Artwork
“Got it, thanks!” Bob finished talking on his phone and put it away. “Okay, so that was my friend Matt, the artist. He’s agreed to make us a new poster for the show for free if we allow his signature to be large enough to be read as part of the design.”
Jack shrugged. “Hey, if he’s willing to do it for free, he can make his name bigger than mine on it!”
- Jack Magic: Believe Your Eyes
STUFF AND JUNK I DREW
Above left: The earliest drawing I still have, a picture of The Beatles after watching them on The Ed Sullivan Show. I think I only saw them because I waiting for the Muppets. Above right: My entry for Starlog Magazine's Pinball Backglass Contest which was published in issue 31, cover dated February 1980. It's low resolution because I sent them the original and I don't have a copy. This may be the first Oz picture I ever did, note that the characters are a space princess Dorothy, a cyborg Tin Man, a cowardly Lion Man, a zombie Scarecrow, a werewolf Toto and a little alien Munchkin with antennae. The original illustration was in full color.
Above left: Illustration of my favorite TV heroes that was published in Fandom Directory #19 (2000-01 Edition). Above right: Illustration of Author and actress Robin Lamont. Behind her are images of her character from the movie Godspell.
Two poster-sized pictures I did for my friend Dawn Goodson. Above left: Illustration for mynerdgirl-dot-com (the link for the page is no longer working) featuring Dawn in a "cheescake" pose. She was a MySpace Girl of the Week for G4's Attack of the Show. To put the picture in context, Dawn is about to hang up an LED sign of an Aqua Teen Hunger Force character. There was a guerrilla marketing campaign in 2007 where dozens of these were posted in major cities and caused a bomb scare. You can read about that here. Above right: Dawn is a major Trek fan so naturally I had to make a poster celebrating this. I tried to include every major cast member and recurring character from Star Trek The Next Generation. It was only after I finished I realized I had left out Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett). I'm still kicking myself over that.
Above left: The Official G.I. Joe Club had a contest to design a cover for their newsletter/magazine. My entry was an "honorable mention" and was used for the February 2011 issue. I tried to include G.I. Joe characters from every era, from the 1970's Adventure Team through the 2009 movie and 2010 Renegades TV series, as well as foreign versions and crossovers like Street Fighter and Sinbad. Above right: Cover I designed for my 2016 Amazon Kindle Worlds G.I. Joe novel Makeover Monday. Kindle Worlds was a program that allowed authors to write about established franchises such as G.I. Joe, Wayward Pines, Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars and others. My plan was to write five books for each weekday in homage to the G.I. Joe animated mini-series of the 1980's. I only got to two before the program was abruptly ended on 2018. The books planned were Makeover Monday, Totally Tubular Tuesday, What Big Lies You Have Wednesday, Throneback Thursday and Forever Endeavor Friday. I used time travel to let the G.I. Joe characters from different eras meet each other. I've been asked if I could rewrite the series to take the G.I. Joe elements out and replace them with my own but most of it was so specific to the toys and animation that it would no longer make any sense, especially since two of the characters had names that were anagrams that revealed their true hidden identities. Perhaps one day if I become a successful enough author Hasbro might seek me out to finish the story (ahem). It was going to be epic! No, really!
But seriously, I do have an idea for a separate stand alone book paying homage to G.I. Joe that I have been toying with, a single book of short stories that span centuries and connects to make one narrative. The tentative title would be called S.T. George vs. DRAGON.
Above left: Poster done in 2020 as a benefit for Bill Bowman AKA The Bowman Body, a Richmond/Petersburg television icon who hosted a funny horror movie show over many decades. I imagined him having his own vintage Aurora monster model kit. The blank space at the bottom was for his autograph. Above right: Another contest entry, this time to Image Comics. They were accepting submissions in 1995 for a new superhero to join the team of their Youngblood comic book. This is Jenny Arcade, a computer generated virtual heroine. Jenny didn't win, they chose Kia, created by then 14-year old Glenn Lewis. The character appeared a few times in the series and then got killed off. There was supposed to be a trading card and an action figure made of Kia but...well...nope. Hey, at least I still own Jenny Arcade if I ever decide to revive her.
THE OFFICIAL MARVEL COMICS TRY-OUT BOOK
The Official Marvel Comics Try-Out Book was an oversize book originally published by Marvel Comics in 1983. The book was in the form of a contest encouraging up-and-coming comics creators to try their hand at getting a job with the company. The winner would be awarded a professional assignment with Marvel. SPOILER ALERT: The promised book with work by the winners never saw publication.
These are photostats of my original pencil entries to the 1983 Marvel Comics Try-Out Book. The concept was to do page layouts based on the script they provided. Some of the art makes me cringe (like what's up with that awful upside down Spidey on page 2?) but some of it isn't too bad. I like how the split panel of Spider-Man talking on the phone with Dr. Octopus turned out. The problem was that I was used to drawing things flat out and "winging it" at the time, instead of doing light pencil layouts, getting it right, then doing the bolder stuff. I erased that bad first Spider-Man so many times that I thought I'd leave a hole in the sheet, and I didn't have any extra sheets from that book to re-use. And what's up with the lady pushing the elevator button with her gun?
The original script said to "go crazy" with the factory sequence so since Cabbage Patch Dolls were hot at the time that's what I went with. I just wish I had gone into much more detail.
The younger version of me did not really expect to win but in a parallel universe an assistant editor contacted me and asked if I wouldn't mind submitting artwork for a Howard The Duck fill-in story.
IT FIGURES COLECTOR'S GUIDE
Back in the 1990's I self-published a guide to 3 3/4 inch G.I. Joe Collecting that I sold through Toy Shoppe Magazine. You have to remember this was back when the internet was still small and crude and there were not a lot of resources available. I ended up selling a lot of copies. I followed that up with a guide to the G.I. Joe animated series and from there it evolved into the It Figures Collector's Guide. It was just a Xeroxed fanzine but it got more elaborate as my skills with Photoshop and (the now-discontinued) Adobe Pagemaker grew. The best part of this endeavor was connecting and making friends with a large number of fans in the United States and other countries. I was even an official "influencer" toward the end, Hasbro actually sent me early samples of toys to review. It was a lot of fun.
TOYING AROUND
Yes, I'm an avid toy collector, so it was fun to contribute artwork to a couple of real action figure projects. Above are mock-ups for a 2016 proposed modern expansion of Mattel's Big Jim line. I based the artwork on the original Jack Kirby styled packaging from the 1970's. Since Big Jim started out as a sports based personality I gave him sports related villains. Notorious N.O.C. was inspired by the episode of Seinfeld where Puddy was wearing face paint (DEVILS!). Unfortunately it turned out the person behind the project didn't actually have the rights to the character. Whoops! Well, I suppose I could always change the name to Big Bad or something similar if I ever chose to pursue it again. Below you can see real product samples I helped create for Super Joe Unlimited, based on Hasbro's Super Joe series also from the 1970's. Here I tried to emulate the art style of Mike Hinge whose designs were used for the superhero/space themed line. For legal reasons the current line has been rebranded as Adventure Command and Astro Command and figures and accessories can be found at White Elephant Toyz website and the My Vintage Toys & Trains store on eBay. Check it out, the people involved brought a nearly forgotten action figure line back from oblivion and it improved it!
KID CTHULHU
These are some of the illustrations I did in 2017 for my writer/producer friend Theo Lemasters as a TV network pitch for a Kid Cthulhu TV series, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Think of it as a mash-up of Scooby Doo, The Power Rangers and The Evil Dead. I'm proud of the logo I created for this project, mixing children's building blocks and a freaking tentacle.
TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE
Left: Pencil drawing circa 2003 of the cast of the TV series Max Headroom.
I really like the way it came out. Not sure if it was talent or luck.
Maybe I'll revisit this again someday. You never know.
THE RAINBOW CONNECTION
Above left: Rough color pencils I drew on my birthday in 2020 of the Oz characters that I planned to put in Jack Magic: P.A.R.T.Y. Above right: Five years later, the revised official "pencils" for the characters to be used on the cover of my next book.