The Gorilla Man
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, monsters, serial killers, weird 2 CommentsAnother drawing I did of a serial killer: Earle Leonard Nelson (1897-1928). Nelson was nicknamed ‘The Dark Strangler’ and ‘The Gorilla Man’ by the press:
Nelson was called ‘The Gorilla Man’ because he strangled women and usually stashed the corpse in some out of the way place in the victim’s own home before leaving (an M.O. that apparently reminded some newspaper readers of Poe’s story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“). He eluded capture for over a year, murdering at least 22 women across the U.S. and Canada. He preyed mostly upon women who ran boarding houses or who wanted to rent rooms to lodgers. He was well spoken and polite, ofter claiming to be a weary traveler who needed a place to stay. When he got a woman alone, he would attempt to convince them to look at the ceiling, saying something like, “Is that water damage? I think that plaster is about to go…” and then grab them from behind and strangle them. After she passed out, he would knot a cord, cloth or clothing tightly around her neck and then have sex with the corpse. After stealing cash and valuables, he would visit pawn shops, second hand clothing stores and barber shops and change his appearance before moving on.
His early life is filled with examples of bizarre behavior, but, when traveling or setting up a victim, he was always polite and well spoken and made a favorable impression on people. He enjoyed talking at length about religion and usually carried a Bible.
Nelson was skilled at picking locks and slipping away. A Canadian sheriff captured Nelson and put him in a cell fastened with two padlocks. After the deputy left the room for less than two minutes, Nelson picked the locks and escaped. He was recaptured the next day and handcuffed; Nelson was able to slip out of the handcuffs right in front of his captors and hand them back with a smirk.
When he was hanged in Winnipeg for the two murders he had committed in Canada, Nelson maintained he was innocent and claimed to have never visited many of the cities in which murders credited to him took place.
Recommended reading: Bestial by Harold Schecter (2004)
Albert Fish the Cannibal
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, monsters, project, serial killers, weird 3 CommentsHere is another drawing of one of the world’s most evil people, Albert Fish. I’ve been working on drawings of Fish and Peter Kürten lately; Fritz Haarmann, Peter Stubbe, Armin Meiwes, Alfred Packer and Andrei Chikatilo and others are all eventually due for their portrait.
Besides murdering and eating people, Fish felt compelled to shove needles so deep into his gootch that he could not pull them back out; there were 25+ needles and pins permanently embedded in his pelvis when he died. Fish was executed by electric chair in Sing Sing prison in 1936. Rumor has it that his crotch lit up like a Christmas tree covered in blue lights when the juice hit him because of all of the metal in there, but that can’t be true, can it?
Covered
Posted: September 16, 2011 Filed under: art, comics 1 CommentI have a picture on Robert Goodin’s ‘Covered’ blog today. If you don’t know ‘Covered,’ it is a blog where artists take a comic book cover they like and redraw it. I did an old ‘Strange Tales’ that I always liked:
Dylan Williams Benefit; Albert Fish
Posted: September 12, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, inspiration, serial killers 1 Comment
Dylan Williams, founder of Sparkplug comics, is battling a serious case of cancer and his friends have contributed artwork for sale on ebay to help pay for his treatment. If you have some extra money burning a hole in your pocket, go here and bid away. I already placed my meager bids and saw the prices rise beyond my pathetic limit, so, since I can’t pay what I think some of these artworks are worth to help, I’ll just try to spread the word.
Edit (9/12/2011): I just read here that Dylan Williams died this weekend. R.I.P.
I don’t know Dylan personally, but have a couple Sparkplug books in my collection (they have published books by both Chris Cilla and Tom Neeley; artists I admire)… plus I was in Dylan’s shoes several years ago (cancer + bills = serious stress). Thirteen years later I think I’m only alive because of the help and support of family and friends (as well as some creative treatment options thought up by my care provider).
If anyone wins that mask at right, I’ll trade you something for it. It looks like a cross between an Ultraman space villain and an African mask; I just love it.
In other news, I just finished reading “Deranged” by Harold Schecter. This is the story of Albert Fish, the serial killer/cannibal/pedophile/sadist/masochist/child murderer/every other horrible thing you can think of who was executed for the murder of a 10 year old girl in NYC in the 1930s. Creepy.
Edit: Here is a very NSFW drawing I made about Albert Fish. Note that Albert Fish was a seriously fucked up dude; don’t click if you are offended by images of masturbating old men whipping themselves.
Black Spiderman
Posted: August 5, 2011 Filed under: comics 5 Comments
I can tell you when I stopped reading comics with superheroes in them. I had finished the 8th grade and was getting ready to go to high school and I gave my comic book collection to a friend. In retrospect, I regret the decision to give the comic books away, but I don’t really miss superhero comics. But it would be nice to still have all those comic books.
Spiderman was never one of my favorite comics. I used to complain that Peter Parker always seemed too ‘whiny’… and everyone (his boss, his girlfriend and everyone else) was always shitting on him. The Superman/Clark Kent thing was, of course, totally unbelievable, but I think I accepted the Superman/Clark Kent thing because a)it seemed so silly that having Clark Kent take off his glasses and allowing a ‘kiss curl’ to fall over his forehead would so completely change his appearance, and b) from what I remember, Superman took place in “Leave-it-to-Beaver-land” where everything was all rainbows and unicorns until Mr. Mxpxylyx or Bizzarro showed up… my expectations for realism hadn’t been ratcheted up the way they were when I was reading Spiderman and being treated to Peter Parker worrying about paying his rent or picking up his dry cleaning or agonizing over whether or not his girlfriend loved him. Besides, “Clark Kent” wasn’t Superman’s “real” identity… Superman was his real identity… he only pretended to be milquetoast Clark Kent so he could hang with the earthlings. The problem with Spiderman (at least from my perspective in ~1978) was that Peter Parker’s life was too much of a soap opera.
Fast forward to 2011. I’m still not reading superhero comics. I don’t have anything against them; I’m just not interested. Recently, people have gotten into an uproar over the fact that there is a ‘new’ Spiderman and he is not Caucasian; he is a mixed race Latino/Black guy. Peter Parker apparently died and somehow this new guy stepped in to replace him. But all of this happened in some ‘parallel universe’… so in another universe, Peter Parker is alive and well (and probably old enough to join AARP). Now ‘another universe’ seems about as cheesy as the stories that end with “…and it was all just a dream,” but it’s a comic book so I accept that this kind of shenanigans goes with the territory. But the new race of Spiderman’s civilian alter-ego in another universe has some people pissed off. “Yet more PC bullshit,” they claim. Glenn Beck somehow manages to blame it on Michelle Obama…
I was initially confused because there was a Spiderman movie that I didn’t see where Spiderman wore a black costume… and when I started hearing that people were complaining about a ‘black’ Spiderman, I didn’t know they were upset about the race of the guy under the mask… I assumed he was the same Peter Parker worried about his Aunt May and wondering if he should tell MJ about his secret identity and the flap was over the color of his costume. Then I found out that the ‘black’ they were complaining about was race.
I don’t think I’ve bought a Superhero comic in 30+ years… so I don’t feel like I have a horse in this race… but it occurs to me that many of the people complaining in public about the change in Spiderman’s race probably haven’t read a comic book in 30 years either… so I guess I’m having trouble seeing why they think this is a problem they need to complain about (especially since, as far as I can tell, there is still a ‘white’ Spiderman in one of the many universes that they can cling to — I don’t know which one is supposed to be the ‘real’ universe, but, technically, I suppose one could argue that not every Peter Parker is dead and at least one Spiderman is still white under his mask…). I don’t know why the new Spiderman is of mixed race… but for young kids growing up now, maybe a white Spiderman who still works for a ‘Newspaper’ (whatever that is) doesn’t seem very interesting… maybe they don’t want their parent’s old and boring Spiderman who probably watches Leno and uses ‘Sweet & Low’ in his Nescafe.
My ‘spiderlore‘ is probably lacking, but I think Spiderman first arrived on the scene in the 60s (edit: Wikipedia says Spiderman first appeared in1962). By the time I started reading him, the ordinary people in the comic books were not still driving Ford Fairlanes or listening to Do-Wop records… and Peter Parker probably eventually got an iPod and a digital camera so he could email in his assignments at “The Daily Bugle.” The details didn’t stay ‘trapped in amber’ (although, clearly, time did not move at the same rate in comic book land — how many decades was Peter Parker a 20 something?). But I don’t know why, as someone who has not kept pace with Spiderman, my opinion about what happens to the character in 2011 or 2012 should matter. I suspect the original ‘Peter Parker’ character was created in order to seem sympathetic to whomever Marvel thought their readers might have been when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko originally created the Spiderman superhero. Obviously, a lot of time has passed since Spidey first showed up, so it should not surprise us that the idea of who might be a good / interesting / sympathetic comic book superhero might have changed as well.
And, really, fuck it, why not?
Floating Cities, adventures underground, etc.
Posted: July 29, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, portfolio 5 CommentsI’ve been doing some illustration work for a book being written by someone I know; a young adult novel that includes a floating city, flying ships, etc. Here is one of the drawings I did that the author likes a great deal (a floating school / city). It’s not 100% there yet, but it is on its way.
In addition, I’ve been working in the garden pretty much non-stop from spring. We have a fairly large plot this year with cucumbers, peppers, squash, corn, collard greens, beets, chard and other things that do well in Michigan. In the spring I had to build an 8 foot tall fence to keep the deer out. The lettuce is finished (but was surprisingly long lasting). Here is some of one days harvest — what we can’t eat gets preserved or frozen.
Finally, a shout out to Chris Cilla; a comic book artist whose work I recently discovered and enjoy. I got a copy of his book, “The Heavy Hand,” and, although I haven’t had a chance to read it, my first peeks have me excited to do so. “The Heavy Hand” seems to be about two groups of researchers studying the critters who live in a cave and a hapless character named Alvin who wanders into their midst.
Atomic Knights!
Posted: November 20, 2010 Filed under: comics, inspiration Leave a comment
I finally got my copy of the reprints of “Atomic Knights” comics in the mail… and I can’t wait to sit down and crack it open.
The series originally ran in DC’s “Strange Adventures” in the years 1960-1964; a little before my time. It is apparently not to be confused with another comic called “The Atomic Knight” that I know nothing about (maybe “The Atomic Knight” is about a bookworm who got superpowers by suffering a paper cut from a radiated copy of “Ivanhoe”).
The comic is set in post-nuclear holocaust America in the year 1986 (yeah, I know… but in 1960 the threat of a nuclear war on any given day was a possibility people thought about, so, in context, it works). There are all sorts of weird radiated mutants running around and a few scraps of humanity struggle to survive. “The Atomic Knights” are a collection of do-gooders seeking to keep civilization alive and help the other survivors. I guess they may have raided a museum for suits of medieval armor… and the armor apparently protects them from radiation (ah, the optimism of the 1960s). Others, like the evil Black Baron, are hoarding food and attempting to set themselves up as rulers. The “Atomic Knights” also ride around on giant dalmatians and battle foes that are animal, vegetable, mineral and extraterrestrial. What fun!
I had never heard of “The Atomic Knights” until recently, and never would have if not for the internets. Thank you, Al Gore for bringing me “The Atomic Knights!”
Atomic Knights!
Posted: November 20, 2010 Filed under: comics, ideas, inspiration 2 Comments
I finally got my copy of the reprints of “Atomic Knights” comics in the mail… and I can’t wait to sit down and crack it open.
The series originally ran in DC’s “Strange Adventures” in the years 1960-1964; a little before my time. It is apparently not to be confused with another comic called “The Atomic Knight” that I know nothing about (maybe “The Atomic Knight” is about a bookworm who got superpowers by suffering a paper cut from a radiated copy of “Ivanhoe”).
The comic is set in post-nuclear holocaust America in the year 1986 (yeah, I know… but in 1960 the threat of a nuclear war on any given day was a possibility people thought about, so, in context, it works). There are all sorts of weird radiated mutants running around and a few scraps of humanity struggle to survive. “The Atomic Knights” are a collection of do-gooders seeking to keep civilization alive and help the other survivors. I guess they may have raided a museum for suits of medieval armor… and the armor apparently protects them from radiation (ah, the optimism of the 1960s). Others, like the evil Black Baron, are hoarding food and attempting to set themselves up as rulers. The “Atomic Knights” also ride around on giant dalmatians and battle foes that are animal, vegetable, mineral and extraterrestrial. What fun!
I had never heard of “The Atomic Knights” until recently, and never would have if not for the internets. Thank you, Al Gore for bringing me “The Atomic Knights!”
"The Evil Underground" in production
Posted: November 17, 2010 Filed under: art, books, comics, creativity, project, Shaver, underground 3 CommentsIf you haven’t been keeping up, I’m doing a comic book (ahem, graphic novel) about the life and work of Richard S. Shaver, the artist, writer, conspiracy theorist, outsider, etc. (chapter 1 was previewed here).
I haven’t tried to draw a comic book in something like 30 years, so I’m learning as I go along. But it’s been a very interesting learning experience, although it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I started by trying to write out what I would have happen in the series, but that made it kind of difficult to imagine and I found myself writing things like, “1) Richard thinking, “I’ve got to figure out what is happening…” Foreman: “Get to work!” 2) Richard (working)”All right, all right.” I just didn’t think that kind of script would be very helpful.
I then started doing pencil sketches on notebook paper — just fast scribbles — as an outline. In this way, I could think about and work on pages as a complete unit. I’m not tied to a specific page count or layout, but I want to avoid having a particular interaction between two characters end on a page where the viewer/reader will have to turn the page to resolve that interaction.
Below is a sample page. This is page 1 of chapter 2.
I decided that the first 2/3rds of every page 1 of each chapter would be taken up by a ‘splash’ panel that sort of introduces each chapter. Between the time I drew the rough layout (above) and the chapter 2 page 1 (below), I decided to make the art of the ‘splash panel’ refer somehow back to the cover of one of the pulps. The splash panel from Chapter 1 was based on an Amazing Stories cover from one of the early issues that had the Shaver Mystery in it. The splash panel from chapter 2 is based on the artwork from another pulp from 1938 (can’t remember the title right now, but I’ve reproduced the art below (last picture in the thread).
After I have my rough layout, I begin drawing the panels on bristol board. I initally use hard pencil to rough out the panels and figures, then add the lettering and then try to improve/tighten up the drawing. When the pencil roughs look pretty good, I use a pen to ink all of the letters (lettering is my least favorite part), then I go in with brush, nib pen and a fine tip magic marker (usually in that order). Finally I use a little china white to cover any smudges or add white highlights. As you can see, I made a few changes between the ‘rough’ version and the inked art below. Instead of the woman being tortured (above), I borrowed the girl in chains being menaced by “Igor” (below) with some sort of furnace/idol in the background. In the panels below, I made a few changes, including giving Shaver’s wife more of a 1930s contemporary hairdo. There were also some small changes in dialogue.
Finally, below is a copy of the artwork I used for the inspiration of my chapter 2 splash panel. It’s a fairly typical pulp cover from the 1930s… you have a ‘mad scientist’ type lowering a woman into a glowing vat of some kind in the background while a girl chained to some girders is being menaced by a defective in the foreground. I liked the woman’s pose and thought the defective could model as a stand-in for one of Shaver’s dero. In case anyone is wondering, this picture was the model for the splash page of chapter one.
