The Snipe

A while back I did a few illustrations for the Snipe, a particularly comics friendly entertainment news site based out of Vancouver. Here they be:

The website used to be called Guttersnipe. Here's an earlier version of this last one, which was based directly off of Blow-Up.

I had some random Jimi Hendrix documentary on the other day while I was doing the dishes. I sketched a couple of his girlfriends. I like Fayne's hairstyle- it's like a black version of Gunsmith Cats hair or something.

I finally got to see Melancholia, which never got a theatre release in nowhere'sville Alaska.

Lars Von Trier is one of a handful of modern day directors who make movies I rush out to see. The film, partly about a planet smashing into the earth, is a painfully accurate representation of anxiety. Go watch it and feel like shit.

It's impossible to talk about this movie without mentioning Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a tune I fell in love with when I saw Une Chien Andalou (which even at 15 minutes is one of my top ten favorite movies).

The Nazis had a huge hard-on for Wagner's music so some feel there must be something inherently wrong with it. I personally can find no such flaw.

The comics are going excruciatingly slow but they are coming along nonetheless. Time to put some more drops in that slowly filling bucket.

The Hu-man Female is Oddly Compelling

Here's a sketch from The Robot Monster, one of the all time great sci-fi flicks. Ro-man is one of my favorite robots. This movie is almost exactly like one of those Gilbert Hernandez sci-fi comics.

And here's some sketches from an old exploitation flick called Olga's Girls.

 I guess there's an Olga trilogy: Olga's House of Shame, White Slaves of Chinatown and this would be the third part. I'd love to do my own Olga comic. It's basically about this surreal den of vice and the power struggle that takes place within. It's told entirely with narration in sort of documentary fashion- except it's completely removed from the reality of such establishments. Actually, there is some truth to it in that here, as in real life, the girls are highly competitive with enemies being made and new alliances constantly formed.

Here's a non-existant album cover.

In my last post I put up some of my character designs. Every comic I do introduces a new cartoon "actor". This is a concept I came up with in high school when I noticed that film directors use the same actors. This also works great for comics. The more you draw a character the better a performance and the better a drawing you get from them. You notice this in comic strips where the artist has been drawing the same character for years. Well, even if you switch up characters if you treat them as an actor you can use old designs. It 's a lot of fun to see the same character in different roles. Tezuka is one of the few cartoonists who used this technique and made it famous in Japan.

Johnny B is sort of my Robert DeNiro and I've been using him since the Steelcharge Horsecap.

Here he is as Henry in Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt.

And here he is as a gay chauffeur named Bjorn Bonde.

My pal Dustin Weaver put Johnny in the background of a western he drew called They'll Bury You Where You Stand.

And here's Elroy Bass who starred in Unreal City and was in Echoes Into Eternity.

Alaska's kinda' been fuckin' with my head. Here's some Alaska stuff so I can pretend this place is cool.

This is a promotional album made in the 60's begging people to move to Alaska. It's obvious when you listen to it that these people have never stepped foot in this place.

I found this at donnerpartyofone - Claire Donner's inspirational "big, fat masturbatorium". No, it's not a porn site...I think.

Y'know, white culture out here kinda' blows but the natives, those symmetry masters, they actually make some cool shit. I like these native fashion accessories.

Here's an Alaska themed manga by Jiro Taniguchi. These stories are sort of in the vein of Jack London.

I've actually seen this shit with my own two eyes. I've ridden up next to dog-sledders on a snow machine (you people in the lower 48 would call it a snow mobile).

Here our main character shares a profound moment with a humpback whale named Dick.

I was talking to a trapper the other day (that's right, a trapper) and he was telling me how he traps pine martens, called sables in Europe. It dawned on me that he was collecting the same fur used in the Windsor Newton brushes I ink my comics with. I hadn't given much thought to the fact that animals were being killed so I could draw comic books. It made me a little uncomfortable. I'm an animal lover, despite the fact that I DO eat meat- but I would sooner become a vegan than give up my Windsor Newton brushes.

I honor you, Mr. Pine Marten.

I'm sorry you had to die so that I could draw razor sharp lines. But nature is kind of fucked up that way. A pine marten certainly wouldn't show any mercy to a mouse or a vole. Please know that I hold you in the highest respect.

And for those of you cartoonists who feel exempt because you don't use a brush- FUCK YOU. Brushes are way cooler than the shit you use.