I was reading about how J. Michael Straczynski is going to be re-inventing (yet again) Wonder Woman for DC Comics, with Jim Lee redesigning the costume. Frankly, I think the best Wonder Woman we've seen in decades came from Darwin Cooke in The New Frontier. (I thought it was great that Cooke made her taller than Superman.) I get a little tired of Adam Hughes' et alia cheesecake drawings of Wonder Woman.
I thought I'd work up something representing the 1940s Amazonian princess. It's anUnfinished Work-in-Progress, mostly because I always reach a point where I don't know how to finish a painting. I reckon someday I'll take some classes. This was painted in ArtRage2 and I used Francis Gifford as a reference.
I touched it up a little bit. It had looked like she had a sunburn.
Chris Schweizer has posted a Crogan Adventures story from his Free Comic Book Day offering. It's an awesome read and an excellent, excellent lesson in sequential art. He has other comics posted online as well.
If you haven't read Chris's graphic novel series of the Crogan Adventures, you're missing out. Chris is a great visual storyteller.
This is almost as bad as making a Smurfs movie that takes place in New York City. At first I thought it was a parody, but discovered to my dismay it's real. Papercutz is actually publishing Nancy Drew, Vampire Slayer and Hardy Boys, Crawling With Zombies.
A pic of Nancy Drew touting a crossbow with a silver bolt is bad enough. I can't post an image of the Hardy Boys zombie cover because zombies give my kids nightmares.
I'll refrain from further judgment until I find out more about the books, but I'm not thrilled with the concept.
Sadly, Lee Messerli informed me that Joseph Messerli passed away this morning, June 23, 2010. He was born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1930.
Joe Messerli was a rare talent. Several days ago I wrote that someone should interview this interesting man, as his career spanned several important decades and venues in cartooning, animation and design. Mr. Messerli was one of the great unsung creative forces, a working man's cartoonist.
According to his website, Joe Messerli's career began as Charlie Plumb's assistant on the classic comic strip Ella Cinders. Throughout his mostly freelance career, he worked on a myriad of comic books. Messerli designed the iconic Twilight Zone logo and illustrated the famous Bonanza credits.
Joe Messerli attended the Chouinard Art Institute from 1954 to 1956, focusing on Fine Art, Advertising Art and Animation Art. He worked at UPA studios and the NBC Burbank Graphic Arts Department. At Cambria Studio, he worked on Clutch Cargo and other features.
Mr. Messerli worked on The Flinstones, Yogi Bear, Warner Brothers, Disney and Sesame Street characters, Dennis the Menace, Chip 'n Dale, Heathcliff, Darkwing Duck, and a plethora of other characters. He ghosted the work of four well-known artists, one being Clifford McBride on his Napoleon comic.
Patrick Owsleyposted email that he swapped with Mr. Messerli about his work on The Flintstones comic strip.
I am in search of the World's Smallest Comic Strip published in a newspaper. I'm starting things off with the Greenville Journal. This Non Sequitur strip by Wiley Miller is 2 3/8" (6 cm) by 2 7/16" (6.2 cm). If it were in strip format, it would be 1 3/16" (3.1 cm) high by 4 3/4" (12 cm) wide.
If you know of a smaller one, please aid me in my quest and email me: spoonercomics-at-gmail-dot-com.
D.D. Degg passed this along:
The Modesto (CA) Bee prints The Family Circus as a one column panel on a six column-wide classifieds page. It measures 1 17/32" (3.9 cm) wide x 1 25/32" (4.6 cm) high.
The same paper prints the Classic Peanuts (1963 version) measuring barely over an inch high and a hair over 5" wide.Jan Eliot (Stone Soup) and Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) have commented on the shrinking of newspaper comics:
Some reader comments from The Washington Post'sComic Riffs' question of whether the small size of comics deters folks from reading them:
With this last round of shrinkage on the WaPo comics pages, I have now been forced to give up my life-long habit of enjoying the funnies at the breakfast table,
The comics are getting smaller?????? That's a relief. I thought I was going blind.When Get Fuzzy is that small, I skip it because to much type in to small a space...very true of The San Antonio Express-News.Yes, the comics in the Post, with the exception of Doonesbury, are now too small to enjoy.Certainly the comics are too small. It does make me skip some and I had long been a reader of every strip on any comics page I've seen, even serials that I might only see while traveling and getting a paper that I don't regularly read.It's important to note that being able to "read" a comic strip is not just about the words. If you look at today's Zits, in the 4 7/8 inch size now becoming common, you cannot "read" the art.If I say "yes," will they change it?* * * * * For what it's worth, I don't believe we're hearing the Death Knell of the newspaper comic strip. I think they'll be around till the end of time. What I do believe is that comic strips are being stifled and not allowed to do what they do best: Help sell newspapers.
Somebody should probably interview cartoonist Joseph Messerli. Mr. Messerli started out as an assistant on the Ella Cinders comic strip, ghosted the Napoleon strip, designed the Twilight Zone logo, drew the Bonanza credits illustrations, worked on Dennis the Menace comic books, drew Hanna-Barbera comic books and that just seems to scratch the surface. Too often in this profession, the "creators" overshadow the Working Cartoonists when it comes to media attention. I would imagine Mr. Messerli has a few stories to tell.
I have no idea who Hector Alfonso was, but he was a brilliant cartoonist. The figures, composition and brushwork are awesome. There is an obvious similarity to Hank Ketcham. I would like to find out someday where that "Ketchum" style originated, because we also see it here and with Ketcham's early assistants, such as Al Wiseman.
If anyone knows more about him, or from what publication these appeared in, please let me know.
(My most current technique which seems to work for me.)
After the original sketch is approved I will print out a high-contrast version of it (sometimes bigger than the original sketch) I'll do this by simply printing it in sections with 8x14" copier paper.
I will then tape this on the back of my Strathmore imperial 500 140lb. watercolor paper and use a light table to trace it. It will look awkward once I pull it from the light table but then i just go in and erase and tighten it up to where it looks right.
That's how I'm transferring sketches to watercolor paper at the moment. I like to save the sketch just in case I blow something in the initial process of the painting and then I can trace it again.
