Parental Advisory Bun Toons! YAY!

 

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Speaking of comics that aren’t appropriate for kids, I wanted to give a less-than-wholesome shout out to Comix legend Jay Lynch, who passed away this week.

Jay was there essentially from the beginning of Underground Comix in the 60s.  Along with R. Crumb, Frank Stack, Gilbert Shelton, Dennis Kitchen, Vaughn Bode, Kim Deitch, Spain, and so many others, Jay helped to properly warp my young, forming brain with Nard ‘n’ Pat, and Bijou Funnies..

He also gave the world Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, and many years worth of the ubiquitous BAZOOKA JOE!

He also did a strip for Playboy Magazine called “Give ‘Em an Inch by Jay Lynch” that I can’t reproduce on this Bunny Blog –no matter how salty the language got this week– for reasons of decorum.

Thanks for the subversion, Jay.  You’re one of the reasons I never got a real job.

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For last week’s subversive Bun Toon, click the Russian Nesting Bunnies above.

 

 

You could be Heroes…

…just with one eBay purchase!

It’s–time to support Hero Initiative in their latest round of auctions. As always, the Hero Initiative is a wonderful project all comic fans and creators should support. When comics creators find themselves in dire straits through health issues or other problems, Hero Initiative is there to figure out a way to  best help the creator. In order to do so though, Hero Initiative needs money. To this end they run many auctions throughout the year and ask comics creators to contribute their artwork.

The latest round of auctions is for Hero Initiative X-Men 100 Project. The auctions have been going on for a while, but this time–my cover is on the list! I have so thoughtfully decided to give you the moment you should have had in the latest X-Men movie but did not get–Future Beast and Past Beast beasting all over each other!

Click the image to be taken to the auction link and for your chance to bid:

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Ty the Guy OUT!!

 

X-Men Spoiler Bun Toons On The Road! YAY!

Through rain, or sleet, or a trip to Montreal…

It`s the Montreal Comic Convention this weekend, and I`m happy to be attending…but it takes me far away from my home computer, my scanner, and all my happy places.  Still…nothing will stop the Bun Toon, if I can help it…so I sketched this out on the kitchen table at my sister-in-law`s place, and drew it at postage stamp size to get it to fit on my brother-in-law`s teeny scanner.

I did my best.

I was glad that Johnny Storm un-died long enough to go to Charlie`s funeral.  And who knows who will un-die next…there are rumours.

NOTE:  I drew everyone`s costume wrong.  I had no comics to reference their correct colours.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your BONUS Dead Professor X Moment:

It`s always bittersweet to remember the first time someone dies.

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For last week`s Bun Toon, drawn in the safety of my very own home, click above.

For every Bun Toon ever (drawn in locations around the world!) click the well traveled bunny above.

 

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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THE TOP SEVEN REBOOTS IN SUPER-HEROES

This blog has weighed in on the Wonder Woman costume re-design, and it got me thinking about how often it’s done, and how often it’s done well.   Later I might offer up the list of the worst re-imaginings in the land of Super-Heroes…but today, in a happy mood, I offer up the best costume changes/ret-cons of our little world.

THE TOP SEVEN SUPER-HERO FRANCHISE REBOOTS

Feel free to disagree.

#7  Legion of Super-Heroes:

In 1972, Dave Cockrum and Cary Bates, took the Fifties-style small town teens from the future and made them the sexy teen swingers of the Seventies.  Then Bates along with Mike Grell turned them into THE comic for teenagers with a libido.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:
They went from minor back-up series to pushing Superboy out of his own title within a few months.  See what showing a little more skin can get you, girls?

My favorite “teen” super-hero team ever.  Every now and then, I consider asking the wife to dress up as Seventies Saturn Girl, but that would be wrong.

SATURN GIRL: BEFORE: Wooden and uninteresting. AFTER: Vavoom!

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#6 Avengers

Avengers disassemble, and then reassemble, and then we'll have a vote.

With issue 16 we find out that everyone left from the original team is quitting and they’re handing the mansion, and the name “Avengers”, over to a bunch of B-level bad guys as a sort-of “halfway house” for super-villain reform.  They do leave Captain America behind as their keeper, but to be fair, Cap wasn’t an original Avenger either….

So instead of a team with just the “Marvel Big Shots”, it became a team soap opera about the entire Marvel Universe, where anyone could join… reformed villains, minor league players (with canceled titles), big stars like Thor and Iron Man, as well as members of the FF, X-Men, New Warriors, and Defenders, were welcome.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:
Check your comic collection and the best-selling sales lists every month and get back to me.

And six zillion other titles out this month

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#5 Green Arrow

No matter how much we might retroactively enjoy the Jack Kirby issues of the Golden Age Green Arrow, there’s NOTHING about that character to attract your attention.  He was a cheap ass imitation of Batman–a millionaire crime fighter with an obsessive gimmick and a sidekick- where the writer need only substitute the word “arrow” for “bat” and VIOLA!  You had a Green Arrow story.

Is that the Arrow Signal? Let's hop in the Arrowcar, and leave, trusted boy-assistant!

Arrow-crap, fans.  But then along came Cary Bates and Neal Adams in Brave and Bold #85, fall of #69, and Green Arrow was completely made over.

The start of the "relevant" comics of the Seventies.

He looses his millions.  He becomes a loud-mouthed left wing rant-machine, with a chip on his shoulder for the down and trodden that he’s more or less held onto until this day.  Besides growing a funky beard and silkier threads, the Emerald Archer gained political awareness and was used as a voice for various writers to dig into their liberal or libertarian bent.  It made Green Arrow actually INTERESTING, and he remains that to this day.

Proof the Reboot Worked:

I know people with Green Arrow tattoos, and it’s ALWAYS this version:

What sort of a pussy would tattoo the Golden Age Green Arrow on their body?

#4 Batman

The reboot was a little more than the yellow oval.

For the first thirty years of the Batman franchise, the Caped Crusader  spent MOST of his time fighting giant blenders and oversized pool tables, or aliens with transmutation rays, and time travelers. The Adam West Batman TV show was a faithful reproduction of the Batman comics of the fifties and sixties, not a spoof of them.
But after the big payday provided by that TV show, Bob Kane, the original coordinator of the Batman studios, finally retired and passed the editorial decisions onto DC more directly, and the “New Direction” Batman was born.
At first, the changes were fairly slight, mostly just a yellow oval around the bat-symbol.  But at the start of the Seventies, the team of Denny O’Neil, Frank Robbins, Irv Novick, Dick Giordano and Neal Adams, re-imagined Batman as a scary-as-bat-shit street fighter with a grim attitude about the world.   They dropped Robin off at college, closed up the Batcave, moved downtown into a penthouse apartment, tossed out the Batmobile, and made Joker into a homicidal maniac.  Hmmm…that’s chocolately bat-goodness all the way.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:

Forty years later, which version does the current Batman comic resemble?

#3 SHOWCASE COMICS and the DC SILVER AGE:

Flash/Green Lantern/Atom and the Julie Schwartz revolution.

The rebooting of comics itself for a new generation is often credited to Showcase #4, which introduces the all new FLASH into the modern era with a spiffy new jump suit, and no more goofy helmet.

My wife's favorite Super-hero costume is Green Lantern. Make of that what you will.

It’s quickly followed by Green Lantern’s spiffy new jump suit and no more goofy collar, then the Atom, Hawkman and the Justice League follow quickly behind…all under the watchful eye of editor Julie Schwartz.  As much as I like the quirky old Golden Age versions of all these characters, I doubt I’d be that big a DC fan without the dawn of the Silver Age.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:
Fifty years later, you can’t kill these Silver Age versions.  The fans consider them “definitive”, no matter what.  Long periods of oblivion, retirement or dishonor is nothing to these guys, who can come back after mass murder, marital infidelity, suicide, and crumbling bones.

#2 X-Men (Giant Sized X-Men #1) 1975

Behold, the license to print money.

This issue saved the X-Men franchise—five years dead at that point… having had so few fans, it had once been canceled while Neal Adams was drawing it.  Len Wein and Dave Cockrum (again!) created a new generation of X-Men who quickly took over as the definitive X-Men for everyone currently breathing.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:
Besides the landslides of money, you mean?  Later on, Marvel tried re-launching the original line-up of X-Men under the name “X-Factor” and fans still preferred the new guys two to one.

Whoops. It turns out the problem was us all along.

PROOF #2:
This worked so well, a couple of years later, Marv Wolfman and George Perez lifted the plot almost scene for scene to reboot the tired out Teen Titans franchise with a new generation of characters.

An entirely original idea, we promise.

#1 Watchmen

Quick quiz: Which one of these is popular?

The Charlton Super-Heroes are purchased by DC and rebooted by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons into the best selling graphic novel of all time.  If  Moore and Gibbons hadn’t killed off so many of the just-purchased trademarked characters in their mini-series, they might have been allowed to use their real names.

PROOF THE REBOOT WORKED:
DC tried their own version of Watchmen, by collecting the original incarnations of the Charlton Heroes together in a mini-series called “THE L.A.W.-Living Assault Weapons” ….No one on Earth read it.

See the blue guy with the atom symbol that looks like he might be Doctor Manhattan? Up above the guy that looks like he might be Rorschach? He's not. And neither is the other guy.

There are many reboots/redesigns that didn’t make the list.  Doctor Who, James Bond, the Wally Wood Daredevil costume, even Wonder Woman herself had a lovely re-imagining at the hands of George Perez, but I start with a limit of seven, and these are my top choices.  If you disagree, I’ll happily refute you in the comments section, but I’m fairly sure I’m right, as it’s my blog and I always win.

Ty the Guy OUT!

TOMORROW:  A preview of the new comic series I’m working on!

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The TOP SEVEN BAD MOTHERS IN COMICS

It’s Mother’s Day, and time to celebrate moms, niceness, and cookies, all across North America.  It also happens to be my birthday, so I get to indulge myself this morning, and blog up this list of….

You do NOT make this joke, Templeton. Sweet CHRISTMAS you do not make this joke.

#7

Debbie Grayson

"I hope I look sober in this driver's licence photo."

Wife of OMNI-MAN, mother of INVINCIBLE.

You don’t get to pick your mom, that’s old wisdom, but your mom does get to pick your father, and Debbie may have set a world’s record for marrying the worst husband and father in the known universe.  Her youthful crush, Nolan Grayson (super-hero Omni-Man to his legion of fans) turned out to be an alien from the Viltrumite race, who mated with his human pet, specifically to create a son with whom Dad can destroy humanity.  When son Mark starts to exhibit dad’s alien powers, the biggest Oedipal fight scene in comics history ensues, thousands die and Dad is exiled to space forever.  And what does Debbie Grayson do, now that her world has crumbled around her and son needs a mother’s love more than ever?   She settles down into the gutter and drinks herself blind.  Oh sure, if EVER there was a reason to knock back a few wrist benders, the old “my alien husband tried to kill our son” excuse is a good one, but I’m not sure Debbie needed to open the second truckload of Jack Daniels so quickly.

#6

Lara Lor-Van

Ooh, Jor-el. Show me your little rocket.

Kryptonian wife of Jor-el, and mother of Superman.

Lara was an astronaut on her home planet, and she’d been in space a few times (only ladies rode Krypton rockets, as their alien, but primitive catheter technology wasn’t able to cope with the impressive Kryptonian schlongs), so when her world started crashing down around her, she had the training to stay calm and not make terrible decisions…And when her husband tells her there’s a chance for Lara and her baby to survive the end of the world in a space ship he built for the two of them, SHE REFUSES TO GET INTO THE GODDAMNED ROCKET AND GO WITH THE BOY!!

Sure, there’s that moment of romantic self-destruction a good wife offers her husband on Doomsday so he’s feeling pretty manly as he dies, but anyone with an ounce of mother in them goes with the kid or they suck.  It’s why Clark prefers Martha Kent, you know, and only ever pines for his Kryptonian father.   Jor-el stepped up and saved his son’s life.  Lara was a whiny, suicidal dick, and we all know it.

#5

Aline Kominsky-Crumb

Pray to whatever god you believe in that these are not your parents.

I cannot possibly know the first thing about her parenting skills, and I’m certain Aline Kominsky-Crumb is a kind, decent human being, perhaps a far better parent than I ever am.  But…she has written and illustrated a few blunt confessional stories (Dirty Laundry Comics), along with her husband, underground legend Robert Crumb, that feature her obsession with oral copulation, wild sex fantasies, private bathroom time and anything else intensely personal that pops into Aline’s head…ALL WHILE SHE HAS A LIVING, BREATHING TEENAGE DAUGHTER NAMED SOPHIE WHO GOES TO SCHOOL WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS!   If you think it’s mortifying to see your mom walking about in a bathrobe in your front yard, imagine mom performing fellatio on infamous dirt-bag Robert Crumb while the planet pays to watch it, and get back to me.

#4

Gwen Stacy

Check out the child-bearing figure! I'll bet she's a GREAT mom!

Mother of twin bastards, Gabriel and Sarah, who look like Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy because of magic/science, and who were raised by the Green Goblin, the man who killed their mom.

Of course it didn’t happen.  It couldn’t have happened, not in a rational world with professional writers and editors who understand their craft…and surely it all went away with the BRAND NEW DAY retcon that fixed all those continuity problems.  But the SINS PAST storyline was written by J. Michael Straczynski, published in Amazing Spider-Man #509-514, and it can’t be ignored in a column such as this.  Gwen Stacy, virginal Queen of Super-hero Girlfriends decided to give her “special flower” to her beloved boyfriend’s roommate’s father, Norman Osborne, because Normie seemed to be in a bad mood one afternoon when Gwen found him in Harry’s living room.   Norman Osborne didn’t rape her, didn’t drug her, didn’t do anything to Gwen but brood in her presence, and she gaped open her thighs and cheated on Peter for the most important sexual moment of her life.  And then, rather than tell Peter of her astoundingly unlikely transgression, she decides to go to France, have the kids in secret, and THEN tell Peter about it, so they can raise the perpetual reminders of her criminal infidelity together as a happy family.

But Osborne, in his guise as the Green Goblin, kills her instead, and raises the kids in some kind of hyper-aging chamber so they can kill Peter Parker when they get old enough in eight years.

It may be the worst written comic book story of all time.  Certainly the worst comic Marvel ever produced, and something Straczynski did just to see if the fans would break his nose when they met him.  So far, his nose remains intact, so fandom isn’t trying hard enough.

#3

Sheila Haywood

Some folks like to smoke after sex. Sheila drags on a ciggie as her son is being beaten to death with a tire iron.

Mother of Jason Todd, the used-to-be dead Robin.

Okay, Shelia abandons her child Jason at a young age and leaves her husband to figure it out on his own.  Strike One.

She becomes an illegal abortion provider in Gotham, and simultaneously kills a teenage mother and unborn child through impressive medical  incompetence.  Strike Two.

The Joker finds out about her mistake, and tracks her down to an aid station in Ethiopia, where she is embezzling funds and selling medicine on the black market.  Joker  blackmails Sheila into replacing the life saving drugs she’s stolen with highly poisonous Joker toxin, and also, into handing over her son for a crowbar beating by the evil clown so she can avoid arrest.  Strike Three, and four and five through nine.  Joker used the crowbar quite a bit.

With this monster as his mummy, I no longer blame Jason for being such a irritating little bitch.

#2

Talia Head

I beat up the Black Widow and stole her tights. Who's a bad mama now?

Daughter of the Demon.  Lover of the Bat.  Mother of the Creepiest Robin Yet.

Maybe it’s her upbringing – she was sired by a terrorist father nearly a thousand years old, and that kind of generation gap is tough to overcome.  Also, her parents met in the audience at Woodstock, so there’s all that hippie baggage, too.  But when Talia gave birth to her son Damian, she went from being Batman’s sometimes girlfriend/enemy/paramour/Emma Peel Stand-in/leather fantasy chick, to spectacularly crappy mother.  She didn’t balance parenthood and career well, and spent Damian’s toddler years organizing the League of Assassins while the kid was raised by murderer-nannies and wet-nurse hit-men who preferred open hand kill techniques to Teletubbies.  And once the lad survived to twelve years old, Talia abandons Damian to his estranged father, a lunatic who lives in a cave and who takes rugrat-Robin into gunfights because baby sitters tend to die around Talia’s boy.  If Ms. Head thinks the Justice League is a pain in the ass, wait until she gets into it with Social Services and the family law courts system.

#1

Mystique of the Evil Mutants/X-Men

Stick with me big boy, and you'll never have to worry about raising kids.

In the movies, she’s a blue lizard hottie with a nudist streak, just like so many of my college girlfriends, but in the comics, she’s easily the worst  mom of all time, human or mutant.

Her first son, Graydon Creed, she gave up for adoption and “kept an eye” on him until she realized the child wasn’t a mutant like herself, and therefore, too icky to love.  Things go wrong, Creed becomes an anti-mutant crusader as a adult, and messes with the granddaughter of mom’s lesbian plaything, so mother eventually travels back in time and shoots her son in the head.

But everyone makes mistakes with a first child.

For her next bout of motherhood, she willingly cheats on her then-husband with someone who claims to be Satan.  Her second child, Kurt Wagner, is born with blue fur and a tail, and naturally the townspeople begin chasing mom and child with pitchforks and torches, purchased at bulk discount prices.  But even though she’s got a magic power to turn into anyone she wants, and she’s been learning stealthcraft and all sorts of useful skills to avoid detection for decades, what do she do with her cute, fuzzy blue newborn?  She tosses him in a river like a bag of kittens and hopes he drowns.

Nice one Mystique.  I hope someone kicks you in your shape-shifting balls.

That’s it for Mother’s Day, and my Birthday.  I’m off to celebrate in my own way, and it just might include handing my kids off to the Joker for the afternoon.  They’ll be okay, we have a nanny-cam.

Ty the Guy

PS:  Scroll down for Saturday’s Free Webcomics, and play with the navigation-buttons up top.  And stay tuned for tomorrow’s BIG HOVERBOY ANNOUNCEMENT!  Art Land is too much fun to ever leave!

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A page and a page and a page and a page…

This was a piece Ty did for a Spider-Man calendar…I think 1993.  He’s going to look for the calendar and scan the colour version later, so we’ll find out then! (His computer is still down…it’s got the scanner on it…blah blah blah)

The art is 12″ x 12″, pencilled and inked by Ty and is $400/USD.

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This is an illustration Ty did for Mad Magazine. It’s part of the two-page spread Mad did for their special SDCC edition:  spoof comic book covers.  This was for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I flatted the colour version of this–not the most fun for a vegetarian!).  Ty did all of the drawings for that spread on paper; this drawing is on a piece 8″ x 12″, pencilled and inked by Ty,  and is $60/USD.

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Ty was thrilled when he got a call to do this Spirit assignment;  he loves Will Eisner and The Spirit, and it was a chance to work again with Scott Peterson, his long-time editor on many of the various incarnations of The Batman Adventures.  Scott, now at Wildstorm, is one of the nicest guys in the biz, and Ty feels pretty beholden to him for letting him get to wander around in the Batman universe drawing and writing.

This page was done on paper in markers and ink. It’s 10″ x 15″, pencilled and inked by Ty, and is $100.

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And…it’s the X-Men.  Ty lost track of just how much work he did for Marvel’s Creative Services department way-back-when (thanks, Dana!).  Much of it was for the art and promotion for the videos of the 90s cartoon series of the X-Men. (An absolute favourite of our boys)  This was done as the back of the video boxes (I believe…have to check the notes on the art when I have a moment).

It’s 12″ x 12″ on board, pencilled and inked by Ty and we’re selling it for $500/USD.

It’s going to take me some time to put these pieces on the **New Pages this week** page, and into their various categories so, just to let you know…if you’re interested in a piece, check out pricing, payment and shipping info, then email us at tytempletonart@gmail.com.

Keiren

New Pages…

will be going up tomorrow, on Tuesday. I did a bunch of scans per Ty’s request, but he forgot to leave me with pricing info. So, check back tomorrow to see what’s what…

–and for just a quick peek, here’s an Xmen video box cover with Gambit fighting…Gambit? And Krypto, the Superdog, looking around for Jerry Seinfeld.
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Keiren

KeKeiren

MARCH MARVEL MADNESS. X-MEN PARADE.

When this started, I figured it would be a one or a two day thing, but the more I dig, the more I realize, I have an avalanche of images for Marvel projects.  And I haven’t even gotten to any of my Underoos or Candy Apples work yet!  Today, a clearance-style parade of the X-Men video and DVD box covers you haven’t seen yet!  Heck, some of these, I’ve never seen.

You’ll notice that all these covers have the wrong title, or often the same title (Deadly Reunions), even when they’re clearly telling the PHOENIX SAGA (those images of Jean crashing a Space Shuttle and flying away from the ocean are a bit of a giveaway).  That’s not a sign that the producers of the show just plumb ran out of titles, it’s that I started including suggestions for the title placement when I sent in the artwork (so we wouldn’t have any more of Wolverine’s arms covered up), and the only title copy I had available was from the first of the video boxes that I’d scanned.  So that title became the title of ALL the series (more or less) from a certain point on, when I was laying out the covers.

Look down this column a little bit, and you’ll see what is probably my favorite of this series…starring Wolverine and Alpha Flight all in one cover?  This Canadian boy was happy to play with THOSE toys for the day when this one came in.  Towards the end of the series, they were doubling up the episodes in each box, so that you could get twice as much mutant action per tape, and the covers were asked to be “split” images from that point forward.  It made for more challenges, as it’s hard to design a striking cover with a big f***ing line down the middle.

Just as I’d gotten used to doing TWO images per video box, suddenly for this next cover, they went for THREE episodes in one tape, and asked “could I include the following characters in the cover:  EVERYBODY in the Imperial Guard, and everyone in the X-Men?.  And the New York Yankees if you can fit them in…” I got out the triple zero brush for inking this one.

This was for a store poster, that ended up being printed something like seven feet tall.  I actually saw one in a video store, this GIANT thing…and I asked the store if I could have a copy of the poster when the promotion was done, as I’d drawn it and they wouldn’t send me a seven foot poster.  The guy in the store said he wanted it for himself, and asked me to sign it.  Which I did.  So THAT guy has a version of this poster, and I don’t.  Hmmmph.

That’s it for today’s Marvel Madness Parade. Next up are a set of images for some Marvel Card series that no one, I mean NO ONE has seen outside the industry, and it’s not because they didn’t print up lots, and didn’t distribute them…it’s because…wait that would be telling.   See you later, Marvel Zombies.

Ty the Guy

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More March Marvel Madness. Hoverboy Friday Below! (scroll down!)

I promised myself I was going to post my “unseen Marvel” work this week, but I’ve started to realize that I have a LOT of unseen Marvel, and there’s no way to get through it all without just dumping it on the site like a fish bucket spilled onto a baby’s change table.    I still have pajamas designs, t-shirts, Christmas party invitations, video and DVD covers, Bullpen portrait cards, TV guide ads, toys and an avalanche of this mess to get through.  But digging through it all is kind of fun, so here’s more of the rock slide. I promise, I’ll stop before Monday.  Marvel Madness comes but once a year, and it’s best not to push your luck.

Up above is the rarest of all my Marvel work…though strictly speaking, I did it for the THE HERO INITIATIVE.  It’s a one-off.  Only one comic like this as the cover was drawn on the comic with pen and watercolour dyes and auctioned off (for a few thousand dollars, if I recall, which shocked me senseless!) to raise money for our cartooning brethren and sistren who need a hand.  I’ve never met the guy who dropped the couple of grand on this, but bless his generous heart.

Here’s a couple more of the X-Men video boxes.  The Magneto cover was featured in adverts that appeared on the back of national magazines, and even the back of some DC comics!  The one with Bishop and Wolverine used Marvel artist (of the New Warriors at  the time),  RICHARD PACE as a model for Bishop’s face.  It still looks like him, even though Richard has long since had his facial tattoo removed, and gotten that haircut properly attended to.

This spoof version of Amazing Fantasy #15 was done for for Wizard Magazine, covering the launch of the Spider-Man animated series, SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, which was the most bizarre ripoff of Batman Beyond and lasted only one horrendous season.  According to that show, to improve on Spider-Man, you send him to counter-Earth, have him fight the High Evolutionary and the armor plated Ani-Men, and write MJ out of the series.   This art was a supposed to be for a Wizard cover alt (back when Wizard did two covers for every issue) but since I’ve never seen a printed copy, I’m not sure they ran it.  I tossed Kirby’s name in there, just as a tip of the hat.

And now, a couple of the many collector’s cards I’ve done over the years for Upper Deck.  There’s probably twenty or thirty of these all told and there’s not enough room to come near putting them all up.  But I think I might force you guys to sit through about six of ’em in total.  I like the inking on the Radioactive Man card to the left, and I like the big goofy fun of the H.E.R.B.I.E. card below.  Considering that H.E.R.B.I.E. represents the last Fantastic Four character that Lee and Kirby created together (for an animated series, rather than a comic, replacing the already licensed-to-someone-else Human Torch to make a foursome), I couldn’t help but enjoy working on his card.

I’ll leave this post with more of that mysterious X-Men comic book giveaway art that I worked on sixteen years ago, that I can’t remember where it got used but it might have been for Pizza Hut.   Dana Morsehead, (former head of the department at Marvel for which most of this stuff was done) thinks it might have been for a PITCH to land an account, rather than an account itself.  What?  Ah, all that Don Draper stuff is above my pay grade.  I was just happy to have a few months drawing up them X-People, and working with the lovely and talented Mr. Morsehead.

Keep scrolling down for the feature Hoverboy Fridays!.  We now return you to it, as regularly scheduled.

Ty the Guy