Walking and Rolling to School with Buster the Bus

 My friend, the multi-talented Kayt Hester pulls a day gig at the Hudson Transportation Management Association in New Jersey where she works in pedestrian safety for the younglings. She wrote a book for the kids starring the TMA's mascot, Buster the Bus (one of a number of Buster Buses across the land) and asked me to illustrate it.  Sadly, WALKING AND ROLLING TO SCHOOL WITH BUSTER THE BUS is currently only available to Hudson County school children, but it may be given a wider distribution at some point. Here's a selection of pages from the book along with the poster I did to promote it and a photo of the writer and artist in the wild (or, at a bar!). 

Fawnwood

  This commission is outside of my normal purview, but it was also a very personal piece. My aunt (mother's sister) and uncle built this beautiful house in 1979 in the woods and spent the next forty years making it a warm and inviting home for their own family and many, many visitors. In January of 2020, they moved out of the house into a smaller retirement community (which they have already made their own, because that's what they do). For my uncle's birthday, my aunt asked me to collaborate with her on a comic strip style ode to the house they (and I) loved so much. To call this a labor of love is putting it mildly. 

SPIDER-MAN Cover Redux Yet Again!

 More of these! At this rate, I'll eventually have redone every Silver and Bronze Age AMAZING SPIDER-MAN cover by the end of this decade! Sooner, even! Here's my covers (so to speak) of ASM #13 (after Steve Ditko), #39, and #112 (both by John Romita). 

WRAPPER REDUX SERIES III

Some months back, I decided I was done doing Lichtensteinian redrawings of other people's artwork because as much as I enjoy doing it, it wasn't the most creative work. WELL, SCRATCH THAT, HUMANS, HERE'S 13 MORE OF THESE. As with the other Wrapper Redux (or "Wredux," depending on how alliterative I'm feeling at the moment), are available for sale (original art) at the Tough Guy Goods Etsy shoppe.  

Topps Baseball 1972 Series

Topps Batman 1966 (one of many wrappers for this series)

Fleer Official Drag Champs 1972

Topps Frankenstein Stickers 1966

Topps Kung-Fu 1973

Topps Monster Initial Stickers 1973

Leaf The Munsters 1964

Topps Return of the Jedi, 1983

Topps The Six Million Dollar Man, 1974

Topps Supergirl, 1984

Philadelphia Chewing Gum Co. Super Hero Stickers, 1967

Topps Superman III, 1983

Topps Tarzan 3D Picture Cards, 1953

Recent Design Work...

For the five or six of you who periodically visit this page (I mean, seriously, what's more ludicrous than hosting a blog in 2021?),  you'll note that I've migrated the bulk of my design stuff over to Tough Guy II, dedicating this page to my illustration and comics. But I did a handful of fun T-Shirt / Sticker designs during lockdown that I thought I'd put here in one post. If you wanna see more and get ordering information on any of these, please click over to TGII (the link is right there on the right, but I'll go ahead and embed it here anyway). 

Yet More Spider-Man Recreations

 Three more Spidey recreations, the covers to THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #s 97 (note the lack of Comics Code stamp) and 113 (both originally by John Romita) and the 1970 Marvelmania Spider-Man poster (also by Romita, based on a piece by Jack Kirby). 

Bootsgate

 

Great Pumpkin Cels Redux

 

Agent Jeffries Stardust

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

 

PEPNUTS (or, The Peanuts / Archie Mashup)

As someone who loves both Peanuts and old Archie Comics (up through the late '70s), I wanted to pay tribute to both with this mashup, based on the cover of PEP #287 (March, 1974) originally by Dan DeCarlo. It's semi-successful, I think. I mean, let's face it... Reggie and Shermy are one and the same. 

 

The Joker #1 Cover Recreation

 After Dick Giordano (with some alterations to the original)

Even More Spider-Man Cover Recreations

 Yup, I got more Spidey cover commissions! It's only a matter of time until I have the Ditko / Romita eras covered (so to speak)! Here's THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #23 (originally by Steve Ditko) and #114 (by John Romita). 

SUPERMAN #261 Redux... Twice!

Nick Cardy's cover to DC's SUPERMAN #261 (Feb., 1973) is a perfect capsule of the oft-unintentionally bizarre quality of Bronze Age comics. I don't think the editor intended to publish the kinkiest superhero cover of 1973 (and maybe it's not, I haven't done the research), but Boy, Howdy! 

Anyway, I've been wanting to tackle a redo of this cover for a long time, and I ended up doing two different versions, one entirely hand-drawn, using a mish-mash of generational trade dress and swapping the Superman logo for its sister title, ACTION COMICS. After I finished drawing it, I had second thoughts about replacing the original logo, so I did a second version with Illustrator / Photoshop elements for color and cover elements. So... here they both are. Lemme know which one you prefer in the comments. 

The Black Widow (No, Not That One)

Is it technically a #POOC if it's a Splash Page? Would #SPOOC be more apt? Probably not. Well, whatever it's called, here's an interpretation of the Mike Sekowsky / George Klein splash from the Black Widow (no, not that one) tale, "Murder, Unlimited" from Timely's USA COMICS #5 in 1942. 

More #POOCs

Another round of Panels Out of Context / Comic book panel recreations: The Spectre (after Bernard Baily, whose name I misspelled in the signature, oops), Sabrina (after Al Hartley), and Johnny Thunder's Magic Thunderbolt giving the Justice Society of America the big pink boot (after Mike Sekowsky)! All of these are pretty faithful to the source material, honest! 

 

Bullets and Bracelets

 

Freakies

Millennials and post-Millennials have no idea how important breakfast cereal was to the Saturday morning routines of generations of kids from the 1950s through the '80s. F'rinstance, we never, ever found out who grew the Freakies tree. 

Cereal Monsters Print Set!

PLUG TIME: New in the Etsy shop: A set of five 5.25 x 6.75" digital mini-prints of all five Cereal Monster drawings. Plus new stuff all the time. I'm working on a bunch of new pieces RIGHT NOW! Well, not right now, right now I'm posting this, but you know.