. It's a gift for someone from someone else. I'm pretty sure the recipient received it, so I'm not spoiling it if they read this blog.

At any rate, this came about from the tiny drawing of an alpaca from that All Dinosaurs poster. So, I owe this one to them.

If you're interested in a small drawing, as a gift or for yourself, there's some more info on the 6" x 9" commissions, HERE. Feel free to email me, if you have any questions at all.

Esqueleto de la Bruja 2: The King of Fires

Skeletonwitch is playing another show with All Dinosaurs and this time the Mighty Megachurch fills out the bill.

Here's the facebook event page, for y'all social networkers.

For this one, I reached back and brought out the character I used for the last time Skeletonwitch played, la Esqueleto de la Bruja. I think I did a MUCH better job this time. Much better. Especially on the colors. I've been kind of obsessing over the colors lately, and I think it's been paying off. At any rate, I've added 12 x 18 prints of this one to the Shiner Comics store, only $5. There's not many of them though, so... get 'em while they're hot! I don't think I'll have any at the show.

To further illustrate how insanely awesome this show is going to be, I'm posting this video parade for these bands. Starting with something I meant to post sooner, but haven't had the chance or time. This is the video for All Dinosaurs' Castle of Uncle Robert. You may remember the poster I drew for the premier show, of which I still have a few available. Turnstyle Films really killed it on this.

All Dinosaurs - Castle of Uncle Robert from TurnStyle Films on Vimeo.

This is kind of an older Megachurch video, but I fucking love it. Here's another piece of genius. And another.

Megachurch - More Mormon Than Mormon from Keitj T. Alin on Vimeo.

Lastly, is this amazing video for Skeletonwitch's Bringers of Death. This thing is bananacakes. Just... just watch it:

Skeletonwitch "Bringers of Death" Music Video from Authority Films on Vimeo.

And, here's a b/w version of the poster for all y'all color blind peoples- and you thought I didn't love you....



See you at the show!

KING KONG by Jake Kelly

Jake Kelly's hand painted poster for one of the greatest movies ever made, King Kong, screening at The Capitol Theatre this Sunday, February 26th at 10:00 AM as part of the Sunday Classics Brunch and Movie Series.

A limited number of 12" x 18" prints will be available at the movie for only $5. I know it's early for a Sunday morning, but seriously, it's one of the greatest movies ever made! Get yourself up early, hit Gypsy for coffee, saunter across the street and start your Sunday on Skull Island. ALSO: After the film you can present your ticket stub at one of their partner restaurants (LUXE, Latitude 41˚n, Reddstone, Stone Mad) and enjoy a discount on brunch.

If you can't make it to the screening but are still interested in a poster, feel free to email me, I'll do my best to make it happen!

Electric Eel Shock + Hot Cha Cha

Recently had the opportunity to do this non-specific tour poster for the shows Electric Eel Shock and Hot Cha Cha are playing together this March. I'm not a super huge fan of going the visual pun or literal graphic translation route, but in this case I think it works better than if I had tried to marry the two band's styles in some other, less overt way. Somehow, I think this image even is a graphic marriage of the two band's styles.

This being a non-specific poster, there's the huge empty space at the bottom for the different venues to fill in the date, and supporting bands. I found out this is called "Admat", short for Advertising Material. I've been doing posters for YEARS, and this is news to me.

Question: Where have I been? Answer: Cleveland.



Here's a black and white version I did just to do, and since it is less expensive to print black and white, I figured I'd give the promoters the option. If you have booked this tour and would like pdfs of either the color or black and white versions of this tour poster for printing and posting, please email me. Obviously, these are not for resale. I don't know if it's necessary to actually say that, but... maybe it is?

Here are the tour dates for Electric Eel Shock and Hot Cha Cha:

3/19 - somewhere in Baytown TX w/TBA
3/20 - Hi Ho Lounge , New Orleans, LA, w/TBA
3/21 - The Hi Tone Cafe, Memphis, TN, w/TBA
3/22 - Sluggo's North, w/TBA
3/23 - Strange Matter, Richmond, VA. w/TBA
3/24 - The Black Cat, Washington DC. w/TBA
3/25 - The Cake Shop, New York, New York, w/Hard Nips, Eric Davidson (DJing)

6 x 9 Commissions

I've added a 6" x 9" Commission piece to the ol' Shiner Comics Big Cartel Store, as an easy way to offer fairly inexpensive commissions. These are original brush and ink drawings on nice heavy watercolor paper. I draw these pretty loose, but as you can see there's still a nice amount of detail. I usually spend somewhere between an hour and 90 minutes on each one.

If you have something specific in mind, I would be more than happy to take requests. However, if you're just interested in piece but don't mind leaving it up to me to just draw something, I'll guarantee that you'll be happy with what I send you. If you don't like it, you can send it back and I'll draw something else for you.



Here's a scan of the drawing in the photograph above. As I mentioned above, even though these are smaller, quicker, looser drawings- I don't chump out on the details. This particular piece is a gift for someone, but here are some more samples, of these, there one is already spoken for, the other two are available for purchase:



BUDS is available HERE, for just $25!





FUR is available HERE, again, just $25 and it could be yours!

Pac Man vs. Ghosts

This poster actually evolved fairly organically, it started off as a totally different poster for something else I had on my desk at the same time. I was in the middle of trying to do something more surreal and weird, and had this idea of this skinny oddly swirling dude with an iguana head falling into these ghosts, but then I was having a hard time with the actual iguana head... at one point I starting thinking about what else would fit in there, and roughed in a slightly too large circle where the head is, then everything clicked- "BLAMMO", Pac Man appeared and I realized this was the perfect for for The Ataris.

I had actually never heard The Ataris, but when I checked them out, it seemed pretty wide open, thematically, like they didn't really have a focal point to draw from and nail down an image for. Rock and Roll bands are often strange like that- there's bands that have a sound that is so visceral, so visually inspiring, like when I hear it I can see what that sound looks like in my mind's eye, but then on the other hand there are bands that have just a wide open space, a vacuum that literally anything could fit into, and fill, visually. It's not really a value judgement, I'm not saying those band's aren't as good though I guess I do prefer bands that roll with a heavy theme or focus. Anyway, though I never owned an actual Atari system, I played a lot of Pac Man in my day. It's a wonderful game. I really dropped the ball by not including any fruit on this poster. Goddamn, at least some cherries or something?

I tried to look up the opening bands and could not find anything about We Were Kids. Originally, the first results for looking up Beat Kids were just videos from Wondershowzen's Beat Kids segments that are all pretty funny. It took me a bit of digging to find Beat Kids, after deciding that the Beat Kids from Vancouver that evidently broke up on New Year's Eve was not the band playing this show. After doing hundreds and hundreds of fliers and posters for shows, I gotta confess- I pretty much hate all band names. It's not you, Band Names, it's me.

UPDATE: I've been informed We Were Kids has a bandcamp site: http://wewerekids.bandcamp.com!

The show is at Now That's Class, March 2nd!

Corrosion of Conformity

Corrosion of Conformity is the band that I think best cultivated a fan base by way of that insane logo with the radiation symbol in place of the eyes and nose of a skull with pointed spikes popping out all over it's dome, back when that was a move a band could make. It's very much an thing of the 1980s, that move, especially the specifics of incorporating the radiation symbol, which at the time, I feel like the fear of a Cold War nuclear missile attack had lessened it's grip a little and the overall paranoia had moved on to fear of just... radiation poisoning from any number of sources. I could be wrong, I mean, Red Dawn was made in 1984, and that was basically a propaganda film. Anyway, Pushead designed that logo, and I probably saw it on at least a million jean jackets and Trans Am bumpers when I was a teenager. It just seemed like it was everywhere, and I had never once heard the band, or knew anyone that had heard the band.

Valient Thorr was probably one the best live bands I have ever seen in my life, the last time they were here. It was seriously the most fun I've had at a show in years, and the crowd was amazing. I think Valient Himself said some of the funniest, most insightful, and entertaining things I've heard someone say into a microphone in a long ass time. In stark contrast to the vibe at a lot of metal shows, there was just an overwhelmingly positive vibe during their set at this show. If the Cleveland Winter Demons got you down, I highly recommend you get to The Grog Shop on Monday, March 5th for this, because it will make you super duper happy to have seen Valient Thorr.

A side note: Valient Himself writes a pretty great blog about bad movies that he somehow updates pretty frequently. It's a straight up "What's What" of awesomely terrible movies.

I did a poster for the show the last time Torche played, but I think I missed them at the show. Or, maybe they've been back since, but I missed them then too. I dunno, I know I've done multiple Torche posters and probably never actually seen them play. Maybe this time I'll hang out and pay more attention! I don't really know anything about A Storm of Light.

I liked drawing this poster. It was fun. Though, it kind of feels like I'm cheating, playing to my strengths and basically repeating something I did for the Red 7 New Year's Eve poster: A Cavelady with Lots of Weapons in Front of A Shadowy Large Thing. Still, it's fun to draw that stuff, and someday I'm going to do that as a comic. Just pages and pages of Caveladies and Shadowy Largeness.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this initially, so I'm adding it. That bag of skulls this blue Cavelady is carrying was meant to be the same Bag of Heads that Frankenstein had in the Goathwhore poster I drew recently. Continuity, these posters are all CANON.

Go to this show, it's going to be super fun. Wear your jean jacket. Under your winter coat.

Blacksun

Converge is playing again at The Grog Shop, April 9th. Another show with RINGWORM! Plus Loma Prieta and some band called Git Some, which is just about the worst name for a band this side of The Lottery League.

The inspiration for this poster came from a clip in a Converge video reminding me of specific pages and panels from Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA books. The video is for the song Wretched World, and right about 1:50 there's just these scenes of cities being blown up. The video takes a pretty sharp turn right after that, but it stuck with me and just made me think of AKIRA. I actually really love thinking about AKIRA, so I was stoked to run with that imagery. There's a scene where all of Tokyo gets destroyed, it's in ruins, and this one character that was right at the center of it all, The Colonel, somehow survived and is standing on the edge of a building's roof that is now knocked over looking out at the devastation (vol. 3, pg 275 of the Dark Horse printings). I'm not really sure where I got the idea of the black sun.

I've got some more bonkers things to post, some housekeeping, some updates and hopefully announcements. Go to this show, it's going to be pretty awesome.