The Leporidae and the Felidae: A Love Story Bun Toon! Yay!

My brother from another scientific sub-order.

Sorry I wasn’t here last week.  I was in Kansas City, helping to raise money for the wonderful HERO INITIATIVE  (Click on the name and go donate!) so, I could not come to the Bun Toon.

But I did do something this week that I’ve been waiting to do for decades.

No punch line this week.

Just jumping for joy.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Long time readers of this Bunny blog are familiar with my connection to Avengers #58.

It all begins here

I’ve “re-imagined” the story at least twice while writing different Avengers books over the years, and make no secret of my love of the Vision.

But the Black Panther holds a similar place in my heart because of that issue, and I made a point of including Panther as often as I could manage it when working on Marvel projects.

When Dan Slott and I were putting together plans and ideas for the Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series we did, Dan asked if I had any wishes for the plot.  “Black Panther” was my only request, and he appeared in issue #4.

When I was writing the AVENGERS UNITED mini-series in the early 2000s, I was given a set of Avengers to work with (Wasp, Vision, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Wonder-Man, Tigra, Falcon) and Black Panther was not amongst them.

Nevertheless, in the premiere issue of that series, the Avengers first appear on page 2-3 in a sequence where they’re working out in the training room…

….You’ll notice Black Panther is there, in the background.  The story claims he’s “visiting” the mansion while he’s in New York, even though he’s not an Avenger.  I’m sneaky that way.

Some months later, the Avengers are captured by the Collector and find themselves on the Collector’s ship, in orbit around Earth.

…you’ll notice T’Challa is there, behind cap’s leg.  Apparently the Collector didn’t know The Panther wasn’t an Avenger and he captured him along with the team “accidentally”.

He’s there in the next couple of issues, too.

I made sure the Black Panther appeared in as many issues as the editor would let me get away with.  I wasn’t writing the Avengers without him.

Why?

Because the Black Panther is the ultimate heroic character.  He’s insanely wealthy, he’s king of his own country, he’s young, handsome and good looking and a genius inventor….but he spends his time helping the less fortunate instead of wallowing in his remarkable good fortune.  And unlike Batman, T’Challa’s not doing the heroic bit because of personal trauma or compulsion…he’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do.  It’s his moral position that those who can help, must help.

As a kid, I never wanted to be Batman, because of the whole orphaned childhood thing.  And I never wanted to be Superman…it’s too weird that you could fly.

But I wanted to BE Black Panther.

Who wouldn’t?

Some pages from the amazing “Panther’s Rage” story that introduced Killmonger and the whole concept of a two hundred page comic book story.  Art by Billy Graham (the other one).

Nice job on the movie, guys.  You could have screwed it up and ya didn’t.  Thank you from this happy five year old boy who waited patiently.

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Family Values Bun Toons! YAY!

Think of the CHILDREN!!

You think it’s easy living in this modern world?

It’s a struggle.  Each and every day.

Ty the Guy OUT!

I should point out, young Spock has been around the Trek universe almost since the beginning.

He first appeared in the animated episode YESTERYEAR, a time travelling Spock-Meets-Himself-as-a-Child story.  It’s actually, a pretty good Trek episode, but it gets death-duel arguments from Trekkies about it’s level of canonical acceptance.

Of course, there’s Genesis Planet Spock, grown from his own dead cells to house his own katra on Star Trek’s Eden World.

A couple of scenes later, we are treated to “Pon-Farr” Teen-Spock and his very special after school episode with Lt. Saavik.

“This won’t be creepy, because you’re not the real Saavik anyway.”

And of course, we must include NuTrek’s baby Spock–from the first/eleventh movie.

Okay, I shouldn’t have gotten so excited.

There’s already a LEGION of baby Spocks.  It’s like Spider-Verse at this point.

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For last week’s Bun Toon, which OBLIQUELY references the new Star Trek Discovery series, click the words FICTION EXPLAINED.

Bun Toons Countdown YAY!

Good lord, are we ending another year again?  I keep insisting we only do this once every decade or so, but something was said about calendars being important to the economy, and I, as a gentleman, deferred.

So, to honour tradition, we re-present our best and worst of the year – starting with those FIVE Bun Toons that soared above all others in popularity, touching the hearts of the internet across the globe… and including the five LEAST popular Bun Toons – the ones that no one clicked on or read, and even my mother disdainfully shat on.   I feel as an artist, I must air my dirty laundry or else how annoying could I really be?

Our fifth most popular Bun Toon is no surprise, as it features Comicdom’s most popular character in his most popular story, written at the top of my game.

What I especially love is that the Robin that was most recently dead when I wrote this, IS in fact, alive again at this point.  My powers of prognostication are strong!

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Let us turn now to failure.

Perhaps I’ve loved Good-Man more than he deserves, as I keep doing more and more Good-Man comics over the years.  I think we’re up to episode forty-eight with this character and we get nothing but hate mail when I publish each instalment – shocking, vitriolic stuff that makes Gamergate look like a valentine card…but I don’t care, I shall never give up on the character.  Good-Man represents all that is good and honest and true in this world, and they really don’t take me very long to draw.

See, and here I am, making you read another one.

I’m such a bully.

TOON in tomorrow, when I reveal the 4th most and least popular Toons of the year, and possibly say something amusing whilst presenting them to you.  ‘Tis my nature.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Also a tradition around here, we wish a happy birthday to STAN THE MAN LEE, co-creator of the Marvel Universe, and father of Bruce Lee, the famous kung fu movie star.

He’s 92 this year (Stan, not Bruce), and can still beat me at full contact kick boxing, though we haven’t gotten in the ring together since July, so I might be able to take him by now.

Happy Happy Stan Day.

Stan Lee’s kickboxing action figure.  It’s rare to find them “mint in box”, as they usually punch they own way out.

Stan Lee Presents Bun Toon Countdown 2011 #4! Yay!

Before we continue with the pulse  pounding countdown of the Top Five Bun Toons (and the Five No One Loved) of 2011 ,  let’s take a moment to salute the living legend himself, true believers, on this, his 89th birthday…..STAN LEE!

Stan Lee, pictured here in a moment of confusion, attempting to grab Robert Downey's man-boobs.

Stan Lee needs no introduction:  He created Batman, King Arthur and James Bond, as well as writing the original plot for Gilgamesh.  As curator of the Hobo Art Museum in San Francisco, Lee helped introduce America to the great whittlers of the 20th Century, and as a philanthropist, Stan Lee  established the first School for Bombast, on the campus of Yale University in 1973.

Stan Lee, in a moment of confusion, attempting to grab Hugh Jackman's man-boobs

Stan Lee’s famous nickname “The Man” has inspired others in the comics biz to adopt a similar nomenclature in tribute, including artist Steve Rude “the Dude”, writer/artist Ty “the Guy” Templeton, and letterer Emma “Not a Fella” Campanella.   Famous baseball player Stan The Man Musial was so inspired, he began using the nickname long before before Stan Lee did.

Always willing to adapt to the times, Stan Lee attempts to grab this lady's girl-boobs.

Ahh, enough of the silly… I kid around with the boobie grabbing and the whittling museum, but it’s all done with buckets of love.  Without Stan, there’s a vast wasteland of Richie Rich digests and Lois Lane Annuals and that’s the comix biz.   But Stan gave us Spider-Man and the Hulk and The Fantastic Four and so many others that no one could count ’em all up without a handbook.  He reached into the hearts of kids and adults on every continent, probably everywhere that civilization exists, and spread out little pulp paper bits of joy that changed the world, and every last one of us working in the field wish we could grow up to BE him.

Happy 89th Birthday, Living Legend!   You’re a real life hero to all of us.

I'm pretty sure he's rubbing this guy's nipple.

NOW BACK TO THE 2011 COUNTDOWN!   First a TOP FIVE BUN TOON-

By one of those cosmic coincidences that only the Watcher truly understands, the Number #4 Bun Toon on the 2011 hit parade features none other than the Birthday Boy himself.   It comes from February, and it asked the most magical “What if…?” of all.

Clearly, making fun of American comic books does fairly well on this blog, getting thousands and thousands of hits.  Making fun of Belgian comics has a different result.  When you consider the huge hoards of Belgians roaming the internet looking for suitable comic-based entertainment, the Bun Toon below should have done better.  But well…c’est la vie.

Maybe people were thrown by the French, who knows?  As the saying goes in Paris, “Il fait froid ce matin, et ma auto ne marche pas”.  Now that Tintin is a huge movie star, perhaps this toon will get some attention.   Maybe then, I’ll be as big as Stan Lee.

A boy can dream.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Come back tomorrow for the strangest Bun Toons of all….

Click here to be taken to the complete and utter history of Bun Toons online, since 2010!

And…don’t forget, today is the day that the legendary banned Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 sees print. Okay, it saw print when it first came out. In Ireland. Everywhere else it got pulped. And okay Kyle Baker’s story (the reason for the ban) has been printed and reprinted and then a couple times after that. But yayy!! Now ALL the pages are in print and there’s a few drawn by Ty Templeton.

Get it today at your Local Comics Store!!

What If Stan Lee Bun Toons! YAY!

Excelsior, True Believers!

Not that I’m suggesting that Stan Lee was the sole creator for any of these Marvel Characters…I’m just saying…

Nuff Said.  Face Front.  Have Faith.  We are the members of the Merrie Marvel Marching Society.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your Stan Lee Moment of the Day:

I think this is a Paul Shaffer doll with a painted-on mustache.

Little known fact:  Stan Lee is the only comic creator to have his own action figure other than Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy.

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Happy Birthday Stan Lee! And the Top 5 Bun Toons Countdown Begins!

First…  Respect must be paid.

Stan (the Man) Lee is birthdaying up today, so we tip our hat here at Art Land.   Besides being the consummate showman, and the best “artiste de la hype” since P. T. Barnum, Lee IS actually one of the best writers to ever work in our biz, of that there is no question.  You’ll always find something  fun, or  something  hokey, corny, brilliant, dramatic, or two parts genius in every script the Man writes.    He’s at his best when working with other geniuses, like Kirby, Ditko, Romita, Colan, Buscema…

…Pamela Anderson and others, that’s true, but somehow Lee manages to be the one pulling his weight in those genius team-ups every time.  That’s his real talent, that he believes in himself like a Super-hero, and he’s kinda earned it after all this time.

Stan Lee, being accused of loving the big, fat dollar.

I have a really funny Stan Lee anecdote to tell on this blog someday…a fun moment I shared with Stan, Mark Waid, John Byrne and the Great Robert Loren Fleming at San Diego some years back that I plan to draw up as a Bun Toon, and then you’ll see…you’ll ALL see!  I’ll show you…!

Stan Lee and George Bush - both squeezing as hard as they can to see which one shouts "ow" first. The shake lasted three minutes, until Secret Service agents wrestled Lee to the ground.

I freely admit, I stole Ty “the Guy” from  Stan “the Man” (just as Stan stole it from Stan the Man Musial),  and I salute Marvel’s Great One on his 88th  birthday.

Love you lots, and lots Mr. Lee.  I just can’t help it, I’m a True Believer.

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Enough fawning over a legend, let’s pay more attention to me.  It’s the…

I started my little webcomic back in April of 2010, and have enjoyed this fun place to play and giggle – when I get an idea that simply won’t work in a Marvel or Simpsons script, it goes here.  Some toons are surprising hits, read by tens of thousands of people, and some are read by merely hundreds.  I never know what’s going to “go viral” around here, and what’s going to lay there like a lump.   So, betwixt now and New Year’s, I’ll be counting down the top five most popular Bun Toons, mixed with the five that no one read.  HAH!  I’m shackling my successes to my failures, which keeps my ego in check, and the glass half empty, because that’s how I roll, bitches.

Our first entry was much liked and commented on, passed around the net on a couple of sites, and read by quite a few people.   Every word of it is verbatim true.

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This next Bun Toon was put online early in the series, before anyone was reading them, or knew I was even doing them.  Poor little Bun Toon spent the year at the bottom of the “hits” pile on my blog stats.  Never got over two hundred hits all year.   Lonely little thing…here it is again…

See you tomorrow with some more grand triumphs of the Bun Toon Arts, and another ignoble failure to embarrass myself with.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your end of the year comic book Moment of Zen:

It’s the Top 20 Dumbest Issue of Mad Magazine, and I’m the 20th Dumbest!  Or at least, I illustrated it.  On sale now, wherever magazine stores still exist in this digital world of the future.  SHAMELESS PLUG ZEN!

 

MORE UNKNOWN MARVEL, and some UNKNOWN WRITING

Because I’m penciling and inking some stuff for Marvel at the moment, all last week we devoted this blog to unseen artwork I’ve done for Marvel comics in my career.   I still have a million more things to show you in that area, but today, I thought I’d spend a little space talking about some WRITING for Marvel that a lot of people don’t know I did, simply because it was for the Marvel younger readers line, and the average fan simply IGNORES them. It’s a pity, because some of the creators who worked for that line were deserving of more attention.  Graham Nolan, Norm Breyfogle, and Tom Grummett worked on some of the issues before and after my brief run, just to name a few.  And of course, Jeff Parker (now doing well with Hulk office gigs) wrote a SLEW of the Marvel Adventures Avengers books before I got to ’em.  But here’s the three I wrote:

The premise for the issues, as asked for by the editor, was to tell stories about Avengers that were NOT part of the regular team…new members joining, or old members showing up for a visit….as a way of introducing the newer readers to these characters.    If anyone recalls a post from a couple of weeks ago, I consider the ROY THOMAS/JOHN BUSCEMA Avengers period in the late sixties/early seventies the pinnacle of comics excellence from that period.  Silver Age Marvel is Roy and John to me, even SLIGHTLY more so than Stan and Jack, or Stan and Steve, simply because it got inside my brain first.   So when given a second chance at these Avengers characters, I went right back to that well of inspiration again and went for the characters originally from that era.  Quicksilver, Hercules, and of course THE VISION. Amusingly enough, they ran the stories in the opposite order from which I wrote them.

The Quicksilver story was a fun script.   Quicksilver has been kidnapped and forced (in a roundabout way) to betray the Avengers to a super-villainess, the creator (in this continuity) of the Super-Adaptoid.  The art was by my good friend Stephen Molnar, with whom I’d later do my STAR TREK GRAPHIC NOVEL.

I’d had the idea for the Hercules issue in my head for years:  If Hercules was immortal, why hasn’t he been part of human history?  Where was he during World War 2, or the American Revolution.  Or heck, ANYWHERE in  history?  It didn’t make sense to me that so outgoing a character would have stayed hidden for centuries.  But what if he had no choice?  What if he’d been imprisoned for a few thousand years…buried in lava rock beneath the streets of Pompeii?  Perhaps his cousin, Pluto, sent the lava from the center of the Earth JUST to mess with the demi-god.  Sucks to be from Pompeii and get stuck in the middle of it, but from there it was easy to extrapolate a story.

For the last story, this lazy, unscrupulous, thieving bastard went after Roy and John’s original Vision two parter AGAIN!  Last time (in Avengers United) I re-worked the second part, where the team figures out what to do with the killer android in their midst, so this time, I reworked part one of the original story, and set the killer android against the Avengers for the first time.  But instead of ULTRON creating him, this time he’s a creation of Pym’s robotics, Stark’s security tech, and the life force from a bolt of lightning from Ororro/Storm.  (Thor was my first choice for the lightning bolt, obviously, but he wasn’t on the team at the time).  I’m very happy with how this issue turned out, and would love to re-visit this version of our red and green robot pal, but the series eventually ran out of steam and  finished up.  Sigh.

Still a GREAT gig for a few months.  And dig those crazy Grummett covers!

One last image for the lost Marvel today.  It’s an ad I drew for HEROCLIX last year.  Heroclix is sort of a game, sort of an action figure, sort of a desert topping.  Obviously, with Ultimates Cap and Ultimates Iron Man, standing next to Classis 616 Hawkeye and Wasp, with the Simonson Thor tossed in with the Witch and the Seventies Wonder Man, this Avengers team exists only for this ad…but wouldn’t that be a fun team?  Like much of the lost Marvel stuff, I’ve never seen where this ad ran, or what it looked like in colour.  If anyone has a copy in colour, I’d die to see it.  ALSO:  Since last week, I have been told there are Spanish X-Men comics with my art on the covers, taken from the many video covers, and have been promised scans .

Oh, this reminds me…I have a Heroclix story of EPIC scope that I’ll post later this week.  It has to do with my eldest son, and a mini-series I wrote that I NEVER thought they’d make Heroclix for.

Ty the Guy

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BIG PS:  As a lifelong Vision freak, I was excited and elated last week to receive an email from Vision artist RICHARD  HOWELL, who bought a page or two of Mike Parobeck Elongated Man stuff off me.  Richard wanted to know if I’d remembered him…?  Like I would ever forget anyone who worked on the Vision miniseries?  This fangeek is as fangeek as they come!  Here’s one of Richard’s covers below.  Thanks for the email, Richard, and best of luck with your current work at CLAYPOOL COMICS.

Thus endeth the shout-out.

Ty

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Hoverboy-Friday on SUNDAY! CURSES!!

Once more, knee-deep into the land of Hoverboy we go, fellow inter-tube travelers, and this time, we’re exploring the wonderful world of the infamous “HOVERBOY CURSE”.

Most fans of The Battling Bucket know that co-creator Bob Stark ran down both his dog and his gardener the day after he created Hoverboy, in an accident the police dismissed as “hi-jinx” in their official report.  But the death of his beloved dog Skippy, and his casual acquaintance, Carlos the groundskeeper, would haunt Stark for the rest of his life.   Often, Stark would wander to the end of his driveway on Stonebrook Terrace and stare intently at the trees found there, where he would then start to whistle violently, calling for either the dog to come “do his business” or the gardener to “Trim these damn shrubs!”.   These episodes increased as the creator got older.

Some consider this tragic car accident the official start of the curse.  Others cite the meteor strike that killed Stark’s parents the week later.  Certainly the meteor strike was more memorable, singling Stark’s family out so specifically from the  crowd like that at the baseball game.  Either way, from that month  forward, and until his death at the hands of overzealous mall security officers in 1982,  Bob Stark’s life and the life of his creation, Hoverboy, were surrounded by mysterious and bizarre tragedies with a frightening regularity.

As this is the fiftieth anniversary of “The Day the India Ink Died”, when most of the staff of Vigilance Comics was killed by a dose of weapons grade botulism toxin that was accidentally spilled into the machine that wrote out the company cheques, I thought I’d focus on the curse and the cartoonists.   (Steve Ditko, the only survivor of the famous Vigilance disaster, had refused to cash his cheque for Hoverboy #37 that month, as he claimed later it was “against the higher laws” to do touch money throughout all of February.  Famously, when Ditko co-created Spider-Man with Stan Lee two years later, he would insist on being paid entirely in trousers and butter.)

The twenty eight cartoonists who died on February 13th, 1960 were not the only Vigilance artists to die mysteriously.  In fact, the regularity with which these poor ink stained souls would pass away was so frequent, that amongst working illustrators, a Hoverboy job was known as “taking the last gig”.   So great was the fear of the curse, that creators such as Kirby, Adams, Steranko and Toth stayed away from Hoverboy throughout their lives.  Lucky for us they did avoid the curse, and got to spend long years working at their craft.  Well, except for Steranko, the lazy bum.

At any rate, let us now pay tribute to some of the other unlucky craftsmen who “took the last gig”.  This is but a partial sampling of the many Hoverboy artists and writers who died of suspicious circumstances.  The loss to the golden and silver age of comics cannot be calculated, but some experts estimate it at around eight thousand dollars in unpublished art.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolled for these guys…but good.

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Ty the Guy