Category Archives: artwork

September 22, 2023 · 1:08 am

The Golden Age

I am certainly no expert on the Golden Age of Comics. I was, in fact, born the year that the Golden Age ended. I am a child of the Silver Age (1956 to the early 1970s) and those were the comics I grew up with. But I admit to a fascination with the initial creation of the characters I love, including Batman, Superman, the Flash, Captain America, the Phantom, Steve Canyon, Wonder Woman and numerous others who were first put on the comic book pages in the Golden Age. And being subject to comic book prices that zoomed upward from a dollar an issue, I was bedazzled by the ten cent price on old comics.

Comic books owe their creation to the popular newspaper comic strips from the Depression era and WWII wartime. Originally, comic strips were gathered and printed on cheap paper. Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, and other adventure strips would lead to the war comics and hero-centered comics that would morph into superhero comics.

Some of the artwork in Golden Age comics leaves a lot to be desired. Especially original, straight to comic book publications that were produced fast and furiously by publishers who would open one week, produce three issues. and go out of business three weeks later. But in the mad scramble, some truly great artists formed the start of their illustrious careers, Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Milt Caniff, and Bill Elder learned to master their craft in the newspaper strips, and all later created comic books and graphic novels. True geniuses like Jack “King” Kirby and Bob Kane and Jack Davis grew directly from comic book studio madhouses into comic-book-artist immortality.

As with most things that have a Golden Age, the truth was that later comic book eras were superior in most ways. But this Golden Age was the foundational age for an American art-form that I truly love. So, flaws and warts are overlooked. And some of these old ten cent books on super-cheap paper are worth huge amounts of money if you still have a rare one in mint condition. Ah, there’s the rub for a manic old collector guy like me.

Most of the Golden Age comic book images used for this post were borrowed from the ComicsintheGoldenAge Twitter page @ComicsintheGA. If you love old comics like I do, you should definitely check it out.

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September 21, 2023 · 2:17 am

Picturing What’s Inside

The question before me now is, “What do you know, and how do you know it for certain?”

Well, I really don’t know anything. How do I know that I don’t know anything? Well, Socrates always told everyone who would listen that he didn’t know anything for certain, and he is obviously much smarter than I am. So, being super-stupid by comparison, I don’t even know as much as Socrates.

So, like Socrates, I need to ask questions. But who will I ask? I can look at the picture above for answers, and I can ask you, the reader, the questions.

The picture is one of the most favorite ones I have ever drawn. By that I mean it is one of the pictures I drew with colored pencils that I like the best. It is, therefore, basically a self portrait of things inside my silly head.

Do the soldiers look familiar to you? If they do, it is probably because, like me, you have seen the soldiers from Disney’s Babes in Toyland. Hopefully they are just generic enough that Disney wont sue me for modeling this fantasy on something I saw in their copyrighted movie. I didn’t intentionally copy anything, and I have never knowingly made a single dime off of this picture. So, they don’t need to sue me, right?

Okay, those weren’t Socratic questions. They were leading and focused questions. So, let’s start the Socratic stuff.

Do you see anything in the picture that is innocent and childlike? Could this be illustrating a childish fear of the darkness? Did you notice the darkness they are marching towards on the left of the picture? Could this also be showing a progression towards maturity? Are the children and the soldiers not approaching that darkness… whatever it might be? Are they not getting more prepared to face the darkness as they get closer to it? The weapon pointed straight at the darkness is the bugle. Does the bugle, being an instrument for announcing something in combat, not have some symbolic meaning here? Does the darkness they are approaching not represent something like death? Does the boy with the drum suggest how we might deal with the darkneness in our own too-near future?

So, did you learn anything from this post?

I am asking because…

…I don’t really know anything.

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September 18, 2023 · 1:53 am

Thinking About Tomorrow

No tomorrow is guaranteed.

Even today is not a sure thing.

Every new dawn is a gift.

It might be the last day on Earth for me.

It might be the start of a new adventure.

We shall see what we shall see.

And all we can do is…

… Let it be.

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September 17, 2023 · 12:29 am

Ken Akamatsu

Ken Akamatsu

Japanese Manga is a complicated and difficult-to-understand thing. Of course, it is also a very beautiful art form when done well. There are many features of Japanese culture that play a prominent part in the comic book genre known as manga.

It is a strange fusion of the art of Meiji culture in Pre-War Japan and the Western influence of the U.S. Occupation forces after WWII. You read the comic from right to left, opposite to American comics, and the dialogue in speech balloons go from top to bottom rather than horizontally.

A manga by Akamatsu

I first discovered Ken Akamatsu’s manga brilliance in 2004 through Half-Price Books copies of his manga series Negima! I was reading the last two Harry Potter novels at that time and the Harry Potter-ness of the main character, Negi Springfield is what attracted me. He is a ten-year-old boy who is secretly a wizard. He is also so accelerated in school that they make him an English teacher in a Middle School where they give him an all-girl class. Of course, Negi is definitely NOT like Harry Potter. I learned that after three books worth of Negi’s magic sneeze that blows girl’s dresses off and all the other accidentally-seeing-middle-school-girls-naked jokes. Gushering nose-bleeds and the most-important girl character, Asuna, constantly ending up standing in front of the older instructor she has a crush on stark naked soon convinced me that Japanese humor and sense of adventure are very different from their American counterparts.

Negi Springfield is the little guy in the middle… Of course he’s the teacher.

The students in this ten-year-old teacher’s class are a diverse group of girls. One is a deadly ninja. Another is a dead-shot gunslinger. A third is an expert swordswoman who fights with a katana in each hand. Several of them wield magic like their teacher.

The adventures in this multi-book story are filled to the brim with magical battles, martial arts, demon summoning, Japanese festivals, and the many ups and downs of young love.

There are lots of instances of girls losing their clothing. Some of it happens in Japanese outdoor baths and spas. Some happens by magic. And some happens completely by accident.

Though, the writer seems to focus on it an awful lot.

Ken Akamatsu has been at the business of creating very similar manga stories for many years. He started in 1994 with A.I. Love You.

He has written three series since.

Love Hina came before Negima!

UQ Holder! is his current manga series.

So, I love the artwork of Ken Akamatsu. And it isn’t necessarily the story that makes it so good. The stories are chaotic and full of things that make very little sense to American sensibilities. And I do like artfully done naked girls. But the real attraction for me is something that I can’t quite name.

I just know it is there. Ken Akamatsu definitely has it. Whatever it is. (Maybe it IS naked girls?)

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September 16, 2023 · 1:02 am

People Art

All art on this planet (with the possible exceptions of paintings by monkeys and elephants, and the songs of whales and dolphins) is about people. What is art, after all, if it is not a reflection of who and what we are?

“Tell me a story with our people in it.”

I am the man from the setting sun who comes from the past to deliver the future.

Every bit of art I do now is done as my own mortality, the end of my own story, is soon to reach the final page. I have lived six decades complete and have begun to live the seventh. I am close to the sunset. But I have wisdom to share from a lifetime of struggle, and reversals, and successes, and joy. And in a dark time when it appears the world could actually be ending, I wish to do the only thing I can to help, provide pictures and stories that might prove useful to you.

“We are beautiful as the day is ending, because the day was worth living in.”
“Magic, like lightning, infuses the sky with that which makes us wonder. What is it? How do I use it?”
What we are is based on what we were. Our hopes for the future have their foundation in our past. We only have to see it and identify it. Then we can build on it.
Why am I obsessed with naked people? Because naked people are exactly what you see. Naked hides nothing, and honesty is like sunshine, the more we walk in it, the healthier we become.
Laughter is an essential part of who we need to be and how we deal with where we need to go. Laugh at mistakes, and chuckle with satisfaction as you correct them.
Life is like Moose Bowling because… in order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose!
Art exists because it simply has to exist. My art exists because I exist. So, my art exists because you all made the mistake of allowing me to exist.

So, all art is about people. Even the art with no people in it. That art, at least, has a creator who was most probably a people… or a monkey… or an elephant.. or a… well, you get the idea, don’t you?

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August 31, 2023 · 1:11 am

This is What Happens When You Leave a Crazy Old Retired Guy Alone With a Doll Collection and a Camera

Yes, I know this is supposed to be a Saturday Art Day Post, but you can make art in many different ways. That can include pictures made with a camera while I play with dolls… er… action figures and try horrifically to be funny. There is an art to that, right? Maybe?

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Filed under action figures, artwork, cartoony Paffooney, comic book heroes, comic strips, doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, photo paffoonies, playing with toys

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August 30, 2023 · 12:39 am

Monster Mashing

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One of the side “benefits” of having diabetes is that it often comes with an extra helping of diabetic depression.  I had the blues really bad this week.  I am not the only member of my family suffering.

So, what do you do about it?

Or, rather, what does a goofy idiot like me do about it?

Especially on a windy day when the air is saturated with pollen and other lovely things that I am absolutely, toxically allergic to?

Well, for one thing, I used the word toxically in this post because it is a funny-sounding adverb that I love to use even though the spell-checker hates it, no matter how I spell or misspell it.

And I bought a kite.

Yes, it is a cheap Walmart kite that has a picture of Superman on it that looks more like Superboy after taking too much kryptonite-based cough syrup for his own super allergies.

But I used to buy or make paper diamond kites just like this one when I was a boy in Iowa to battle the blues in windy spring weather.  One time I got one so high in the sky at my uncle’s east pasture that it was nothing more than a speck in the sky using two spools of string and one borrowed ball of yarn from my mother’s knitting basket.  It is a way of battling blue meanies.

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And I bought more chocolate-covered peanuts.  The chocolate brings you up, and the peanut protein keeps you from crashing your blood sugar.  I have weathered more than one Blue Meanie attack with m&m’s peanuts.

And I used the 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination to bring my novel, The Baby Werewolf, home.  I wrote the last chapter Monday night in the grip of dark depression, and writing something, and writing it well, makes me a little bit happier.

And I have collected a lot of naked pictures of nudists off Twitter.  Who knew that you could find and communicate with such a large number of naked-in-the-sunshine nuts on social media?  It is nice to find other nude-minded naturists in a place that I thought only had naked porn until I started blogging on naturist social media.  Being naked in mind and body makes me happier than I ever thought it would.

And besides being bare, I also like butterflies and books and baseball and birds, (the Cardinals have started baseball season remember) and the end of winter.  “I just remember of few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!”  Oh, and I like musical movies like The Sound of Music too.

The monsters of deep, dark depression are being defeated as we speak.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, battling depression, cardinals, Depression, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, imagination, nudes, Paffooney, photos, strange and wonderful ideas about life

August 27, 2023 · 12:59 am

Surreal Self-Portraits

What you see is basically me.

It is said by somebody who wasn’t basically me that any time an artist draws a picture of someone, or paints a picture of someone, or twizzles a twizzle-snoot of someone… they are basically making a picture of themselves.

So, this Paffooney that I paffooned of a purple mouse in a Don Martin-esque style, is supposed to be Mickey the cartoonist. And Mickey is supposedly, basically me.

And here I am as Muck Man, the superhero. It is me because the super power he has is his horrible, non-adorable, and unrelenting stench. The horrible smell of him renders villains and bad people unconscious or worse… sometimes straight to the hearse. And using his olfactory assaults on evil as a way to make something terrible into something with a -someness of awe, makes him indubitably, indelibly basically me.

“Long Ago It Might Have Been”

And here is a picture of a boy who might’ve been my son if only I had been given enough good sense to fall in love with that first blond young lady who first had thoughts about making babies with me. I didn’t. I’m stupid. And now she has only girls. That makes it a picture too of basically me.

And this little not-me was me all along, and as the boy who sees colors, it’s really not wrong. Synesthetic they call it in a name that’s not long, but is resoundingly deep like the words of a song.

And you might argue this one and say that it’s true… “This one is too pretty to be a picture of you.” But you would be wrong on this basis, you see…

The monster inside me is basically me

And here I am all magic and purple, and I just blew the rhyme again, so this isn’t another danged verse. I drew this picture of Milt Morgan from an old school picture of me.

I often say the character in the stories is based on the Other Mike, the other boy I grew up with who was named Mike in my little home town.

But he thought like me, he acted a lot like me. He even looked like me, at least a little bit. So, if I am portraying him, I am depicting basically me.

And this is the naked me, as a nudist back in childhood in Rowan, Iowa, which I never was… not like this… but still am. Because I am a writer. And writers always write about their naked selves, showing the whole world what saner and more prudish people keep secret. If they were truly smart and wanted to keep their secrets to themselves, artists would never draw or paint or write about or twizzle about themselves. In fact, they would make no art at all.

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August 27, 2023 · 12:52 am

Irreverence

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It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God.  Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth.  And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.

The thing I find most distressing about faith is the fact that those who have it are absolutely convinced that if you don’t agree with them and whatever book of fairy tales they believe in and interpret for you, then you are not a True Believer and you do not have real Faith.

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I remember being told by a Mormon girl in one of my classes that I was her all-time favorite teacher, but she was deeply distressed that, because of my religion (I professed to be a Jehovah’s Witness at the time) I was doomed to burn in Hell forever.

Hey, I was raised in Iowa.  I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill.  I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

But I am no longer actually a Jehovah’s Witness.  So I guess that helps with the whole Hell-burning thing.  The Witnesses are a religion that claims to understand the Bible is full of metaphorical truth, and yet insist that it is literally true.  They don’t believe in Hell, which, honestly, is not actually mentioned or explained in the Bible as we have it now.  But they do believe your prospects for eternal life on a paradise Earth are totally contingent on knocking on doors and telling other people that they must believe what you believe or experience eternal destruction.  I have stopped being an active Witness and knocking on doors because I got old and sick, and all the caring brothers and sisters in the congregation stopped coming around to visit because number one son joined the Marines, and the military is somehow evil hoodoo that cancels out any good you have done in the past.  Being a Jehovah’s Witness was really hard work with all the meetings (5 per week), Bible reading (I have read the entire Bible two and a half times), door-knocking, and praying, and you apparently can lose it all for saying, thinking, or doing one wrong thing.

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According to the Baptist preachers, Jehovah’s Witness elders, religious zealots, and other opinionated religious people I have known and dealt with in my life, if I do not believe what they believe and agree with them in every detail, then I do not know God and am therefore an atheist.  So, okay, I guess I am.   If I have to be an atheist to believe whole-heartedly that everyone is entitled to sincerely believe whatever the hell they want to believe, then I’ll wear that label.

On a personal note, my favorite verse of the Bible has always been 1 John 4:8,  “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.”  That is why I claim to be an atheist who believes in God.  I know love.  I love all men, women, children, animals, sunrises, artwork, paintings of angels by Bouguereau… everything that is.  And I even love you if you exercise your freedom to tell me, “Your ideas are totally wrong, and you are going to burn in Hell, Mickey, you bad guy, you!”  Mark Twain always said, “I would choose Heaven for climate, but I would prefer Hell for company.”  I am not going to worry about it.  I will be in good company.  Some things are just bigger than me.  And trying to control things like that is nonsense. Sorta like this post.

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August 25, 2023 · 11:19 pm

Leftovers From the January File

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You reach a point after a hard month has lingered long where you have to eat the leftovers and accept what is.  I faced challenges again like the bankruptcy in 2017 and the Covid pandemic in 2020.  July and August in 2023 have been super hot and withering of both soul and resolve.  When faced with such a situation, I need pie.

So here are some of the things left in my January file for use in this blog.  The only reason they are here is because I have developed a tradition of repeating this post in times of trouble.  Of course, updates are necessary.  The pie I just had was a cherry pie, not the apple in the picture. The ideas have not been knitted together for any rational purpose.

This will be a crazy quilt blog post.  But crazy quilts keep you just as warm in winter as any other kind.  But at the end of this month, I need the crazy more than the quilt.  I am having no trouble keeping warm at 108 degrees of real temperature today.

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My once-newest Facebook friend is the daughter of my wife’s cousin.   I have only known her as the sweet-faced little smiler at Filipino-American family gatherings who sometimes gets my attention by squirting me in the ear with a water gun.  Her father is from Greece and teaches Math in San Antonio.  Her mother, like my wife, is from the Philippines.  I won’t tell you her real name, but we used to call her “Sweetie” because of her resemblance to the little pink Tweety-bird character from Tiny Toons Adventures.  Since this bluebonnet picture was taken, she has graduated from high school and definitely become a worthy young adult, slightly older than my own daughter.  I did once hold Sweetie in my lap as an infant.

I have also spent considerable time writing to and for nudists I have connected with through their various websites and on Twitter.  These two lovely works of nude art were shared with me on Twitter.  I have collected a number of nude pictures from Twitter nudists that I can’t use on WordPress because I am still entirely too modest to be the unrestrained naked person that some nudists are.  I can’t really claim to be a complete nudist myself.  But I do have stories to tell about naked people, and I have been working on them diligently.  I have been working on a book-length essay called Naked Thinking, full of ideas and drawings about being naked and honestly open to the world.  Whether I live long enough to publish it remains to be seen.

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Of course, I still miss being a teacher.  I was a teacher of English for 31 years.  I taught reading and writing in English to over 2,000 kids.  I also learned how to stare in Klingon.  It is a useful skill for keeping students in line and keeping them from becoming a disappointment to the empire.  I miss teaching kids, especially talkative kids.  Far fewer people talk to me during a day of retirement than used to talk to me in a single class at school.  Those interactions were precious.

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And several things are just too confusing for my old brain to explain.

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But I do like this picture I found on Facebook of Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, playing with multiple kittens.  I don’t know why, but it makes me happier.

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Tom Baker with kittens all over him… It doesn’t get any better than that.

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