Working on a cover for an upcoming Swampy’s Florida item. Inks tomorrow.

This is the inked version of art I did for an upcoming fishing event in Melbourne, Florida. It’s to salute American military veterans and help some get out and fish.

Click here to learn more and maybe you can join in and help!

My next step is to digitally color the artwork.

Sketch Dailies had H.R. Giger as their subject of the day in honor of his death the day before. Giger was an artist known for his very sexually themed artwork. This included his designs of the alien in the film ‘Alien’. In fact, his sexual designs were meshed throughout the set of the alien’s lair in the original film. As the sequels were tacked on, the alien settings were toned down as was the alien and family members.

Back when the film came out it became a favorite topic amongst my friends Ken Cullota and Steve Gallancy and others. This was back in high school. It was at that time I attempted to work through Junior Achievement to create a humor magazine, much like Mad. Ken Culotta came up with a take off of the film renamed Alias. It was hilarious. Unfortunately, the funding part became pretty unreachable as I’m as incompetent in fiances then as I am now. We had an adviser that was also a publisher, but that didn’t help. It was just too much to pull off. I still have Ken’s script.

I picked up all I could of the film from movie books to Walt Simonson’s incredible graphic novel of the film. Thee best illustrated adaption of any film ever done, in my opinion. I’ve still got most all of it. The one thing I never got was a large Alien “action figure” around at the time.

Back then there was a comic book convention in Orlando that was run by, my friend, Jim Ivey. One of the guest artists was a local fellow, Ken Mitchroney. Mitchroney had a set of copies of his version of Alien that just blew me away! I’ll try to track them down and post them here. Mitchroney is still cartooning, but in California now. He just announced today his arrival at Warner Brothers Studio to work on a film. He’s a great cartoonist who should be better known.

Anyway, the Alien film obviously was a big part of my life after it came out for over a year and I got real good at drawing the critter. It’s been a rare time that I will draw the Alien character these days. When Sketch Dailies posted the opportunity, i grabbed it and tailored a bit of humor to go with it.

Alex and I discussed ways to streamline the illustration and I offered to add likenesses to the players. Here’s the new inked version now in for a final check. I’ll post the color version when finished.

Blood Oath by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is very grotesque book in that the descriptions of what the “bad guy” does is extremely graphic. Especially when realizing this book was written in 1982. I have to wonder why this wasn’t edited more to cut out what is clearly x-rated material. It’s not just one description. The crimes are repeated and the graphic description gets more and more horrid. This book is not for the squeamish. It is definitely not for children.

I need to judge this book’s story and how the above mixes with the plot. With that in mind I find the book to be good. As can be the case of Johnstone novels, the main characters are well drawn or drawn as needed to make the story more interesting or exciting.

This is a book early in Johnstone’s production that has me wondering, based on how it was written, if Johnstone was using ghost writers that early. ‘Blood Oath’ does not read at all like other books of that time with the Johnstone name on it. Similar crimes done in the books at this time, that I’ve read, have none of the extreme detail illustrated in ‘Blood Oath’. I believe he did use a ghost writer.

Something else different about this Johsntone book is that the ending is very well paced and satisfying. The ending is often wrapped very quickly in the Johnstone books I’ve read.

Botom line: I recommend it with the warning that this book is very graphic and not for children.

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Here’s the cover art for the upcoming Swampy’s Florida comic book for Free Comic Book Day on May 3rd. This mini-comic is a short story of Swampy and better establishes that he has been around for a loooooong time. This story takes place in 1898 in Tampa. You’ll have to read the story to learn more.

The Secret Soldier by Alex Berenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m against the tide of the majority of reviews praising this volume of John Wells fictitious life. Maybe it’s timing that affected my experience reading the book. I also wonder if it’s that I accidently bypassed the volume before this, The Midnight House, that has gotten poor reviews. Whatever the case, I found this book far over written. It’s great when an author has a lot of background for a novel, but that author doesn’t have to put it all in one volume. To me, the book dragged horribly with the excess. This is a complaint I have with the majority of contemporary writers I’ve read. I just hadn’t experienced so much coming from Berenson. A good dose of studying Agatha Christie might help. But, I have a feeling the publisher needs to build a $9.99 book and wants the overdone writing.

I happen to be reading a Frank Slaughter novel at the same time which has plenty of excess. But it’s so beautifully written and so cogent to the storyline, that it works so very well. Being a better writer would’ve greatly helped Berenson’s extra loads in this. Slaughter is so good that I’m very slowly taking in each line and paragraph. At this rate, I could take a year reading Slaughter’s book and find it time well invested. I found myself wanting to read through The ‘Secret Soldier’ faster just to get it out of the way. It was pretty obvious how the book was going to end and, sad to write, there were no twists to make the reading journey interesting or fun.
There is a very good story intertwined in so much else. I wish the book was better assembled to make it enjoyable. There are also some other specifics in the story that bother me, like use of a cell phone, navigating a boat in a certain area, an oddly handled partner for Wells. Seems if a writer is going to over write, maybe fix some other sloppy writing first.

One other thing. There is an odd similarity to the basis of this book that is similar to an episode of ‘The Rockford Files’ where even a couple character names are the same. As an editorial cartoonist, I certainly know how duplication exists when creating a story. It just happens. Just found the similarity interesting and thought I’d mention it.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book.

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This is the third of the Swampy’s Florida Easter card images.

This was penciled and inked on paper. Then scanned. Colored using Photoshop. I did the artwork about a month ago.

I’ll post a link to where you can purchase them when ready.

Made my bi-annual stop at my friend’s George Pieper’s cartooning class to give a talk to his class about cartooning and caricature. Each time I take answers to a series of questions I give to the students and combine them into a drawing. Above is me and George and the drawing i drew based on the responses.

Soon three new Swampy’s #Florida Easter cards will be available! Above is one of the images I did of the cards. I’ll post a link when available so you can purchase some! – http://swampysflorida.com/?p=9837