The Pits

I recently bought--at some expense, I may say--a ton of stills from the 1965 Italian movie Bloody Pit of Horror starring Mickey Hargitay, a bodybuilder/actor who was Jane Mansfield's husband. He plays "The Crimson Executioner".

Crimsy as direct inspiration for the Octavia comics.

Those of you with a copy of ORB2 already know about the parallels between the film and my Octavia comics--heck, the issue explores that in depth. I scanned 'em all, kept some of the stills and eBayed the rest.

Dungeon thrills with Octy and Crimsy, from ORB issue two.

I decided to throw in some free Octavia TPBs with the stills I sold, and here's what I got in return:

Thanks for the comic! Very nice to see BLOODY PIT honored in such classy fashion! Your art is fabulous and very appropriate for the topic. You draw some hot women! I was lucky to first see BLOODY PIT in a grindhouse theater in San Francisco way back in 1973 with a couple of stoner friends while cutting class during our senior year of high school. It blew our minds. We went around for weeks muttering, "My perfect body...!" No one knew what the hell we were talking about.

It's nice on account of it being so ridiculously tough just to get a simple review anywhere.

Do You Mind?

What would it be like to spend some time inside someone else's mind? If you could listen-in to their innermost thoughts, feel their emotions fully whether you liked it or not, experience their sensate, nonverbal lives as they do, would it change you as a person?

Would it be like going to the Moon--an astronaut in catharsis--and you'd return better and wiser than you left?

More on Gene Ray later...

Don't laugh, there are stranger things undreamt of in your Philosophy.

There are myriad mental disorders around these days, and schizophrenia cases have been steadily rising for decades now. Other disorders like D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and what some call Multiple Personalities embody the idea--in fact--of separate identities in one head.

You may doubt all this, but someone speaks to you in a clear voice, you hear it. It's as real as you are, mainly because you can't prove that your "self" is real, either. Nor can any Psychoanalyst on Earth prove he really exists.


I stumbled on this book yesterday because I was drawn to its cover. Additionally, mental health--and illness--is a recurrent interest of mine. My own brain, scarred and battle-weary, is more precious to me than ever and I want to keep it hummin' in spite of plentiful war-wounds.

Without giving away the whole story, it's a woman's overnight descent into schizophrenic delusions and then later safely out of them. Being a good writer with a fine mind helped in producing this book, which reads like a novel and which I found fascinating.

Barbara O'Brien's (a pen name) system of delusions and hallucinations is complex, logical and even somewhat believable--especially if solid beings appear to tell you so. The "Operators" control the "Things", which could stand for the subconscious and the conscious minds. Her hierarchy is enriched with regulations, a currency, and even a bus line--run by the Operators. Operator regulations vary state-to-state. They have meetings and conferences. "Things", like you and I, are bought and sold. Such details abound, due to the fertile mind of Barbara O'Brien.

Researching online leads to booksellers (the book is rare and quite valuable) and to websites dealing with Schizophrenia, and of course the nature of the internet has determined many will be "entertainment based".

In other words, they ridicule the Schizophrenic.

The core tenet of Gene Ray's delusions.

You wouldn't laugh at a broken leg, but a broken mind is funny to some people. Let the sister, wife or best friend go mad and they'd probably change their tune, but that's another subject. Heck, some people think all "crazies" are just faking to get out of work, anyway.

Protective Mimicry at a sculpture garden.

On a related note, we went to Brookgreen Gardens yesterday, one of the few cultural landmarks to recommend in South Carolina. It's all sculpture and gardens, and most of the work is from the 30s to the 60s and has what I call "Universal qualities".

Universality imbues a piece of art with a timelessness so that it will alway be appreciated by someone. Using current events, politics, trends, fads, fashions and jargon usually will doom Art to a limited lifespan. We may still know John Held, but his career ended along with the movement of a hemline.

Jeremy Davis' award-winning sculpture.

We saw, at Brookgreen Gardens, the winners of the National Sculpture Society's 76th Annual Exhibition. They've been doing these a long time, which makes it hard to stop. Some of the work was quite good, but much of it showed no Universality at all.

More inspired sculpture at Brookgreen, presented by my current girlfriend Lydia.

The worst culprit was one of the biggest winners--"Soft-Serve" by Jeremy Davis. Accompanying the work was an artist's statement I can only describe as emotionally and intellectually immature. We're told the ice-cream man represents our consumer culture's trend towards obesity, which, in spite of being a horrific oversimplification of a complex problem, shows a total ignorance of the nature of obesity itself.

Just as it might the nature of schizophrenia.

In other words, they are both illnesses.

Doctors these days are actually being trained in Empathy and to listen more closely to patients' stories. The patients get better a lot faster with doctors who listen and feel.

You can probably take it from here.

We Just Met...

Here's a new drawing I just stuck up on eBay, it's on parchment paper in ink, pencil, gouache, watercolor and some cheap Sharpie marker I used for the solid red areas. In fact, the possibility of trying those markers on this paper inspired the whole thing.

Jeez, I hope I got the color scheme right this time.

And, here's the smartass description that accompanied the auction:

Once upon a time in the 1960s there was a "Vampire Girl" magazine. All the kids thought she was great, though the stories weren't too good it didn't matter. After a time people forgot about her and her cousin an' uncle and the mags died. Later, some guys bought her and started the mags again. Trouble was, they didn't understand her and didn't care to either. The vampire gal all the kids loved became a dumb piece of meat in dumb comic books with too much blood in 'em. But people thought she still looked good in spite of her being just a costume anymore, and bought the new mags. Everybody else got sick in their stomachs. One day some hotshot artist decided to make a new Horror gal and he called her OCTAVIA. She don't care to show all that skin--TO YOU, PAL. Because that's not the point, because it ain't nice, and because of ya just met. So Octavia comic books got made and people were much much happier wit her the end.

Kal-DATH-er, uh...

I'm dusting off the files from my old Tigress: Journey to Caldathera TPB and digitally coloring 'em for re-release through Ka-Blam. And why not? It's a fun cover, may attract some readers, and the new cover can make up for the original one, which I freely admit was a bit of a dud.

Complex digital color layers over ridiculously simple lineart.

I didn't like doing digital coloring much in the past, mainly because of the time factor, but recently I figgered if all these people are doing all these comics digitally now, there must be a faster way than what I'm doing.

And there it was--the magnetic goddamn lasso tool. What a dope I am.

Weirdness in Space with the band of Victorian castaways on the asteroid "Caldathera".

Here's another page showin' the whole merry bunch. The original pages had wash tones over the inkwork, so now that's lending a sorta hand-tinted-old-photograph look to the whole thing. Naturally, it suits the subject matter, in spite of being an accident.

Sexual repression and we got yer table-legs covered.

Though I've already announced the thing is coming, I still am only 10 pages into coloring 60 of them, but I do a few each day in mah spare time so it shouldn't take too long.

Here's one more preview page.

Doctor Vale engineered moving the whole house, brick by brick, to Caldathera.

It's fun because I'm not reading ahead, but rather seeing new pages every day. I'd forgotten a lot of it.

Art Implants...

My daughter recently asked me, while in the local Comic shop, who the characters were on a new Marvel promo sitting there on the counter. It was on newsprint and meant to look like an old newspaper, with the Submariner and Human Torch on it. I said they were from the 1940s, and WWII. She asked me why people today didn't come up with their own heros. Ya want the short answer?

We don't belong to you.

Now, Harris Comics, due to several slow business days on eBay, is harassing artists who draw Vampirella and shutting down their auctions. Like with early Marvel characters, Harris didn't invent Vampirella, or Eerie and Creepy; they just robbed a grave to get her. No matter that they paid, it's still robbery.

The 1960s Vampirella lacked an important modern improvement: breast implants. Digital Xerox art by Arthur Suydam (note repetition of bat shapes, swiped figure and background from Frazetta Death Dealer on horseback).

That's the obvious question to most people outside Comics--why don't you people come up with your own ideas, new ones, instead of perpetually mangling other people's ideas totally out of recognition--like turning the Human Torch into Barbecued Man?

Another failure of "Realism" in comics: if someone's on fire, why would their body have shadows on it?

I often say that the trouble with modern comics is that the "Fans" invaded the Industry, driving out every last bit of maturity. At least with the Japanese Manga scene, they have the sense to keep the Fan (Dōjinshi) and Professional products clearly separated.

Is it really appropriate to use brain-damaged modern gladiators to promote comics for kids?

Here in America, there is no separation at all; it's not necessary because no matter how slick or how much money's behind it, there's still really nothing but Fan product.

That's Fans, like a million monkeys at typewriters, all tapping out absurd variations on what men like Jack Kirby created. It'll never work, because it ain't honest.

So what's the matter with me, that I'd rather whip up something new than go to work for these parasites?

I'd sure be a lot richer and more famouser if I joined in.

More Gore...

We talked a while back about some rather unpleasant publishing going on currently, and lo & beho I run into this gem today:

This cover's from 1969, and I admit it's fascinating to me in its over-the-top horror. The more I looked at it, and a slew of other covers from the same "Eerie Publishing", I got to wondering--who made this stuff? Who was the artist, and what went through his mind?

Myron Fass, onetime Comics artist and Emperor of Eerie Publications.

I suppose if you're a working comics artist and need some bread and the editor says "Hey, can ya pop some eyes out?" or "We need more heads chopped off!" then ya might just say "Sure, boss!" and after a while get used to it.

Playing every angle--and eyesocket--for max grue.

That's about all I can come up with as an excuse for the slasher slice 'n' dice people today, they musta got desensitized one bloody stump at a time.

Case of Cooties...

Google has asked a bunch of illustrators for free samples to grace a new project of theirs, but many have turned 'em down. Nonetheless, there'll be plenty who'll take the bait for the "exposure". If nothing else, the Internet sure gives exposure.

What I'm concerned about is that for creative people, perhaps artists more than writers, Internet technology is allowing us the opportunity to Cut Our Own Throats. That's where COOTies comes from.

It's not a game anymore.

The fact is that web surfers want everything free. They already paid a bundle for the computer, so why pay more? There's innumerable artists out there now offering prints, giclees, t-shirts, calendars etc. in an effort to buy some groceries, and ya know what? NOBODY BUYS THEM. Or hardly anyone. Why stick something on the wall when you can just stick your face to a computer screen?

It's not for nothing they call it "Windows"--and any decent prison cell should have one.

My main site gets respectable hits all the time, but again--visitors want to be entertained free of charge, which I have been doing, though I also have a "donate" option, which amazingly has actually been used.

Y'know, if you pass a beggar in public, you may feel obliged to dig in your pocket for a quarter, but if he and everyone else is blind or invisible, why bother? Go get yer free entertainment.

The kind of thing computers are good at--soulless, inhuman rendering.

The other problem is "Digital Art". I think we know by now that millions or more people who never would've learned anatomy or painting now consider themselves "artists" and are all over the landscape. It's hard to tell them apart because while a real brushstroke identifies the artist like a signature, digital tools resist personalization. You have to try and ID by subject matter, because there's nothing else.

Also, the medium itself tends toward the inhuman due to its reliance on number-crunching. It can create smoother gradients than any human hand ever can or could, but so what? Do we really want humanity sucked out of Art?

The sty in the modern eye that identifies the artist.

This also affects perceptions of what's now called "Traditional Art". I know that many viewers now prefer the slickness of digital to muddy paint and hair-stick art. The trouble is it's not "smooth" enough, and worse, it actually betrays the fact that a human made it.

Quick--who made this picture, and does it matter?

People that know little about Art usually want the brushstrokes to go away. Looseness bothers them. Greg Cwiklik, a critic for the Comics Journal, who claims to be an artist too but hides his work, bemoaned Frazetta's "meaningless brushstrokes" in some backgrounds, showing ignorance of a cardinal rule of painting: unimportant areas should be under-rendered.

Antiseptic techniques for a spoiled public.

The unwashed public prefers slick, and they want it delivered to their feet; basically, they won't work for anything. They want a big, fluffy, sparkly, nutritionless birthday cake. No work, and the lazier people get. Eloi.

More and more artists, more virtual venues to sell their work, and less of it actually selling.

I remember reading studies about what TV watching once did to kids' intelligence and IQs, but who's studying computer usage? Probably someone, but the results obviously don't interest anyone nowadays in the midst of the Free Feeding Frenzy.

Maybe the goal of digital art on the internet is to completely erase the individual identity of the artist, because the public really doesn't want it.