Wayback Machine: The Super Kids League!!

No it's not the Justice League, and it sure as hell isn't Teen Titans Go (good grief, I hate that show!!). It's not even the Legion of the Super Heroes but if you guessed if they inspired it, you'd be pretty close!  Ladies and gentlemen, dusted off for the first time in three decades, is an original drawing of some super teens that I came up with back when I was a teen myself... (drumroll please)... THE SUPER KIDS LEAGUE!!

Here they are, as they looked back in 1980-something... Wonder Kid, Inviso-Kid, Colormatic, Thundercloud, and Wombat, just to name a few... my new favorite is the one at the top, center.... Flame Boy (think "Human Torch") with his hand tea-potting on his hip with just the right amount of Fabulosity.... if that's really a word (I doubt it).

I mean, the work is all very derivative... if DC or Marvel had a hero that did something, I made my own version of it.  I actually designed two sets of heroes back then... Laughing Lad (top row, right) was in both leagues.  Of course, for all the things I loved to create, I never really took these works to the next level... I did actually start a comic for Zippy, the borderline inappropriately named boy speedster.  It was to be a secret origin tale where he (and untold others) gained their powers from a tremendous glowing meteorite that lands in the woods behind his house.  He later meets up with Inviso-Kid and become anti-bullying champions.  That book, along with many others, lay filed away and unfinished.  For years, I berated myself for having so many unfinished pieces of work, but I've since learned their purpose.  They were all skill-developing endeavors.  It was a big problem to start a project, only to find that your expertise and style were now much better than when you started.  It would have been too much to go back and start everything over... so I took them as far as I could at the time and moved on.  In the end, I became a better artist.

It just so happened the other day, that I was cleaning house, and as my mind normally does, it wandered on to something a little more entertaining than vaccuming, and it just so happened that these heroes came bubbling up to the surface of my mind.  Suddenly I was plotting out what could be the makings of my next full comic.  One never knows... this is really a good sign.  I did post recently about balance in my activities... the more these things work their way to the surface, the easier it will be for me to choose what comes next!

Oh... so that people don't think I totally, totally abandoned these kids to time... here is a rework I did a few years ago... luckily I had the good sense to file them all together so that I could find them.  I wanted to know what these heroes would look like if I drew them today.  I avoided all manner of "Hollywood rewriting" and instead just drew them with today's skills - minus the hands... I totally admit I rushed the hands to get the below drawing done.  As they came to life on the paper, the pencil nearly ran away from me with excitement to see these guys again after so many years.  I could almost see them animating themselves on the page.  It may be time to reboot Reflex Comics!!

My First Book??!!!

And so, here it is, my first anthology of sorts, documenting 20 years of cartooning the Hairyer Parts Universe.  What??  Twenty years??  Where could the time have gone??

I won't deny that the dream of being published has always been in mind, but doing the work of actually producing a book, when one sets out to do it, is actually a LOT of work.  I actually can't say it's my first book if you count that I've created a handful of comic books ahead of this publication, and I can say first hand, making those comics were a LOT of concentrated, hard work.  That aside, this really is my first softbound collection, a restrospective of sorts.  I actually started editing it about six years ago, and it got shelved for one reason or another.  It was a momentary, passing thought the other day, that I needed some kind of prize to donate to a Mr. Connecticut Bear basket raffle.  I said to myself, "Why not create a Hairyer Parts basket?"  So you know me, I can't do anything with half effort; I decided that any basket of mine was going to need products, and no product like an actual book.  So I went back to my original project, dusted it off, and looked at the date of the very first drawing.

1995.

<Momentary pause>

I first doodled the face that would become the lead character in my bearishly inspired universe on some unknown day in 1995.... which means it's totally appropriate to label the book as a 20th Anniversary Collection.  The strip that eventually became "Hairyer Parts" first debuted in the Northeast Ursamen's "Bears & Hunters" newsletter two years later in 1997, which means the series remained in development for two years.  There was a lot of trial and error in those early years.  When I stop and look at where I started, as compared to where I am now, I realized that perseverance was the key, all along, to making a good book.

It feels a little unusual to put something like this out, directly for sale, especially when I've spent most of my energies working for charitable means.  I pause to remind myself, that aside from the few cartoon prints that I sold more recently, I've never made any money off of my work.  A large percentage of it has been donated to auctions, raffles, or advertising campaigns, all of which have gone on to make thousands of dollars either for charities or community organizations (and I mean, THOUSANDS).  When you look at it that way, if I end up selling a couple dozen books and making a few bucks off of them, I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about it.  There is this other philosophy that gets into how artists need to think in terms of what they are really worth.... it's something I ought to get better at, so in that spirit:

If you've ever enjoyed my cartoons, please go buy my book here!!  Follow the link to get a preview.  Share and enjoy :-)

Priorities....

Sometimes it takes dramatic events to help you gain a better perspective.  Recently a friend of a friend passed away, at much too young of an age.  Our conversation drifted over to, of all things, never knowing when your time is going to come.  My thoughts went to something that's always been on my mind... that I have so many things that I still want to do.  My friends response was brilliant:  then you set priorities.

I remember being a tender young age of 19, and like most young adults, I wanted the world.  My mother was recently single, I was getting closer to finishing my degree in Computer Science.  I was in the middle of a college co-op, when I got the idea that I wanted to do a summer abroad.  I really felt like this was the one time in my life that I would have the chance to do something as crazy as going to Europe for a summer.  Meanwhile, I was commuting to school with an old beat-up 1976 Buick Skylark, and it was really on it's last leg.  So my mother says to me, as most good mothers would, as I'm blabbing about wanting to go to Europe, "You need that car to get to school and work.  Set your priorities."  So what did I do?  I made BOTH the new car, and the trip abroad, a priority.  I used my full-time co-op pay to qualify for a new car loan, and I continued working after the co-op term was done, and banked as much cash as I could.  I ended up with a new car, a two month stay in Munich, and enough credits from the summer to put me within grasp of a double major in both German and Computer Science. 

But... priorities.  I guess I am no stranger to filling my plate, reorganizing, and then filling it up again.  It's not always a winning strategy.  Case and point, Spookybear of 2013, the Heroes & Villains party.  I very much wanted to remain in retirement from my volunteer life while I sorted out what I wanted to do and when.  Of course, I wasn't going to say no when asked for help.  I basically art-directed the whole thing, which ended up with a larger than-life comic book on the walls of the night club, custom animations, a well-photographed ad campaign, and more.  But in the end, I broke under the strain of the work.  Even now, the recovery of my ongoing neck and shoulder issues continues at a slow pace.  I'm getting there, but not as quickly as I'd like.  So unfortunately, my time at the drawing board has been minimized.

Priorities. 

I started this blog as a way to express a lot about who I am as a creative person, but of course, I am so much more than just a creative person.  I try to make some tie-in's as I write and as I share.  But I suppose a year off from the drawing table meant I also ended up taking a year off from this blog.

So what's really important to me?  The art?  Volunteering?  Building things out of plastic bricks?  Throwing charitable bar parties?  Teaching people tracking and how to tie knots?  Making music??

Well, you know.... all of it is important to me.  Maybe the key word for 2015 will be one that I became more aware of in 2014 thanks to a new job:  BALANCE. 

Below is a cartoon I made of our current Mr. Connecticut Bear, which was raffled off at our Lumberjock party at the beginning of the month.  It's also my first real finished piece of work in many months.  Hopefully it will be one of many more to come in the next year.

How To Draw Cartoons - Syd Hoff

From a very young age, I've been into comics strips, animated cartoons, and comic books.  I would spend hours in the school library reading Peanuts books by Charles M. Schultz (more on him later).  And Saturday morning was not Saturday morning without the Superfriends.  I want to say it was around first grade that I saw a book at one our school book fairs that I had to have.  It was Syd Hoff's "How To Draw Cartoons", a how-to book for kids.  I remember that my mother didn't really want me to have it.  I think she would have rather had me get something I could read, to improve my reading skills.  I must have pleaded my case effectively, because after a couple missed opportunities, I finally went home from a school book fair with this book.

I think from the moment I learned how to use a pencil, I began to draw, but when I took ownership of this book, I turned my attention from drawing cityscapes to drawing cartoons.  I spent hours with pencil, paper, and my new how-to book.  Now, instead of reading Charles M. Schultz, I studied his work.  At times, I imitated him.  I imitated Syd Hoff and his style too. I know I probably wasn't a very good cartoonist back then, and I don't really know that I'm that great now, but I would have to say, if there was one book that changed my life, it would be Syd Hoff's How-To book.  It helped me discover a lifetime of pleasure and relaxation as a cartoonist.  I suppose the drive was always there, and it probably would have come out somehow, but I guess Syd gets the credit for being the one who showed me how to get started.

Recently, I was going thru my collection of how-to books, art books, and other toon-related things, and realized that I lost this book long ago.  Thanks to Google and eBay, was able to locate it a copy of it for just a couple dollars.  So history repeated itself... I had to have it.  It's now on its way to me.  I can't wait to get it and leaf thru it again.  It'll be fun to see the images again that started me down my journey as a cartoonist.

Dusting off the Copic Markers

Dug out my Copic markers today, and I'm happy that they haven't dried out after all this time! I can tell I'm a bit rusty but its good to be drawing again!!

Adam & Andy

One of my favorite web comics is Adam & Andy by James Asal, Jr.  I had the pleasure of meeting him when I was cartooning HairyerParts for the Northeast Ursamen, and I am lucky enough to own an autographed copy of his book.  His comic is a slice-of-life strip featuring two hunky gay guys.... something a lot of us can appreciate.  James was super-friendly, and very encouraging of my endeavors as a cartoonist.  Please check out his work, and get yourself a copy of his book - it's so important that we support our gay talent and gay businesses.  I just wish more people could see his work - it's really good!

Hairyer Parts

In the spirit of trying things out, I created a Google+ page for my cartooning site, Hairyer Parts.  It's been so long since I've edited that website, it's really time for a hard reboot of the Hairyer Parts Universe.... with my 4-year presidency of the Ursamen at a close, and a very major project at work winding down, I will finally have some free time coming soon.