St. Louis Landmarks

Two things in the Riverfront Times this week. A new Amazing Facts & Beyond strip (above) about St. Louis' historic standpipe watertowers (more information on these wondrous anachronisms at Built St. Louis)...
... and an illustration for the Summer Guide, in which summer activities were grouped according to the four classical elements. I did a sort of old-fashioned alchemy chart (below).
I relish any opportunity I get to include Farmer Fred and his son Clyde (from my local grocery, the Sappington Farmer's Market) in an illustration.

Foods on T-Shirts

Grilled Cheese (on sale today at shirt.woot.com):
The Ballpark Franks (worn by our softball team on Friday Nights).:

Original St. Louis Style Comics

above: strip taken from Little Sammy McSkinker, an STL-centric strip written and drawn by the USS Catastrophe Gang and published in the Riverfront Times, Sept. 2003
There's an opening for a big cartoon art show this Friday, May 16th! The show is called "See You in the Funny Papers: The Rich Tradition of St. Louis Cartooning" and will have original art from lots of local comics luminaries, past and present. It should be a cool show, and if seeing an original Beetle Bailey strip or Hirschfield caricature or Ted May Heracles Fart Joke comic doesn't get you going, then there will probably be fancy hors d'oeuvres and wine. And you're nuts.
I'm not gonna give away a sneak-peek of the page I'm showing, but here are some tantalizing tips: "Abe Lincoln, Cutaway, Pro-Wrestling, Logs". You'll have to check out the Gallery at the Sheldon Concert Hall to get your mind blown.
above: drawing taken from Ted May's It Lives #1, pizza box taken from local pizza chain website

Munny Show at Star Clipper

My lovely fianceé Jenny and I painted a couple of these Munny dolls that all the kids are talking about for a little art show at our favorite store Star Clipper. Basically you buy a little blank vinyl monkey-looking dude who looks like this...
Then you come up with a stupid idea, like this...
...then you paint it, apply some gross doll hair with gorilla glue, get some leftover silver spray paint from the last model rocket you built, add a bulging eyeball (of course), etc., and you come up with something like this:
Or in Jenny's case, this:
If you can't tell, we each turned our dolls into little self-portraits. The theme of the show is "The Future", and due to the fact that Star Clipper is celebrating its 20 year anniversary, we painted ourselves how we think we'll look like 20 years from now. I will have a cyborg arm resulting from years of drawing-related carpal tunnel syndrome, and a bird living in my hair, Jenny will be wearing embroidered vests and will still be frying me two sunny-side-up eggs.
Anyway, if you're around, you should come to the opening tomorrow night (Friday, April 18th) to see a whole bunch of these stupid things in person, drink beer, etc. It's at the Star Clipper gallery on Delmar, on the University City loop, a few storefronts down from the Tivoli. I think it starts at 7. See you there?!
love,
Dan & Jenny

Ghostly White-Out

From wikipedia: The doppelgängers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed their own doppelgänger they are doomed to be haunted by images of their ghostly counterpart.

From the Dead Horse's Mouth

I drew this strip tonight while eating hamburgers and watching Big Brother. It's based on quotes overheard by my friend Amy (one of my favorite people in the world) at her place of work. She says to imagine these sayings spoken with a southern drawl and with full confidence that they are being used wisely and correctly. Thanks Amy! Hopefully there'll be more to come. (Hamburgers and Big Brother I mean).

Off-Kilter Comics Art show in Minneapolis

If you live anywhere near the twin cities, or will be there this weekend, you should drop by the Minneapolis College of Art & Design to see an art show I'm involved in. There will be a bunch of stuff by great artists like Ivan Brunetti, John Hankiewicz, Zak Sally, Onsmith, Lille Carre, and uh, me. Here's the neat postcard Onsmith drew:
Some of the stuff I'll have hanging are original pages from comics I've drawn for Kramers Ergot, the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, Arthur magazine, etc. If that sounds like the same old jive, there'll also be the cover to my long-awaited new comic, Redbird #1! If you don't fancy boring ol' black india ink and white white-out, there'll be this strip which features COLORED PENCIL at least:
Anyway, it should be a cool show. What have you got to lose?!

Gross Anatomy

Some brain-heavy illo's I found laying around my desktop. Here's one I did recently about Mensa.
Part of an illo I did for the Post about the mechanics of improv comedy:
This week's Amazing Facts & Beyond:Part of an XPLANATiON I did a few years ago for Men's Health Magazine, about what adrenaline does to your body:A self-portrait / How-to make comics diagram:An old 3-D "cutaway" I did for a show of Elvis busts:
And finally this sketchbook doodle of my lovely girlfriend - I mean Fiancée! - Jenny:

The Humongoussons in 3-D

Hey kids! While your mom is shopping for groceries, head over to the magazine aisle. After you're done sneaking peeks at those car/motorcycle magazines with babes in bikinis on the cover, check out this month's Nickelodeon magazine. (There is a creepy looking rat-dude from The Spiderwick Chronicles on the cover). Inside I've got a one-page comic strip about a family that lives in a gigantic monster truck. The magazine comes with a set of official 3-D glasses that will allow you to see my comic in all three dimensions. I basically just did a 2-color comic strip (seen above: BOOOO-RRRRING) ... then legendary 3DFX master Ray Zone made my drawings (not to mention my word balloons) literally pop off the page! Here's a small section:
There are lots of other cool 3D comics in the magazine too, as well as a sweet ad in which Fruity Pebbles fly out at you. Check it out!

New Catastrophe Comic Strip & Blog

Hey Friends! In case you didn't know, some pals of mine -- Kevin H. and Ted May -- and I have started a comic strip that appears 3 weeks out of every month in the Riverfront Times. It's sort of like a "Ripley's Believe or Not" style strip chock-full of fun facts relevant to our readers. The hero / narrator of the strip is a walking treasure trove of information named Leon Beyond, whose first name (and basic look 'n feel) we lifted from the character of Leon from the great 1980 Disney movie Midnight Madness.
If you don't live in St. Louis, we're posting our strips in a timely fashion up on a new blog here. Bookmark your hearts out. To save you a click (dont' get used to it!), here's this week's strip:
love,
USS CATASTROPHE

Fred G. Sanford & The Giving Tree

"It's the Big One, Elizabeth! I'm comin' to see ya!" Acrylic, White-Out, & Ink on Board, 18" x 14"
"And the Tree Was Happy", Acrylic, White-Out, & Ink on Board, 18" x 14"
From this year's Famous Fictional show catalog:
Sanford and Son and The Giving Tree are moving works of art that I have enjoyed since I was a kid. I thought the junkyard and forest settings -- and the dominant personalities of Fred and the tree -- would make for interesting juxtapositions across the two paintings. I don't know if that happened, but I did have the Sanford & Son theme song running through my head the entire time I was painting. Rest in Peace, Redd Fox and Shel Silverstein.

Spirit Duplicator / Comic Art #9

Todd and Alvin, the good fellows over at Comic Art, were kind enough to lend me 5 pages in the latest issue of their wonderful magazine, to draw a weird comic strip on. If you wanna read it, keep your eyes peeled for this awesome cover on the newstand: My strips are interspersed throughout the book, and take place over the course of 50 years or so. Each page includes a church bulletin comic, drawn by my (fictional) uncle Darryl Zettwoch, culled from a lifetime Sundays archive of graphic experimentation and corny Episcopalian jokes.
Each bulletin presented was ostensibly printed using a different piece of antiquated technology, everything from a mimeograph machine to a "ditto-maker" (aka the Spirit Duplicator) to a modern inkjet printer. Lots more info on these great devices at the Museum of Office Machines.
Hopefully along with the evolution in printing technology you can kinda trace an abridged history of my uncle and his church. Here are the first couple of pages:

Commissioner Gordon

Here's a commission I drew recently. Ink and colored pencil on bristol, 8" x 10". It features the old Batmobile which I think is still the best Batmobile.
Incidentally, if anybody out there ever wondered what he or she (or their cute pet!) would look like in a hot rod with their eyeball popping out -- and would like me to draw it -- gimme a holler. It will probably take a long time and be outrageously expensive but you never know!

Famous Fictional 2 Art Opening

If you're looking for something to do this Friday night (Jan. 4th) come out to the Mad Art Gallery for what should be a fun art opening. Everybody's got 2 paintings in the show -- the same size and shape (like last years show) -- but instead of a character from popular comics we all chose a character from popular television (along with literature). If you can't tell who my 2 characters are from the scribbled sketches above, here you go: I didn't get good photographs of my paintings before dropping them off at the gallery, so you'll have to show up to see 'em. Or wait until I post them later. In the meantime, here's a painting of a famous NONfictional character I know, my buddy Adam "Picklehead" Bertels. Happy Birthday, Adam!("Weird Science Adventures: PICKLEHEAD", Gouache on board, 18" x 24", 2007)

LOOKING FORWARD!

Happy New Year's everybody!
(above: cover illustration for the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, coming out this week).

Trans-Siberian Orchestra vs. Kenny G. vs. Vince Neil

A couple of music-themed illo's of mine published this week, all ink/gray wash/white-out on typing paper. They're pretty weird without the articles but you get the idea.