Portfolio 2013

This is my current illustration portfolio, which I'll display here until I finish rebuilding my website.

First are examples of cartooning combined with hand lettering:

Next are book illustrations from The Golden Ass:

More book illustration and wild figure drawing:

...and inventive pages in a mix of styles:

Skillful and ingenious, right?

Tragic Strip: Universal Sentiments & Volapuk

This strip ran in the March issue of The Brooklyn Rail, but with a spelling error. The Menominee for "I love you" is ketapanen, not ketapenan as I first had it. Here is the corrected version.

Mere Anarchy

Here's one to ring (wring?) in the new year.

I'm pleased enough with this piece that I'm hoping to make a color version and post it again.

Happy 2012!

Cliff's Notes Illustrated

Here's this series of pages I did back in the mid 1980s. The idea was to take ponderous works of literature and modernize and miniaturize them. So the great white whale became the Big Bee, the crown of England became a coin, and the hordes of Greece became a little league team. And I tried here and there to explicate the meanings of the works, as found in the Cliff's Notes.

The first four ran in a zine called nada. The fifth one didn't see print until they were collected in Acme Comics #10 in 1994. That anthology can still be purchased from The Squid Works.

The artwork is a bit naive and punkish, but I think it succeeds on its own terms. Click on these images and they should finally appear big enough to comfortably read.


Cliff Notes Faust


Mo Bee


The Complete Works of Shakespeare


Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle of operas


The Iliad and The Odyssey


Thank you for your time.

Comic Attack's Artist of the Month

I spilled my guts a bit in this interview on Comic Attack dot net. Read it if you dare.

The Umpteen Umbilici of Ulro

Last week I finally made it up to the Morgan Library Museum to see their amazing collection of William Blake prints. It made me wanna post these old unpublished jam pages where I was goofing on a similarity I think I perceive between the prophecies of Blake and the cosmic comics of Jack Kirby.

It's from this comic jam my friends and I have been passing around for years and years. The comic is called Giant Size Man Thing, the story is called "Even an Android Can Cry," and it's about a character named Rod Packer, Public Dick.

Here are pages 16 thru 18. Click to enlarge, of course.



While I'm at it, here are a couple of my other pages. Page 8 makes fun of my favorite superhero dialog cliche. If anyone's to find funny, my timing will have to be perfect.

Page 25 is really just marking time. I like it because I was under the spell of Alex Toth when I composed the panels. I hope to do more like that sometime.

Maybe I'll publish the whole thing someday, to the relief of those who've contributed, if no one else.

another recent Tragic Strip

This ran in The Brooklyn Rail in October.

Doodle Diary

Awhile back, my friend Isaac Cates took one of my doodles and colored it, which inspired me to try dabbing some color onto these.


The approach to the drawings follow a method I teach under the name "DareDoodle Number Three."


Maybe I should do a post explaining the DareDoodles someday.


What with Halloween looming, I guess I had costumes on my mind.


I imagined these as costumed figures in some sort of post- or neo-constructivist theatrical performance.


Happy Halloween, everybody.

Doodle Diary

I'm game. Deal me in.

Another Recent Strip

Doodle Diary

My Cubofuturist dream girl.

The Power of the Individual Panel

Cubofuturist interpretation of Durer's "Ascent of Venus" from Damn Weird #23, 2006.
Border & lettering is by Maximum Traffic.

Before we had the terms "Sequential Art" and "Graphic Storytelling," the pretentious name for comics was the advertising term, "Continuity Illustration." It's a horrible phrase, really, because it completely ignores the role of writing in comics. It diminishes the drawing too, since illustration is always subordinate to whatever it's supposed to illustrate. That said, I think this term needs to be brought back to our attention. "Sequential Art" emphasizes the sequence of images and leads us to think about the cinematic quality of comics. "Graphic Storytelling" stresses the rhythm and timing involved in the successful telling of a story. "Continuity Illustration" reminds us that a comic is also a linked series of individual pictures.


A germ carnival from "God Bless You," 1995

Since the underground comics faded in the late 70s, there's been a trend in the comics intelligentsia, such as it is, to view comic panels as visual syntagms or ciphers. It doesn't matter how they look. It only matters how they function. This view is supported by the fact that the good drawing found in commercial comics too often serves hackneyed stories. And it 's considered good drawing mostly because it's correct, not because it's creative, much less visionary. Although brilliant visual art has always thrived among indie comics, I see it consistently marginalized in the critical conversation. Maybe that's because writers find it easier to write about writing.


Universal language wars from "Volapuk," 1990

Personally, I love it when a carefully crafted comic panel makes me want to stop and study its effects. As a seasoned comic reader, I can hold the pacing in my head and read at any tempo I please. In my own work, I've sometimes spent up to two weeks working on a single panel-- designing it, revising it, packing it with ideas. You may think I'm wasting time but I believe I'm saving paper.


Pro Wrestlers on a scaffold from "Steel Pulse" #4, 1989.

So I'm launching this here thread where I'll occasionally post comic panels I'm particularly proud of to see if they can stand alone.