Breakfast Serial

It's very cool to see the reference material that artists have used...

Frank Brunner

Frank Frazetta

Reed Crandall

Breakfast Serial

A picture of Kirk stepping off the transporter platform...um...no...wait...

It's always fun to see the paths that inspiration takes...

The Evil Spock

The Evil Ming

Comfort TV

When I saw these ads in the comics I nearly fainted. The TV show was by this time in rerun syndication, but I had never heard of it. Checking our newspaper for time and channel was fruitless—Columbus Ohio was not in the syndicate. 

 

But now we were on our way out west. And somewhere along the way I saw or heard something that hinted that the show might be playing in our destination city. In my light-headed delirium of hunger I was comforted by the thought that I might yet see this show (I already told you what a dork I was). Our very first afternoon in town, in a motel room, I saw George Reeves as Superman. The black and white vision of Metropolis in the 1950s was a sight for weary kid eyes. It was on every weekday afternoon on KLZ, and I almost never missed a showing, rushing home from school everyday to watch, and then do my homework.

George Reeves as Clark Kent was the best. I would have watched if the show had been titled "Clark Kent—Reporter". Reeves portrayed him with strength and compassion, humor and determination. Sometimes I would be disappointed when he changed into Superman. I thought, hey--Kent can handle this. Reeves has been lauded by many, but I have a special fondness for his portrayal as the show helped to get me through some tough times as a kid. Seeing his images now brings back the warmth I felt. I think I am not alone in this.

 

Comfort TV

Jon Gnagy taught me how to draw, as I guess he did countless others. Watching his show was a comforting routine, and of course like countless others, my family bought and used his art studio kit. Even my mother and brother joined in. My mom would sketch landscapes and my brother would draw faces over and over, using grid planes, so that they would look like diamond creatures. Unlike them, I stayed with it and went on to become a lifetime working artist.

All this TV experience was in black and white for me. I didn't see color TV regularly until the Bicentennial. 

And the only reason I could tolerate the Mickey Mouse Club was to watch the old cartoons, and oh yeah--Spin and Marty. The cartoons were always introduced from an old vault (I liked that idea) and Spin and Marty always filled me with a sense of dread, cuz there was always trouble brewing. But this TV stuff comforted me in my times of aloneness. I was alone a lot of the time, but I didn't really feel 'lonely'. I always found something to do and I enjoyed where my imagination took me.

Welcome to My Morgue I

A morgue, in this sense, is a clipping file that artists keep for reference. Also called a swipe file and probably all other sorts of colorful pejoratives. In a sense any clipping that is not bound is part of a morgue, but to me, some clippings are more so than others. It starts out by clipping stuff that you like and just want to keep from old magazines and newspapers. But as you get into the business of art, it becomes more helpful to know what a bicycle looks like or more importantly a bicycle's shadow. And then it gets overwhelming, clipping and filing and cross-referencing and soon it's like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, clippings flooding all around, threatening to drown your twitching body. Maybe that's why it's called a morgue. No, actually that's what newpapers called it, when they started it all by keeping track of their clippings of stories and pix, usually of people. 

When I was a kid I had a Walter T. Foster book on cartooning that encouraged the keeping of a morgue (I've always regretted getting rid of that book). It said to watch out for collecting only what you like—there should be a wide range of unexpected subjects. The author said personally he was a sucker for stream-lined trains and females. I'll admit I'm pretty partial to those as well. Over the years I've had a huge morgue and eventually I got rid of a huge bunch, and been more selective. But a lot has stayed with me, more for inspiration than swipes. Then it seems like it's more of a collection than a morgue. Yet "illustration" is a category, and sub-categories are "streamlined trains" and "females" with plenty of sub-sub-categories.

So every once in a while I'll be posting morgue stuff that might be confused with collection stuff. It doesn't matter, I love it all...

Welcome to My Morgue I

Merry Wives

Shakespeare is, of course, a wealth of opportunity for illustration. Walter Crane's style is a bit archaic, which is, of course, a perfect fit for Shakespeare. Images make the reading so much more palatable and entertaining, which is why I also read these kinds of books as a kid. 

Years later I helped produce an exhibit that lauded the notion that it is the picture that serves as a gateway for the young reader to enter a book and explore its treasures. And it is the illustrator that serves as gatekeeper, creating the pictures. The entrance text said, "The pictures in this show illustrate some of the great classics of literature. Enter through these gates with your children in the hope that interest in the pictures will create interest in the words..."

At least that's the way it worked for me...

Merry Wives

Turning Point

Batman Annual #3 was with me at a turning point in my young life. All these years later, my recollection is of sitting on the living room floor, when I was 10, kind of in the dark and staring at the cover of this comic, not really focusing. It was the night before we got in a broken down old Dodge hooked to a U-Haul trailer to head west from Ohio. To start over, as my parents put it.  They tried to convince me of how great it was going to be, but even if I was dead set against it, it wouldn't have changed anything. We were going and the trailer was packed.

I was pretty secretive with my packing, cuz I didn't want anyone to know what my passion had become. I was already an image junkie, and I had all the comics and books and magazines I had saved and some new ones that I had bought as well. And I already had a morgue going, even though I didn't know that was what it was called. Clippings of all kinds, but they were neatly organized and filed.

Imagine a 10 year old hiding a secret like that. I was afraid someone would talk me out of it, or worse, just arbitrarily toss it out and tell me to straighten up and suck it up. So I pretended it was toys and games, even putting a few on top to camouflage the contents of the (big) box. What a dork I was.

So that day, the last day of my childhood in Ohio, I spent a quarter on a comic that I could take with me, out in the open, to keep me company on the long drive out west. And it was this Batman annual. Who could imagine then that years later I would have the means to scan it and post it on a world wide network. But that night I felt a bit sad for some reason and I stared at the cover and fixated on the Human Firefly, and the colors were bright enough, even in the semi-dark that the image was somewhat comforting. 

The interior artwork on that story was by Dick Sprang (but who knew that then?). He was the good Batman artist of that era. And it and the whole comic kept me going for our 3 day drive. The cool thing for me in this comic was that the villain made a diagram of himself, planning his cool features. I liked the idea of planning like that. In my inner sanctum box I already had a cover that I had rescued of Batman and Robin planning out and building their new batplane, as they did again, with the rest of the batcave, in 1968. That was my favorite kind of cover, not the beat-em-up kind. But they were pretty rare—those planning ahead kind.

Superman had his Fortress of Solitude, Batman had his Batcave. I was pretty envious.

We sort of ran out of money during the trip and food became scarce for us. Bless their hearts, but my parents hadn't planned ahead very well. When we arrived at our destination, my brother and I were actually light-headed from hunger. My dad pawned my mom's sewing machine down on skid row and then we had a blast eating a bagful of White Castle burgers and that orange soda--what was the name of that? Fanta or something like that. Food had never tasted that good in my young life.  And that was my first turning point in life. Life would be starting fresh and new--according to my parents. And why should I doubt them?

Secrets of the Batcave-1968: "ejecting smoke to give cloudy effect and conceal take-off"? Now that was clever—to look like a forest fire every other day and then come swirling out, like a bat out of hell. No one would ever suspect!