MARSHI

Marshi worked at a place where I used to go sometimes--her boss Vigo got pissed if she smoked on the job. She was cool and we'd hang out sometimes and talk. She asked me to do a drawing of her one time-- and it was a mistake. I did another--but no good. She kept complaining that the drawings didn't look like her. And to be honest, they didn't. I puzzled over this a bit. I went home and did this one from memory and although it is very cartoony, it really does look like her. Even she agreed.

Another subjective description.

CYNARA

This is a depiction--a subjective description-- of a memory of a girl called Cynara.

A SHORT MADNESS

"Anger has been called a short madness; and people of the weakest understanding are the most subject to it. It is remarkable that when a disputant is in the wrong, he tries to make up in violence what he wants in argument. This arises from his pride. He will not own his error, and because he is determined not to be convicted of it, he falls into a passion."

-- from Benjamin Humphrey Smart's Practical Logic, a 19th century Rhetoric primer used in Seminary schools.

DESCRIPTION AND DEPICTION

I've been re-reading John Berger's "Ways Of Seeing", research for one of the PULPHOPE essays. He has an interesting chapter on portrayals of the nude throughout Western art history, from the ancients up through modern (20th c.) advertising. He says a description is an objective depiction and a depiction is a subjective description. Interesting idea, hard to illustrate.

The flaming giraffe comes from Dali, which is why I signed it with his name.

HOME

"Public Sale" by Andrew Wyeth, tempera, 1943. He painted this from memory after a day out at a livestock auction with his wife and their friend Bert Guest.

This painting looks like a memory of the place where I grew up, a world which no longer exists.

You spend so much time as a young person dreaming of leaving a place you are from and then you finally do. And then, when you realize you haven't been back for a thousand years and you miss the place you once called home, you turn around to find that old familiar place has quietly, completely disappeared. Gradually, it dawns on you that you have no home. You are reminded of it everywhere you look. You have a place where you dwell, you have work, you have four walls and a cel phone and bills and deadlines and a sink full of dirty dishes. Then you realize you need to find a home, a place where everything feels right and is in its place. Because no one else will do it if you don't.

THERE IS NO BOX

I just finished a big store installation for Saks 5th Ave. here in New York for their Diesel boutique-- which is going up next week. Here are two of the pieces I did for them. This season Diesel is doing a line of women's jeans which emphasizes super-tight, peglegged, colorful designs. To capture this, I proposed doing five colored drawings in mixed media-- less "comic booky" than the instore I did for them in the fall-- more illustrative, more impressionistic, with a painterly touch. The images will also be displayed in an industry trade show Diesel is attending in Vegas this month, and special prints of the images are being done for preferred customers and friends. In a related bit of news, Diesel is also planning to carry the PULPHOPE book in their US stores.

These girls came out a bit more tough-guy than planned, less virginal, less springtime blossom. That's undoubtedly due to the Motorhead and old Cult and Bauhaus I was listening to while drawing. The girl on the left is a subtle nod to HR Watson from THB...

I find store installations-- and fashion work in general-- to be challenging, it's like being in school again. Something new. I'd never quit comics for it, but it keeps you thinking in new ways.

But it's not "thinking outside the box". There is no box. Art is a bottomless wishing well of beauty and danger and forceful expression.

ACROYEAR 3

Dream-memory of Baron Karza/Prince Acroyear, circa 1976. My version of Karza is called KING K and is a king super-mek.

ELEVATOR

Never understood why people knock Canada. People who've never been there and have no intention of going there. I love Canada. I've lived there, I was raised an hour from the Canadian border, in some ways you could say I even grew up there. I've broken bread with Canadians, slept with them, laughed with them, gotten drunk with them, done business with them, argued with them, fought with them, commiserated with them and loved them. I have a godson there and many friends. Canada is a huge country and it is part of America, it IS America as much as we of the States are. Its North, South, East, and West are as diverse as those of the States, and so are its people.

Rick White is Canadian. I've never met him but he is an incredible musican and I love what he does. He does exactly what he wants and he asks no permission to be who he is and I respect him for that.

Rick White.

Elevator.

JANUARY INTO FEBRUARY

2007 so far has been a nonstop blur of work, it's incredible. I have a lot of new and exciting things in the works-- which I can't share yet. But "you will be the first to know" as they say. In the meantime, here's another look at my Spidey vs. Torch story. Apparently the book is shipping a week off schedual and I have to confess it's not due to me. The editors tell me I am the only one who actually hit the deadline on the book. I'd say offhand there must be thirty or more people involved in putting out a book like Fantastic Four, all told. It's like a small army, and it's not too suprising books fall off schedual sometimes.