Autumn Cleaning

Just a sampling of more sketches completed in the month of October...

click on any one image to see it embiggened.

THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 14

(But getting back to ME!)

I'm a member of a group of comic book fans and aspiring artists called OUTCAST STUDIOS, it has branches that extend over to deviantART and Google+ and even Facebook and perhaps even Twitter--I'm unsure about Tumbler, but I think we'd be perfect for that.  It's a group that has seen better days, frankly.  But then again haven't we all?

EC Comics' the CRYPT-KEEPER, but this is what he became at HBO years later.

All month long we're doing horror and Halloween themed sketches for our Daily Sketch and Weekend Sketch Challenges--I call it "MONSTER MONTH".  It's been an ambition of mine to do this for the group for a while, so I'm glad to finally see it pan out.

Now I used to be a regular, every-day sketcher when it came to the DSC--for a few straight years I rarely missed a day of it and it really helped me get back into drawing again after about a five year hiatus from taking the skill seriously--but these days I'm stop-and-start about it.  I'll do a few here and there but can rarely keep up the pace for even a week.

Nonetheless, it's been fun to contribute to the subjects day-to-day, especially in this month of October.

Here are some examples from the month so far:

(These are all ballpoint pen on cardboard, except the monster, who was pencil on cardboard)

Above is Mephisto with his evil giggle as he watches some poor soul suffer in the Marvel Universe as he seems to be in charge of that reality's Hell.

Jack Kirby's Demon from Hell, Etrigan!  Doomed to battle the forces of evil by being bound to the human Jason Blood by the wizard Merlin.

Lilith, the Daughter of Dracula, was made a vampire through the magic of a Gypsy witch so that she would torture her father for all eternity!

This redesign of Frankenstein's monster was a hard one to resist and yet a hard one to get very creative with, so I tried to simplify it a bit.

Gossamer is the name of the huge hairy beast that chases Bugs Bunny around an old castle until Bugs outsmarts him and does his hair and nails.  He's fun to draw.

Well, there you have it!

MONSTER MONTH continues all month over at OUTCAST

And now a nifty Halloween greeting card:

MONSTER-MONTH: A COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 28.5)

Enjoy this bounty of scary, spooky Halloweeny Looney Tunes comic book covers...

COUNTDOWN to HALLOWEEN Day 16: A SPRINKLE OF HAZEL AND GOSSAMER

Certainly we all remember the annual viewing of IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN, and it is a fun little imaginative feature for all ages, but does anyone remember the Bugs Bunny Halloween Special that used to air on nearly the same kind of annual basis? Is it just me or was the yearly combination of those classic Looney Tunes a lot more exciting to watch? Now don't think that I'm dissing the Great Pumpkin, because he is a great religion (blessings and peace be upon the sincere patch he chooses to arise from this year) and always a hoot to watch, but for a kid of my youth the pacing of the Charlie Brown specials seemed to be in s-l-o-w--m-o-t-i-o-n. The work of the Looney Tunes gang could never be classified as slowly paced. Manic, sure, tortoise-like, nope!


Warner Bros. studios certainly weren't very original in naming their witch Hazel, but they did a great job of making her a character of note. One of surely evil intent, but with quite a few relatable traits as well. She was big, ugly, green and moly with a touch of modesty and a bucket full of sass. She was a fun match for Bugs.


Gossamer, who was usually seen as a henchman of a mad scientist, did not have a name when he first appeared. In his second appearance he was called Rudolph. He finally got the name Gossamer, in DUCK DODGERS AND THE RETURN OF THE 24TH1/2 CENTURY decades after his first appearance in 1946. Gossamer, like many of the guys chasing our animated heroes, is an overpowering physical menace while being as dumb as a box of hammers and as gullible as a new born baby. And he's kind of fun that way.


Hazel usually wants to cook up our fair hare for supper or to use in a spell and chases Bugs on a broomstick which has an attitude all it's own. Her wall mirror seems to be the one the witch from Snow White used.

Easily one of my favorite, if not my very favorite, bits that Bugs has ever done is when he stops the monster cold when he's about to be pounced upon and starts in on him like a nail salon gal about his fingernails. From there he goes on a veritable sprint of giving the monster a manicure and a haircut--all the while talking him up like a long lost girlfriend from high school.






"A Witch's Tangled Hare" features many Shakespearean references (even has the dude running around and taking notes).


"Duck Dodgers..." lets us know, finally, what Gossamer is hiding underneath all that hair!

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For more on Hazel and Gossamer:
Monsterama
GoldenAgeCartoons
CaffeinatedJoe

And now a look at another nifty greeting card to give meaning to the season: