The fellow with the guns is the Iffrit, a take-off on the Shadow. I’ve never actually been a fan of the Shadow. It’s not that I don’t find the character interesting. I just seem to be more interested in other pulp characters. I’ve seen the 90’s movie and I read the modern day version in the comics but never read any of the novels or listened to the radio show.

I enjoy taking popular pulp and comic characters (and b-movie monsters) and putting a spin on them to see if I can invent something new. Or at least something fun to sketch. The Shadow supposedly got his ability to cloud men’s minds from a stay in the mystic Orient. So I thought, the mystic Orient is a cliche, where else could he have gained magic abilities? Maybe the Middle East? Why not?

The old fellow with the widow’s peak is Father Wilde, a Doc Savage take-off, in his later years.

It’s Monday. Let’s get hopping!

Sunday with sunshine in Seattle. I’m out in it.

I expect to be as far away from explody things as possible. But don’t let that slow YOU down.

I did say that this sketchbook had a lot of nudes in it didn’t I?

I don’t see evidence of a specific project here. There’s a vague tripod that indicates I was thinking of the War of the Worlds – probably. I might have been thinking of the tripods in John Christopher’s series. Probably not. I really liked the books when I read them as a kid but I tend to forget that I’ve read them. Wells’ machines have had a greater cultural impact even if his novel was less impacting on me than Christopher’s. (I remember being mostly bored by War of the Worlds when I read it as a kid.)

Based on the nose and the eyebrows I’d say all of these are portraits of Beastie. I’m not sure what’s up with long haired versions. Disguises perhaps?

Okay, not everything here is a portrait of Beastie. The weird thing in the middle of the page is a marionette wasp, an other dimensional predator that implants its eggs in human beings as part of its breeding cycle. It’s obviously not a very attractive creature so, in order to get close enough to a human to implant its eggs, it disguises itself as a human.

The chunky fellow in leather with the smiley face is Zipperhead. He’s a movie style serial killer I invented back in ’92 for the All-Cover Comics minicomics series. He’s one of those ridiculous killers that use household objects as weapons and makes wisecracks while killing you. And unlike the killers in movies these days who restrict themselves to teenagers in isolated places Zipperhead killed anybody, anywhere.