LO-FI TAKES THE STREETS 2026

For this year's LO-FI TAKES THE STREETS festival artwork, I used a vintage sci-fi pulp inspiration (along with a few other geeky elements). Here's the print poster and the tee-shirt design. If you want to read / see more, click over to Tough Guy II! 

Punk Jughead Redux

 My friend Steve is a huge Archie Comics collector, and sometimes he buys lots on eBay, inevitably stacking up piles of duplicates. He's been generous enough to share some of those with me, and as a thank-you, I offered to do a cover recreation for him. He chose JUGHEAD #327, in which Archie's best pal shockingly (and temporarily) goes PUNK! *gasp*

As an old punk rock fan, I tackled this with glee, mostly for the attempt to make it actually a little more punk rock, rather than the "I don't know, what's punk, is it like with headbands and earrings?" look that Stan Goldberg used on the original 1983 cover. Additionally, I swapped "normal" Jughead with his Captain Hero persona, got rid of the weird "Punk vs. Funk" blurb (is Forsythe normally funky?), and used a 1977 JUGHEAD trade dress and issue number to make it more era-appropriate. 

Below are the digital version, the hand-lettered and colored original I sent to Steve, the work In progress, and the original cover. And thanks again to Steve for his generosity and friendship! 

Tommy Conwell / Dynagroove flyer

 Here's a job I did that took me back almost forty years! In the 1980s, I did work for Lancaster PA's Chameleon Club while simultaneously working as a cocktail waiter (oh, you shoulda' seen me navigate a crowded dance floor with a tray full of glasses and pitchers balanced over my head!). Two favorite acts from those days were Tommy Conwell and Dynagroove (both out of Philadelphia). Last month, my old boss, Rich Ruoff, who took over reopening another old Lancaster nightclub, the Village, asked me if I'd like to do a digital flyer for this fun throwback show! I instantly said yes. 

To see much more about the process and some goofy vintage graphics I did for both bands, click on over to Tough Guy II. And go to the show if you can! 

Secret Country: To Heck with Ole Santa Claus

If there's anything I love more than doing art for Secret Country, it's doing another Secret Country Christmas single! This year, Kearny's finest has given us a cover of Loretta Lynn's ass-kickin' 1966 anti-carol, "To Heck with Ole Santa Claus!" Go give it a spin (if you can call streaming something online "spinning." 

 

The Beatles Colorforms Redux

 

Yellow Submarine

 I did this piece as a birthday gift for my friend, John. I combined elements from four different sources and the background is in fluorescent inks (which you can't tell, but I swear it's true!). 

Prince Street News: The Lost Oddities of the Bronze Age of Comics

BACK ISSUE #134 may be one of my favorite issues, focusing on comic book rarities and oddities of the Bronze Age (being the 1970s and '80s). While the issue's content (as always) is strictly for the longbox crowd, this issue's installment of PRINCE STREET NEWS features, along with the usual nerdy chuckles, a handful of gags that even civilians can get (that is, if you were into New Wave or Russian Soviet dissidents of the 1970s). I've posted some of the individual elements after the complete strip, but a few of these will get their own posts just so I can slip into someone's Google search of George Carlin or the B-52's a little quicker.... 

Next up: Another one-pager, lamenting some beloved extinct elements of old comic books. 

POSTSCRIPT: It was almost a month after posting this that I realized I put TWO conflicting issue number / months on the ARCHIE / X-MEN Mashup piece... that's what I get for mixing trade dress from two eras! Apologies! 

Strummer

 Joe Strummer's guitar (with "Death or Glory" lyrics). Done for a friend for Christmas. Prints are available in the Tough Guy Etsy Shoppe! 

Agent Jeffries Stardust

A mashup of David Bowie's character from TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, Agent Jeffries, with his character Ziggy Stardust. 

 

AJ Lambert, Lonely Songs EP

 As a giant fan of Frank Sinatra, it was a thrill to be asked to design the cover to AJ Lambert's LONELY SONGS, a limited edition vinyl EP of four songs from her grandfather's classic album, SINATRA SINGS FOR ONLY THE LONELY. For the full story and more artwork, see the corresponding post on Tough Guy II. And go order the EP here! 

Secret Country, Under the Mistletoe

 I've done more artwork for Kearny NJ's Secret Country than any other band, but this latest work might be my favorite I've done for them. "Under the Mistletoe" is their new holiday single for 2020, including a VERY limited edition vinyl pressing. You can listen / buy on Bandcamp or snag the single at the Killing Horse Records' website! 

Yeah Yeah Candy!

 

Wrapper Redux Series 2! All New!

 Yeah, I did another round of these things... to be blunt, doing reinterpretations of existing artwork has been about all I've been able to mentally handle during the pandemic. I'm a bit wiped. But, hey, they're fun! So... yeah (four new Star Wars and Star Trek wrappers are posted separately). 
Again, most of these are available in the ToughGuyGoods ETSY Store... 

Angel Eyes

 

Trading Card Wrappers Redux

 A series of drawings of vintage (mostly Topps) trading card and sticker wrappers, a project that kind of snowballed out of control. Gee, I wonder if I'll ever go back to drawing new stuff out of my own head instead of just doing reinterpretations (and these are mostly pretty literal) of existing things in the universe? WHO KNOWS, WE'RE LIVING DURING END TIMES! 

(Note: In case we survive, the above sentence refers to the Covid-19 Pandemic, which, as of this posting, is in its fifth month with no signs of stopping. I've been doing a lot of art to keep myself busy, but don't have the mental wherewithal to be overly creative, hence dozens of Lichtensteinian work that I've been posting here. Man, that's way more info than you needed, isn't it, Internet?). 

Most of the original artwork for these pieces are available at my Etsy store, ToughGuyGoods. And other stuff, too! 

I Wish I Were in Love Again

Another repurposed element from that Sinatra poster I did some years back, this time incorporating the lyrics from one of Frank's more bizarre songs, his version of the 1937 Rodgers & Hart tune, "I Wish I Were in Love Again" (recorded in 1957 for the Capitol album, A Swingin' Affair!). 

Art + Autonomy Salon Presents...

I was hired to design a retro 1980's style punk show flyer for imaginary bands to be used by NYC's Art + Autonomy Salon on merchandise. You can check out this (and much more fun stuff) at their Threadless store. The style of the girl was inspired by Diane Lane in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a 1982 movie that I have never seen! Thanks to Haven and everyone at A+A for asking me to do this really fun job. 

Prince Street News: Comic and Cartoon Characters' Favorite Musical Artists (complete)

The new BACK ISSUE! spotlights rock & roll comics of the Bronze Age, featuring pieces on Alice Cooper, KISS (many, many articles about KISS), Flash Gordon, Paul McCartney, and much more. Finally, with this issue's theme, I was able to bring a new installment of what might be my signature piece to PRINCE STREET NEWS.

The first installment of  “Comic Characters’ Favorite Musical Artists” appeared in Warner Bros. Records’ promotional faux-zine, DIRT in the 1990s (wherein I contributed a monthly comic strip called THE RETAIL ADVENTURES OF KALLI & REX about the joys and travails of running an independent record store… remember those?). The concept’s next appearance was in my online strip, YOU DON'T LIKE ANYTHING! (which also appeared in the music magazine, THE BIG TAKEOVER). From 1999 through the first decade of the new millennium, I added more installments of the series, which eventually went viral in 2011, aggregated by dozens of websites including CBR, Buzzfeed, and Flavorwire (to name a few). 

Ever since I started doing PRINCE STREET NEWS for BACK ISSUE! that same year, I’ve been hoping to bring the concept to these pages. Finally, with this rock & roll comics issue, the format fit.

But as I set to writing the strip, I realized something: Every other installment of CCFMA was aimed mostly at a music fan audience; the bands chosen could be obscure, but the characters expressing their affection had to be known by the general public (for the most part). This time around, I had to take the opposite tack: Since I was doing this for BACK ISSUE! readers, the characters could be more obscure, but the musical preferences needed to be (again, for the most part) more mainstream. 

Still, not everyone will get every joke. That’s inevitable. Few will recognize every single artist mentioned. And the reasons for the pairing are all over the map. Some are obvious, groan-inducing puns (e.g., Mysterio, Hawkman). Some are due to iconic songs that could relate to the character (e.g., Thor, Underdog). Some are jokes that you might need to think about—or even do some Googling—to get (e.g., The Crypt Keeper, Little Dot). And some are actually chosen because, well, they make sense (Foghorn Leghorn, Hawk & Dove). My hope is that (in true music industry form) the 35 gags herein yield more hits than misses.

For this fifth installment, all the characters are new to the series, but I had to reuse one band from an earlier strip because it fit the new character so much better than its original champion (I won’t tell you which band, but in the old strip, they were loved by Space Ghost). 

For this post, I've included the previous four installments of CCFMA, combined into two bigger pieces, with some updated jokes and a few redrawn panels. I'm not going to explain each and every joke (part of the fun is trying to figure them out), but if there's something you don't get that's driving you nuts, feel free to ask me in the comments.