That Ron Dude

Just downloaded free, no strings attached, watercolour brush from Kylebrush.com . They have a couple of other free brushes and many inexpensive brushes. I recommend it.

Great tombstones!

11. Did Chuck cross the line?

Tomorrow do you warm up with Superheroes whose names start with "I"?

That's creepy all right.

That's a strong image, Boba, with a great over all effect. No, I didn't notice the chair. Sometimes the off-to-the-side components make the drawings more interesting later on.

More from Tower of the Comic Book Freaks. This is page 132. Most of the comic book is drawn in my usual style which I would say resembles a cross between Sprang and an Archie artist. This page is different though. Though it was drawn by me, in the context of the story it is drawn by an important but disgraced pre-code Horror artist, a peer of Williamson, Wood and Ingles who can no longer get work because of his testimony during the Senate Sub-Committe hearings in the 1950s. Furthermore, it is a drawing that uses a teenage model that he is trying to humiliate. I will probably colour it and post it again later.

I am happy to report that the graphic novel of 200 pages and I am on page 128 at the moment, will be published by Caliber.

This is opening for a lengthy comic book story I have been working on. I am trying to do something that will make people forget Maus, Our Cancer Year and Fun Home. Chances are people will only remember to not spend so much time writing and drawing unless they are talented and working on an accessible topic (like the Holocaust, Cancer and GBLTQ). Still, if you love it, you do it.

Nice Inks and everything else too.

I attended the NY Comicon in 1974 but I don't remember seeing that. It was a long time ago. In fact, I haven't seen any of the fanzines on this page and I have seen a lot of fanzines. Thanks for putting them up.

The recent work displayed is very accomplished.

Most WTB ads troll for suckers.

Great work. Nice painted portrait. Nice rock-and-roll guys portraits.

There's a lot up to be enjoyed.

A joy to behold all the new stuff.

I enjoyed looking at all the recent drawings. There is a lot of talent and ability on these boards.

Lots of energy in those inks.

Garfield looks like he is 32. I checked. He is 31. I watched half an hour on a big screen TV and it was all I could stand for a while. I didn't care that much about Peter Parker's problems. I checked rotten tomatoes and that seemed to be the big complaint-- the critics didn't care much about his problems either. Uncle Ben's death is worth the time. Missing graduation isn't.

For Artboy-- I can see it as a Warren image when they were hiring all those new people, like Cockrum, Kaufman and Fantucchio. For Sarfa-- Great inking! I actually lettered the first Pitt story. Dale gave me a colour photocopy of that image without the copy on it. For Senormac-- Congratulations on your knowledge of perspective and patience. For Revol-- I hope it goes somewhere. It deserves to. For Timely-- It looks likely you learned a lot from those pre-Code horror books.

I'll never get tired of visiting this thread.

Hey! I still have something new to add! I am quoting Michael Kaluta here from an old fanzine called MCR. From about 45 years ago I think it is still relevant. Who knows what Mike Kaluta thinks today? The entire letter and much more can be found at kenmeyerjr.com “It does not come as a shock to find your work swiped by another artist. Neither do you foam at the mouth, or buy a gun to hunt out the with the intent to shoot him between the eyes. You laugh. Again it’s the artistic ego. You know you did it first and your ego is flattered to see someone else using your art. I say this from personal experience. The only horror that slyly creeps yup is the fear that possibly the fans will think you swiped it from him. Obviously your ego tells youth he is an inferior artist— after all he swiped from you, didn’t he? The only kind of swiping that does offend falls into two categories: a) idea and mood swipes. Let’s say somebody looks at Vaughn Bode’s lizard worlds and then goes about building universes and histories, much as Vaughn did, peoples the universes with nitwitted, pitiable sadists; and then sells it as his own. —Thats a crime. And, b) somebody that swipes something from you and obviously does it better than you could every hope to do. Which makes you wish you never did it in the first place. “

And if you have a lot of time and a little bit of money... The $12 million dollar stuffed shark. http://www.amazon.com/Million-Stuffed-Shark-Economics-Contemporary/dp/0230620590/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415558276&sr=1-1&keywords=12+million+dollar+stuffed+shark

I created celebrity portraits years ago and consulted a lawyer about selling them. The Chaplin that I use as an icon is one of them. The lawyer told me that the people that I did portraits of, and the photographers who took the images I painted from, had rights to my portraits. That bit of advise was worth getting and cost me $500. I spoke to an artist who had worked for Playboy, Esquire, Rolling Stone and the New Yorker who lives down the street. He also works from other people's photos. He told me there had never been a suit of that kind in Canada to create a precedent. He said, though, that one day a million people would be walking around Canada with T-shirts of a painting of some celeb drawn from a photo taken by another party. Then we would have our lawsuit and have a precedent. Made sense. I also met an illustrator who had done at least two Time Magazine covers. One of them, of Einstein done from the famous Karsh photo, was controversial because it was so easy to spot as being from Karsh and wasn't credited. He said that after doing it he got a letter from Karsh's management, not his lawyers, explaining that there is a fee for using Karsh's work in that way. He told me that it was a perfectly reasonable fee and he paid it. He added that he had only been called on using other people's photo's twice in his long career and both times the people on the other side were reasonable. MY CONCLUSIONS: 1.Photographers have the right to work done from their images but in most cases the damage doesn't amount to a hill of beans and is difficult to pursue within the Canadian legal system. 2. People (like me) who are risk averse should avoid taking from other people's images. There are reason's why artist's often sign contracts with a clause saying that they have all rights to the work they are selling. 3. The more the image is changed in the copying the less rights the photographer has over it. If possible, change the photo beyond recognition or, whenever possible, take your own photos. And finally... I think Dan Adkins got sued a couple of times for his swipes. That is rumour though. He did a Warren cover, perhaps of a Mummy grasping onto a man done coldly from a photograph. That might have been one of the lawsuits.

Except that Roy Lichtenstein was a nobody - an art teacher at Rutgers - who, in becoming a pioneer of Pop Art, had to fight the same battles with the Art Establishment and general public in the early 1960s that fanboys are still waging 50 years later. The New York Times called him "one of the worst artists in America", while Life Magazine asked, "Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?", answering itself by saying, "For some of America's best known critics and laymen, the answer to the above question is a resounding YES." Of course, over time, his innovation and importance was recognized by the art establishment, while his style and iconography (as with Pop Art in general) have become entrenched in pop culture. It's only a small group of comic book fanboys who still think he's just a plagiarist and scam artist. The power of a Lichtenstein is not derived from the lines swiped from the original comic panels. If he wanted to, he could certainly have created his own - but, that wasn't the point of Pop Art. But, that's beside the point - the power of Lichtenstein's comic paintings is derived from taking the original panel out of context and re-purposing it, as well as transforming it into a larger size, with brighter colors, thicker lines and Ben-Day dots to simulate mechanical/photographic reproduction as if it were done by a commercial printer. It was innovative, breakthrough stuff at the time, and has since become an important, iconic part of art history. The source material, on the other hand, was not innovative or important in any way, shape or form. Every successful fine artist was once a nobody and ignored. I'm talking about once they become accepted-and that acceptance often has nothing to do with their actual work-it can be paint spatters or a crucifix in urine. I have read the stories about Jack Kirby getting poorly treated. Same for Ditko, the creators of Superman, Steve Gerber, Don Martin, Gene Day, Bill Finger, and more. It would be nice if Russ Heath was living it up after so many years of giving people like me great work and making my life joyful. However, as scummy as the comic book industry is, it is a collection of choir boys compared to the world of high art.