the art of ed emshwiller

bib fortuna

big-head dax

team-up thrillers

This book, collecting six Marvel comics, came out in 1983 and was my introduction to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and the Silver Surfer, amongst others (sure, it was also the first time I had ever heard of the X-Men villain Lucifer, or of Pepper Potts, or Kulan Gath, or Kurrgo--the Master of Planet X!...but I digress).

Looking back on it now, the inclusion of the team-up story featuring Spider-Man and Red Sonja seems...mightily weird. And the Hulk/Thing story isn't really the stuff of legends, either (I guess they didn't want more than one Jack Kirby story in the book, so they went with a fine-but-not-classic Hulk vs. Thing by Len Wein, Jim Starlin, and Joe Sinnott from Marvel Feature #11, instead of what would be my choice, a classic Hulk vs. Thing story from Fantastic Four #25)...but there's Iron Man fighting Captain America drawn by Don Heck, the X-Men vs. the Avengers by Kirby, Spider-Man vs. Daredevil by Ditko, and Thor vs. the Silver Surfer by John Buscema.

And my first real introduction to the Surfer was this panel:

Isn't that awesome? No wonder he became my favorite superhero character.

apollo 11

Forty years ago man first set foot on the moon. Here's the live coverage with Walter Cronkite.

john coltrane

inking time

Started inking The Big Black (with gusto!) last week. Here's panel 3 from page 3 (which I previewed, in sketchbook form, here):

Thulsa Doom

Not 'James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom', but rather the version from the Kull the Conqueror comics of the 70's, and later Conan issues.

surprise

Dax alienates everyone by talking about tennis

Today Roger Federer won Wimbledon, his record-setting 15th overall Grand Slam championship. The match against Andy Roddick lasted five sets, with a fifth set score of 16-14...

...see, at Wimbledon (and every Grand Slam tournament other than the U.S. Open) there's no tie-break rules for a fifth set once you get to 6-6, so the only way to win is to break the other opponent's serve and then serve out the match (i.e. win by two). So...a 16-14 fifth set in a championship final is pretty amazing.

----------------------------------------------

Here's a close-up of my Lincoln painting...I think this bit looks really nifty blown up like this (click on it to make it super big and abstract-y):

4th of july

In honor of the Fourth of July, here's Abraham Lincoln.



Fun Facts about Abraham Lincoln:

--Successfully led the country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis—the American Civil War--by preserving the Union by force while ending slavery and promoting economic modernization.

--Issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and promoted the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery.

--Preferred to honor-duel with swords and axes, as his long reach and natural strength gave him considerable advantage.

defunct panel

A panel from a short story I aborted a couple years ago:

Clara