Radiant Comics

Earlier this morning I was out on the riding mower mulching up the leaves that have fallen in my back yard. Chopping up the leaves where they fell so they can quickly break down and feed the lawn. After that physical work I decided I wanted to write something so here I am. I’m going to take a look at one of the “Dreams of Things” covers that I’ve made recently and break it down for you and me to feed on.

This is “Dreams of Things” number 252. That’s a big number. I can hardly believe that I’ve been making these for so long that I’ve got over 250 of them done in the series. I made this one on September 16, 2024. I’ve been getting one of these a week finished for most of this year. Over the summer I was finishing them on a Thursday but starting in September I switched over to finishing them on Mondays. I have no idea why that switch happened but the change was made.

This piece, along with all of them in the series, is done on an 11×17 inch piece of paper. The logo, trade dress, and cover printer markings are all done digitally and then printed out onto Bristol board. Just like a real cover that stuff is all done mechanically and then copied onto the board but the artwork is all done by hand.

When I first started doing these years ago I used to first do a 6×9 inch sketch and then transfer that sketch to an 11×17 inch piece of Bristol board and draw the full pencils at that larger size. Somewhere along the way I stopped doing that. Now I do all the pencils at the smaller 6×9 inch size, blow that up to 11×17 inches and then ink over the blue line pencils. Somewhere along the way I stopped gaining anything by doing the full pencils at 11×17 so I just stopped doing them that way.

This cover has two figures on it. A woman and a thing. I’m not quite sure what that thing is but it’s floating upside down as the woman is floating right side up. When I pulled this one out of the pile a scene from “Goodfellas” popped into my head. It’s the scene where they are having dinner at Joe Pesci’s mother’s house and they are looking at one of her paintings. There are two dogs facing opposite directions in the painting. As they are discussing the painting Pesci says something like, “Look at that! One dog is looking one way and the other is looking the other!” That’s the thought that came into my head as I looked at this cover. One figure is going one way and the other is going the other. That thought amused me.

There is a lot of background in this piece. The environment is what makes it. The top part is filled with rectangles of color and is all about graphic design. That’s the space of it. There is a hint of real space with the yellow behind her head that acts, sort of, like a piece of the sky but the rest is mostly solid color. It’s also a little flag like.

The one piece that is not like the others is the orange bar that goes across the piece. That is made up of three transparent colors. The lightest orange is in the back and then there are two different oranges that are made with horizontal and vertical strokes of the marker. I like the texture of this part and the background color becomes a positive shape. This area seems to catch my eye the most.

The rest of the background is all about creating a landscape space. The top is a design space and the bottom is a work space. It almost looks like the top is a colorful curtain that’s behind the two characters.

We have one of my pyramids in the background. That’s a shape and object that I like to use in these drawings. The front of the pyramid has ink lines adding a horizontal texture to the piece. The side next to it has some spirals in the color. So we’ve got textures in the color going on plus some texture in the ink part of the drawing. I like the mix of those two things.

The purple smoke down the bottom grounds the whole piece. It gives everything in the drawing a place to stand even if not literally. I put the purple color down with a scumbling effect. I pushed at the paper with a marker to get a fuzzy edge. That gives the smoke/clouds their fuzzy feel. It took nine different purple/violet marker to make and I like the way it turned out.

We have some green texture for the grass plus some green triangle trees in the background. That’s the first time I can remember that I’ve made triangle trees. They reenforce the shape of the pyramid. I draw pyramids all the time so you think I’d use more triangle trees too but I don’t think I have very often. I like them here.

The blue and slightly green sky in the background has some big texture marks going through it. They’re sort of like clouds but not really. I think the diagonal nature of the marks make them look more misty than cloudy. Maybe it’s just me but that is what I was going for.

Finally we get to the figures. The one of the left is clearly female but the one on the right is genderless. Maybe even some kind of robot or alien. Either way it’s a magical creature. It being upside down adds to its oddness. Both figures share some purple colors with her having a little more magenta and it having a bit more red. They match but are not the same.

I like the stripes on the woman and I like the way the yellow stripes pull down the background color into her. That blends her in a little more with the design element of the top. They also both have some white gel pen highlights one them. I don’t always do that but sometimes it hits the spot.

Overall I’m happy with this piece. I like the imagery of it. I like that it gets me wondering and asking questions to myself. I also like that her hair appears to be blowing in the wind. It gives an overall static image just a hint of movement. On to the next one!

Nine New Art Cards

I was making some more art cards this week. Lately I’ve been working steady on my cartoon art cards for my “Drifting and Dreaming” Sunday strip. I have 80 out of 104 of them done and I’m happy with that number. I’ve been getting ten a week of those done so it’ll only be a couple of more weeks until I have a year’s worth of them finished.

Yesterday I turned my attention to getting some of the regular art cards done rather than the cartoon art cards. What’s the difference you ask? The cartoon ones have writing on them. They’re the ones that have drawing of a person on them with a word balloon above their heads with some writing in the balloon. A regular art card can be any piece of art as long as it’s done on a 2.5×3.5 inch piece of paper. Hopefully some paper with some stiffness to it and not just a piece of plain letter paper.

I usually use Bristol board for my art cards. It’s the same two-ply Bristol that I use for most of my drawing. A lot of my drawing is done on 11×17 inch Bristol but I buy that paper in 14×17 inch pads. That means that I cut a strip of paper off the side that’s 3×17 inches.

For most of the 1990s I generally threw that strip of paper away. It always annoyed me a little bit to do that but I could think of no use for it. I occasionally drew a long thin drawing on that paper but it mostly went into the recycle bin.

Then in the early 2000s I heard about art cards. A woman, whose name I don’t know, started making baseball card size pieces of art and trading them or selling them online. The idea went viral among artists. That’s when I decided to make my own.

After that I always took the 3×17 inch strip of Bristol, cut a half an inch off the length of it, and then cut it into four art cards plus an extra short piece. Now it’s a nice little bonus to get that 3×17 inch strip of paper. I’ve made around 3000 art cards since I started.

A funny thing happened earlier this year when I bought some new pads of Bristol board. For most of my Bristol board buying life you could not buy 11×17 inch Bristol. 14×17 inches was the standard size. That’s what I always bought it. But then sometime a couple of decades ago some paper companies started making 11×17 inch Bristol board aimed at comic book artists. Often it had blue line comic book production markings on it and it was little more expensive.

Back to earlier in the year when I was buying paper. I saw some pads of Bristol online and they had a good piece on them. I ordered a few pads to stock up. It turns out the paper I ordered was 11×17. I thought I ordered 14×17 but I didn’t. My usual paper doesn’t even come in 11×17 so I somehow didn’t even notice the size discrepancy online.

So I’ve been using that 11×17 inch paper all year. It’s convenient since I don’t have to get my paper cutter out and cut it to size but at 20 sheets per pad I’ve lost out on 240 sheets of art card paper! I just ran out of that 11×17 inch paper and now am back to cutting 14×17 inch paper to size. As a matter of fact I have to order more. I only have about 30 sheets of p[aper left. I’ll make sure I order 14×17 inch paper.

These days they ever sell tiny pads of art card paper. I have two small pads of it to try out. One is hot press watercolor paper and the other is cold press. The strange thing is that the paper is actually 2.5×3.75 inches. There is an extra quarter inch of height. That’s actually no good since it makes the paper harder to fit into cards sleeves. I’m going to have to trim that quarter inch off.

It was yesterday that I made some art cards. I usually make them in batches of ten and it takes me most of the day to get ten of them done. I always think I can get them done faster than that but it never seems to work out that way.

The first thing I have to do when making an art card is to figure out what to make them with. Do I want to use pencils, pen, paint, or markers? Can I think of anything else to make them with? I’m always looking for new methods.

I came to rest on a way that I have made some cards in the past but not a ton of them. One of my favorite color markers is a Tahitian Blue marker from Copic. It’s actually the first Copic Marker I ever bought and it’s over a decade old. I just checked and I bought it in 2010 so it’s 14 years old. So old that its plastic cap and barrell are starting to disintegrate.

The technique is that first I draw with the blue marker using it as an underdrawing and then I draw on top of that with a black marker. I like how the combo of colors looks in the final drawing. I also decided to use a could have other colors but with different brands of markers.

The second marker that I used was an orange click marker from Sharpie. I bought this one when Sharpie first came out with them (Five years ago? Seven? I don’t know.) and I’ve always liked it. It’s a Sharpie that doesn’t have a normal Sharpie cap but the tip retracts into the barrel. I’ve always meant to get more of these but never have. The orange and black make a good color combination.

The third marker I used came in an art supply sample pack. It’s a yellow marker from a company called Lyra. It’s a brush marker but it also has a bullet tip on the other size. Usually I like brush tips but for these art cards I used the bullet tip.

So I spent my day working with those markers and a couple of black ones. I got the ten art cards done and I think they came out well. I have twenty five more of those ones to go. I’ll get ‘em done.

I buy almost all of my comics from my local comic book store. I go there every week and pick up my pull list comics and I also order things like those big and expensive Artist Editions from them. But I also buy cheap collected editions off of eBay and Amazon every now and again and also have an Amazon wish list for my family to buy things from for birthdays and Christmas. I mention this because I want to note a few things that I just ordered.

Artist Editions are big books that go from around 11×17 inches up to 16×20 inches. They are printed from high resolution color scans of comic book original art and are then printed to look exactly like the original art. If you like comic book original art then they are very cool. And I like comic book original art.

But as I said they are also expensive. Most of the ones I’ve purchase from my LCS were from about $100 to $125. I keep my eyes open for online bargains but I don’t find them too often. A couple of years ago there was one that I wanted but didn’t have the money for so I kept my eyes opera for a bargain. It was called the “EC Comics Covers Edition” and it was one of the more expensive ones.

One day, months after it came out, I saw a used copy on Amazon from a seller for about $80 total. I decided to take a chance on it and bought it. It arrived damaged. It was so damaged that it looked like all four corners were smashed with sledgehammers. It was crazy. So I returned it just a few hours after I bought it. Since it was a used book it couldn’t even be exchanged. So I had a copy for only a few hours.

Over the two years since that happened I’ve kept my eyes open for that book but had never again seen it at that price. It usually goes for at least $125. Then just last week I was scrolling through Facebook and up popped a picture of someone holding that book. It was from an EC fan group that I wasn’t in but I read the post. He had just bought that book from a seller on eBay for $60.

I read some more of the posts in that thread and other had bought from the same eBay seller too. Some even said that they offered the seller $50 and she took the offer. I clicked on the link for the seller and saw the eBay page. It looked legit so I decided to get one myself. I clicked on the “Make an Offer” link because I was also thinking about making a $50 offer but the link said that there were already 23 offers on the book. The page also said that there were over ten in stock with 50 already sold. I decided to not take a chance on missing out and just paid the whole $60 so mine would be bought before the 23 offers.

The total came out to $73 with tax and shipping but that was still a good deal. I see now that the shipping price has been raised to $28 so I’m glad I got mine in at the low shipping price. I haven’t received my book yet so there is no end to this story but I look forward to getting it. (Update: I got the book and everything is cool.)

The second thing that I ordered was another expensive book that I’ve been waiting for the price to drop on. It’s a Marvel Omnibus. They usually are priced at $125 to $150 but you can often find them for at least a 20% discount.

I used to have a bunch of these Marvel Omnibuses but I sold off all but two of them over the years. The last one I bought was in 2017 (it’s October 2024 as I write this) so I really haven’t been as into them as I once was.

This one that I was interested in is a Crossgen comic book. Crossgen is a comic book publisher from the early 2000s that I liked. They went out of business after a few years of making good comics and their stuff was bought up by Disney. A few years after that Disney bought Marvel Comics so now Marvel has the rights to all the Crossgen stuff. Last year they started putting some of the Crossgen stuff into Omnibuses.

I bought a lot of the Crossgen series off the shelf, back in the day, but not all of them. Since they went out of business I’ve always meant to buy some of the series that I never bought. Each series is about 40 to 45 issues and to get a complete series on eBay would probably run me from about $60 to $75. So I never pulled the trigger.

It was back in December of 2023 that Marvel put out the “Sigil” omnibus. That was one of the Crossgen series that I wanted the read, since I never had, but the new collection was priced at $125 full retail. I didn’t want it for that much. The original issues were cheaper! I kept my eye on it but it was never priced where I would buy it. Then I kind of forgot about it. Until this week.

Marvel Omnibuses have a weird price trajectory. Full retail price is usually high but then the price on the book drops down a little. If it’s a desirable book the price doesn’t drop very much until the book is out of print. Then the price of it rises. Of course popular books come back into print fairly quickly and then the price drops again.

For less desirable Marvel Omnibuses the price starts the same but then drops more precipitously. It might take a while but sometimes the price can be cut in half. But then after it goes out of print the price rises. It sometimes rises to way above the original retail.

Back in 2014 I bought the Marvel John Carter Omnibus from Amazon for the crazy price of $35 (with a random promotional credit that cut the price to $15). I don’t know why it was that low but I’m glad it was. Now the only one you can get on Amazon has it priced at an insane $1500. No one is going to buy it for that since you can find it on eBay for between $120 and $200. But even those prices are high considering.

As I was looking around on Amazon last week I decided to check on the “Sigil” Omnibus. To my surprise the price was down to $65. That seemed like the sweet spot to me. I also like the reviews I read of it as there was a lot of good extra material in the book. (Update: it’s back up to $90 now.)

I had been saving up credit card points so I could get the box set of Peter Bagge’s “Hate” but I already had the original issues and softcover collected editions of that series so I decided to put it on hold (for around the third time) and use those point to get the “Sigil” Omnibus.

Neither physically big and expensive book has arrived as of this writing but I’m looking forward to getting them. Keep an eye on my YouTube channel because I’ll probably be making videos about them.

I haven’t written a “Friends” walkthrough in months so I feel like writing one now. Let’s see what episode that I’m on. Season Seven Episode 22, “The One with Chandler’s Dad.” It first aired on May 10, 2001. Let me check my calendar to see what I was doing that day.

It looks like I was working at Marvel Comics down in Manhattan that day and all week. The weekend before the tenth I was hame sick. I bet that was no fun. The weekend after that I have a note that I, “Took it easy” which means that I got no artwork done. I was probably still a bit rundown and off my game. I did make it to the comic shop and art store on Saturday the twelfth. That sounds like fun.

I notice this episode is about Chandler’s dad who was gay and a Vegas drag show performer. His dad was played by Kathleen Turner. The joke at the time was that Turner was always accused of having a manly voice so wouldn’t it be funny if she played a man in drag? I never found that bit funny. Let’s start the show.

We’ve got the three women in the apartment planning Monica and Chandler’s wedding. We start with a joke about Ross driving Monica’s new inherited (from their father) car. Joey walks in. The joke is that Monica lets everybody borrow the car except Rachel. Pretty bland opening and here comes the song.

Now Ross walks into the coffee shop after driving the Porsche. Rachel is there and she tries to talk him into letting her drive the car. Some typical Ross and Rachel stuff as she steals the keys (and some money) from Ross’s jacket.

Meanwhile back at the apartment Monica starts the main plot by saying, “We still haven’t gotten an RSVP from your dad.” That’s because Chandler never sent him an invite. Chandler was embarrassed by him growing up and doesn’t want to invite him. It’s revealed that he stars in a drag show in Vegas. A funny Phoebe joke ends the scene.

Cut to Rachel polishing Monica’s Porsche and getting in as Ross throws himself across the hood to stop her from driving away. Ross eventually gives in and goes for a ride with her. They drive off after a middling amusing scene.

Back at the coffee shop Joey and Phoebe are waiting as Phoebe’s new boyfriend picks her up. At least I think he’s new. I don’t remember him. Joey wants to get to know him better and asks him his name. It’s Jake. Ahhh… Now I remember this plot. Jake bends over and Joey is shocked to see that Jake is wearing women’s underwear.

Another apartment scene as Monica brings a suitcase to Chandler and announces that they’re going to Vegas. Chandler doesn’t want to go. So childhood embarrassment is revealed. Some funny stuff in there and eventually Chandler relents and off they go.

Joey enters the coffee place and explains to Phoebe about Jake’s underwear. Of course Phoebe is unfazed as it’s part of her kink. Joey thinks it’s weird but Phoebe tries to convince him.

Now a driving scene. We don’t get a ton of these in this show. Rachel is driving and reveals she doesn’t even had a license anymore. Ross is nervous and freaking out and then a cop pulls them over.

Joey is in his apartment and in a robe as he has just taken a shower. Rachel is his roommate at this point in the show and there is a basket of her laundry in the living room. There is never laundry lying around in this show so we know where this is going. He decides to try on a pair of her underwear.

Look! It’s Las Vegas! Chandler and Monica are at his father’s drag show. Chandler reveals that his father has tried to reconcile with him lately but he’s rejected him. Kathleen Turner makes her appearance on stage and the short scene ends.

Back to the road and the Porsche is pulled over. Rachel flirts her way out of a ticket as Ross is appalled by her behavior. This may be the funniest scene of the episode.

Kathleen Turner is putting on a show and walking around audience in the small club as she sings and makes jokes. Chandler tries to run out but she notices him. Stunned silence as the scene ends.

Here comes Joey again into Central Perk. He brags to Phoebe about wearing women’s underwear. After some humorous exchanges they both decide he likes them a little too much and he has to stop. That scene ends quickly.

Back to Vegas as Kathleen Turner interviews Chandler and Monica as part of her show. This is actually a very sweet scene as Chandler and his dad make up and Kathleen Turner gets invited to the wedding. Of course the scene ends with, “It’s Raining Men.”

Now we have to wrap up the driving scene as Ross is behind the wheel but he is driving way too slowly. Eventually he gets pulled over. He tries to flirt his way out of it but fails miserably. Here come the credits.

The credit scene wraps up the Joey and Phoebe plot as Joey asserts his manhood by hitting on a woman. It doesn’t go as well as usual due to some stay lady’s underwear.

Let me check the internet to see if anything was cut out of this episode for syndication. The cut a Phoebe being a vegetarian joke from the opening scene. They cut a couple of Chandler’s embarrassing stories about his Dad. They cut a Monica joining the Brownies joke. They cut the scene where Phoebe checks out Joey’s underwear as he bends over. They cut some jokes out of the scene where Rachel is driving. The cut some of Ross’s attempt at flirting. They cut a lot out of this one. And this was only a 22 minute show!

Now I’m going to look up what I rated this show at back in 2010. Right now I’d only give it two out of five stars. I think it was a weaker than average episode. None of the plot lines were particularly good. Chandler making up with his dad was nice though. Looks like I gave this one four stars back then?!? I could see maybe three (average) but not four (better than average). I must have been in a good mood that day back in 2010.

Two Sets of Markers

Sometimes getting things done is all about finding the right tool. In my case it was all about finding that one black marker. Of course it’s not like I don’t have a lot of black markers and a lot of black markers that I like but sometimes I find a good new one.

This week I’ve been working on some of my cartoon art cards that I use for my Sunday comic strip, “Drifting and Dreaming.” Since I use two of them per strip I have to make 104 cartoon art cards for a year’s worth of strips. Fo some reason I like to get a year’s worth of strips done at a time but it takes me months to get them all done.

I usually start making the strips a year before I need them. Right now it’s October of 2024 and I have all the “Drifting and Dreaming” strips for 2025 finished and ready to go. I think I started them in January 2024 and I usually finish all 52 strips by May. Then I don’t work on them much until the following January.

This year has been a little bit different. For the last few year I’ve had a big art project of my own to work on during the summer months but I never had one this year. So I’ve been working on all small stuff. Lots of 11×17 inch and smaller drawings and such but no big paintings or big ink drawings. I don’t know why. That’s just the way it’s been.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself working on some cartoon art cards. It’s a bit early to get started on 2026’s cards but I just felt like drawing some.

When I first started making these cartoon art cards (which are nothing but a cartoon head and shoulders of a character with a word balloon over their heads) I would draw them right in ink. I would have to make up the whole face as I went along with no pencil drawing to guide me and therefore no erasing. This served me well for years until I grew tired of it. I grew tired of it because I found myself repeating certain ways of drawing the faces.

That’s when I decided to do a quick pencil drawing first. Nothing fancy just some indications of features, hair, and shoulder clothing. That went well until this year when I, once again, found myself repeating myself. Turns I usually do that when I grow tired of a particular method. Or maybe the repeating myself is a result of the growing tired. I’m not sure which comes first.

So I changed it up again this year. Now I draw an even more basic face on ten cards in a row (I always do these cartoon art cards in batches of ten) as quickly as I can and then after all ten are done I go back and add a little more pencil detail to each face one by one. I found this a little more fun and freeing.

After the pencil work is done I would go in and draw the face over the pencil with an ink pen. It’s almost always been a Sign Pen refilled with India ink. A Sign Pen has a hard nib and is one of my favorite pens to draw with. Except I have grown tired of making these cartoon art card faces with the Sign Pen. I don’t know why except I wasn’t looking forward to finishing the drawings.

I love to try out new art supplies. I especially like to try out new black markers because they are cheap and plentiful. Last December (2023) I bought an eight pack of black calligraphy markers to try out. I don’t do calligraphy so I was trying them out to draw with. They weren’t anything special at the time so I put them away with all my other markers.

Since I was so bored with my usual Sign Pen I pulled a bunch of other black markers out to try. Lo and Behold I really liked one of those calligraphy markers. It’s one of the three brush markers in the set and it’s the medium point one. It’s not really a brush. It has a small rubbery tip with some flexibility to it but it takes some pressure to flex that tip. I ended up knocking through the first ten of the cartoon art cards because I was really enjoying that pen.

Next I had to try and find some more of them. I can use this one for a while and I know how to refill it with India ink but even so that tip is eventually going to wear down. I bought the pen set off of Amazon and knew I could easily get another set but I don’t want to buy an eight pen set to only use one pen. Not very cost effective.

This calligraphy set of markers I bought on Amazon was made in China. There are a ton of “Made in China” markers on Amazon and a lot of them are unbelievable cheap. They also tend to be the same markers with different branding on them. So I was pretty confident that I would be able to find the marker I was looking for somewhere on Amazon.

After looking for a while I realized that I couldn’t find the marker on its own. It was always part of a set. The original set was $13 for eight markers but I found what I thought was the same marker in a set of three markers for $6. I decided to order a set and see if it was the same marker. After all it was also made in China.

When I got the set of three calligraphy markers they looked slightly different. The barrels of the marker were a bigger style but the tip was nearly identical. It was nearly the same so I was happy with it. Maybe I can’t find it on its own but $6 a marker is better than $13 a marker.

I’m also going to have to check some of my other markers that I’ve bought but not used a lot. I think there have to be some of them with similar tips because it’s not like this marker felt like it had a tip I’d never drawn with before. It just hit the spot in the moment.

Now I’m looking forward to using the medium size brush tip calligraphy marker to draw more faces and cartoon art cards. That’s always a good thing.