Secret Country, Hard White Snow

This is the art for the new Secret Country Christmas single, "Hard White Snow!" You can git 'er here!

Gruß vom Krampus!

This is the cover to my 2010 Christmas compilation, GRUß VOM KRAMPUS! featuring the beloved Germanic holiday figure from the 19th century. Mayhaps you'd be inclined to check out the single I did with my girlfriend and some chums. Here's the link to the Jingleberries' CHRISTMAS VIDEO PARTY.

You Don't Like Anything! The Vicious Circle of the Three Dollar Bin

The Exorcist

The final ONE-SHEET REDUX post (for now, anyway), my take on one of my all-time favorite movies.

Night of the Living Dead (version 1)

Another ONE-SHEET REDUX, and (to be honest) my least favorite of my pieces for the show. I'm working on a second version, which is coming soon, but here's the first version.

Kitten with a Whip

ONE-SHEET REDUX post no. 5, this adapts (pretty literally, but I put Jody in jeans and added an actual cat in the background box) the poster for Ann-Margret's KITTEN WITH A WHIP, one of my favorite B-movies. See here for a little more information and buy the DVD here!

The Night of the Hunter

Another ONE-SHEET REDUX piece, a lobby card for Charles Laughton's noir masterpiece, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. The film is finally getting the Criterion Collection treatment this month (the current DVD is a scratchy, cropped travesty). I was originally going to do three different lobby cards for this film, but again, time got away from me, like kids fleeing in a skiff from a mad preacher!

X: The Unheard Music

Another ONE-SHEET REDUX piece, THE UNHEARD MUSIC is an amazing 1986 documentary about one of the greatest bands of all time, Los Angeles' seminal artpunk group, X. I sent this to singer / bassist John Doe, and he passed it on to director W.T. Morgan and the rest of the band, and I'm happy to say that John said they hope to use this at some point...

The Dark Knight

Another piece done for ONE-SHEET REDUX, two different versions of a poster for THE DARK KNIGHT. Originally, I was planning to do a Saul Bass-style poster for a nonexistent 1950s Batman movie directed by Alfred Hitichcock. I was partially inspired by a 2003 internet hoax that claimed Orson Welles was planning to do a Batman movie in the 1940s, but I wanted to adapt a more stylized 50s aesthetic. But as I worked on the poster, it evolved (or de-evolved) into something else. No Saul Bass am I to be sure, but a simple, stylized DARK KNIGHT poster still felt like a good idea.

The second version is because after I'd finished the poster, my girlfriend said she much preferred it without the background images. I took them out and Dammit, she was right. But what the heck, here are both versions.

Barbarella

This is the first of nine pieces I'll be posting that I did for ONE-SHEET REDUX, a show of reinterpretations of movie posters hanging at Maxwell's in Hoboken NJ from November through January! C'mon out and take a gander!

Secret Country Halloween Show Poster

PRINCE STREET NEWS: Groove Like a Spider

Man, am I bummed that this never saw print. I did this (based on a piece I wrote for CMJ New Music Monthly in 1998) for COMIC BOOK ARTIST Magazine in 2007, with the intent being to continue PRINCE STREET NEWS as a comic strip about comics in each issue of that fine publication. Sadly, CBA seemed to fade away, as its editor became too busy with other jobs.
Happily, however, I was able to successfully pitch the strip to Michael Eury's BACK ISSUE! Magazine, where it has appeared sporadically since 2011. This strip, however, remains unpublished.
As another postscript, happily, the KPM Music Library released two digital volumes of the music that was used for the latter season of the SPIDER-MAN cartoon, so now all I need is the music from the first season!

As part of the prep for this strip, I re-drew both the GRAVE record and the cover of SPIDER-MAN #109, then pasted them into the strip later in Photoshop.

The Tough Guy Postcards

These three pieces were postcards done at the same time as the Tough Guy Greeting Cards. They are entitled, from top to bottom, "What Does Blinky Think?", "Mona Sullivan" and "Casual Combat." The last one was inspired by the 1960s-70s psychedelic advertising mailings of the clothing chain Casual Corner.

Batusi

Bad coloring on this one, maybe I should redo it.... when that happens, you'll be the first to know.

S'TAN & SOCIAL GRACE: Hell Is...

DVF

Based on an old photograph of Diane von Furstenburg.

1stgirl

Titled such because this was the first time I'd played around with doing illustration work in color since I'd put down the crayons as a kid.

Guttergirl

Done for the NYC band of the same name.

YDLA: Rambling Thoughts on Music...

YDLA: Second Thoughts

Secret Country WOMEN, WHISKEY and NIGHTLIFE

I was tremendously excited to be asked to do the full artwork and layout for Kearny NJ's own Secret Country's CD WOMEN, WHISKEY and NIGHTLIFE. This is the cover. To see the rest, you have to buy the CD, a walloping slab of songs concerning the complex issues noted in the title. You will not regret it.

Secret Country Poster

This Secret Country poster uses the "Hot Dog Girl" image from the inside cover of the CD WOMEN, WHISKEY and NIGHTLIFE.

CMJ Family Albums

This piece appeared in CMJ NEW MUSIC MONTHLY No. 64, December 1998. Another piece done before I had a scanner, as the original of this was sent (mailed, mind you) on a giant piece of illustration board with the text boxes done in Illustrator and printed out on sticker paper, then attached to the original. This is also from my brief experimentation with mixing colored pencil and marker for color.

YDLA: 40K

Josie Swirled

aka THUNDERSTORM

I created Thunderstorm in high school (that'd be in the 1980s) as a standard superhero strip and self-published two THUNDERSTORM comics, portions of which will NOT be posted here. My next comic, the anthology BEAT COMICS (1985-1990) featured a revamped version of the strip, focusing more on the hero's alter ego and his relationship with his wife. When the strip next appeared in the Lancaster PA free monthly, 13 MAGAZINE, from 1994-95, it had evolved further into AKA THUNDERSTORM, now almost solely about how being a superhero affected the character (named, heh, Alexander Hitchcock... no, really) and the small group of friends and family (mostly his wife Laura) who shared his secret.

The strip predated the whole "superheroes in real life" genre as Thunderstorm didn't really have supervillains to battle, he mostly used his powers (flight, invisibility, the ability to generate lightning bolts of varying intensity) to put bad drivers in their place and run errands more easily. I may get around to posting some of the later strips here, and I also have a big file of layouts and scripts for a never-finished graphic novel / screenplay (wasn't sure which). Whether or not TS remains in limbo remains to be seen.

This drawing shows a costume that I never got to use for the character, with the shirt turned into a heavy pullover (seemed to me that tucking in a shirt would be very cumbersome to a crimefighter).

YDLA: 20 Things I Actually Love About the 80s

This was slated for AQUATULLE Magazine, but the magazine sadly folded before it was printed. I still hate the 80s.

Alison's Parents

In 1999, my friend Alison hired me to do large drawings of old photos of her parents for their 50th wedding anniversary.

Music Geek: Semantics

This accompanied a piece I wrote for MTV.com's Music Geek about what to call music in the age of MP3 (is it still a "record" or not?).

Agents of P.O.O.C.!*

This was the flyer for a 2003 show I curated at Maxwell's called AGENTS OF P.O.O.C.!* which stood for "Panels Out of Context," in which artists were asked to do reinterpretations of comic book panels (some of mine are elsewhere on this site). The background for the flyer was my version of a panel from LOIS LANE #93 (1969) by Irv Novick in which Superman and Wonder Woman were dancing the Froggie Underwater.

S'TAN & SOCIAL GRACE: No Reserve

This was the final episode of S&SG done for THE NEW YORK HANGOVER, but the paper folded (and at the time wasn't set up for large graphics... man, how the internet has changed) before it ever saw print.

Scooby Dooby Doo

What Sort of Man Reads Playboy?

This illo accompanied a NEW YORK HANGOVER piece I wrote in 1998 called "Playmates, Cheap Cigars and a Goodie Bag" about attending a party for the newly crowned PLAYBOY Playmate of the Year with my then-roommate Rob and being really creeped out by the atmosphere of the shindig. PLAYBOY was a big part of my adolescence in the 1970s, and while nostalgia certainly colors interpretation, I came away from this party just skeeved at what had become of the magazine and its brand.

YDLA: The "Real" Superman

Never before posted, this 1998 installment of YOU DON'T LIKE ANYTHING! was intended for publication in a friend's zine that never came to be. I'm putting it up here (despite hating the panels of George Reeves and Christopher Reeve) because it's interesting to see (post-SUPERMAN RETURNS) what was right and what was wrong. I'm just still so damn glad that Tim Burton film never got made!

POSTSCRIPT, February 2012:
Note that a few elements from this strip made their way into the ICON episode of PRINCE STREET NEWS, located above!

Christmas Video Party Invitations

For the past two decades, I've been hosting an annual Christmas Video Party, where a buncha pals come over and everyone votes on what classic holiday specials or TV episodes to watch while we get all hopped up on egg nog and cookies. I ain't lying, it's my favorite day of the year. These two invitations are from 2004 and 2005.

Gang of Four

Another piece done for MTV.com's MUSIC GEEK column.

Yo La Tengo, 8 Nights to Love Poster

I did this poster for Yo La Tengo's 2007 8 Nights of Hanukkah at Maxwell's, a semi-annual event featuring amazing guest stars and great comedians. The band does a different set every night and proceeds all go to charity (and yes, that girl is wearing a vintage pair of Gilda Radner's Jewess Jeans).

YDLA: Fauxhawk

Betty's Decorating

Another Dan DeCarlo reinterpretation, from an old Archie Christmas comic book (man, I love them). For some odd reason, I did this piece on gray speckled paper, giving Archie and Betty very unflattering complexions.

Secret Country Hootenanny Poster

Tuff Ghosts

Spectre Ballyhoo / Beerguy

This piece (the pose on the girl came from an ad for a Philadelphia used clothing store that really struck me) was later reworked for the ill-fated line of Tough Guy greeting cards (the sad tale and altered version can be found in another post). I had to take out the Spectre and replace him with the gentleman below. My cat Monkey (R.I.P.) remained, however.