Hop, hop and away!

I promise, no complaining about the new Zack Snyder movie, except for this bit here.

Another honest-to-god-true-life-adventure.  Ah, the life I lead…

I suppose my other children are pretty cool, too.  No, really.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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As long time readers of this blog might recall, my eldest son, Kellam once went out on Halloween as BLUE SUPERMAN!  

Perhaps the only Blue Superman ever on Halloween.  Not a single house knew who he was.

Below is a conversation I had with Taylor about the Archie characters.  It’s an ongoing education with my brood.

And, of course, me and the lad aren’t the only ones with a Christopher Reeve man-crush.

Jerry Seinfeld’s man-crush on the big blue boy scout is so strong, a few years back, American Express actually hired me to draw Superman and Jerry palling around together.  No, really.

I think Superman is tickling Jerry here.  What was I thinking when I drew this?

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For last week’s Bun Toon, click here!

If you life in the Toronto area and are interested in learning to write or draw comics, click here.

Happy Birthday Big Red S!

Seventy Five years old!  Great Rao!

I have a lovely essay that I wrote on the occasion of Superman’s 70th Birthday, and rather than rethink it, I’ll just link to it below.  Click on the image and you’ll be taken to a much larger and readable version of the article.   When you’re done (or once you’ve ignored the article and scrolled below it), you can rejoin the regular blog, still in progress.

What I said still holds true (unless the upcoming movie REALLY sucks).

I’ve had a long and unexpected association with Superman through the years, and I consider it quite an honour to have contributed to the great character’s legacy. Working out of the Superman office in the late 80s and early 90s gave me the whooping-giggle thrill of collaborating with some of the legends of this comics industry.  I got ink over such childhood heroes as Jim Mooney:

And John Byrne…

 Dan Jurgens…

…and the definitive Superman artist for a generation: Curt Swan.

…as well as a dozen other artists working out Mike Carlin’s Superman office.  My single favourite image I contributed to while I was a Superman inker was this cover for Superboy: The Comic Book #4…penciled by Kevin Maguire and rendered by your humble blogger.  I rarely put my own artwork up on the walls of my house, but I consider this a Kevin piece anyway, so it sat on my wall for years.

I dare you to tell me that isn’t a great cover.

Superman was on hand the first time I co-wrote a story with my pal Dan Slott.  Though we’d worked together as a writer/artist team a few times, this was our first collaboration as co-writers, and our little tale featured Krypto and his big flyin’ master.   Go find a copy and read it, you’ll let go of a few honest tears when it’s done.  I’m proud of this one.

I got to work with Jerry Seinfeld because of Superman.  I was asked to design the look of  Superman for a series of Seinfeld/American Express animated commercials, as well as creating some odd Jerry and Superman scenes for billboards and print ads.

The original photo is Jerry grabbing at “no one” in the air, and I had to draw Superman to fit where Jerry’s hand was.  Kal-el is supposed to be saying “this guy’s crazy”, but it looks equally like he’s tickling the comedian.

Superman and Jerry bond over their dogs.

Is there any better job than being paid to illustrate Krypto starting a bromance?

Working for Superman offered me to opportunity to design collectable action figures:

and crayon boxes, and puzzles and t-shirts and colouring books and darn near anything with an S on it.  Of the many many images of Superman I’ve drawn for DC Comics over my career, this is my favourite:

I know there’s other characters on this JLU cover, but there’s something about the Superman figure that sits just right with me.  His proportions, his expression, even the colours of his costume, all came together in this image and I didn’t screw any of it up.  I actually don’t hate this cover and my wife will tell you how rare that is for me.  I might be wrong, but I think it’s the last time I drew Superman for the mother corporation…once I get it correct, I scoot off and don’t do it again.

So happy birthday Mr. Cape.  You’ve been a delightful character to read as a child, to work on as a young adult, and to come back to every few years like a comfortable trip back home.   I hope I get another chance at him someday…and I treasure the time we spent together.

I’m always a little jealous when he dates someone else.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your BONUS Superman Moment- You knew this one was coming.

New Pages…

Way, way back in September when we started up this blog, I posted an entry on the art Ty did for the Jerry Seinfeld and Superman American Express Commercials.  Just a bit of intro and a link to the commercials.

Now, Ty’s decided to put a couple of the pages up for sale. He loves the Krypto page–he’s always had a fondness for Krypto the Superdog (cannot type that without instantly hearing the theme song for the recent Krypto cartoon. Ty saw every single episode so I know the song well) and even tried to pitch a story or two to DC Comics.

I don’t remember all the details of this assignment, so I’ll have to get Ty to add something later. I know that Seinfeld had a particular Superman in mind, and DC Comics knew Ty was the man who was going to be able to give him that.

The Seinfeld-Superman pages are here…

Gambit vs. Gambit Xmen video box cover is here…

Keiren
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Last of the SUPER SEINFELDS

It turns out, once I found it, that the mock up of the Daily Planet was a plastic bag, and not a phony newspaper.  So, sorry about the quality of the scan, it’s impossible to make the shiny plastic work in my scanner.  I’ve tried sacrificing to the gods of digital technology ( smashing an analog video tape in front of my hard drive while chanting ), but ain’t nothing going to make the “photo” section of this come out well.  Ah, so what, you can read the jokes.  This particular Daily Planet bag is one of my favorite pieces of swag from my world of art stuff.  I LOVE Jerry Seinfeld, and have for years, and it was a tremendous woo hoo to help him put his arms around his Kryptonian buddy like that.

Before we leave the land of Seinfeld/Metropolis, I have two more images.  When the final art ran for these ads (in subways and store posters, etc.) there were two little tweaks I didn’t love.  1)  The asked me to change the expression on Superman’s face in the party image so he was laughing more.  I liked the original image, it looked more “CURT SWAN” to me, which was the gig.  And the shot of Superman at the fence was too “skinny” for the art director, so we photoshopped him a little extra girth before we put him into the photo.  Funny the nonsense that sticks in an illustrator’s brain for six years.  Anyway, no that I have a blog, I get to post the original drawings, the way I liked them.  At ART LAND I control the world!  BWAH HAH HA H

Speaking of images I don’t control, check this out, just below this paragraph.  It’s a box of crayons I came across a couple of  years ago, whilst gamboling through a local K-Mart in my home town.  The Superman image is mine, from the nineties, part of an attempt at putting a Batman Adventures spin on Superman a few years before his show spun-off, and done around the time Superman was a long haired  hippie freak.  I assumed when Bruce Timm did his designs for Superman that my designs got tossed into a bin.  But here’s one of them, on a crayon box from 2008.  What the…?  Can’t vouch for the quality of the crayons.

Here’s a fun image (below)  that NEVER ran anywhere in print or online, so far as I recall.

It was commissioned by Wizard Magazine, I’m going to say around 2001, or thereabouts.  It was for an article about Superman and his fans, and I was asked to do “MY” iconic image of Superman.  Seeing as we’d just been forced to endure another couple of issues of the BLUE SUPERMAN that year, after we’d seen him retired back in ’98, I felt the most important image I could think of was the big red cape turning his back on the nineties and striding ahead into the 21st Century.  Well, the folks at Wizard didn’t run it.  They paid me though, which was nice, and gave the artwork away to a contest winner.  I have no idea if he was as unimpressed by as Wizard was…I still like it and now I get to show it here!

More later today, if the deadline gods are kind…it is Hoverboy Friday, after all.   And tomorrow, WEEKEND STRIPS begin.  Which is to say, I start running strips, not start blogging while naked.  I’ve been naked this whole time.

Ty the Guy

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MORE SUPERMAN. MORE JERRY. Because I have my finger on the PULSE of America.

Just so we’re perfectly clear, here.  When I posted some of this stuff yesterday, it was because I found some fun Jerry Seinfeld meets Superman artwork I did, and not because I’m contributing to the piling on for THE MARRIAGE REF TV show.  Oh, it’s a dumb show…I’ll give you that.  But the Larry David/Madonna/Ricky Gervais show made me laugh, but I’ll bet if you put those three in a room to discuss butter, it would make me laugh.

All right, groveling apology aside (in case my close friend Jerry Seinfeld is reading this), here’s more of the fun project I did for American Express a few years ago.  I dig through the pile, I find more things.  These were postcards of Jerry and Pal, Superman, cavorting about town like two bachelors who own dogs.  And sometimes getting a little tipsy together.  I have a set of these postcards, only I’m not sure where you’re supposed to send them FROM.  If you have a postcard of Italy, you send it from Italy. Click on the images to make them bigger.

The primary reason I was asked to do this, I think, is because I used to ink a lot of the Silver Age Superman guys towards the end of their runs, and Jerry Seinfeld had a very Silver Age Superman in mind when he conceived the promotion.  At least someone did.  I recall being asked specifically to draw it like Curt Swan, or at least like I was doing a Sixties or Seventies version of Superman.  There’s other fun doo-dads and things from this project.  A phony issue of the Daily Planet, if I recall, and some long form commercials I had a small hand in.  I’ll keep digging, and when I strike something other than old sandwiches, I come running to the scanner!  Well, when I’m not drawing this month’s comic books.  Which I should get back to doing, right now!

Ty the Guy

PS:  Robert Klarer had some interesting things to say about the Kirby lawsuit a few feet down this page in the comments section of that entry.  Go check it out.

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THE KIRBY QUESTION and More Unseen DC

First off–Nomination Shmomination.  I’m honoured, and hope all the other nominees are killed in a sudden, painless skiing accident at once.  Otherwise, should they survive, I’m good if Ian Boothby gets the Shuster.  He’s rock solid funny every month over at my secret home, BONGO comics, and may not have been properly acknowledged for that yet.

Ah, the whole KIRBY thing.  If you’ve lived under a rock for the last few days, you might have missed that Kirby’s family is suing MARVEL and DISNEY for the rights to many of the characters he created, or co-created, or was down the hall when someone else co-created them (in the case of the obviously-not-created-by-Kirby Spider-Man, for instance).  I’ve read some pretty passionate calls for the Kirbys to go sink their teeth into Marvel for what was done to Jack, and some equally passionate calls for the Kirbys to back off and accept that their dad sold that stuff to Martin Goodman decades ago, and that they’re just trying to reach into Disney’s very deep pockets.  I have to admit, I come down on the side of the family, simply because us creators have to stick together, and I’d hope someday my family can reap the millions and millions that will someday come our way from my dramatic re-design of the ROCKET RED costume, or the creation of a spin-off version of MODOK in Howard the Duck.  But I’m a sucker for anything that’s anti-corporate, EVEN IF IT’S THE CORPORATION THAT EMPLOYS ME FROM TIME TO TIME.

So, I’m very interested in hearing from the folks that drop by.  Pro-family or pro-Disney, let’s holler, as the kid’s say.

No, dude.  Not SUPERMAN should holler…oh, wait, this is more of that Unseen DC stuff, today with 25% more Jerry Seinfeld?  In honor of the truly horrific flogging that Jerry’s new show “The Marriage Ref” is getting all over the critic-o-sphere,  I’m posting some of the images of Superman that went into the production of the Jerry Seinfeld/Superman/American Express commercials of six or seven years ago!   And since we’re going for “Unseen” as a theme this month, I thought I’d start with some of the preliminary artwork, and dig out the finished (and printed!) versions later.  These were all meant to be “snapshots” of Jerry and his best pal SUPERMAN, hanging out at the ball game, doing laundry, walking their dogs together and male bonding in a totally heterosexual, dockers-wearing kind of a vibe.  Here are some of the REJECTED sketches I did.  They didn’t like the flying Krypto, and wanted him walking, they didn’t like the look on Superman’s face, so that got re-drawn something like eight times.  These are the Unseen comp versions.  There are five or six of these “snapshots” in total, here’s a few to chomp on for now!

Stay Tuned for more silly reasons to repost the Mad Cover as the days wear  on, and ALL NEW BUNNY FUNNIES this weekend, as the blog morphs into a webcomic.  Slowly, but very uncertainly.

Ty the Guy

Animation by Ty

We (he and I) have done posts before about animated projects Ty has been involved with (goodbye, months of our lives gone to Dexter Early Cuts!), but yesterday’s post made me think I should just quickly gather ’em all in one place.  So, here, with no fanfare whatsoever…

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Zellers Law of Toyland commercials

featuring Joker

featuring Penguin

featuring Catwoman

featuring Riddler

(Ty did storyboards, layouts, full-animation for all the parts that repeat for each commercial and then, reveals for the Joker and the Penguin (coming out from the cash register.  He was less-involved in the latter two)

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Jerry Seinfeld and Superman for American Express commercials

“Hindsight is 20/20”

“A uniform used to mean something”

There’s a third one I have to hunt down…

(Ty did the still images that transform into the live action…if you have an eye for it, you’ll recognize his lettering for the titles)

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Dexter Early Cuts, “Cindy Landon” webisodes for Showtime

Dexter Early Cuts, “Cindy Landon”

(Ty did all the drawings–not for the credits–and the colouring for those drawings.  With an assist from Yours Truly. Animation was done by KTV Media.)

And Ty says this re-mix of the Batman commericals amused the hell out of him, so he asked me to put it up for ya (we’re still busy arguing about where it should go in this sequence…as I’m the one at the keyboard, I currently am winning, but at any moment he could shove my chair out of the way–it’s on wheels–and take over).

Holy Perplexity, Batman

Keiren