Woof.
Tag Archives: minicomics
The Ugly Dog Sees All of You and Understands – B&W
This is the Ugly Dog of Heaven. He made his first appearance in a minicomic I did with my brother, Glenn, back in 1989. Glenn wrote it, I drew it. That minicomic got reprinted in The Treasury of Mini Comics, volume 1. Most flatteringly, the publisher used a image of him on the spine of the book. 
Glenn later wrote him into segments of his thousand experiment on his Lovesettlement blog: each day for a thousand days he wrote a post of 100 words. If he didn’t finish a sentence one day he’d carry it on to the next. 100 words a day for a thousand days resulted in a 100,000 word stream of consciousness ramble. Is it a novel? An epic prose poem? An incantation to summon strange gods? Yes.
Whatever Happened to Bigfoot?
One of the choices for a final project in my Humanities 270 (Comics) class was to do a non-fiction comic zine. That seemed like more fun to me than creating another presentation. And it was both more fun and a lot more work. With the exception of the footprint on the inside front cover, all the cartooning for this project was done digitally, using Photoshop. 
Occupy the Pearly Gates
College hasn’t been all code and prerequisites. I took a class in comics and comics history in Spring 2012. One of the projects for the class was to do a minicomic. The students voted on a general theme and then each of us did a page for the book.
Our class chose “Mythical Creatures in Modern Times” as the theme. This was my page.
The Curse
This minicomic was done as an example to our students in the Luther Burbank Center’s after school comics class. I wanted them to see a story with a beginning, middle and end – in four pages. Three actually, since the first page was the cover.
Zipperhead 2012
Any tool is a weapon if you use it right.
Steffi 2012
I changed Steffi’s hairstyle for this 2012 version. I know that there are still a lot of women out there with big hair but they are in the minority. And not a trendsetting minority.
I know. That’s a silly thing to consider when drawing a protagonist who wears a fake fur bikini.
Pornoman & Kinky 2012
As far as I can tell, having the Pornoman cartoons on this site hasn’t done much to improve my SEO. If you do a search for “Pornoman” and “Kinky” together with either Google or Bing then the cartoons show up at the top of the list. Pornoman by himself doesn’t show up for before the second page. He’s got way too much competition from all the other Pornomen in the world.
Midnight Commando 2012
When I started posting the All Cover Comics entries I felt a compulsion to do new versions of each one to show how my art skills have progressed in the 21 years since I drew the originals.
I fought the compulsion.
Number one, I don’t have time to draw 20 new comic book covers.
Number two, those covers were jokes. Jokes rarely get funnier if the anatomy being depicted is more accurate or the vanishing lines all line up properly. In fact, too much reality can make a joke less funny.
The Midnight Commando is a good example of that. All the mayhem would have been less humorous if it looked more realistic.
So, instead of redrawing all the covers I drew new portraits of each series’ protagonist and created a couple of new header banners for this site. You’ve probably seen them by now. If not, the header banners load randomly so, if you just refresh this page enough times they should eventually show up.
Here’s to William Ehmann Jr.
On July 6th, 1988 I got a large manila envelope in the mail. Inside were 14 minicomics and one full zine. The name in the return address was Bill Ehmann Jr. Bill had seen some fliers I’d put up around town to advertise my services as an illustrator (art mercenary) and was inspired to send me some of his work.
These were the first minicomics I’d ever seen. I’d wanted to draw comics ever since I was a kid but I’d mostly given up on the idea of drawing for a “real” publisher. I was a better artist than most of the people I knew personally but I wasn’t nearly as good as the guys drawing for Marvel, DC, Charlton, Eclipse or … anybody. I couldn’t afford to print my own comics. Or so I thought.
Bill’s little xeroxed masterpieces gave me an example of what kind of comics I could do with the level of skill and the lack of budget I had. Two weeks after getting these in the mail I printed out one hundred copies of the first issue of Cheap Thrills at the Kinkos a few blocks from where I was living.
I never met Bill in person. I sent him some of the minicomics I did and traded a letter or two. I went to a showing of his collage art. He wasn’t doing minicomics by the time he sent me that package. I got lucky and got inspired.
Every so often I google his name. So far I haven’t had any luck at finding him. I’ve found listings of a few of the minis he sent me but nothing that points back to him.
So, Bill, if you’re out there, I want to say thank you again for sending me these minicomics. You turned on a light when I needed it!
