Sketches: Veronica After Bob Montana 1

Let's quickly sum up Bob Montana's Veronica: Va-Va-Va-VOOOM!  Even my questionable interpretations should convey that.

In Montana's comic strips, Veronica and Betty aren't exactly friends.  Veronica doesn't even see Betty as a real rival for Archie, which she isn't, because Archie is all in on Veronica.  For her part, Veronica is pretty much stringing Archie along, but she gives him enough to keep him interested.  There's a couple of panels of her laying a smacker on Archie that can easily take the breath away of even the reader.

Always fashionable.

These are from a Sunday color strip where Veronica was hosting a Hawaiian luau. 

Veronica, in the strips and the comic books, is always on the phone.

Swooning by the jukebox.  How Americana.

Sketches: Betty After Bob Montana 2

More sketches of Betty in charcoal and pencil.  Don't let her cute looks fool you, the 40's version of her character was nuts.  She was not the sweet girl-next-door in the newspaper comic strips.

The original love triangle was Veronica stringing along Archie, while Archie kept trying to get away from Betty.  Who would run from this pretty blonde?  It's all part of the humor, though I'll be posting some Veronica next, so you can judge for yourself.  Betty would go to sometimes dangerously borderline psychotic lengths to get with Archie in the strips.  She could probably get any guy.  Why chase the goofy accident-prone redhead who didn't want her?  Why?  Because it was funny.

Sketches: Betty After Bob Montana 1

Going through my old sketchbooks, I didn't realize how much time I'd spent drawing Bob Montana's Archie comic strips.  Regrettably, I wasn't drawing like Bob after going through a couple of sketchbooks, but who does? 

I liked Archie Comics, but this volume of Montana's daily newspaper strips was a revelation.  These strips were the reason Archie was popular to begin with.  The opening storyline featured Archie on an unintentional double date for prom.  That was probably a hackneyed plot in the 40's, but it reads fresh and funny here.  Part of the appeal was Betty and Veronica being the most glamorous high school girls ever.  Even in these little black and white panels, they are artistically inspirational. 

I posted a review on an Archie Comics fansite.  The publisher read it and blurbed my comment, "This is the best Archie book I've ever read."  I also posted a bunch of scans and fanart and even some fan fiction there.  Unfortunately, the whole site crashed and it all disappeared.  So much for the Internet being "forever."  Here are some of the sketches. 

These first two were pencil drawings that I inked over. 

I think the next two are pencil drawings.

For some reason, I did several in charcoal.  Somebody should really take the charcoal away from me until somebody teaches me how to use it correctly.

Sketches: Manga Characters

I was able to pick up some scattered manga in the 80's.  It's hard to believe now, but there was a time you could easily collect all of the translated manga available in the US.

The Japanese editions of Newtype that I'd gotten all had manga features.  My favorite was Marionette Generation by Haruhiku Mikimoto, who created Minmay for Macross.  I later bought some of the translated volumes.  I was disappointed to find out that there wasn't really any story to it, but it sure looked good.  I forgot the name of the character here.

Mai the Psychic Girl, Kamui, and Area 88 were translated manga published bi-weekly by Eclipse Comics.  These along with Lone Wolf and Cub, published by another company, comprised all of the initial wave of manga in the US.  Area 88, about mercenary fighter pilots, was the one I collected, but I later picked up an issue of Mai and was entranced by the heroine.  I later the bought the collected volumes.   

Those initial comics led to more translated titles being released.  I loved the violent cyber action of Xenon.  The comic was actually a big influence on a superhero RPG game I created.  (No, I'm not going to post it.  It's embarrassing.  It mechanically worked, after a fashion, but would probably be considered unplayable by others.  It's irredeemable.)  Xenon's girlfriend was Sonoko, who is pictured here.  This might be the best hair I've ever drawn in a sketch.  I kind of wish I still had the comics even though the story did not have a proper ending.   

I also picked up some American produced manga.  This is Kenji from Metal Bikini (I think).

Mylene is technically an anime character from Macross 7, but I never saw it.  (Thank God.  Macross II was bad enough.)  The picture I sketched from was from an issue of Protoculture Addicts.  It was in black and white, so my colors ended up being way different than her correct ones.   

This is another American manga here, Kei from Dirty Pair.  Yes, Dirty Pair is an anime, but it was based on a series of SF novels.  Bizarrely, the only manga version at the time (I don't know if that's changed or not) was licensed by Eclipse.  Writer/artist Adam Warren, over the course of several series over the years, probably took the characters far afield of any Japanese version.     

So in the late 90's I was a fan of Evangelion and Gen 13.  This mashup was inevitable.  I made a color version of this, but gave it to a comic book shop for their fan art wall.  This might be the most complex thing I've ever drawn.

Sketches: Anime Characters

I'll be posting some old sketches for a while.  We'll start at the beginning.

I've established I'm a big Robotech fan.  One of my prized possessions is my Robotech Art 1 book.  It not only has a lot of information on the series, but also has a quick overview on Japanese animation which turned me into an anime fan.  The book included character sketches and animation cells, which proved irresistible to me.  I hadn't ever tried drawing before, but had to now.  This was the start of my sketching.

Minmei may have been irritating on the show, but she was really good looking and an obvious favorite of character designer Haruhiku Mikimoto.     

Rook, from later in the series, was also a favorite.

Anime and manga started making fans in the US in the 80's, but finding it was a different story.  I was fortunate in that my comic book store owner had a west coast connection and brought in some Japanese stuff.  Unfortunately, all of this stuff was in Japanese, but I liked the pictures.  I picked up a couple of issues of the Japanese anime magazine Newtype.  This first drawing was from that issue, but I don't know who the character is.

This is Fa from Zeta Gundam.

Here's Nike from Appleseed.

This is a later sketch of Hitomi from a more recent Appleseed movie.

And, this is Shinobu from Patlabor.

I picked up a few anime books.  I don't even remember all the ones I had.  I only kept the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie books.  One of the ones I had was an Iczer-1 OVA book.  It was pretty cool.  I liked one of the heroines, Nagisa. 

Allegiance Comics Review

I’m going to subvert expectations and start with another Indy comics label before getting to the Allegiance Comics.  I’m sort of a fan of Vampire: the Masquerade.  I loved the computer game Bloodlines and I love to watch the Twitch live action game LA by Night.  The RPG itself, I’m not the biggest fan of.  The rules don’t really support the kind of game that it bills itself as.  It’s a bit dishonest.  There’s also a massive corpus of background and continuing storyline that might help, but probably just gets in the way of creating your own game (and then they reboot the whole setting start over again).

I don’t know if there have been any other VTM comics.  [Edit after a quick Internet search: There have been several, but I’d never heard of them.]  It would seem like a natural.  There’s been any number of D&D comics.  There’s a series of comics for Critical Role.  That was sort of what I was expecting here, either an LA by Night story or something set in Los Angeles or in Seattle, where the next VTM computer will be set. 

I was subverted.  The two stories in the issue were set in Minnesota.  Minnesota?  That here-to-for unknown hotbed of vampiric activity.  I was attracted to the excellent David Mack cover (good to see his work again), but the inside artwork was just dark and ugly.  I grant you that the overall setting has always been a strange mix of elegant sophistication and hideous sleaze. 

The characters and setup here just didn’t appeal to me.  It was a bit too gutter and trailer park.  The two stories featured two different sets of characters and situations, but neither was really compelling.  Fundamentally, the setting for the stories is flawed.  It’s trying to present detailed, realistic character studies in an absurd fantasy situation.  Character background and dealing with it is one of the weaker elements of VTM overall.  This comic unfortunately exposes that and plows ahead with it.  They would have been better off with a more action-oriented operatic story that alludes to character backgrounds without trying to feature them.

I hope this isn’t the last new comic I buy at Zia Comics.  DC comics has recently undergone a mass layoff.  I didn’t even notice anything solicited by them last week.  This is bad, since their 100-page comics have been the only thing I’ve been regularly buying.  If DC goes, Marvel will follow.  This led me to look for alternatives, which brings up the next set of reviews.              

Months ago, I’d heard about a new comics company, Allegiance that would be distributing comics at Wal-Marts.  I’d been kind of avoiding Wal-Mart during the lockdown, but when I was finally forced to go there I looked around for the comics.  I found them on my third trip to the store earlier this month.  They were tucked away in the Electronics/Book department in their own display stand next to some kids’ books which made sense. 

There were four different titles each having two issues out.  Cringingly, they were all priced at $5 for a normal-sized comic.  Given the price and literate nature of the comics, I’d think the slightly more upscale Target would have been a better distributor.  Looking through all of them, I picked The Futurists, since it looked the most interesting.  Also, I’m a bit of a sucker for 19-th century red-coated British soldiers, which the issue featured.

Butch Guice’s artwork was definitely a selling point.  The story was rather mysterious.  That, along with some time and location jumps in India under British rule and several unconnected characters, made the whole thing confusing.  Still, it was intriguing enough to get me to want to read #2.

After getting that first issue, I went back to find a couple of review videoes by Zach and get his opinion (one and two).  Of the four titles, he’d concluded Norah’s Saga looked good, but was for teen girls, which was what I’d thought from looking at it.  He was familiar with Bass Reeves, a real-life Old West bounty hunter, and had researched him.  The comic was too like real-life in that it wasn’t that interesting.  I’d hoped for a good western comic, but that wasn’t what I saw when I flipped through it.  Zach thought The Futurists was gorgeous, but totally confusing.  He had some nitpicks about the characters all looking too alike. 

The only one Zach really liked was Red Rooster, the 30’s pulp superhero comic.  From him and another comic commentator, I found out there was some controversy surrounding this title.  It had originally been a Kickstarter project, but the backers didn’t get their hard copy before it ended up in stores.  The creator was thought to be a bit of a sleazeball, as he parleyed his backers into a better deal with a distributor. 

I went back to Wal-Mart to get a few more comics the next time I needed to go to the store, because I was somewhat skeptical they’d be around much longer.  Indeed, my local store keeps shifting aisles around massively and I had some trouble finding the display again.  Red Rooster was my main target.  It was cool.  The artwork and setting are well done.  Even in an issue with essentially no action, all setup, and introducing, but not explaining a bunch of characters, it was very enjoyable.

Issue #2 brought the action and added some character depth.  I found myself mentally making up characters for my Pulp Fantasy Core RPG game.  (I admit that it’s not my best work, since it was early, but combined with some character building and interaction elements of my Robomech game, it might work well.)  Even with the price and questionable publisher, I have to recommend these.  

      

I also got the next issue of The Futurists.  The artwork was still good, but the story offered more confusion.  This one introduced another new main character, had more time jumps, and a location jump to Scotland.  I can appreciate a slow burn in establishing characters and building a mystery, but not in a 24-page $5 comic.  Hopefully, everything comes together more coherently in the next issue.  I’ll look at it when I pick up the next issue of Red Rooster. 

Overall, they’re too pricey to sell and thus last in the stores.  Wal-Mart has tried some other exclusives with Marvel and DC, but they didn’t last either.  They were just reprints basically.  It needs to be magazine-sized, feature new material, and not be more than $5 guys.  There’s a wide open market for their superhero comics, if they’ll just focus on fun-to-read stories, instead of the Agenda and decades of continuity-driven ones.

Somewhat depressingly, the superhero title is the only really worthwhile one.  It’s okay that not all of their titles would appeal to everyone, but they’ve all got to appeal to someone.  Only Norah’s Saga has a clearly defined audience.  The other titles are too fringe.  Bass Reeves looks cartoony, but isn’t.  The Futurists perhaps appeals to Masterpiece Theater types, not comic book readers.  Even Red Rooster is too much of a throwback concept for most MCU movie superhero fans. 

I find myself using the “C-word” as an example of a comic company that would probably do better with this kind of mass distribution, Crossgen.  They didn’t offer superhero titles, but they all had action and a certain audience in mind.  My hopeless quest for fun new comics unfortunately continues.  

Another Pre-Labor Day Sports Update Part 2

Part 1

MLB

Unfortunately, this social justice suspension nonsense hit home with me as various baseball teams also decided not to play.  Friday night, the Astros and A’s declined to play, thus cheating me of my MLB.TV free game.  (By Sunday, they were sidelined for a positive cold test.  Serves them right.)  Since it was Jackie Robinson Day for baseball, it would have been disrespectful for the teams to just not show up, so they all came out in their #42 uniforms before walking away.  Chock stunts like this up to things that you can only get away with when there are no fans in the stands.    

These “impromptu” (staged) protests have morphed Jackie Robinson Day (since was rescheduled from its April date) into Jack Robinson Weekend because of all of the cancellations.  Maybe they’ll just all wear #42 jerseys for the rest of the season.  MLB let me break down the effect of your outreach to “urban youth” with this yearly memorial.  Inner city black kids still don’t watch or play your sport.  Thanks to Jackie Robinson Day however, instead of thinking baseball is boring, they now think its racist.  Nice job. 

8-25-20

But before this all happened, I was reminded of why I love this game (even if I hate the players, the teams, the league, and especially their media partners).  This day I got to see my second live no-hitter on MLB.TV’s free game.  I saw Phil Humber’s perfect game a few years ago.  I was listening when Yu Darvish took a perfect game into the ninth and lost out on it.  (He’s been pitching well this season since he grew an afro.)  This was first time I got to see one from the beginning.  The others were joined in progress. 

Today, it was Lucas Giolito for the White Sox no-hitting the Pirates.  I was watching the Pirates’ TV coverage because early on a power surge took out the White Sox’s broadcast.  That was too bad.  The current White Sox’s broadcast team is really good.  I do like the Pirates’ guys too.  They were constantly mentioning the no-hitter, perhaps to jinx it.  I don’t know if the home town guys were mentioning it also to try and build up the hype.

Giolito got his no-hitter in 101 pitches with 13 strikeouts and one walk.  By the last two innings, he was getting a bit wild, but still baffling Pirate hitters.  The hardest hit ball of the night off him was on his last pitch.  It was a hard dying line drive caught on the run.  Thank goodness for Sabrmetric fielder positioning.  Catcher James McCann pointed to the ump afterward, likely to thank him.  The ump was calling low strikes, which helped out Giolito, but he was calling it for both teams consistently.

As if that wasn’t enough, on FS1 I caught the end of the Giants versus the Dodgers.  Giant Brandon Belt managed to homer to the deepest part of Oracle Park to tie the score in the ninth.  It was Dodger closer, Kenley Jansen’s first blown save this season.  Both teams scored in the tenth and took the tie into the eleventh.  The Dodgers scored one in the top of the frame.  The Giants scored one to tie, and then Donavan Solano, who’s been a revelation this season and was hitting over .400, hit a two-run homer to win it.  He’d been 0 for 5 up to that point.

Meanwhile on Fox Sports AZ, the Rockies and D-Backs were in the bottom of the ninth.  There were two outs with the bases loaded and the Rox up by one.  D-Back Nick Ahmed struck out to end the game.  I only mention this because the next night, the same thing happened.  It was even worse then, because the Rockies went through three relievers in the inning, who gave up four runs, to get the Diamondbacks to within a run.  Poor Nick.

8-29-20

Today, FOX broadcast the Cardinals and Indians in an early game.  The pregame was a social justice cluster foxtrot.  The early game coverage was likewise, as a couple of black players were mic’d up during the game to comment on events.  They’ve done this during the All-Star Game, but this is frankly a bad idea during a game that counts.  They’ve got to at least use some smaller, completely wireless equipment on the players.  They also talked to the managers, but I didn’t listen to any of the comments. 

I did hear one of the announcers get one of the new rules wrong.  This is the third time this season I’ve heard a baseball announcer do this.  I knew the new rules for automatic runners and the three-batter rule for relievers off the top of my head.  How do these professional broadcasters not know them?  On the other side of the booth, AJ Pierzynski was on his way to being the best color commentator in baseball.  He’d obviously been studying the batters and pitchers like he was still in the lineup.

A Mexican station was showing the Mets and Yankees playing at the same time.  I was flipping back and forth.  The Yankees won their game on a wild pitch scoring a runner from third.  It was a good preview for the Cardinals and Indians’ conclusion.  After a 1-1 tie, they went to extra innings.  In the eleventh, the Indians managed to take a one-run lead.  The Cardinals only managed to commit a pair of baserunning blunders that cost them the game.  The last one was future Hall of Famer Yadier Molina letting himself get caught in a rundown as part of a game-ending double play. 

My dad likes the Cardinals, and I’d told him ahead of time about the game.  I was kind of glad he didn’t watch it.  I can only hope Aunt Judy, a die-hard Cardinals fan, missed this one too.         

8/30/20

As much crap as I’ve given Philly fans over the years, I have to give credit where credit is due.  Listening to the ESPN Radio game on Sunday night, the announcers commented that Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia probably had the most fan cutouts in the stands.  Along with that, there were hardcore fans standing outside the stadium at the gates cheering and blowing horns.  Philly fans will go to any lengths to boo their team.  (If I ever start a Youtube channel, I’ll do my crowd-pleasing Philly fan impersonation.  I’ve gotten some laughs from it.)   

I don’t’ think every stadium is allowing the cutouts.  I haven’t seen any in Yankee Stadium surprisingly.  They’ve got a tarp over the home plate seats.  I was watching the Rays playing the Marlins earlier in the day.  Unsurprisingly, the Marlins don’t have any cutouts eithers.  Having watched them play, I wonder if they have any fans.  They committed three errors and gave up 12 runs.  The Marlins did come back late to make a game of it in a 12-7 loss.  I noticed that they also got rid of that weird statue in the outfield and replaced it with a new club area.  I think they moved the thing outside.  God knows how they did it.  It was huge. 

Meanwhile later in Philadelphia, there was this exchange from the announcers.  “Hey, the Philly Phanatic is here.”  “You know, Statcast had the Philly Phanatic rated second in fan interaction in the league last year.”  “Did they adjust the analytics for the ballpark?  Because, he should be number one.”  Now, this is real information (and comedy).  As for the game, the Braves went up 10-0 in the second.  The final score was 12-10 Braves.  The Phillies certainly made a game of it and you have to appreciate the effort.  “Boooo! You guys suck!  You miserable losers!  Booo!”  Okay, maybe the Philly fans standing around the gate didn’t appreciate it.  The big baseball news of the night was a flurry of moves made by the Padres.  We’ll see what happens.

NASCAR

I have no social justice news for the Saturday Chase field-setting race at Daytona.  Gasp!  I didn’t see all of the prerace, but it seems like the broadcast played it all pretty straight.  They didn’t even mention the cold much.  On Friday night, I was literally checking the NASCAR website to see if the event was going to be canceled for virtue signaling reasons.  The crucial difference with the MLB and NBA was that there was going to be a bunch of fans there for the race.  I doubt they would have been understanding if the drivers had come out and said they weren’t going to race and then called all the fans a bunch of racists.  Having fans who all have a shotgun rack in their pickups has a way keeping you honest.        

Ron joined me and dad for the race to watch on dad’s new TV.  I missed the prerace getting dinner with Ron.  We went to Sonic, which I totally blame on their constant Toasted Smore Shake commercials during the last NASCAR race.  The meal was overpriced and very average.  The small drinks were watered down and more like kid’s sized cups.  That said, the shake was awesome.  No regrets.

Well, I do sort of regret not taking notes for the race.  I didn’t think I’d be writing about it.  There was a lot of fuel-mileage jockeying for the first half of the race.  The TV coverage focused on the “bubble battle” between the four drivers trying to get the last two spots in the Chase.  There was only one caution for damage until late in the race and that only involved one car hitting the wall.

Then there were two Big Ones, both of which red flagged the field.  Jimmie Johnson, who had raced hard for one of those final Chase spots, got caught up in one of them and will not be in contention for an eighth championship in his final full-time season.  Joey Logano, who’d won both Stage 1 and Stage 2, was also taken out.  Ryan Newman, who’d had a horrific crash at the Daytona 500 to start the season, had a somewhat subdued return to the track this time.  He was taken out in a wreck, but okay afterwards.  While other drivers were being diplomatic about the incident, Ryan, eschewing a mask for the interview, entertainingly went off on Tyler Reddick for causing it and some other drivers.   

It would be William Byron getting his maiden win and getting into the Chase in a Green/White/Checkers victory.  He was an absolute picture of youthful exuberance when interviewed on track after the win.  It was hard not to feel good for him.  Byron had come to NASCAR partly through a successful career in iRacing.  He’d done well earlier this year when the drivers were doing the virtual racing.  Speaking of Chases, Chase Elliot came in second and pushed Byron to the victory.  Both cars had given up track position up front late to take on fresh tires.  That turned out to be the winning move.

The race was pretty efficient, as it came in at just a bit over three hours.  Ron, who has a pretty humdrum life lately doing caretaking, had a great time watching.  I felt pretty exhilarated from seeing a good race and just enjoying a sporting event, instead of cringing through it.  See, I’m saying something positive about sports. 

That’s it for now, unless I’m watching the Kentucky Derby next weekend and the horses all decide to sit it out in protest.  (There won’t be any fans there.  It could happen.)  I’m also pretty sure I’m not going to be doing a Labor Day post.  The only event I’d want to cover would be NASCAR’s Southern 500, but it’s on cable, which I don’t have.