Me and my TX Comics cronies will be at the Toronto Reference Library for the Toronto Comics Art Festival (TCAF). It is a FREE comic event with lots of great cartoonists and one of the most fun shows I go to. If you’re in the neighbourhood swing by to say hello! I’ll have prints and drawings for sale and be launching my new webcomic. It’s not an all ages comic so I won’t be talking about it here other than to say that. This is a kid friendly zone. If you can’t make it by, you can check out the banner link on the left side of the screen to buy one of the 11 prints I made for your walls. If you’re a fan who shows up, you will get a free quick sketch of your favourite character… if I can still remember how to draw them.

TCAF
May 8th and 9th 2010
@ Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St., Toronto, Canada

Moving on from Disney/Marvel mashups I thought I’d do some celebrity ones.

I think this one works for me because, thanks to Nightmare Before Christmas, I can picture Tim Burton making a Sesame Street movie with the Count and other adorable, misunderstood monsters. Blend that with Mars attacks via the Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip aliens and you’ve got a sure fire Burton-esque winner.

I only became familiar with Cory Doctorow last year thanks to Ontario public television’s The Agenda. Since then I’ve enjoyed tracking down his lectures on YouTube and his book of young adult sci-fi Little Brother. It brought back all the excitement I had reading Neuromancer for the first time. If you don’t get the gag, it’s based on Cory’s work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that tries to make the internet accessable to all and fix some of the failing copyright laws that don’t allow fair use. Also you need to know Doctor No which was a great book and a solid James Bond movie. Although I think it’s ridiculous that at one point the bad guy, Doctor No, asks James Bond to join his organization and James Bond refuses to betray his queen and country. It makes me think Bond doesn’t know what a spy does. A spy’s response to his enemy saying “I want you to help me with my evil plans” should be “Where do I sign up? Do you want me to know your secret access codes and plans? I’m totally up for that too!”. That parts not in the book. However, in the book Dr. No is killed by being buried alive in bird poop. Seriously.

Could you imagine the money that would be created by the merging of the merchandising power of Star Wars and the Kiss Army? I guess Kiss hasn’t had it’s second wind like Star Wars has, or there would be Kiss Lego video games. Even if they’re getting to old, they should do a reality TV show (Gene Simmons knows how) where they put together a new Kiss band to take their place, like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Kiss: The Next Gerenration would create new Kiss Warriors with different face makeup. Instead of the Demon and Star Child, they’ll be things like the Robot Dinosaur and the Tarantula Dracula.

After drawing Disney Captain America and the medieval Modok’s Hulk troll, I decided I wanted to draw a bunch of the Marvel Avengers the way I did the X-Men. Click on the image to see it large.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created many great characters but one that is near and dear to many of our hearts is MODOK. He is a man who is transformed into a beast with an enormous head, so enormous in fact that his super brain needs a hover chair to carry him around in. MODOK is an acronym for Mental Oragnism Designed Only for Killing. Ooooh. Scary! But he looks ridiculous, like a California Raisin in a bowl-cut wig. I think he looks great. So do the people over at March Modok Madness, a blog that collects drawings from different artist interpreting MODOK. Obviously I went with a Princess-like MODOK and made the M stand for Magical. This is what I drew (click to enlarge), but if you love giant headed super villains you should visit the blog to see how other people drew him.

When Disney bought Marvel Comics last year I saw a lot of great mashups of Avengers with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. Still, to me, Mickey and Minnie and the animal cast of characters aren’t who come to mind when I think of Disney. I think of Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, even the Hunchback of Notre Dame before I think of Pluto. Disney hasn’t been making movies with those guys for a long time. It’s all fairy tale princesses and princes. As a guy who does a comic strip about princesses and princes, I was more interested in giving some Marvel characters that treatment. So here are my versions of the X-Men, Captain America (and Falcon) and Peter Pan/Parker. The X-Men and Cap are not supposed to be references to particular Disney movies, just the in-house style.

Reality TV is not something I’ve gotten into. I have never seen a whole episode of Survivor, The Amazing Race, American Idol, Wife Swap, The Bachelor, Jersey Shore, or any of those other smash hits. However, there are two that I enjoy.

One is Mantracker, where a dude on horseback  tracks two contestants through the Canadian wilderness for two days, trying to catch them before the hit the finish line. I love watching all the tracking tips he gives because they help me understand how Kate and Locke can track everyone on Lost. Since I used to be a player and organizer of urban manhunt (also how I met my wife), I also obviously enjoy a good chase.

 The other show is Project Runway. Unlike American Idol that searches for raw talent, Project Runway looks for professionals who are already making a career for themselves. They find 16  fashion designers and make them compete in challenges, like making a new bridal gown out of a divorced woman’s old bridal gown or using potato sacks to make a cocktail dress in 24 hours. I appreciate the skill level of the contestants, the eye into people’s creative processes and the limited level of personal drama. Probably the clincher though is Tim Gunn. He’s a design teacher at Parson’s School of Design, which means he has the chops of a proper teacher. He’s the anti-Simon Cowell. He isn’t mean. He’s helpful. Gunn provides a professional critique of each of the works in progress, helping the designer funnel their thoughts and energy in the rights direction. Knowing how to present criticism is a skill very few people have and is clearly absent from most tv. Dramatic flare ups between strong personalities seem to be what other shows strive for. I much prefer a thoughtful consideration of pros and cons. And the outifts are often really exciting. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I drew while watching the show, trying to catch a quick likeness of each of the contestants left. Some are pretty successful and some are the terribles.

For V-Day this year my wife decided to make me stuffed animal. I’m decidedly jaded about advertising. It’s so everywhere that I’ve grown to hate it like a garderner hates weeds, even the ones like dandelions that you can make a nice salad out of. Yet the commerical featuring an orange puppet who tries to tempt dieters with food puts a smile on both my wife’s and my face. I love the muppets and in an age of computer generated everything it was great to see puppets again. That’s where Henson and Kermit got their start I believe, in commercials for Wilkins Coffee. It’s nice to know my wife is still “hungry for your love”.

As for my gift, aside from flowers, I also got her a call from Batman. Our favourite internet video is one of Batman at a poetry slam. It’s got some cussing, so it’s not for all ages, but it is hilarious. Actor acquaintance, Jon Blair, who played Batman was kind enough to phone my wife and read her a special valentine’s day poem in his Batman voice, on my behalf. Later that night I took her to to see him as part of the comedy group the Sketechersons preform Sunday Night Live which was really killer. It made me regret not going to see live comedy for often. If you live in the Toronto area check them out!

I hope your February 14th was full of great goodness as well? Who else got or gave something grand?

Before I drew the Snowman holiday card I made this one. I dind’t think it was funny enough so I didn’t send it out but just for the heck of it I’m sharing it with you all here.

A couple weekends ago, Michael Cho and Steve Manale and I drew pictures for tykes at a bank’s Christmas kid’s party. They hired out a building at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) and filled it with a ferris wheel, a rock climbing wall, go karts, Santa Claus and enough inflated monsters and castles to make their own Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. This is just a small wedge of the hall:

I was hired after one of the bank’s employees saw me at TCAF doing hideous cariactures. I drew him and his whole family and they got a real kick out of it. Unfortunately most of the kids (well, moslty their parents) at this event were not excited to be made into monsters. Fortunately we all still enjoyed the drawings of kids as princesses and super heroes.

Mike doesn’t really do likenesses of kids but drew awesome superheroes for them instead.

Here’s Steve drawing a couple of ladies, which was a nice change from when we had to draw babies who wouldn’t keep still. I think maybe we needed a policy and sign “For ages 1 and up”

We had a long line up most of the time so hopefully we’ll be brought back next year for more fun or for your corporate event.

During the lunch break we found a unicorn that had wandered over from the Princess Planet that looked happily wounded with its legs in the air that wanted us to jump up and down on it’s belly.

And I thought this was weird. Want to find a bathroom from a distance in the big busy hall? Just look for the universal symbol for washroom: two grey squares, one with a smaller blue square, of the same value , inside it. ???