Wednesday, February 20, 2008

S-s-s-s-stutterin'

Have a new favorite song; Stuttering by Ben's Brother. You might have heard it in the new Dentine Ice commercial (or some type of gum like that). I think it's the only song using stuttering as a method of singing that I like. Bad to the Bone- George Thorogood-Hate it. Ain't seen Nothing Yet-BTO- Hate it. Shakin'-Eddie Money- Didn't hate it, but we thought he had a disability when we saw him sing, so I excused it. But something about this song is really good. Maybe it's the fact that the singer admits his stuttering problem in the song. I like his honesty. You be the judge!

Home with the kids for 2 days while Mom is in Indiana for a funeral. Hope to get some drawing done. You'll see it here first!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Comics review: Doom Patrol


Hey there! Thought I'd give an occasional review of favorite current & past comics I've liked. I don't buy many new comics anymore, so I've been reading things from my collection.

First up is Doom Patrol, volume 3 (2001). Written by John Arcudi & art by Tan Eng Huat. Doom Patrol began in the 60's by DC Comics. The deal was a group of misfits that became a family and beat on weird creatures. Robotman is Cliff Steele, former race car driver, whose brain survives in a robot shell after a racing crash. Elasti-Girl is Rita Farr, a model who gained the ability to change size. And pilot Larry Trainor became Negative Man, who contains an energy creature inside him while wrapped up like a mummy from head to toe. The Chief was their wheelchair bound leader genius, and somewhat manipulative and eccentric. After some adventures, they got blown up and died. But they got better (that's the norm for comics).

After a few different incarnations of the team, rich guy Thayer Jost decides he wants to buy a superteam. He gets the rights to the Doom Patrol name from Cliff Steele, who at the time is the only living member of the team. He recruits some new members: Kid Slick, slacker with a frictionless force field, Fever, excitable girl with heat & flame powers, Freak, who has a mysterious creature living within her, and Negative Man, pessimist A-hole who can see 1 minute into the future (yeah, that's it).

The book only lasted 22 issues, and I felt the story suffered from that. Some subplots were started, and then dropped as cancellation loomed to wrap up the series. Like what the thing inside Ava(Freak)was. And Ted pushed his powers so he could see further into the future, but that was dropped as well. The writing was good, however. Robotman's humanity was examined, and the tem's constant fighting (mostly started by Ted's attitude), made for an intereesting team dynamic.

The art was unique and I loved it. Similar to Manga, with cartoony characters with high amounts of detail in mechanical and background objects. You could see every nick and dent in Robotman's body, and he could look expressive at the same time. A treat was the 2 issues done by the late Seth Fischer (Fantastic 4 & Iron Man: Big in Japan). Tan is currently doing a Silver surfer project for Marvel I hope to check out.

At the end of the series, Cliff and the others went their separate ways. Robotman starred in the next DP series a few years later. I'd love to find out what happens to
the others, but just like in life, we never get to meet up with friends that go away.

Monday, February 4, 2008

No more car trouble!!! Please!!

Aah, glad I got that out of my system! Lets see, got car wrecked 2 Fridays ago, spent the weekend trying to find a reliable car for under $1200 (not as easy as it sounds), got locked out of the car while running last Friday, wouldn't start on Saturday, spent all day Sunday trying everything I could do & check in vain. Got it towed this morning to the garage, it turned out to be a tiny electrical connection. A $10 part cost me $200 in towing, diagnostic & repair. Poop. Could have been worse. I am blessed to be able to pay for another car so quckly.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow!

Listening to: Tobymac (portable sounds)
Reading: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker, M.D.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Hey, haven't updated for a while! Still working on new Children of Light stuff, and Timmy the Killer Robot. You can see new CoL pages over at Megazeen. Still have pages coming in. There's some awesome art coming up soon!


Here's a sketch I did of the mountain creature the kids will be fighting later on!
Got my car wrecked on the way to work last Friday, someone hit me in my door going about 35 or so. Saturday all I had time for is last rites for my car, Sunday we drove around looking, only to find out no dealers are open during normal peoples' day's off. Today I had to call off work to look some more, took us like 2 hours to find this place we found online that had cheap cars. Settled on a '91 Olds Cutlass for $1100 had to wait 2 hours while they fixed something, come home. Whew! Glad that's over! Oh, wait, it's not! I forgot I have to go to court in a few weeks for the accident. i guess I was at fault or something. ugh.