WAKE UP!

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I submitted this image to a recent Remake/Remodel challenge at the Whitechapel forums. The hand holding the CD case is a creative commons image that I found here –

The original image, outside the CD case looks like this –

 The Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip has had a weird influence on me.

On the one hand it’s a masterpiece of comic art. Each page is beautifully composed and drawn. Each panel is filled with detail and nifty ideas. Describe any episode and it sounds like the epitome of weirdness.

Which brings me to the other hand – I can’t read more than one or two strips at a time. The strip was created when the vocabulary and pacing of comics was still being developed and, while it’s easy to see the action based on looking at the page, trying to read the captions and word balloons is kind of painful. They’re badly placed and just physically hard to read. The characters aren’t engaging. The punchline of each strip is Nemo waking up.

So I find myself picking up my Nemo collection, reading a strip and putting it down again in frustration that there’s … not … something more? It seems silly to complain that something is just a pretty piece of art but I read comics for stories and I never feel like I get a story.

So, every so often, in my copious spare time, I think about doing a version of Nemo that would have the weird dreamstuff that is so attractive and feature a story that engages me at the same time. The image about isn’t related to any of the ideas I’ve had so far. None of them are distilled enough yet to be represented by a single image. I just knew I wanted to contribute to the challenge so I let my subconscious go to work and that’s what I came up with.

A pretty image with no story behind it. Sigh.

The Living Ghost!

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These days I rarely draw anything just for the fun of it. Certainly the process of drawing is fun and I pretty much only take on the projects that I want to. It’s just that the drawings I do are generally part of larger projects – a commission, a role-playing game, a book cover, a present, a website, the occasional remake/remodel challenge. To just sit down and sketch something out because it seems like fun in the moment doesn’t happen very often.

Last week,  however, Andrea Bonazzi posted a link to this comic on the Frank Belknap Long facebook page and I thought, “That Living Ghost character looks like he’d be fun to draw!”

So here he is. And you know what? He was fun to draw.

Back to work!

Royal Historians

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 A lot of folks have written a lot of Oz stories in the century plus since The Wonderful Wizard of Oz first saw print. For the purposes of the Oz-Squad.com site I’m only designating a few of them as official Royal Historians. I’m including their biographies and Oz bibliographies over at that website. These portraits will also be colored there.

L. Frank Baum
W.W. Denslow
John R. Neill
Ruth Plumly Thompson

And Steve Ahlquist, of course. I don’t think he wears this suit very often. We had to vacuum off a bit of dust before he sat down for the portrait.

I’ve gotten up to John R. Neill in writing the bios. I’ll post a notice here when I’ve finished the rest.

The Black Lion

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The Lion in 1955. Or maybe it’s a Lion in 1955. Dorothy was replaced involuntarily. Perhaps the Lion had a substitute as well? I don’t know. The 1955 Lion appears twice in the flashback in issue 8 and neither version looks different than any of Terry Loh’s contemporary versions of the Lion. But, since everyone else on the Squad has gone through changes since Dorothy first came to Oz over a century ago, it seemed unfair to have the Lion stay the same in every incarnation.

Tin and Chrome

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Nick Chopper, the 1955 version. Drawing Nick is always a bit of a challenge. I’ve known a lot of artists who had an affinity for drawing cars, robots and other machines. My preferences are drawing organic objects – animals, plants and landscapes. So representing the Tin Man usually requires twice as much preliminary sketches as any of the other characters.

Terry Loh drew Nick with 1950s styling for that 1955 version of the Squad so I’ve tried to duplicate and preserve that.

She’s Not Who She Thinks She Is.

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This and the next three posts feature the 1955 version of Oz Squad. I really can’t tell you much about them. They appear in a three page flash back in the 8th issue of the comic. Apparently Dorothy spent most of 1955 in a Soviet sensory deprivation tank while a duplicate Dorothy ran the Squad. Hopefully I’ll get to draw that adventure sometime.

Or at least do illustrations for the novel. Hey Steve?

A Lion Among Men

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When he goes to Earth, the Lion uses an enchantment that makes him appear to be a human being. I assume that the enchantment actually transforms him into a human but it’s possible that his human guise is merely an illusion. Given that a human and a giant lion will fill space differently, a  physical transformation seems more practical but I don’t know for certain which it is. I’ll have to ask Steve about it sometime.

One Tin Soldier

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Nick Chopper wasn’t a soldier. He was a woodcutter. Once his body had all become tin he remained a woodcutter. He continued to carry his axe less for utility than because it was the last remnant of his human life.

After the events of World War 2 he set his axe aside and built other weapons into his body. He used the latest technologies to make his bodies into mobile defense/assault systems.

There was a Tin Soldier in original Baum Oz books. I don’t know if he’s still around. If he is, he isn’t scheduled to appear in Oz Squad yet.

Scarecrow – The Years Take Their Toll

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In the first few issues of the original Oz Squad comic, the Scarecrow isn’t in good shape. He’s depressed and somewhat suicidal. How else would you explain his smoking habit?

His outlook improves but only after he experiences a kind of a breakdown. And a change of clothes. For some individuals, more than others, how one looks really is how one feels.

Andrew Murphy, the first Oz Squad artist, gave the Scarecrow a face that had three dimensions. He had eyes, a nose and a mouth with teeth. I’ve always preferred the idea that the Scarecrow’s face was painted on. When he talked, the paint moved. I think that’s cool and creepy at the same time.