A break from OBAMAMANIA!

Take a break from the Obamamania...and spend a few minutes watching this wonderful, short film.
Trust me..it delivers.
http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO

Friday Freak: DA BOID!

Today's FRIDAY FREAK is another dip into my old Kubert School days. Towards the end of the year, we would do sketches for each other, and this is one of my favorites from a very talented guy named Jim Rohn.
The guy had a great style, and he also had a great sense of humor.
This is a great drawing filled with a few inside jokes. The bird's thought balloon refers to an article on space travel that I had read in the now defunct OMNI magazine.
One of the problems of zero gravity is that the astronaut's organs migrate to the middle of the body,
and the fluids tend to collect high up inside the body.
"Getting my money's worth.." is pretty self-explanatory. : )
The potato salad remark is the real reason that I pulled this out of my files. I bought a jar of kosher dill pickles from COSTCO, marketed by the New York Carnegie Deli.
Towards the end of our last year at Kuberts, our Film teacher, Bruce Wands, took the class to
New York. We visited his studio, checked out the Museum of Broadcasting,(very cool watching Jonny Quest there), and a few other places.
For lunch, we went t the Carnegie Deli.
Let me paint the picture:
I'm sitting with a few of my friends, and the waiter, a chubby Jewish guy, takes our orders, and leaves.
My order : A hot pastrami sandwich,(this was back when I still ate red meat), potato salad, and a St. Pauli's Girl beer.
He comes back with all of this food and drink, and sorts it all out to us.
Now me, being a big goof from the Midwest, thought I would help this guy who obviously made a mistake.
I had my beer, and my sandwich, plus a pickle, but no potato salad.
I said.." Excuse me sir, but I think you forgot my potato salad."
Just like in the movies, it seemed as though everyone stopped talking, not wanting to miss a word of what was going to be said.
The waiter said .."What?"
I repeated myself, then added, " You brought my beer, and my sandwich, but you forgot my potato salad."
I found myself suddenly cast in the starring role of "Rube in the Big City".
He said, " Young man, the sandwich and the beer come from the front, the potato salad comes from the kitchen in the back. I didn't forget, I just didn't get it yet." He took a step and then turned back to me.
" You have a beer, and a sandwich..you don't have enough food in front of you?"
As I was trying to stammer out an apology, he kept pouring it on.
" This place is busy, but I should drop everything for you?"
" I should put roller skates on to get to you faster?"
"I should have a heart attack to get your potato salad?"
"Drink your beer, eat your sandwich, and I'll get your potato salad."
He finally left, and my friends were going nuts laughing. I was as red as I could be....and then the capper.
The waiter comes back and says, I kid you not, " Mr. Lucky, here's your potato salad," giving it to me with a flourish, just to bust my chops even more.
Jim used to do an impression of that guy that was spot on.

Friday Freak: PHOENIX

This is one of my favorite possessions from my Kubert school days. We had so many great teachers, just about all of them were famous in the comic world, and a lot of them would knock out a quick sketch for you if you weren't a jerk.
Sal Amendola was one of those pros. He was one of our teachers for "Methods and Materials", or else it was " Sequential Art ", I forget.
He once assigned us a really cool project. We were all supposed to create a comic, by folding layout paper, so if you had four sheets, folded them, stapled in the middle, suddenly you have 16 pages to draw on., front and back.
Hope I made that clear. So we all worked hard, and created our comics. I still have mine. I did a story about a rock that floats down into a canyon, gives birth to a baby rock, and then they both fly away into the distance leaving only the placenta, etc. As I write this I realize how nutty it sounds, but we were supposed to be creating a story that could appear in Epic or Heavy Metal.
Anyhow, this one girl turns in a story that she copied out of an older Heavy Metal, where a woman, after eating some fruit, becomes pregnant, and her belly peels away to reveal this same fruit. Trust me, it looked more artistic than it sounds.
As soon as I saw this project, I called her on it in front of the entire class. Not only that, I had the same issue that she had copied the story from, and brought it out to show Sal.
Everyone started to laugh, she turned red, and Sal got real quiet and said "Fuchs..out in the hall. I wanna talk to you."
Now Sal was maybe 5 foot tops, if he was wearing his boots, and I towered over him like the Minnesota goof that I was, but I was still kinda scared.
We go out into the hall and he asked me why I did what I did.
I told him that I was mad that I worked so hard on my story, doing the roughs and finishes, etc., and that I paying a lot of money to go to the school, and that it just made me furious to see this cheater at work.
He was real cool about it. He told me that he knew she didn't create the story, and that she traced it badly, but that didn't make it right for me to embarrass her like that. He said that he knew she wasn't as talented as me, and that she probably wouldn't even stay in Kubert's for another semester, so what harm would it do to just let her slide on out, unchallenged.
He said that I should concentrate more on what I was doing, then worry about what someone else was up to. That was a lesson I never forgot.
One day, he was talking about some of the awful jobs he had had , and mentioned a book he did for a comic company called Atlas. I instantly perked up and said that I had bought many of the titles that came out. I mean, back in the 70's, to have a company put out first issues...I thought I was buying the next Superman.
At first Sal thought I was busting his chops, but after I told him about my favorite character, Phoenix, he said that that was the one book he had hated to work on.
He told me that the company was almost floundering when it started, and that the name of the game was to crank out the work, because no one knew when the lights would be turned out.
So this comic character, who is an astronaut, gets rescued by these aliens after his experimental ship crashes in the Arctic.....you can read the synopsis here,( open this link in a new window, so you can close that and come back here for the rest of the story. It's a good one...I'll wait for you) :
http://www.atlasarchives.com/comics/phoenix.html
Ok, you're back.
So the crazy part was this this guy was supposed to be like Jesus, and save humanity from these aliens who were going to wipe us out.
The insignia on his chest was supposed to transform into a cross-like shape during the many issue story-arc.
But, because word came down that the book was being canceled, the writer or editor told Sal to make the changes on the insignia, during the course of the last book.
So what you have, is a superhero that, from panel to panel, and from page to page, has a logo on his costume that is changing without any explanation.
I thought that was one of the coolest insider stories I have ever heard.
So at the end of the year, I asked Sal if he would do a sketch for me, and he whipped out the Phoenix.
Plus, he wrote down my phrase that I still use to this day to explain to people how to pronounce my last name: "...FUCHS like BOOKS.."
Sal also did some of my favorite Batman stories.
He was the first guy that I had ever heard sum up the Batman as : " a guy who became psychotic because he witnessed his parents being murdered when he was a kid."
What a cool guy.

Sniffer dogs to wear ‘Muslim’ bootees

Once again, Britain comes through to help break my cartoonist's block!
The story:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4276489.ece

FRIDAY FREAK: Invasion of the LIZARDMEN!

Today's Friday Freak is brought to you by the 80's! Remember? SNL wasn't funny until Eddie Murphy was hired, parachute pants, and Reagan.
Above is a character/mascot I created for a company called, I kid you not, "Invasion of the LizardMen!"
It was a headshop run by a collection of hippies in Northern New Jersey. No longer in business.
Somehow these people had an almost unlimited funding, due to certain activities, and opened a business that besides selling the usual assortment of bongs and what have you, also sold t-shirts.
They had a state of the art transfer machine that could print any artwork, no matter the medium, onto a shirt.
The largest it could print was 11"x14".
So, I created a wide range of designs for them, and they sold really well.
I would do 10 designs, fax those to the shop, they would make selections or changes, and I would work all night to have them ready for the next day.
I would meet them at diners along Rt. 46, and we would make the "exchange".
I would give them the art, and they would cut the check. Which was always a nice sum, and ALWAYS cleared, not like some clients, who shall remain nameless....for now. : )
Anyhoo, once they gave me a hit of LSD that they wanted a t-shirt for.
It was purple, on a stamp looking thing, really ornate, Purple Haze, I think it was.
( I was in my 20's, and scrambling for every dollar, so just relax..and wait for the end of this story).
Being careful not to touch it, I wrapped it in a napkin and took it home to work.
I took the front cover off of a cassette tape,clear plastic, and taped the hit to it so I could look at it without risking a trip.
Next day I drop it off, again at a diner, and the three of them loved the design. I captured the blotter hit perfectly.
So, they were eating when I handed the hit back to them.
"Keep it," said the owner.
I declined, and the younger guy snatched it out of my hand and went to the bathroom.
I ordered a hamburger basket,(I used to eat red meat back then), and about 30 or so minutes later, the guy came out of the bathroom.
He was white, and sweaty, and his pupils were the size of dimes.
I of course couldn't resist messing with him, as I offered him french fries, by holding up the basket and asking if he wanted some, and then quickly moving the fries into his face, like a 3-D movie.
He jumped out of the booth and landed on the floor laughing. so much that the other customers were pointing.
That's when I left.
Weeks later, the whole place was closed, and everyone busted, except LSD guy. If I remember right, he was picked up on a minor drug charge, but his dad was plugged in some how with the community, so this kid narced on the other two, and he didn't do a day in the clink.
That's one of the problems with drugs. Not everyone you hang out with is a stand up guy.
It was a great freelance gig while it lasted.

Friday Freak: Milt Neil

This week has sure been exciting! My birthday was Tuesday, and the family and I went to my favorite Mexican place to eat....and it was STILL open!
( In my neck of the woods, restaurants open and close quickly).
I was brought on to work with a company I have been trying to get into for years, but more about that later.
Yesterday, as I was riding my bike at the park, I took a nastie header as I was negotiating my way through a herd of small children.
As I was picking rocks out of my road rash, the kids came over to ask if I was ok.
This drawing of Milt Neil is also from my days at the Kubert School, circa 1981.
My only regret is that it's drawn in marker, and every year it seems to spread out a little bit more.
Milt was an old Disney animator, and worked on a lot of cool projects, such as "Fantasia" and "Dur Fuhrer's Face".
The man could draw anything, and he didn't take sh*t from anybody.
He was such a wealth of knowledge. When he would go down the line and help each of us with our assignments, it was amazing, and nerve wracking!
We'd go to the pencil test machine, and he would critique us one by one.
It was during our flag waving tests that he yelled at a guy for copying the flag from the " Timing for Animation" book. He saw instantly when someone was cutting corners.
Once, we were going over one of my scenes, where this depressed dinosaur was sitting on a log, looks up at the viewer, and gulps.
Milt said.." that looks real good, son."
I walked on air the rest of that week.
More often than not, Milt would flip your scene, say that it was getting there, and then motion for you to get out of your seat so he could sit and" show you how to take this further."
Watching him made you realize just how much you didn't know.
When he was finished, he'd get up, clap you on the shoulder, and go to the next guy.
Leaving you with a pile of Milt's animation that he just roughed out as he was talking,20 or 30 pages of key frames, alternate drawings for cycles to break them up, etc., that flipped beautifully, and that you didn't have a chance in hell of duplicating.
I'm not even going to talk about his mastery of pastels.

Curious George

One of my fondest memories is of my dad taking me to the library for the first time.
I was able to check out three books,( I was very young, maybe 5), and " Curious George
Learns the Alphabet" was one of them. I loved this book!
The Man in the Yellow Hat will let George eat a bag of donuts if he learns his ABCs.
So to help George learn, the Man draws animals using the letters as the foundation for each animal.
I still remember "Cc" as a big crab and a little crab.
Here we see George looking at a gay fish. : )