Big Choice Bun Toons! YAY!

Changing shirts for the duration of the Olympics

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To be fair, Pete Best might not have made it to the Ed Sullivan performance, but he did make a couple of million dollars off his contribution to the Beatles’ Anthology albums, and he’s gotten to outlive a couple of his ex-band mates, so he wins in the end.

Bill Finger didn’t even get a Google Doodle on his birthday, so sigh.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Your Bonus Batman vs. the Beatles moments are fun-

First up:

Behind this gorgeous Neal Adams cover is a story by Frank Robbins about Batman and Robin solving the mystery of Paul McCartney’s murder…using clues found on album covers.    Well…the murder of Saul Cartwright…I guess the editor wouldn’t let ’em use the REAL Paul, as he wasn’t actually murdered.

This is a cover I did for Batman and Robin Adventures #13.  It came out around the same time as Beatles’ Anthology, so…

…the story revolved around Scarecrow using the Anthology broadcast to piggy back a fear frequency to America…we still weren’t allowed to use their real names, so I named Paul McCartney “Mike McGear” (an in-joke for Beatlesmaniacs, anyone know why?).

Basically, this Batman meets the Beatles thing has been going on for a while…

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For last week’s special tribute to Debra Jane Shelly click here

For the Bun Toon that started all this Bill Finger attention last month, click here

For the Bun Toon Archive, click here

Unseen DC: Rejected Batman And Robin Adventures #6 Covers!

Before we get to the unseen goodies from B&R Adventures #6, I have to  follow up on the LAST unseen DC post about the cover for Batman and Robin Adventures #7.  I had originally published the set of rejected cover sketches that looked like this:

Before the final one that got accepted…

And I thought that was the end of it.  But while going through the files for this week’s post about a different B&R ADVENTURES cover, I found another  rejected Ventriloquist sketch, that I’d forgotten until I saw the art today.  I really like this one.  I wonder why it got turned down.

I like the movement, the crying the gun to the puppet’s head and the basic composition.   And no, I have no idea who Eric is, and why his name’s on there.

HOUSEKEEPING OVER:  

We move onto Unseen Batman And Robin Adventures #6

For reasons not worth going into, this issue required an eighteen page rewrite over a single weekend, and that required a sleepless 72 hours, and a clever, helpful wife to get the final script to the office that Monday morning.  It’s about a newspaper tabloid that makes up a story about Batman firing Robin, and a dozen kids show up to audition for the job, one of whom gets kidnapped and held for ransom.  With all the drama,  it ended up one of my favorite issues of the run, and I always wanted to return to some of the “auditioning Robins” someday.     Here are the proud, the strong, the rejected cover sketches:

I was going for a “Silver Age” type of image here…something that Carmine Infantino or Neal Adams would have drawn in 1968….That sweep of Batman’s cape as he exits towards the reader is a little like a Neal Adams cover of that period, where Batman tells Alfred to close up the Batcave…FOREVER!

Focusing on the kidnapping element of the story.  There’s no Batman on this cover though, which may have been why it was turned down…

Hmm…needs more Robins. Rejected!

And here’s the cover that was finally chosen:

Now, here’s how much of a knob I am.  When I was drawing up the cover, I wanted to make sure the photograph of Batman and Robin looked as much like an image that was printed flat and lying on an angle, so I drew the image up properly, and figured out a grid that would allow me to transfer the image into perspective.  Oh you kids today, and your Photoshop transform commands!  Back in the day, we had to use our brains to do this stuff.  Of course, I could have just freehanded it, but I mentioned; I’m a knob.

Enough looking at rejection and misspent youth!  I have new drawings to get back to!

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your bonus Unseen Batman Adventures Art:   The sign I used to tape up over our TV screen when I was out of the house during Batman time, in case one of my roommates was tempted to change the channel.

Rob Granito Comic Fraud Funnies! YAY!

Sue me! Sue me! Please sue me!

Sorry internet, I couldn’t resist.

Ah.  It’s funny because he’s a dick.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your Rob Granito moment of dickery:

This is a print rob offers for sale at his convention booth.

and….

Here's the page from Batman and Robin Adventures #1 that Rob traced part of, and claimed was his work.

For those who’ve never heard of this fecal jackass, here’s a link to more about him…

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**New Pages this Week** are now

up and available for your viewing pleasure. An eclectic bunch: a Tailgunner Jo page, something from a Teen Titans Annual, a poster for Marvel Heroclix…and a Batman and Robin Adventures page.

Keiren

New Pages this week…

…will go up in an hour or two. Waiting on the confirmation of some pricing from The Guy.

Keiren

This Week’s Pages…

Ty has decided to go with an Adventures theme…Batman and Robin, WildCATS,  Justice League and Dark Claw specifically.  Check out this week’s new pages.

Keiren

Nepotism Thursday

Good lord, Nepotism Thursday falls on a Thursday this month.  Alert the coast guard!!

Years ago, Ty was approached by Brandon Kruse for an interesting project he was involved with.  Kruse had drawn some issues of Batman and Robin Adventures which Ty had written (issues 9, 12-16, 18-20, 22 and 23) so he was part of Ty’s work “family”.  The project involved doing covers and a couple of interior pages for a superhero character which would be used on a website for that character.

Ty, at the time, was up to his neck teaching at Max the Mutt Animation School, and thought of offering up some of his students to do the work.  For someone who will happily take the opportunity to write, draw, ink, colour and letter his own stuff, Ty actually loves to collaborate–and to pass work on to those he considers deserving. But Kruse was hoping to work more with Ty.

At the time, Ty was teaching our eldest how to ink, so he sent along some samples by Kellam (Templeton-Smith at the time, now using Templeton as his work name), and some colouring and lettering by me (and yes, I can spell when I letter–it’s just that we Canadians like to stick “u”s in our words for something to do–a favourite of ours which I know our neighbours to the south don’t even when they’re out and about.) The samples passed muster and the pages arrived…

All the pages were pencilled by Brandon Kruse. Ty and Kellam divided the inking evenly.  I coloured all but one of the pages (the cover for the trapped Crimson Arrow, as seen immediately above) and lettered ’em all. Ty came up with the aging techniques.

The project went by fairly quickly–but was revisited several times.  I had to make a few changes to the pages a couple of times; once because when the costume was created for the live-action video, a yellow stripe was added to the glove which hadn’t been in the original design.  And other changes came about because…well let’s just say that there used to be extra material on the top of the head of the character and leave it at that.  Basically–thank god for PhotoShop!

You can see how the finished work was used over at

The Crimson Arrow

(I didn’t do the lettering which is used on the opening home page for click-throughs.  That was in place of the dialogue lettering I had done.)

(And, for those of you who might be wondering and speculating…let’s just say that this project came well after Ty signed on as one of the three curators* of The Hoverboy Museum. )

Keiren

*Ty and Rick Green both signed on to help original curator Marcus Moore who had been struggling valiantly for years to build the museum up.

TY HERE: Ten special bonus points for whomever can tell which two covers my son inked, and which two covers I inked.  ALSO:  I coloured one of ’em, and my wife coloured the other three…for THIRTY points, which cover was my colour work.  The clock is ticking, people.  And, as always, the points are redeemable as airmiles.  All winners will receive miles and miles of air, theirs to breathe for  years to come.   By the way, the things atop the Crimson Arrow’s head were, in fact, clearly actionable pointy bat-ears.  I’m not sure why the producers thought the bat-ears were originally acceptable, and I’ll look for one of the un-altered covers to put up in a bit…it was like a neon sign blinking “SUE US!  SUE US!  SUE US!”.   But the whole things was wonderful fun, and my son’s first professional inking paycheck.  So WOO HOO Nepotism Thursdays!

Ty the Guy

SOMETIMES, THE ROUGH…and another of the increasingly late Hoverboy Fridays!

Clearly, I’m mad, I tell you.  MAD.

I’m one of those guys who spend their lives liking the rough sketch better than the final art.  It’s a curse.   I have a fondness for the scribbled, eccentric, humanistic and unembarrassed linework of a rough sketch.  There’s a lovely connection to movement and thought in the first contact with the image to muscles and paper,  often softened unbearably by turning it into a final illustration.   As a professional drawer-boy, I’m always fighting between “cleaning it up” and “letting it live”.

The Batman sketch from an old, old Adventures cover, (which I just found in a box yesterday, and hence this post) is less than three inches high.  It’s drawn in pencil and a thick pentel marker which was clearly drying out, as the background becomes less dark to the right. But the sense of danger, the monster, and the expressions on everyone’s face works for me in a way the final doesn’t.

My Pekar’s AMERICAN SPLENDOR work last year did the same thing to to me.  I was going for a very sedate, “realistic” Curt Swan type of storytelling for Harvey, since that was the basic feel of this particular script…but the rough layouts had a Kirby-like energy to them, with a lively and playful sense of proportion that I wish had fit the story.

( for more Harvey online, click here)

Again, these layouts are about three inches tall, and the final art is fifteen inches high…so the movements of your hands vs. the movements of your shoulders are going to be different.

I just got through reading an issue of Marvel’s new “STRANGE TALES” comic, with folks like Peter Bagge, and James  Kochalka doing very indy looking work on Marvel super-heroes.  Astoundingly great fun, and some of the pages have the same feel as my rough pages do…before I clean myself up.

If only I hadn’t seen so much Harvey Kurtzman while growing up.  I could rid myself of this demon of liking the roughs.

AND NOW—

FOR THOSE WHO DEMAND THEIR HOVERBOY FRIDAYS ON FRIDAY, I GIVE A FIE TO THEE!  A FEE FIE!

Hoverboy Fridays continue to wander the calendar, and we find one barging into Sunday.  I’m only making this rare exception to move Hoverboy Fridays from its regular spot on Tuesdays, to this weekend, because the most recent update is topical!  It has to do with Hoverboy’s very tenuous connection to Sesame Street, which celebrated it’s 40th, or 45th anniversary this week, I wasn’t paying enough attention when Wolf Blitzer mentioned it.

Go to the Hoverboy museum and read more about this astounding connection between Kermit the Frog and The Boy Who Hovers.

www.hoverboy.com (for those who don’t hyper link well).

Ty the Guy.  AWAAAY!