Fanboy Radio Appearance

Can you "appear" on a radio show? Not quite sure that makes sense.

Sorry for the big gap here on the Blog. But with the holiday and all, it was tough to update. I'm also dog sitting for friends who are presently living it up in Jamaica... I love dogs and he's been good... but boy are they a lot of work. I have 2 cats that I adore and if they could open their own cans of food, they'd never need me. Dogs on the other hand, are, as the great Larry David said, "Like letting a bum live in your house." Anyway, he's fun and a good dog.

As for the Fanboy Radio appearance, you can hear the show today at 1 p.m. Central time. (Here's a time zone converter) The show is about the Bullet Angelica. (a great online comic jam I've spoken of before here on the Blog) If you haven't been to Fanboy Radio before, check it out... if you love comics, you'll love the show.

Big thanks goes out to Scott Hinze and the Fanboy Crew.

And don't forget the new page over at Pixelstrips.com!

Thanks

New NYComix...Episode 7

There's a new 3-Page NYComix up. This is one of the funniest things to ever happen to me here in New York City...Hope you guys enjoy it.

Feel free to drop me an email to let me know what you thought of it.

--Randy

Get In On The Ground Floor

Some of you may know that my comic, NYComix, is part of a great webcomic site called Pixelstrips.com...

Pixelstrips is a subscription webcomix site, but what's neat about it is that you can read all the comics for free every week. (subscribing gets you access to archives and extras) I put a new page up every Wednesday, so if you head over there you'll get a new page of NYComix every week for free. As well as a bunch of other neat comics. Today is the first page of a new story (chapter 2), but I promise you didn't have read Chapter 1 to know what's going on. So head on over and check it out, here's the link. I even have my own message board over there so feel free to post after you read the comic. I'd love to hear some feedback.

A Comic Book Hiatus

Been taking a break from reading comics lately. Honestly nothing has been grabbing my imagination/attention. Don’t know why, but buying individual issues of comics has become more difficult to do. I feel like I’m buying a chapter of a story instead of the whole thing. Plus, I’m not able to stick with it if the first chapter isn’t very eventful. I guess I’m old fashioned when it comes to my comics. My favorite comic storyline is the Death of Gwen Stacy. I have the "trade" on my shelf and its like 2 issues long, if that. But in that span, Spider-Man was not only changed forever but his reason for doing what he did was reestablished and given even deeper meaning. Why now every story needs to be 6-8 issues is beyond me.

I have shelves full of trade paperbacks and I enjoy reading them because I’m getting the whole story without ads. Seems like a better deal to me. So I guess I’m turning into one of those “waiting for the trade” people.

Anyway, upon Ereisa’s request I’ve started reading more fiction novels. I’m a huge history fan and I’ve read a lot of World War 2 novels, (anything by Peter Ambrose), as well as any true crime book dealing with the mafia. Although I’m a bit burned out on Mafia books right now. Ereisa suggested I start reading some fiction, which I honestly haven’t done a lot of. She bought me a copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and am I glad she did. If you’re a comic fan, do yourself a favor and read it.

Right after Kavalier and Clay I started reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Phillip K. Dick. A few blog entries back I mentioned that while visiting my parents upstate, my Mom dragged a box out of the closet full of old stuff. I found a sketchbook and a bunch of news clippings from my High School Sports days. Among the stuff was Androids. My good friend who I’ve known since I was about 13, Drew gave me the book to read. He’s a big fan of PKD and he thought I’d enjoy it. Mainly because he knew I really liked the movie Bladerunner, which is based on the book. Wow. What an incredible read. I finished it in about 3 days (a record for me) and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’ve never read a book that made me think about not only the story itself, but the world in general. PKD is just an amazing writer. I still can’t get over how incredible that book was. I want to run out to a used bookstore and pick up some more of his writing because I’m that blown away by Androids. Bladerunner was a great movie, but it doesn’t even come close to doing the book justice.

So hey, enough babbling on about my seminal book reading experience, if anyone is reading this is a fan of PKD. Feel free to shoot me a message about what novel of his I should read next.

--Randy

Bullet Angelica

A li'l plug for what I think is a real cool thing.

The Bullet Angelica is a comic jam that I'm lucky enough to be a part of. I found out about it over at Fanboy Radio and I was impressed with how much work these guys have been putting into the comic. Comic jams are basically a bunch of people working together to tell one story. The neat thing about it is that nobody talks about what they're going to do next. Its just a bunch of artists getting together and making a comic just for the love of doing it. Can't beat that, right?

Its worth checking out.

Here's my latest panel, please go here to read the rest of it.

More to come tomorrow.
--Gent

A Sketch

Still trying to fit a few superhero sketches into my schedule. I've slowed down a bit lately, but I'm ready to jump back in the NYComix saddle. This sketch is my fave Batman villain, The Joker. I think most writers would love to get a crack at writing Bats, but I'd be more interested in writing a Joker story with a little Batman thrown in. Maybe someday.

Star Wars Prequels

I’m a Star Wars fan and I really enjoyed the prequels.

Yeah, I said it.

In fact, I really enjoyed them.

Yeah, they had flaws, the acting was awkward in places but the acting was awkward in places during the Original Trilogy too. What about the times Carrie Fisher used a British accent and then dropped it in the next scene? Anakin was “whiney” in the prequels? Go back and listen to Mark Hamill’s delivery of the “Going to Tochii Station to pick up some power converters.”

Bah. I could go on and on with commenting about the fans reaction to the Prequels. Take a trip over to the most popular Star Wars fan forum at TheForce.net… head into the prequel threads and see how insane it is. Sure there are plenty of people who love the movies, but there are some folks who act like George Lucas gave their Grandma a wedgie before kicking their puppy into traffic. The reactions are startling to me, really. There seems to be no room to take a step back and enjoy the movies...it’s just frame-by-frame, line-by-line microscopic critique of every second of these movies. I think if some of these fans just took a deep breath and watched the movies without the 20 plus years of preconceived ideas of what they think should happen, they might actually have fun.

But what’re you gonna do? I’m fighting a losing nerd-battle against other nerds making me the biggest nerd of all.

Anyway, I picked up Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days the other day and it’s the best Making of Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Written by Prequel Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll with 100’s of behind the scenes pictures that I’ve never seen before, it’s a great read. If you’re a fan of the movies, you’ll love the book.

Plus, take a look through the Prequel section of the book and you’ll be stunned by how many models were used for sets, ships, etc. A big blast on these movies is the overuse of CGI, but the model making was amazing for these movies, it was used a lot more that people realize.

On the LazyComix front, I’m about to start working on the newest NYComix. I have one more panel on a Pixelstrip page to finish up which will give me a few weeks free to work on some other stuff including a Lettering Tutorial for Pixelstrips. Which is pretty neat and I hope it’ll be an informative article that will help some web comic creators out.
I’ll keep you posted.
--Randy

Pekar in Wizard Magazine

Believe it or not, I’m plugging an article that appeared in Wizard Magazine. (Nov. 2005 issue169) I used to be a big fan of Wizard, but they seem to have entered the Hype-Machine that dominates comics these days. “Every books is great and there isn’t a bad book on the market” is the impression you get after reading an issue of Wizard. I understand the situation they’re in though, they can’t say anything bad about the Big 2 or they’ll be cut off. If that happens, they’re in a real bind. Maybe someday someone will start a magazine challenges Wizard’s stranglehold on the comic magazine market.

Actually, the thing that bothers me most about Wizard is their Top 10 Creators list. Brian K. Vaughn isn’t even on the Writers list. Meanwhile Runaways is probably the best superhero book on the market today. Not to mention his other books like Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina. And the Artists list? No John Romita Jr. and never, ever Mark Bagley. Romita Jr. is as good a penciler as any in history and Bagley is an anomaly in the field being that he hits his deadline every single month. He’s yet to miss an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man and I think they’re up around 90 issues now. That should be recognized before pretty pictures that come 2 months late, but it’s not for some reason.

Anyway, enough with the Wizard stinks rant. The reason you should pick up the November issue is because there is a really well written article on my favorite comic creator, Harvey Pekar. Written by Chris Ward, it’s a candid and honest interview. Which isn’t surprising, Pekar is always candid and honest. Pekar goes into everything from politics, to movies, to mainstream comics. He even makes a great point about the first graphic novel. Which most people attribute to the late-great Will Eisner. Pekar points out that Robert Crumb did his first graphic novel, The Big Yum Yum Book back in 1962. It wasn’t published until 1975, but that’s still a few years before Eisner’s book. A sensitive subject as Eisner is as revered as anyone is the industry’s history, but he has a point. Problem is, superhero comics seem to take precedence over other forms of comics. I wonder if attributing something as important as The First Graphic Novel to someone like Crumb is avoided on purpose by the “elite” comic creators… it is certainly a question worth asking.

The article is a great read and Pekar never disappoints. He’s honest almost to a fault. He’s not afraid to speak his mind and I admire that greatly. It’s something that I struggle with every time I sit down to write my Blog and every time I think about what comic I’m going to start working on next.

So, go pick up Wizard. (I can’t believe I just said that.)

Happy November

After a rush lettering job yesterday, I’ve got some down time and just in time, too. After I post tomorrow’s PixelStrips page I’m all out of pages so I need to get going. I’m planning on doing 3 pages before then end of the week as well as start a new 3 page NYComix that I won’t be debuting at LazyComix.com. This will be the first time I’ll have my work presented for free somewhere besides my own site. I’m pretty excited about it and I’ll get you more info before the week is over.

As well as the new comic, I’ll hopefully be contributing an Op-Ed kind of article to the site as well. I’ve got this idea in my head that I think more comic fans should be thinking about so I’m sorting out those thoughts as well. Again, I’ll keep you guys posted.

Can you believe it’s November already?! Holy cow. I need to start doing more drawings like this one of my main man The Goon. I’ll be sketching at the New York Comic Con this February, so the more characters I do, the better. I’m sharing my table with fellow Marvel Bullpen pal Jacob Chabot of The Mighty Skullboy Army fame. So I’m pretty excited about that.