Today I bought a new book. It is called The Art of Joe Kubert, edited by Bill Schelly. I got it at Halfprice Books for a mere six dollars and ninety-nine cents. It is filled with treasure. From the 1950’s to the present day, Kubert has been an artist behind Hawkman, Tarzan, and Sargent Rock. He is fantasy and surrealism at its graphic best. I plan on pouring over it all summer long.
Life is like Moose Bowling,
Because…
In order to knock over all the pins,
And win…
You have to learn HOW TO THROW A MOOSE!
One of my all-time favorite comic book characters has always been Captain America as a member of the Avengers. Just like so many other artists hooked on comic books, I have drawn my heroes numerous times. Here is a sample. This is mostly a pen and ink drawing, colored with colored pencils.
The Dust Man is unique because he creates worlds from chalk dust. He draws pictures on the chalk board in colored chalks, sometimes massive full-board murals. He is a natural at telling stories, whether they are pieces of great literature read aloud (he used to do Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos, and The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket), or they were incidental slice-of-life stories about his own experiences, or even re-tellings of historical figures and the events in their lives (one student used to sum up all of these stories by saying “first you tell us what wonderful things he or she did, then you tell us how that person died a horrible or painful death”… and I often found humor in that). The Dust Man was a natural teacher of boys, able to connect their silly and hormonal little lives to a great wide world of significant experiences. He could teach girls too, even though he found them much harder to understand. But now, in 2014, he will lay the chalk down for a final time. The dust will race across the blackboard no more. The stories will go from oral to written form. And something will be, regrettably, forever lost. (And, yes, pathos is humor too, a fond but bittersweet memory… so I did not miss-tag this post!)
Although the child in the painting is definitely not me or one of mine (the dog is Queenie, and she was real), and although I grew up about as far from the sea as you can get, this painting reveals something critical about who I am. My Grandpa Aldrich was a singular man of wisdom and good humor. He could tell a funny story with the best of them. He was a farmer and inculcated in me a farmer’s work ethic, that get-up-before-dawn style of thing. He never got mad, even the time I broke the plumbing in his house by playing Tarzan in the basement, swinging on the bathroom pipes in the ceiling. Everything I know about how to love, and how to act, and who to be I got from him, or at least from him through my mother who was his child. My grandpa lasted into his eighties and was alive until I finally got married at 38. He lives in my heart still, guiding my actions… even the words I am writing now.
I have always been fascinated by science fiction B-movies. Flash Gordon battling Emperor Ming on a black-and-white paper mache planet Mongo… The Soviet-paranoia of Invaders from Mars… Cowboys and dinosaurs… Frankenstein in space… Godzilla… You have to love what they used to accomplish with imagination, enthusiasm, and creative use of Styrofoam.
After the invasion ended in defeat for the frog people from the planet Telleri, I found I had a leftover box of these Zillokahsitter Skortch Rays. Zillokahsitter makes a very fine ray gun, not that I ever bought any before, but a couple of my little green friends told me so. They are very useful for removing old paint, unwanted neighborhood dogs and cats, grouchy relatives you don’t really want around any more… Did I mention they disintegrate things completely? Atom by atom? The only drawback is… once a thing is skortched, you will not be able to put it back together again. That’s what happened to my wife’s hair dryer… but please don’t tell her that. I’m not sure how to price these. I was thinking about selling them for the five dollar shipping and handling only. I have to get rid of them before my kids play with one again. The principal at the middle school may never be the same again.
Sometimes you just have to put together something crazy. This is a combination of colored pencil, ceramic egg-man painted with acrylic, and a photoshopped photo. Definitely a looney Paffooney.
Tonight I sent a manuscript of my novel Snow Babies to PDMI Publishing. This is the novel that made the finals in the book contest from Chanticleer Book Reviews, so I have some hope that they will at least look at it.
Catch a Falling Star 