Creepy Archives #17: Nostalgia is Sheer Terror, NYC, Hot Pants, and Sharks…

Creepy Archives 17Dark Horse Comics has been compiling every issue of Warren Publishing’s excellent horror anthology magazines CREEPY and EERIE for some time now and I’ve finally had the chance to sit down with a few volumes. I had most of these mads back in the late 70’s and early 80’s when my comic collecting was getting seriously out of hand, so these reprints have been kicking me right in the nostalgic bits and it hurts so good.

Creepy Archives #17 is available as a pre-order from Things From Another World (buy it!) and among the other fine and frightening tales in this tome drawn by some great illustrators, by the way) are a few I recall quite fondly for different reasons Creepy #83 (October 1976) featured “Country Pie”, an interesting tale from workhorse writer Bruce Jones about a small town’s police trying to track a serial killer using a psychic’s clues as the killer meets up with his latest victim. While far Jones’ best script (it gives up its secret too soon and some will guess the twist right away), the story is remembered for its art from the unusual pairing of Carmine Infantino and Berni Wrightson (yes, it’s as weird as it sounds, but it works wonderfully). Infantino gets to ink his own work later in Bill DuBay’s somewhat average “The Last Super Hero”, but you’ll need to be a huge fan of his quirky artwork to truly appreciate it…

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Return of the Fumetti! IDW’s Star Trek Annual 2013 Does Some Major Time Traveling…

Star Trek Annual 2013 (Custom)Wow. I’m ancient enough to remember owning a couple of Star Trek fumetti, so seeing this all-new page created by comics legend John Byrne for his upcoming Trek tale “Strange New Worlds” made me smile a wee bit too much. I hope the younger fan of the series embrace this photo-novel style, as it’s a real art form. Even crazier (in the best possible manner), Byrne created the panels for the series by carefully cobbling together “multiple pieces of film stills and manipulating them to tell the exact story he wanted”, according to the press release. That alone makes this worth checking out if you’re one of those folks who knows the original series inside and out. You’ll be picking out shots and testing your memory, that’s for sure…

IDW’s Star Trek Annual 2013 will run 48 pages and should be in your favorite comic shop the third week of December. I just may need to pick this up and take a time trip down memory lane…

Androids May Not Dream of Electric Sheep (But I Bet They Dream About These Gorgeous Blade Runner Figures)

BR_Geek Exchange
(Photo from Geek Exchange Figures by Scott Pettersen)

“They’re my friends… I made them!”

Wow. It’s REALLY too bad these aren’t mass produced, as I can see a load of hard core Blade Runner fans wanting to get their paws on the entire set of these spectacularly detailed dolls… er, action figures… er, works of art. Scott Pettersen, a huge fan of the film and a ridiculously talented sculptor has made possibly the best looking non-licensed collectibles I’ve ever seen, so I’m speechless and you should check out his site yourself and wear a drool cup while visiting, as there’s a load of other wonderful goodies there (and some of it is for sale). The man’s got T-A-L-E-N-T… although an owl with that Rachel figure in her office suit would have been wickedly cool to see.

Other than that, speechless…

IDW’s Woodwork: If You Only Buy ONE Comic Collection This Year, Well Here You Go…

22_4Granted, with only 175 (or 150, depending on where you look on the order page) of these SUPER deluxe $125.00 tomes made, they’re most likely all gone by the time you’re reading this post. That said, IDW Publishing’s latest classic comic art collection and hardcover must-buy Woodwork: Wallace Wood 1927-1981 is an absolutely magnificent gathering of some of the best of Woody’s work (and a bunch of cool extras) and comes highly recommended. The man could do it all and did it all in terms of his comics work. Kid-friendly strips and parodies to classic EC Comics of all types to superhero books and far racier content for much more mature audiences, yep, Woody was there and ready to get it done.

As this one’s going to go fast (or is already gone), I figure I may as well run a few images from the official site below, as the chances of many of you seeing this one up close and personal are slim to zero. If anything, Woody’s work deserves to be scrutinized by more of today’s younger artists for a few really good reasons, as the man’s imagination and sense of wonder were seemingly limitless (although with such a massive output, not everything was as brilliant as the collected works here). He’s one of many influences on some of my older work, but I didn’t copy his style directly, instead thinking “What would Woody do?” when tackling certain projects.

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Wolfenstein: The New Order Update: Meet Torvenius!

No, it’s not the name of a villain from the upcoming game, silly rabbits. It’s Axel Torvenius, one of the artists at Machine Games. His Speedpaint skills are pretty awesome, I have to say. Of course, I need to actually get around to doing more art myself, so it’s cool to get inspired by assorted people in a few places… OK, back to work before I start getting distracted by too much other stuff…

Ken Butler @ AIRPLANE: Return of the Home-made Twang Bar King…

KB1 (Custom)OK, class: Time for some art appreciation (siddown, you in the back – you went to the restroom three articles back!). I saw some cool hybrid sculptures by artist/musician Ken Butler last weekend at Brooklyn’s AIRPLANE gallery and found his work to be pretty incredible overall. Some pics are below, but you should probably check out his site to see more and find more about him and his rather amazing work.  I also shot a bit of video of one interactive piece I forgot to write the name down of (oops), so take a look below the jump and let your imagination go wild (or back to normal) as you make up your own story to go with the projected images on the wall. The fun thing about this particular work is it’s all found objects put together and transformed into a multi-purpose art piece (that can probably call down an alien spacecraft if played outdoors, make your cat or dog crazy when they’re chasing lights around the room or perhaps give a burglar a seizure if you play the keyboard fast enough when he’s breaking into your place to steal what he thinks is a time machine)… Continue reading

Video Game Appreciation 101, Scary Side: Roxy’s – A Little Slice of Silent Hill, Circa 1960…

Edward Kienholz was an artist you may or may not have heard of (depending on your level of education), so if you know his work and happen to be a gamer, you’re smiling right now.  For those of you who are scratching your heads, I’ll let you Google him and more of his work up at your leisure. Before that, take a peek at that image to the left. Go on, it won’t bite (I think)…

OK, maybe this should be ART Appreciation 101, huh?. It’s from Roxy’s, an environmental installation piece from 1960-61 (and the artist’s first large scale work) based (loosely, I hope) on the artist’s memories of a visit to a Las Vegas bordello in the 1940’s. Long story short, I’d seen this image years ago in an art book and it bugged the hell out of me for weeks. As in seeing that figure hovering around in a nightmare or two and maybe wanting to dig my eyes out with a cold spoon after waking up bugged…

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