Live Long and Hop Around More.
Last week, mere moments after I posted the Bun Toon, I headed out to my local theatre and took in the latest Trek Movie. This week (with very very slight spoilers), I report back with…
Beyond turns out to be my favourite of the last three NuTrek movies. Maybe because it wasn’t so ambitious, and maybe because they got Spock and McCoy bang-on-bullseye for all their scenes, but it “felt” right, and I was grinning the whole time. I’ve warmed to the Earth-2 crew, even the new Kirk, though he’s the only one that still doesn’t “feel right” to me. The rest of it was delightful.
It’s nice to see Trek back on track for the Fiftieth Anniversary coming up in less than a month. With a new TV series, and other little things here and there, there’s much to celebrate for this old Trekkie, including a return to doing NEW Trek related projects that I can’t talk about in public quite yet…but I promise, I shall shout and howl and promote like crazy when I’m allowed to. (I probably wasn’t even allowed to say as much as I just did.)
So forget I said anything.
I can’t wait for the next Trek Movie, already announced…with the GHOST OF KIRK’S FATHER! BOO!
Ty the Guy OUT!
A few days ago, another one of my heroes passed away at the age of 91: Long time Mad Magazine legend, Jack Davis.
I first encountered Jack, like most of us did, in a Mad Magazine when I was about nine or ten. He was one of the “gang of idiots”, the cartoonists’ cartoonist, whose casual excellence, and confident line work has been a primary inspiration in my career.
In my twenties, I consciously tried to draw like Wally Wood, Neal Adams and Jack Kirby, but some years ago, I realised that SUB-consciously, I always draw like Jack Davis.
At least I do when I’m at my best.
His aesthetic, his line, his easy precision, and his lack of pretension, worked together to create what I consider the perfect “cartoon” style of the 20th Century. It was accessible, and impossibly skilled at the same time. There was something about the way he seemed to splash colours or tone on his drawings as though he had only minutes until a deadline, and yet EVERYTHING looked like it was in the right place. The effect was magnificent, and obviously in high demand as Jack did a heck of a lot more than Mad Magazine.
When I finally got good with a crow-quill, I went to Jack Davis art for instruction on how to create all those fabulous textures and tones. It’s a master class on how to make crosshatching and greys work in illustration.
Around the age of nine or ten, I noticed the same guy who was killing it in Mad Magazine, was the guy that did those fantastic TV Guide covers, and those wonderful movie posters, and those album jackets and those back cover adverts. Jack Davis was everywhere a cartoonist was called for, and no one ever did it better.
Here’s a gallery of some of those MANY TV Guide covers, not as often seen as his Mad Magazine or Time Magazine covers.
Last week, the Bun Toon FEATURED artwork inspired by and swiped from Jack Davis. I was still using him as inspiration as recently as seven days ago.
That’s never going to stop.
For last week’s Jack Davis based Bun Toon, click here.
For the Bun Toon archives of years gone by, click here.
When I put up those Harvey Pekar sketches last week, I mentioned that neither of the drawings were in my “usual” style of doing a likeness. At this point in my career, I’m not sure I have a style, but I do have some vague idea of what sort of final drawing will look right to my eyes, and these ideas are usually rooted in Mort Drucker and John Severin…two of the great Mad artists of my youth.
Either way, when you add the Jack Davis influence in the Pekar drawing below (coupled with a blatant attempt to inject a little R. Crumb in there, another Harvey Kurtzman protege), I’ve obviously never gotten over my early crush on Mad Magazine.
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 