Skook WiP #92

These Days …

I’ve finished coloring the Mighty Nizz story. I’m planning on posting the pages, one a week, hopefully starting next week, over at MightyNizz.com. I’m now working out the best way to present it. There are plug-ins that are designed for serializing comics on WordPress and I’m trying to figure out which one to use. I have one here at Skookworks (Comic Easel) that I’ve never gotten around to using. The developer hasn’t updated it in four years. That’s the Jurassic Age in internet time. WordPress just updated to version 6 point something and there’s no guarantee that the two programs/apps/code gardens will play well together. I could just put up the pages as individual posts but a webcomic plug in would make it easier for a reader to scroll between pages and stories.

I’ve also been watching videos about flatting for coloring comics. “Flatting” is the process of separating a comic page into the individual sections that you plan to color i.e. tree trunks/brown, pants/different brown, Mighty Nizz’s wolf cape/red and yellow, etc. I kept hoping I’d find some trick that would make the process faster. Based on what I’ve seen, the trick is to do it enough that you get faster at it. Or hire someone to flat the pages for me. And that’s not in the budget. It was somewhat reassuring to see that I’m already basically doing what the pros do, just more slowly.

Sarah has written the next story and I’m the process of breaking it up to fit a layout. It looks like this one will be a twelve pager. I have annual leave scheduled soon and plan to spend a good chunk of it working on illustration.

And, of course, I’ve been delivering mail. There’s a lot of construction currently happening on my route, five blocks of it interfering with my regular method of delivery. Four blocks of it is road work. The city is putting sidewalks on SW 24th between Barton and Thistle. Prior to the work, these blocks were mounted delivery, that is, I drove along the street and fed the mail into boxes while sitting in my mail truck. Currently, if I am lucky, I can drive down the street, stop near a mailbox, get out, walk across the ditch/rubble/new curb, and place the mail in the box that has been located out of harm’s way and out of arm’s reach from my vehicle. When I am not lucky, and the street is occupied by large trucks and vehicles with plows and shovels and things, I park my truck on another street, walk down the block delivering to each mailbox and then walk back up the block to where I have parked my truck. The fifth block, on SW 26th, is less difficult. It borders a condo development that’s being renovated. The street itself is being left alone but there’s a lot less parking than normal because of all the construction workers. All that activity means that my delivery time is longer than it used to be. It rarely means overtime but it does make it hard for me to estimate how long each day will be.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features one of my favorite subjects – bloodsucking atomic zombie fishmen! These critters are inspired by the classic b-movie The Horror of Party Beach. No, I’m not recommending that you watch the film. I saw it once when I was a kid, young enough for my imagination to compensate for the ridiculous costumes, script and low budget. I haven’t tried to watch it since. I don’t expect it would fare as well with my adult sensibilities.
This design is available on:
A mug in my Zazzle store.
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Eldritch Horror in the Great War

A few years ago I did a series of illustrations for a Call of Cthulhu RPG manual featuring scenarios set during World War One. The book will likely never be published so I’ll be posting sets of the illustrations here for the next few weeks.

This set is from a scenario where biplane pilots run into a swarm of newly awakened (and very cranky) Byakhee over the Alps.

And that’s it for this week.

Be good to yourself and your friends and your pets and … whoever needs it.

See you in seven!

Tuesday Night Beach Party Club #12

Artstuff

I have only seen two of the horror movies released the year I was born. The Last Man on Earth was one. The Horror of Party Beach was the other. Interesting, both movies feature untraditional vampires. Last Man’s vampires are dead humans who have been reanimated by a virus. The Party Beach‘s vampires are the corpses of drowned fishermen who have been reanimated by radioactive waste and transformed into weird fishman zombies. Last Man stars Vincent Price and helped to inspire The Night of the Living Dead and therefore a ridiculous number of zombie movies, comics and tv shows. Party Beach features silly looking monsters, a surprising amount of gore and is generally pretty dumb.

Guess which movie has infested my imagination?

Yeah.

The monsters in The Horror of Party Beach are atomic fishman zombie vampires, mutated sea anemonies that have somehow animated human skeletons. The costumes in the movie are inspiring. Inspiring like – “I’ve got a better idea!” So over the years I’ve done a few illustrations featuring redesigns of the critters. The following gallery collects a sampling of the best of them.

I’m not the only person to have put way too much thought into making these beasties look cool.

This is Dope Pope’s Horror of Party Beach Gallery. My icthyozombies are meant to be odd combinations of oceanic life in humanoid form. Dope Pope’s design is streamlined and naturalistic. I applaud his results!

Story Seed #36

The Memoirs of Doctor Fu Manchu

I like Fu Manchu. Not Fu Manchu as he has been depicted. That Fu Manchu is a horrible racist caricature. There’s a version of Fu Manchu in my imagination who has a much more interesting story than the one presented so far.

My direct exposure to the character is limited to his appearances as the main villain (and father to the main character) in the Master of Kung Fu comic and to his appearance (as portrayed by Boris Karloff) in the movie The Mask of Fu Manchu. I’ve haven’t read the original novels. I haven’t watched any of the other films. The Fu Manchu in Master of Kung Fu is a villain who got tiresome due to repeated exposure. He showed up and got defeated. Over and over. The Fu Manchu and his daughter, Fah Lo Suee, in Mask are the only characters having fun. I like to see villains who enjoy their work.

By the time I saw Mask I’d also gotten an education in European/Chinese relations, particularly in the imperialist villainy committed by European nations against the Chinese. Fu Manchu’s gripes against the British had historic justification. Having the British characters mostly be portrayed as smug assholes didn’t help me sympathize with them. And knowing that, at the time the movie was filmed, I was expected to sympathize with their smug assholishness really doesn’t help me sympathize with Western imperialist culture.

Fu Manchu is a genius. He’s lived many lifetimes. He’s a scientist and a mystic. He’s a man of his word. He’s got his own secret cults and organizations. He’s got loyal and treacherous family members to aid and oppose him. Imagine the stories he could tell. Imagine how those stories would read if told from his point of view. The name Fu Manchu is still trademarked by the Sax Rohmer estate but the original novels, and therefore the character himself, are in public domain. One could write a novel from the Good Doctors perspective. One probably couldn’t title it The Memoirs of Dr. Fu Manchu without getting into legal trouble with Rohmer’s lawyers.

And, in this, the second decade of the 21st Century, one couldn’t publish The Memoirs of Dr. Fu Manchu without getting a lot of flack from the audience. One could write a brilliant, aware and nuanced portrait of the character and a lot of folks would be pissed off. The name, Fu Manchu, calls up all the prejudice and ignorance of “Yellow Peril” fiction, of “yellowface” performances, of Orientalist fantasy and propaganda. Some characters are products of their time and cannot be revived or reformed. Not by a European writer, no matter how well intentioned. It’s a bad idea.

If there were Asian fans of Fu Manchu, one of them might be able to write the character without being reviled. If. I’ve done quite a few online searches but the only praise I find for the character comes from white guys.

Other Newsletters

Abundance Insider by Peter Diamandis proviides a regular sources of good news about technological advances in the world. Too often our news is a litany of disasters so it’s refreshing to get word of things that are going well, that give a glimpse of an improving civilization.

Lifestuff

I hope you and you and everyone you know are doing well. I’ve got a skewed picture of what’s happening because I’m still working. I don’t have any more to time to look at the news than I did before the crisis. Mail delivery is considered an essential service. So I go to work. I keep my distance from other employees while I’m putting my route together and then the job continues like it has for years. I didn’t see many people during the day before. I don’t see many people now. I keep a greater distance if I have conversations with customers but the conversations are no shorter than previously because they were never long before. When I’m working I’m trying to get done.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay sane. See you next week!

Horrors at Party Beach – Color

PartyBeachHorrorColor

Dear teenagers,

If you must party at the beach (or in the woods or some other secluded spot) be sure to bring plenty of weapons. And salt. Because salt works on demons and bloodsucking atomic fishman zombies birthed by atomic waste. Even though said fishman zombies were birthed in the ocean. Salt water is apparently not as salty as salt. Go figure.

Affectionately,
DLI

Horrors at Party Beach – Black and White

PartyBeachHorrorBW

I saw The Horror of Party Beach about thirty years ago. Probably more. I’m pretty sure it’s not a good movie. The monster costumes are pretty ridiculous.

https://youtu.be/tOS31j9dtoA

But the idea of the creatures has stuck with me. Bloodsucking fishman zombies created by atomic waste. That’s neat!

So I’ve been drawing versions of the creatures over the years. My versions have always had teeth where the original movie costumes had … sausages? I understand that those blunt objects were probably supposed to be horrifying fangs but … they are blunt objects. The creatures are supposed to be some sort of vampires. How could they drink blood with those?

And then I thought – lampreys!

Lampreys are bloodsucking eels that are vaguely shaped like the Party Beach monsters’ teeth. Let’s just pretend that the movie makers intended that all the along; they just didn’t have the budget to reflect that in their costumes.