Above is the first page of a new comic strip I drew about the magical 2004 National League Championship Series, when the Cardinals played the Houston Astros. It will appear in the next edition of the long-running comix anthology Not My Small Diary. As special as that playoff run was, it can't compare to this season's run, which will hopefully end tonight, with the Birds-on-the-Bat taking care of the Tigers in a way that the beloved '68 squad (pictured below) couldn't. This is for you fellas!
Edited to add more info on my pal Will's playoff beard. Apparently he's gonna be on the radio tomorrow talking about it. UPDATE! Will was on the radio. Listen to the little story here.
Show tonight! (100% analog flyer made with a Motec Japanese Brush Pen, White-Out pen, home-made Zip-a-Tone, and xeroxes lifted from a book of old carnival typefaces):
If you haven't heard the Pissed Jeans LP put out last year on Parts Unknown Records you are missing out. Plus it also has a swell cover drawn by the great cartoonist Ron Rege, Jr.:
I'm sure there will be a radio at the show to listen to the game. I'll also have a few of those 'Pond Scum' shirts (see below) with me. See you there!
I've got a few of these shirts left if anybody wants one. Holler at me in the next 24 hours or so. GO CARDS.
Here's an illustration I drew for this week's RFT for a story about the investigative work of Missouri Paranormal Research. It's based on a particular incident at Route 66 landmark the Tri-County Restaurant, out in Villa Ridge. Here's a snapshot taken later in the very same bathroom. Note the misty apparition hovering to left of the urinals.
A few years ago my pal Ted turned me on to the greatness of old Harvey Comics Casper covers, especially the ones where he shows up and freaks people out. For a while I was into doing doodles of that cute little spook popping out of weird places, despite the fact that a) I had no idea how to draw Casper and b) could never really figure out how to spell his name. Please keep in mind I usually drew these in bowling alleys or lame punk clubs.
And clearly, this idea had been something on my mind, even years ago - an ancient archetypal image if I ever saw one:
I've used the same device for a bunch of drawings. Usually it doesn't make sense, but sometimes it does, like in this illustration about Wilco's album A Ghost is Born getting "leaked":
The only thing better than a good ghost is a good urinal. Here's the one my brother and I bought for my Dad for Father's Day a few years ago, in our basement in Louisville. He'd been angling for a facility in the basement (closer to his workshop/studio) for a long time, and the only way we could get our Mom to go for it was to hide it behind a curtain or door or something. Dad more than obliged her, as seen in this before and after shot:
A couple of things about that picture:
Tonight at Drawing Club we all drew 2-headed animals (thanks to Nathan), and here's a semi-relevant diagram of an old homemade Halloween costume from the Zettwoch household. Consider it an open-source design, but feel free to substitute a funnier mask (hippie alien, Dick Cheney), a funnier shirt (Cross Colours?), and a funnier cassette (actually there's not much funnier than the Roxanne Wars). It is a pretty convincing effect - the key is sticking the false head through your shirt's original neck hole and cutting a new one for your hidden real head. Only 46 more shopping days 'til Halloween!
If you find yourself nearby a St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday the 31st, check out the Get Out section to see a bunch of illustrations I did, including the cover. Reporter (and pal) Diane Toroian Keaggy wrote a bunch of funny descriptions of Labor Day events around town this weekend, specifically regarding the real men and women whose hard behind-the-scenes work manufacture good times for the rest of us. I drew them in kind of a Labor Propaganda / WPA poster mode, both to reflect the origins of Labor Day and in fear that my normal cartoonier style would be overkill alongside Diane's funny character profiles. The one at the top of this post is for an unsung hero of the St. Louis Labor Day Parade, and here are ones for the Fall Festival of Art and the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Gardens, which will feature displays of Sumo Wrestling.
I love the crisp shapes and interlocking 2-D "clockwork" compositions of those old WPA posters, but also the dramatic lighting and textured shading. Ideally, I would've actually painted my illustrations also - especially to to get those kind of textures - but given the mechanical concerns of newsprint reproduction (and the practical concerns of newspaper deadlines) I decided to suck it up and give it my best shot using vectors (warning: shop talk ahead!). I've experimented in the past with achieving a gritty blend using series of dots, like here:
But that still feels too digital. This time I tried creating a custom "pattern brush" tile using more jagged organic shapes, like charcoal on a toothed paper might create:
It still looks kinda crummy up-close, but looks okay in print. If anybody out there has better suggestions on how to create this effect, short of actually using scanned or pixel-based textures (my antique computer can't handle humungous file sizes), give me a holler. Happy Labor Day!
In honor of seeing the almighty Gorilla Biscuits last weekend in Chicago, here are a couple of ape related drawings. I had recently watched the movies King Kong and War of the Worlds and was inspired at Drawing Club to deviate from my normal diet of hot-rods and white-out to do these:
The other night I unearthed a bunch of my old bowling scoresheets from the Saratoga. I had it in my head that I'd do doodles every week of the 2004 Fall/Winter/Spring League and make a zine out of them. It looks like I made it four weeks before cramming the results between a dirty Blues Rally Towel and my teammate Will's spare ball in our rusty old locker. (I'm actually trying the project again right now, during the less ambitious Summer League). As you'll see, most of my doodles fall into one of three categories: 1) Peculiar shots executed that night 2) Plotting future bowling-related projects (like fashioning a model rocket built out of a bowling pin) and 3) Expressing my irritation at shitty songs coming out of the jukebox. Click for larger views:
I would've just cropped those images down to just the doodled areas, but in the interest of providing any armchair sports psychiatrists out there with a data set to analyze (comparing my drawings to my actual performance during that game), I decided to show all the gory details. Oh, and in case anyone's curious - when you see a little drawing of a beercan or mug next to a bowler's name it means that unlucky soul got beer framed.
Finally, here's an old photo of me at St. Louis' own International Bowling Hall of Fame, standing in the hall of Women's International Bowling Congress, which houses beautiful and life-like oil paintings of each inductee. I highly recommend visiting next time you are in town!
(photo by my friend Alyssa. Hi Alyssa!)
My buddy Paul C. put on a real clinic the other night, showing off his powerful metal recollection abilities. Not only could he recognize every song in the "name that monster ballad" category within 1.5 seconds - often sooner! - he regaled us with various details surrounding the song: back-up guitarists, what the tour t-shirts looked like, etc. Needless to say, we scored a perfect 20 that round. Take note of Adam laughing all the way to the bank (the bloodbank).
Note: after I made the drawing at the top (ink and white-out on construction paper, 6" x 5.5") I remembered that the Scorpions song they played wasn't "Still Loving You" but "Wind of Change". Anyway, we did just well enough in other categories (e.g. "Obscure St. Louis Cardinals Stats", "Historical Assassinations", "Scientologist or just Nutjob?") to come out on top. Here's the loot we took home:
A) Hostess® brand lip balm (HO-HO® flavored)
Here's an illustration I drew this week for the local weekly paper about a grassroots campaign to convince Nike to manufacture Marty McFly's futuristic sneakers from the movie Back to the Future part II. Here's a video presentation:
I've got an eight-page comic strip, entitled CROSS-FADER, in the brand new Kramers Ergot #6 anthology published by Buenaventura Press. The thumbnails above give you get a sneak peek into the early stages of my working process, which consists mostly of me scribbling with ballpoint pens to see if they contain ink. Once I get a bit further along, I gather up all my reference. Here's the critical piece I needed to begin my strip (© 2006 Don "Toots" Zettwoch):
CROSS-FADER takes place inside and adjacent to a haunted house, and features many real-life Zettwoch scare-traptions. Included is the the On-Coming Car, the Vibrating Floor, and most importantly the Illusion Box (shown in the excerpted panel below).
The Illusion Box is a variation on Pepper's Ghost, a classic magical/optical illusion pioneered in the nineteenth century for Victorian stage-shows. I first experienced it at the far-end of the John J. Audubon Elementary School fall festival, when I saw my principal turn into a werewolf. Thanks Dad!
Anyway, Kramers Ergot #6 contains work by some of the world's greatest cartoonists past and present - all much better than me - and should be a great book. It debuts next week at the San Diego Comic-Con (I'll be on-hand to test ballpoint pens in your copy) and will be available in stores in September.
A couple of weeks ago the MissileFits got together a launched rockets into stormy skies over St. Louis. Above are the plans I drew up for my weird homemade rocket, which is sort of a rocket/glider combo (based loosely on Estes' Scissor-Wing Transport). You can see actual photos of it here or here. It worked pretty well after I reinforced the fins with electrical tape. Here's an action photo of Billy K, owner of the world's scariest briefcase, helping me prepare for launch (photo by Ben Kiel):
All in all it was an awesome time. For next year, I am planning on building a rocket that I can physically travel in. It is gonna require a lot of balsa wood and Elmer's white glue. See you there!
