Appearing today at WOODBRIDGE HEROES

No Bun Toon until tomorrow, folks, as I’m off to Woodbridge Heroes, 3901 Highway 7, Woodbridge ON.

 

Tailgunner Jo stuff!

Hey there, websurfers.

I’ve been sick as a cat lately, so I’ve been doing little but moan and complain.  (I’d say “sick as a dog” but I only have cats, and they vomit fairly regularly, so we’ll go with that.)  I’m running late on everything, so I’m only popping in to show ya this sketch.

Those characters are the stars of a comic book series I did a million years ago called “Tailgunner Jo”,  a sci-fi/fantasy series for DC in the late eighties.  I was the inker for a few issues, and had posted one of the pages online for sale here at ART LAND, and when a fan asked for a bunch of them, we discovered that we had already SOLD one of the pages that he wanted.  He was nice enough to switch over to another page after we explained it to him, and this sketch was my way of apologizing for telling him (in an email) that I had a page which had actually been sold years ago.  (There was  confusion about the story page No. # vs. the issue page No.#  (both were marked on each page SHEESH!, and my brain hurt)

But it’s been all happily sorted out a few days back, right before the body gave in on me.

It’s been a while since I drew these characters, but I did the sketch without looking up the original designs, just to see if I could match them from memory.  I did okay, actually, only having to tweak the raccoon once I checked with the original issues (I’d given him a black mask…but he had a white one in the published stories!).

This series isn’t as long forgotten as I thought it was…for instance HERE is the Tailgunner Jo online shrine!  Nice to see the efforts are never COMPLETELY obscured by time.    Peter Gillis, and Tom Artis (the writer and penciler) did a great job on this series, and it’s their efforts I’m happy to see remembered.  I only inked the first couple of issues, and then I ran off to pencil Justice League, so I was a fair weather friend at best.  Going back and looking over the issues was a treat, and I hope folks find this stuff in their local fifty cent bins at conventions etc.  Worth the read, just for the way cool nonsense happening on every page.  Fairy tale teddy bear wars and cybernetic superhero industrial espionage corporate pirate stuff, with dark hints of drug abuse, wrapped in a message of single parenting in a harsh world.  Lone Wolf and Cub meets the Matrix.

I’m fairly sure the listed pages on the website are all correct and on sale, but I’m as disorganized as an octopus directing traffic most days.   My wife assures me we’re okay.  Heads have already rolled.  I’ve fired two of my cats. **

Ty the Guy OUT!

(**actually, I have a master list of what pages are available and which are for sale, based on what’s been listed on the site. The problem here was email communication–Ty thought he’d never sold any of the pages and was much surprised to find that he had. kts)

This is why artists get married.  So we remember to eat.  It reminds me of this joke.  What do you call a painter without a girlfriend?

A homeless guy.

It’s funny because it’s easily verifiable.

T. t. G.

Here now–your COMIC BOOK moment of ZEN:

Batman: Under the Red Hood redux

There have been quite a few reviews from the press screening Ty hosted, last week, for Batman:  Under the Red Hood. And from those reviews, I’ve culled a few pictures of Ty and one of the sketch he did as the prize in a raffle the PR team held. So, herewith, pictures (I’m too tired for any funny talk)…

from FutureShopForums.ca‘s review

from Future Shop review

(from Future Shop review)

and from EyeCrave.net’s review

from EyeCrave.net

and…drum roll, please–

Batman!

(from EyeCrave.net)

Keiren

Unseen Star Trek – from the LOSER.

As promised on the weekend, I said I’d do a fun blog about my recent Star Trek graphic novel whether I won or lost the Shuster Award for Best Writer for that very project.

As you can see from the title of the blog, I lost.  The winners of the awards can be found here!  Congrats to all the talented folks who were recognized for the contributions we get to make to canadian, and comic culture.  YAAAY all around.

But here’s the fun blog anyway.

Star Trek:  Mission’s End was illustrated by a wonderfully skilled young Canadian named Stephen Molnar, who worked himself ragged to get the likenesses, the costumes, the backgrounds, the aliens, and the whole “feel” of Star Trek absolutely right.  He’s a big part of the reason people liked the book, if they did.  I’m going to show you guys a couple of Steve’s elegant pages in pencil and inks in a moment.  You’ll have to get the comic, GN or phone app to read it in colour; the final product belongs to Paramount and IDW.

Not mine to give away online, without a spanking.

But here’s where the fun comes in.  A couple of months ago, a fellow named Darrin Egan took one of my Comic Book Bootcamp courses, and was interested to try his hand at a full set of sample pages, based on an existing script that was yet to be published (so he couldn’t be influenced by the published version).   Though the Trek issues had already come out at the time, Darrin hadn’t seen them, and was interested in trying his hand at the pages.    Below are both versions:  First, the terrifically talented Steve Molnar, artist of the published story, in either inks or pencils,  followed by the vivacious version by Darrin Egan, from the same script, but without seeing Steve’s art.

Obviously, I’m a pushy writer, as the basic storytelling is remarkably similar.  So the parts that mirror each other, are the fault of a micromanaging writer…it’s the little ways in which they differ I find fascinating.  At any rate, I thought you guys might enjoy.  They’re both good at likenesses, and storytelling rules.  Each has strengths.  It’s like the Tiger and Princess.

Steve Molnar, pencils and inks

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Darrin Egan - pencil

page two and three was a double page spread.  Click on the images to make them bigger…

Steve Molnar - pencils and inks

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Darrin Egan - pencil

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Next:  The sexy moment, with the ripped shirt and the flirty, sweet GLAVIN!

Steve Molnar - pencil and ink

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Darrin Egan - pencil

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Finally, the two page spread that reveals that we’ve been inside a HUGE space ship, originally piloted by giants, and now long abandoned and overgrown with foliage and giant insects.   I think they both knocked it out of the park, though I do confess, the last panel of  Spock in the Molnar layout, is what made this whole introduction work for me.  The concept of the satanic character in the middle of Eden, interjecting and ruining everyone’s appreciation of the nature.  Darrin did a GREAT job on every panel,  but his Spock is a little too friendly for the “beat” of that moment.

Again, these are double page spreads, so click on ’em to make ’em bigger.

Steve Molnar - just pencil this time

–

Darrin Egan - pencil

Wasn’t that fun?  I’d love to hear how much you like Darrin’s pencils…so would Darrin, I imagine, and he deserves a little slap and tickle for these excellent pages (and please, feel free to equally gush about Steve Molnar’s work, but he’s already a comic book superstar, so he’s getting raves from all quarters fairly continuously!).

And one last bit of unseen Trek before we head on over to Ten Forward for the afternoon….When I first found out I had a chance to do some Star Trek comics, a good friend of mine, Richard (Pitt, X-Man)  Pace (here’s his blog, where he’s doing a GORGEOUS painting of a jungle girl at the moment…) jumped up and asked if he could participate.  Schedules and other things precluded his helping out, but the sample sketch he tossed my way was so lovely, I’m including it here at the bottom of this entry.

Richard Pace pencils

I’d love to do a Star Trek comic book with ANY of these individuals in the future, should the fates or the Great Bird of the Galaxy allow.

Ty the Guy

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TY TEMPLETON’S IRONICALLY SELF-AWARE COMIC BOOK BONDAGE PARADE, part 2.

Bondage?  That’s where we are now?

I do six monthly posts about the rise of postmodernism as a result of new educational opportunities created by the second Industrial Revolution, and no one reads them.  I do an eleven day series about our collective struggle for a cultural soul in light of recent media consolidations and the blog gets thirty-five hits over those eleven days… But hogtie Lois Lane to a speeding truck with her thighs held open and 37,804 internet pervs find a way to my homepage.

But I’m no fool.  I understand the needs of the blog consumer, and I will accommodate with the content you heaving philistines so clearly demand.  Here is part two of…TY TEMPLETON’S IRONICALLY SELF-AWARE COMIC BOOK  BONDAGE PARADE.

I can't believe Marvel let me do this cover!

Both in the comments section, and in my email box, I was flooded with an estimated eight requests for Wonder Woman as my next subject.  Unfortunately, it proved nearly impossible to find images of the Amazon Princess in bondage, in either my comic collection or on the internet– even with the safe search off.  This screengrab from the Seventies WONDER WOMAN TV show was all I could find.

Those chains look uncomfortable. No wonder Nazis were considered rude.

morning

You’ll have to excuse me while I catch my breath after that much concentrated sarcasm.  Who here DIDN’T know that the ORIGINAL Princess Diana (Ms. Magazine’s Mascot) was THE poster girl for restraint fetishism for her entire career?  Her creator, Charles Moulton (aka Dr. William Moulton Marston, Phd in psychology from Harvard, and distinguished co-inventor of the lie-detector) was an outspoken bondage enthusiast who insisted in books and interviews that the world would be

noon

a more peaceful place if we all learned to sheepshank our loved ones.  This was before we knew that sort of thing was “weird” and he was still allowed to be photographed for glossy magazines and shop at local stores all through the forties and fifties. And if peace through mutual rope burns wasn’t enough for

night

Mr. and Mrs. America, the good doctor had two openly poly-amorous wives, each of whom bore him a couple of kids, and the whole sordid commune of anti-establishment love lived happily ever after.

Compared to Dr. Moulton,

she may look upset, but she still hasn't shouted her safe word.

Hugh Hefner was a pussy.

So finding images of Wonder Woman in bondage is about as hard as finding a closeted republican at a gay bar.  If you need to see shots of the chained up Amazon, grab your google and work your search engine, kids.  You’ll end up with enough drawings of Diana cattle-roped to a torpedo to wallpaper your sanctum sanctorum.

But in light of the double-mint twins marital arrangements that Dr. Willie had with the wives, this image (below) of two hot ladies RIDING THE MONSTER KANGAROO  does command attention, , but then, who hasn’t drawn two women riding the Monster Kangaroo?

Penis? What four legged penis?

Heck, riding the monster kangaroo is my regular phone-doodle, only I don’t draw the rollicking beast  with quite so phallic a body shape.

So it’s way too easy to go after the Amazon Princess, or the Phantom Lady, or even Robin and Bucky, the boy hostages.  No matter how much fun it is to draw a nicely restrained pale young boy wearing a domino mask, it’s just not “ART LAND” style to blog about the commonplace and mundane.

BATMAN is another story altogether.

I keep a sketch book.  All artists do.  It’s a place to warm up the  hands as we start our work day, like doing scales on a piano.  Sometimes the drawings are of two  headed nuns playing ice hockey, or equally silly images never meant to be shown to the public.  Sometimes I sketch ideas.  The following was never meant to be anything more than an image of how tough Batman was.  He can scare you pissless while still tied to a chair.

You want to see a tough guy? Find him some nails to eat.

This was just a doodle in a sketch book.  But I had an idea.  Could I do an entire issue where Batman is tied in a chair?  Where he doesn’t get out of the trap at all, and just SCARES the bad guys into giving up…?  That struck me as a fun challenge and I asked the editor if I could try it.  I was told “yes” but I had to include Robin and Batgirl in the story, since they were co-stars of the book at the time.  Well, that diluted the idea somewhat, but I was still happy to give it a chance, and I ended up writing one of my favorite little Batman stories for BATMAN ADVENTURES (vol 2) #6, during my more than ten years working on that title.   It’s only five pages, so I reproduce it below…THIS is bondage in comics done RIGHT.

page 1

pg 2

pg 3

pg 4

pg 5

Don’t ask about the Black Mask/Red Hood storyline.  The less said about that, the better.

There, I hope we’ve exhausted bondage for a while, you sicko pervs.  Tomorrow, the return of all new Ty Templeton Funnies for the weekend.  That post will be about coprophilia.

Ty the Guy

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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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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

HOVERBOY FRIDAY ON TUESDAY!

Hoverboy Fridays return, with another stunning find in the world of Hovercheology.  (Yes, I just made up a word, so that’s ten dollars you owe me, Mr. Webster’s Dictionary people. We shouldn’t be doing your work for you.)

This week, it’s sketches from the never-aired, never-filmed and never-paid for “Hoverboy Away!” Saturday Morning Cartoon show from 1993, theoretically produced by BUCKET OF GLASS studios.  They never got much further than these preliminary sketches by Jean Paul Rive Gauche before the plug was pulled on the project due to a misunderstanding.  A bad phone connection (from a fairly new form of mobile phone at the time) had caused a programmer at CBS to buy the show sight unseen believing it to be the animated adventures of LOVERBOY, a stadium rock band from Canada whose hits include “WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND” and “TURN ME LOOSE”.  When the CBS executive realized he had bought a show about the superhero created by the maniac who had shot up a shopping mall in Michigan just ten years previously, he ended his relationship with BUCKET OF GLASS immediately and found a studio that WAS willing to produce a show about Canadian stadium rockers who fight crime.  THAT show, “LOVERBOY vs THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK” was cancelled after two very low-rated episodes.

Little survives of the HOVERBOY AWAY! project beyond these few sketches, where clearly BUCKET OF GLASS hadn’t settled on a final look for Hoverboy’s costume.  We fans of Hoverboy can only sigh and wonder what “might have been” if they had actually aired some of this series…what would have been Hoverboy’s EIGHTH TV show.

Jean Paul would be better remembered by both the animation and the cartooning industry in general, had he not been struck by lightning mere hours after creating these sketches.    Another great illustrator lost to the “final gig”.

For more information about some of the Hoverboy shows that DID make it to the air…go to Hoverboy on screen at the Hoverboy Museum online.

Ty the Guy.

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More Rough Stuff and Getting Mad

In yet another of my embarrassing and self indulgent flights of internet exhibitionism, I present more of those (Yechh) Ty Templeton covers from last year’s San Diego Convention Mad Giveaway along with some rough stuff you kids seem to enjoy.  As I mentioned last time, these phony covers are from a script by the one, the only (Yay) Evan Dorkin!  (Last time I posted a few covers from this Mad stuff, Evan wrote me a nice letter, and I was so happy to hear from him that I skipped around the back yard like a one legged virgin, invited to her prom.  So “Hi again, Evan” if you’re ego-googling your lonely nights away once more…we should work together more often.)

Back to clearing out the digital basement of more of these little funbags (I’m using the word correctly, right?) and  I hope that by seeing how much work is involved in drawing these furshlugginer things, I’ve scared a few of the younger cartoonists away from this life of tears…and they’ve found more fulfilling work in the fields of  food service or appliance repair.

The four drawings you see here represent 1) the original thumbnail the left  2) The “final sketch” below.  3) The penciled and half inked version of the image below that and 4) the final version in colour for the magazine up top.

Thumbnails are about three inches high (the image here is actually a bit large) and just created to first put the ideas in a fluid, two dimensional space. They’re not really a form of drawing, it’s more a process of thinking about images and where they go.   After the thumbs are approved by the Editor they get blown up to about eight inches high, and I add the right proportions, shadows, etc.  This is more of a drawing now, but it’s by no means the final.  I’m still trying to get the “story” of the image onto the page, while adding the illustrative aspects.

In the case of a normal cover, I’d blow this sketch up to fifteen inches high, as that’s standard for cover original art in our biz, but since these covers were appearing four to a page in their printed form in Mad Magazine, it wasn’t worth being that large. So I did them at 12 inches high.

Below is a couple more of the covers from the project.  Just the thumbs and finals here, you don’t need a lecture every damn time I open my mouth.

Oh, and a small promise:  The next time we gather digitally to see more of my Mad Stuff, I’ll post the very first job I ever did for Mad back in the nineties.  The story behind THAT assignment makes me look like a complete jackass, so I’ll need to get roaring drunk to tell it right.  The problem is, when I get really drunk, I don’t post on the internet, I go into the woods near my home and “shoot coyotes”.

And yes, “shooting coyotes” is a euphemism for something, but I refuse to tell you what.  All you need to know is that it requires whiskey and towels.

So much of life involves towels.

Ty the Guy. Jan 25, 2010.  Not out of the woods, yet.

NOTE:  The characters in the Iron Man sketch that get removed are “Harold and Kumar” and the lovely and vivacious ladies of “Two Girls/One Cup”.  They get replaced by the “Chocolate Rain” guy.  Not my call, so I can’t tell you why.  ALSO:  Click on any image, and they open in a larger window!  Neat-o, eh?

Madly Mine, and now Yours.

When I first got into the funnybook business, well over sixty years ago…back in what we used to call “The Golden Age”, I had one dream and one dream only:  to someday work for Mad Magazine.  Of course, sixty years ago, Mad would have been two years in the future, but I was nothing if not precocious, and forward thinking.

So, just to show off, I’m running some of my Mad artwork on da homeblog, from time to time, and perhaps one or two of my strips from the late, lamented National Lampoon.  Today we see some more of the GREATEST COMICS OF THE DECADE covers, created for Mad’s San Diego Comic Convention promo of last year.   (I wish I could run the entire article, which was written by Evan Dorkin, but copyright issues prevent me!).   Here’s the rough work, and the final art on two more of these…

The rough was meant to look like an old Superman annual cover,  with captions suggesting how dull all of it was to see again and again.  The editor eventually opted for one image, and I wrote some cover copy to go with it.  Below is the final.

And here’s the rough work, and then final art for the X-Men cover for the same article.  I thought the casual body language of the characters sitting around the kitchen came off fairly well for so small a drawing (The originals for all of these are about eight inches tall, and the sketch itself is probably only three inches high!)  That’s probably size-as for the upload to the right.  I often find that drawing the rough sketch so tiny is the best way to make sure everything “reads” when it’s printed down at the small size in the final article.    Down below is the final, coloured version of the faux cover.  See you later with a few more of these…

Ty the Guy

Wow, I was clearly the reference for the busty babe in the Superman cover–right, honey?  Right?

Keiren