2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 12: Another Batman one already? Yes!

What can I say? I watch a lot of Batman.

Most of the comics and cartoons I've used in this series have been oldies. I've had them saved to my hard drive for a while and just wanted to post them to this blog for posterity before deleting them from my computer. But today's cartoon is brand new and written especially for this project. A couple of days ago, I saw an ad for a Batman Unmasked action figure and thought, "What if Bruce Wayne walked around looking like that? Would Commissioner Gordon finally figure it out?" Honestly, he might not figure it out even then. Neil Hamilton's version of the character is a pretty dim bulb.

The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar, Day 5: The infinity of the depths of a man's mind

Timothy Farrell delivers one of the great lines in movie history.

One of my favorite moments in the entire Ed Wood canon occurs about 10 minutes into Glen or Glenda (1953). Some context first: Inspector Warren (Lyle Talbot) visits the office of Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell) to try to understand why a local crossdresser, Patrick aka Patricia, committed suicide recently. The policeman thinks the doctor might have some special insight into the case after having assisted in several prominent sex changes. Alton agrees to share some knowledge with Warren, but says he must talk about two very different kinds of cases to make his point. Inspector Warren says he'd like to hear the story to the fullest.

Until now, this scene in Glen or Glenda has played like a rather dry documentary or perhaps even an educational film for bored schoolchildren. We have two somewhat dull, middle-aged white guys in suits, both authority figures—representatives of Law and Medicine, respectively—chatting politely across a desk in one of those offices with cluttered bookshelves in the background. Ed has covered this conversation in a staid, conventional manner: mostly mid-shots of actors Lyle Talbot and Timothy Farrell, with occasional two-shots of both men.

But at this point in the conversation, Eddie does something very interesting and wonderful. He punches in for a dramatic closeup of Timothy Farrell, who addresses the camera (and the viewer) with a strange intensity: "Only the infinity of the depths of a man's mind can really tell the story." Wood lingers on Farrell's unsmiling face for a few seconds and lets the shot go out of focus before cutting to stock footage of lightning, which then dissolves to a scene of Bela Lugosi as The Spirit. In a trice, we have been transported from the world of documentaries to the world of dreams.

I've often said that Glen or Glenda serves as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of Ed Wood's career, and this scene with Dr. Alton is a good example of what makes him special as a writer and director. That line—"the infinity of the depths of a man's mind"—really shows you how Eddie thought. He loved words that refer to a vast, unquantifiable expanse. Along with "infinity," Ed used "oblivion," "never," and "eternity" again and again in his writing, especially his short stories and novels. Glenda has another beautiful example when Bela mentions "the endless reaches of time." If you want to think like Ed, think big. And vague.

Some time ago, I decided to commemorate the "depths of a man's mind" scene with some fan art, and for Day 5 of my Ed-vent Calendar, I'm sharing it with you now.

Some fan art of Timothy Farrell in Glen or Glenda.

Another roundup of comics parodies by Joe Blevins

Remember these?

Well, folks, it's that time again. The long-running comic strip Mary Worth has just wrapped up another glacially paced story, so I figured it was time to do another assortment of comics parodies, takeoffs, and spoofs. I've accumulated quite a few of these over the last few months.

Is it already time for another comics roundup? Apparently.

Yep. In colors. Plural. We're going all out here.

Look. If you read this blog, you already know the deal. Occasionally, I like to clear off the images I have saved to my computer and start fresh. Specifically, these are various parodies of newspaper comics that I've done over the last couple of months. That's what this is. Not into that? Then this isn't the article for you. Move on to something else.

Random cartoon time, gang!

For a while, there was an outbreak of mismatched hands in comic strips.Victims included Mark Trail and Wilbur Weston.

Happy day after Labor Day, everyone! And guess what? I have another backlog of comics and cartoons I want to delete off my hard drive, so I'm dumping them all into one big post here at Dead 2 Rights. Enjoy or don't. It's your call. Either way, after today, they're gonzo.

Let's light this candle.

Ed Wood extra: A smattering of Ed Wood fan art

Four of my portraits of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

A typical early cartoon (1989)

I used to draw an awful lot as a kid. That's not surprising, since I've been obsessed with comics and cartoons since well before I can remember. My only real "instruction," though, was in grade school. At my alma mater, Springview Elementary in Flushing, MI, we'd spend a couple of hours each week in the art room with a glum, mustachioed guy named Mr. Barnes. My strongest memories were of him yelling at me for leaning back in my chair too far. I never studied artwork formally after that.

But on my own, I'd create little homemade comics and cartoons, strictly for my own amusement. I started with established characters like Popeye, Garfield, and Hagar the Horrible. (For some reason, I was always writing gags that involved quick-drying cement.) But by the time I was 11, I was creating my own characters, eventually including Iffy the Troll, Margin Man, and Vernal Q. Equinox, plus a monstrous rock band called The Apple Scruffs, who allegedly killed a fan at every show.

Sometimes, I'd pass my work around in class. Among my earliest "hits" was a series called Moscow Vice, a Russia-set parody of Miami Vice with two burly Bolshevik cops named Crockski and Tubbnik. I also got a strong response with The Melties, a comic strip about a family made of drippy candle wax. Every Melties plot was the same: the family would try to do something (play baseball, have a picnic), but they'd melt in the sun and end up as puddles of goo on the ground.

I kept drawing into my teens and beyond, never keeping a sketchbook but scrawling on whatever random bits of paper came into my hands. Most of my work was in pencil or ballpoint pen on notebook paper, but I'd write on napkins, gum wrappers, the backs of form letters, etc. It was more of a nervous tic than anything else. I drew pictures instead of biting my nails.

By then, most of my drawings were caricatures of famous people—actors, musicians, historical figures—and modeled after photos. I subscribed to Rolling Stone in the '90s and always did drawings of the celebs in there, generally rock stars. But I'd draw my own weird little monsters and grotesque human figures as well. To this day, I have two thick binders of this material.

As you might expect, I did some Ed Wood-related drawings over the years, and I'd like to share them with you today. First up are caricatures of Johnny Depp and Martin Landau as their characters from Ed Wood. Also included here is a little picture of the real Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931). The Lugosi pic was done on a different piece of paper and then cut out.

Johnny Depp and Martin Landau: (inset) Bela Lugosi

Next up are two portraits of Edward D. Wood, Jr. himself, done completely separately but based on the same photograph from Glen or Glenda, as published in Nightmare of Ecstasy. The one on the left is in color, though I used a very messy charcoal pencil for the black background and immediately regretted it.

Two views of Ed Wood from Glen or Glenda.

My most ambitious example of Ed Wood fan art is this wonky triptych based on that much-circulated headshot of Eddie in his theater days. These portraits were done completely separately on different pieces of notebook paper, then taped together. I believe these were done in the 2000s when I was commuting to Chicago from the 'burbs by train. Those Metra trips leave plenty of time for nonsense like this.

An Ed Wood triptych

That about does it for the hand-drawn stuff. These days, I do most of my artwork digitally. It's still just as crude and wobbly as ever, but I don't get ink or graphite on my hands anymore. Plus I can tweak it and try to make it better. Some of this stuff I've already posted on the blog, but I thought I'd put it all in one place. Here's a mischievous Eddie as Mr. Murphy in The Love Feast (1969).

Eddie in The Love Feast.

In a similar vein, here is Eddie in Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970), squinting at the camera through his makeup.

Ed Wood in Mrs. Stone's Thing.

And here is bulldog-faced Duke Moore in Night of the Ghouls (1959). As you can see, this one is a bit more cartoony and distorted. I once thought of creating brand new artwork for every article in the Ed Wood Wednesdays series, but that proved impractical.

Duke Moore in Night of the Ghouls

Here's another actor portrait: craggy, ill-tempered James Craig in Venus Flytrap (aka The Revenge of Dr. X) (1970).

James Craig in Venus Flytrap.

My most recent portraits of Ed Wood include this regal purple one, again based on the same photo from Glen or Glenda. I must be really drawn to that picture, huh?

Ed Wood in Glen or Glenda.

And, last but not least, here's Ed as Alecia in Take it Out in Trade (1970). I hope you've enjoyed this little gallery of Ed Wood fan art. Crude as these are, these sketches and portraits are a testament to my longstanding fascination with Eddie and his movies.

A portrait of Ed Wood from my "blue" period.

Dave Foley, ladies and gentleman! Dave Foley!

Can you identify which skit this is based on?

On the train trip to Indiana for Thanksgiving last week, I started making a digital portrait of Dave Foley from Kids in the Hall. I don't know why. Just seemed like a thing to do. Since then, I've worked on it for a few minutes at a time here and there. Eventually, I realized I was never going to finish it. There's a whole background I was going to do that I didn't do. So here's the part I got finished. Enjoy. Or don't.

As a bonus, here's an unfinished portrait of one of Dave Foley's influences, Jack Benny. Why I chose this moment, some kind of press conference, to represent Benny, I don't remember. I do know that making all those little microphones was more trouble than it was worth.

Jack Benny takes questions from the press.

Everybody's a critic: Why the Cubs made me think about Flebus

Ain't it the truth?

I did this during tonight's Cubs game. It was a rough one, and I needed to relieve some stress. I apologize. You will forgive me, I hope. I guess I was trying to remember what the protagonist from Flebus (1957) looked like. Have you seen Flebus? It's a short cartoon by Ernest Pintoff and Gene Deitch. The title character was drawn in an abstract, minimalist style that was considered pretty hip by 1957 standards. After I finished this, I did a quick Google search and learned that Flebus looked nothing like I remembered. But, anyway, I thought it would be funny if there were a creature who had the same basic body shape as an abstract cartoon, but more realistic flesh and teeth and eyes. I really don't know what the point of all this was, to be honest.

For Herschell...

Artwork inspired by Herschell Gordon Lewis

We lost Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, yesterday. He was 90, so his death was hardly unforeseen. But, still, it's a less interesting world without him. I first saw his two most famous films, Blood Feast and Two-Thousand Maniacs, back in the VHS days when they came packaged with lurid, eye-catching covers. These were unlike the horror films I had seen in the past. The violence was outrageous, bloody, and right out in the open. No editing tricks or dim lighting to mask things here. I was shocked, scandalized, and enthralled. I rented them again and again.

Later, I found what an impact Lewis' movies had on John Waters and became even more of a fan. A former college professor with a varied writing resume, Lewis was an extremely funny, articulate man who gave great interviews and commentaries about his own work. Something Weird Video brought a lot of Herschell's films back into print and gave them nifty special editions. I feel like I learned a lot from those. Nuanced his films were not. Those looking for plausible plots, believable acting, or deft storytelling need not apply. But for those looking for pure, raw aggression against humanity, Lewis' films were heaven sent. I loved them to pieces. The artwork above is my modest tribute to the splatter king. RIP, HGL.

Ed Wood extra! Some "utterly stupid" fan art for 'The Revenge of Dr. X'

So Utterly Stupid: James Craig as Dr. Bragan. Artwork by Joe Blevins.

"How in the hell can anybody be so utterly stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?"

If there's an immortal line in the Ed Wood-written screenplay for The Revenge of Dr. X (aka Venus Flytrap and numerous other titles), that's it. And a big part of what makes that line great is the over-the-top way it's delivered by apoplectic actor James Craig as the harried Dr. Bragan. Over the Labor Day weekend, I found myself stranded in a motel in Indiana with very little to do for hours at a time. For some reason, I had a hankering to rewatch Dr. X. I don't think I'd watched it all the way through since reviewing it for Ed Wood Wednesdays.

Anyway, that experience of revisiting the film inspired me to create a bit of Revenge of Dr. X fan art. There's surprisingly little of that. Maybe this will inspire more. I worked on that portrait of Dr. Bragan for a few minutes here and there over the course of the weekend, starting Friday and finishing today. Enjoy it or don't. Up to you.

Spirits from the vasty deep

A Pink Flamingos family portrait, modeled after a Diane Arbus photo (right).

What's in my filing cabinet.

Probably the oldest thing I have in my apartment, other than what's in the refrigerator (that's a joke; my fridge is empty), is a large gray filing cabinet that I keep in my bedroom/home office. It's an ugly, ungainly monstrosity that dates back to, I'm guessing, the 1950s. There's nothing elegant about it. In fact, it has sharp metal corners that have injured me several times. Why do I keep it around? I don't know. Sentimentality, I guess, though I can't say for sure where the cabinet came from or how it came into my possession. I used to have two of them, but I threw one out. So what's in the one remaining filing cabinet? Junk, mostly. Old CDs and VHS tapes take up the top three drawers. The fourth is filled with manila folders, containing assorted papers from the late 1980s and 1990s.

I was more of a pack rat back in the '90s. I was also more fanatical about my pop culture obsessions: Rocky Horror, They Might Be Giants, Spinal Tap, John Waters, Phantom of the Paradise, A Clockwork Orange, "Weird Al" Yankovic, etc. I still like all that stuff, but I'm not a rabid collector the way I used to be. I have a few thick folders of newsletters, postcards, and clippings related to They Might Be Giants, dating back to about 1988 or so. Nowadays, I barely keep up with TMBG. I think I've skipped their last two or three albums, something that would have been unthinkable to my teenage self. I haven't seen them in concert in god knows how long. Sixteen years at least. Yikes.

What happened? I dunno. People get older. Ardor cools. Adulthood calls. There are bills and dental appointments and shit like that. The Internet killed a lot of my fandom, really. When I started out as a TMBG fan, it was hard finding their stuff. I had to go to out-of-the-way record stores to locate EPs and singles. Press coverage was minimal, so I obsessively clipped every magazine and newspaper article I could find. That was oddly rewarding to me. Now, with just a one-second Google search, I could find more information about TMBG than I could ever hope to get through in a dozen lifetimes. Yawn.

But every once in a while, I get the urge to go through that filing cabinet and rifle through my grunge era memories. Today I went through my personal John Waters archives. Mostly, it was articles I'd photocopied at the college library. There was a mid-1990s Polyester Odorama card, too, and it very much retained its original smell. To a fault, you might say. The oddest, most personal find was a bit of fan art I'd apparently started and then abandoned about 20 years ago. It depicted the cast of Pink Flamingos posed as if they were in a Diane Arbus photo. Drawn in pencil on fragile typing paper, it was badly faded and barely visible. You can see it at the top of this post. Other than making it darker so that it shows up on your screen, I've left it as it was back then. It reminds me of the person I used to be, the one who would do crude fan art while watching VHS tapes of his favorite John Waters movies.

For no reason at all, a portrait of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

A devil-may-care Eddie in The Love Feast (1969).

This took a while, surprisingly. Longer than it should have. I'm sure this portrait of Ed Wood probably could have been accomplished in Photoshop in about five seconds, but I assure you, all those little blobs of color you see up there were done one at a time, painstakingly, over the course of a few hours. Yes, hours. During that time, using a small, grainy still of Ed as my only reference material, I spent quite a while contemplating the man's face. His appearance was pretty badly ravaged by 1969, thanks to all those years of alcoholism and professional rejection. I found some colors in his face that should not be found in human skin: grayish-brown patches with a hint of green and blobs of deep burgundy. A man's face should not match the carnation pinned to his jacket.

And yet, there's also something of the satyr in Ed's demeanor, even at this point in his life. There's a spark of playfulness in his eyes and his smile. Hopefully, I captured that. Either way, I can tell you that Ed's spotty necktie was a nightmare to capture, as was the shrubbery next to him. Tragically, I had to crop most of the shrubbery so that the pic would fit on this blog. The full version is here.

Incidentally, the title of this piece is A Chubby Angel With Gin Blossoms. It's a reference to the Overdrawn At The Memory Bank episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Here's another Wood portrait, this one based on Eddie's role in Mrs. Stone's Thing.

Ed feels pretty. Oh so pretty.

Sometimes, you just have to draw Orson Welles in Microsoft Paint

Sorry to do this to you, Orson.

Sometimes, when I am very, very bored or short on inspiration, what I'll do is open up YouTube and Microsoft Paint at the same time and draw my interpretation of what's on screen. My time limit is however long the video runs. When it's over, I'm done. Ready or not. It's a simple, stupid game that helps pass the time and calm my nerves. What I like about it is that there's (generally) not much time to concentrate on little details. You get the essence of something and move on. So today, I was doing that with a 1962 interview with director Orson Welles on a British TV show called Monitor. He was already getting heavy by '62, and he looked sweaty, tired, and uncomfortable while talking to the host about Citizen Kane for the bazillionth time. But he got through the interview anyway. Something about that struck me as interesting, so I made the picture you see above. Hope you enjoy it. Either way, have a nice day.

Aaaaaaaand it's another 'Marvin' parody, but first a WARNING!

"Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen." Artwork by Joe Blevins.

Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are about to show you yet another parody of Tom Armstrong's long-running comic strip, Marvin. Although we have brought you comic strip parodies and remixes in the past, including ones of Marvin, we felt obligated to warn you that this one is different. It contains... a word, ladies and gentlemen. And not just any word but a word which many people find offensive. That word, ladies and gentlemen, is poop. Not only is that word used in the strip, it is used with abandon, over and over again. The effect, we are afraid to say, is quite disturbing. So if you are someone who takes offense at the word poop -- or if you are the parent of a young or impressionable child -- we ask that you and the child leave the auditorium for the next 60 seconds. Read further if you must, but remember -- we warned you.

In five years, this is what a real Marvin strip will look like. Except he'll say "shit."

Some Ed Wood fan art: Duke Moore in 'Night of the Ghouls'

Some rare Duke Moore fan art.

Originally, I had planned to do more original fan artwork to accompany my Ed Wood Wednesdays pieces, but it never panned out that way. I do, however, have this one attempt at a moody, black-and-white portrait of Duke Moore as he appeared in Final Curtain and Night of the Ghouls. It's the same footage in both movies, so you can decide whether this is Curtain Moore or Ghouls Moore. There's just something about Moore I like, and I tried to capture that here. Enjoy.

The (continued) dark side of Mark Trail

Ha! It's funny 'cause somebody probably died!

I don't know why I find the comic strip Mark Trail so endlessly amusing. It's one I used to read as a kid, and even then my appreciation was ironic. Nowadays, I keep up with it through Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon blog. For the uninitiated, Mark Trail is a nature writer, adventurer, and outdoorsman who travels around and gets into life-and-death scrapes while doing research for undoubtedly boring articles. His employer is a publication called Wood & Wildlife. Almost always clad in a tan jumpsuit and sporting immaculately Brylcreemed hair, Mark is simultaneously the squarest, dullest, and manliest character in American newspaper comics today. Here, we see him chatting with his equally-boring editor, Bill Ellis. They're so humorless and straight-laced that it's almost too easy to make fun of them. But I do it anyway. Forgive me.

Mark Trail, you old smoothie

What works for Mark and Cherry can work for you, too!

I remember, don't worry...

Well, he remembers. He remembers. Don't worry.

How could I ever forget? It's the first time, the last time we ever met.

Tommie

Tommie, look at me! Tommie, over here!

If you already know who Tommie is, no explanation is necessary. If you don't already know who Tommie is, no explanation is adequate. Either way, there is no point in my annotating this image any more than I already have.

Must... not... kill... family!

The product of utter boredom.

I love my family. Really I do. But they can be a major pain in the ass, if you dig what I'm burying. I'm writing this post on a Kindle from a sad, grungy motel somewhere in Indiana. Why? Because it's a holiday, that's why. 

What? Your family doesn't get together for Memorial Day because it's not something anybody does? Well, please tell that to my family. Instead of going home on Friday and enjoying some much-needed R&R, I got on an Amtrak train to Nowheresville, Indiana. It's not where I grew up, mind you. It's just where my sister and her family happen to live. 

For reasons I'll never quite grasp, my physical presence is expected on pretty much all major and minor holidays, not just Christmas and Thanksgiving. This is mainly due to my elderly father, who makes me feel incredibly guilty if I skip a holiday. As much as I enjoy seeing my family (for a few hours, anyway), I've come to sort of dread holidays in general. These trips are expensive, uncomfortable, inconvenient, and boring. The train trip is about four hours, starting from Chicago, but it feels like a small eternity. And then, once I get here, there's never anything to do. This goddamned room doesn't  even have a working TV set! 

And I don't typically go to bed at 8:00 on a Saturday night. That misshapen sketch up there, which I think started as a portrait of Neil Young before mutating into a monstrous old cowboy, should give you some indication of my degree of boredom. I'd write more, but typing on a Kindle is a stone drag. Bottom line: pray for my deliverance... and maybe ask your congressman if we can't get rid of a few holidays.

UPDATE: I  wrote the paragraph above when I was in a pretty crummy mood. In truth, it can be fun seeing the family. But I still think we get together too often. And there really is nothing to do in Indiana. The TV's still busted, in case you were wondering. Going home tomorrow... just in time for the holiday weekend to be over.