Monkey & Bird continues at CO2 Comics! Take a look at the latest cartoon fun from Tina & Joe HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘humor’
Telecommunication! Monkey & Bird Continues!
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Don’t PANIC!!! Monkey & Bird Continues!
Friday, August 13th, 2010
Monkey & Bird is BACK at CO2 Comics! Read the latest from Tina & Joe HERE!
As a bonus, have a look at the sketch for this panel before it had all of those pixels slopped over it:
Swamp Things
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010Before I start this entry, head over to CO2 Comics’ Blog NOW and read Gerry Giovinco’s history of DUCKWORK. He fills in some of the enormous gaps left by my own meager history of PCA’s semi-official student paper. His entry comes complete with embarrassing photographs!
It was 1982, and DUCKWORK was a dead duck, but one of the ex-Ducks decided to have a party. Being that I talked incessantly about film and had mentioned the cinematic efforts of Plague Productions more than once, somebody suggested a film festival. I could bring my reels and we could fill the rest of the evening out with commercial films which were mainly released in 8mm format by a company called Castle Films. They weren’t the entire film. They were more like highlight reels that told the story in a greatly condensed form.
I had some horror films like The Mummy and House of Frankenstein. I think Matt Wagner had some of the old Batman serials from the ’40s; Bill Cucinotta brought some reels, and there were a few other things to pad out the bill.
So it was decided. The kids were going to put on another show. Matt decided to hold it at his apartment which was among some student housing in a tenement-like building in the 1400 block of Spruce Street. It was a large apartment that Matt shared with two or three other roommates and it, and it was called The Swamp.
Matt also did me the honor of drawing this poster for the party.
It was a good time. I think we projected the movies against a wall or a bedsheet. The place was packed. My movies got a good response as did the other movies. We all laughed hysterically at the Batman and Robin serial. I think the version of The Mummy is my favorite although it was heavily condensed. This 8mm version had sound and the picture quality was terrific. It was edited very well and felt like a poetic dream projected large in that apartment. Boris Karloff’s sonorous voice sounded especially eerie beckoning a lost lover from across the seas of time. Great stuff.
For me, it felt like the last hurrah for the DUCKWORK gang. DUCKWORK was done, but the Ducks were still a fairly tight group. We still saw each other in classes or in the halls of PCA or got together when we weren’t buried under an avalanche of school work.
Next time: Wrecking Ball
Girl Talk
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Monkey & Bird by Joe Williams and Tina Garceau continues at CO2 Comics! Read the strip here!
Mommy Dearest II: The Revenge
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
While I was looking for sketches for my abandoned opus Gomer Pyle Goes to Viet Nam, I found this sketch for another possible DUCKWORK strip. This was either going to be Mommy Dearest II: The Revenge or Joan Crawford Has Risen From the Grave. Obviously, Joan’s adopted daughter was going to get it EC Comics style in retaliation for penning her famous tell-all. Don’t mess with willful and driven Hollywood Stars even after they are dead!
DUCKWORK’s Swan Song: The Party’s Over
Monday, July 19th, 2010It was 1982.
Issue No. 6 was the last issue of DUCKWORK. I am not sure of the reasons why, and I’m hoping that Gerry Giovinco does his history of the paper because he was directly involved with the nuts and bolts and all of the behind-the-scenes issues involved in publishing that student paper. Me – I was a clueless freshman who hung out, handed in 3 installments of a strip and irritated everyone with a constant stream of movie trivia and trivialities. I know money was an issue as always. The school was playing musical deans at the time, and the old guard was going out and the new one coming in, wanting to make changes. I know that everybody was trying to get their academic act together. The workload was tremendous particularly for the illustration majors. Time was a precious commodity. What was the sense of working on a school newspaper if you were going to flunk out of that school? Crack those books! Write that term paper you’ve been avoiding!
After issue No. 6, I was proceeding with the idea that there was going to be future issues and was working up ideas for other strips. I was going to continue my trend of mocking classic and sub-classic television programs and started to work up sketches for Gomer Pyle Goes to Viet Nam.
I found these sketches in an ancient, GBC-bound sketchbook. I don’t know why, but I must have been using an 8-H pencil at the time. These drawings were so light they were practically non-existent. I had to really play with levels in Photoshop to get something to show!
Anyway, Sargent Carter having heard one too many “Golly’s” and “Shazam’s” seizes on an opportunity to ship Pyle off to South East Asia. Carter figures Pyle won’t last a day and he’ll finally be rid of that lumbering lunkhead forever! Of course, just like the TV show, nothing works out Carter’s way. Pyle sees action and gets blown to bits. He is shipped back to the old Sarge in a small crate. Carter opens the crate finding a basket case Pyle still alive! Naturally it ends with a deliriously grinning and quite mad Gomer Pyle shrieking, “Soo-Prize! Soo-Prize! Soo-Prize!”
Maybe it’s a good thing DUCKWORK ceased publication.
The story was based on/ripped off from one of my favorite comics in my collection – Weird War Tales. Comic companies had done so many variations of war and Western comics, why not offbeat ones? In the cover story, the GI buys a talisman from a shaman. The shaman promises the American that he can not die as long as he wears the talisman. The soldier figures that he has just got an incredible bargain. The problem is that the talisman only keeps the wearer from dying – not from harm. He ends up at the end of the tale in a wicker basket hoping that somebody will remove the talisman thus granting him the sweet release of death. John, my older brother, bought it, read it and threw it to me as he always did at the time. He may have read it and forgot about it. I obsessed over it. The cover is etched in my mind. I still have it. The comic had the Comic Code seal meaning it was safe for kids, but it gave me the willies!
Eventually word came down that the school was not going to fund any future issues of DUCKWORK. Gerry thought we could keep it going by selling advertising space. That’s what regular comics and newspapers did! There were ads in previous issues for art supply stores, small shops and cafes. We would just have to dedicate more space in the paper for advertising. The problem was that the Ducks would do the selling. Not everyone can be a salesman. Making a cold call to a little shop is tough. I was miserable at it. I think the cheapest ad was $15 for placing a business card on a page. No bites. The other Ducks were equally successful. It was dispiriting. Who wanted to go from store to store, door-to-door just to be rejected? Besides who wanted their place of business associated with comics about cannibalism, necrophilia and over-sexed water fowl? Showing potential advertisers copies of the paper was a deal killer. An inept sales staff and the utter lack of time caused by the crush of school work amongst other commitments meant that DUCKWORK was a dead duck.
I think Comico was starting to come to life. Gerry Giovinco, the driving force of DUCKWORK, had much bigger fish to fry than a little school newspaper. He was on the precipice of independent comic history!
Gerry will hopefully clear up the timeline in his column over at CO2 Comics.
Anyway, the plug was pulled. The DUCKWORK sign came off of the door of the tiny office on the 13th floor. I remember passing it a few times and trying the knob. Locked and unoccupied. DUCKWORK was dead. Nothing else came in or was started up to fill the breach. No other paper was started up. Not even mimeographed typewritten dispatches! No other Spanky McFarlands came forth to declare that he was going to put on a show. The party was over.
Next Time: Epilogue Part II!
Down In Space It’s Always 1982
Friday, July 16th, 2010
1982 and the my second semester arrived at PCA after a lengthy winter break. The second semester wasn’t as bad as the first. It was still the Foundation program that all freshmen had to go through, but it wasn’t as baffling or mind numbing. We continued drawing from models in drawing class; started doing actual figure sculpting in 3-D, and moved into color theory in 2-D which was fascinating. God help me, I was starting to enjoy it.
I didn’t live on campus and took a bus into Philly from my parents’ home in NJ. There were people I hadn’t seen in a month and it was nice being reunited. I soon found myself back on the 13th floor seeing what the Ducks were doing.
Of course, if I did live on campus, I may have met my wife, Tina Garceau. She was in her second year there at the time, and although we had probably passed each other in the hallways a thousand times, I never met her. She claims she remembers me, but I don’t really remember meeting and speaking with her until we were both out of school. Like two ships passing in the night.
Uber-Geek in Zombie makeup circa 1982
There was a pretty good chance that she would have run away screaming if she did meet me back in PCA. I guess things all worked out for the best.
So what about a new issue of DUCKWORK? We kicked around some ideas. Gerry Giovinco wanted another unifying theme similar to the previous issue. At the time, EC comics were being reproduced in expensive hardbound volumes. Some of them were circulating around the DUCKWORK office and we all marveled at the work of Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, etc. This gave us the idea of doing a spoof of the old EC horror and crime comics. Being a big horror fan, I loved the idea. We kicked around some more ideas and decided that the unifying theme would be The Philly T-Square Massacre!
DUCKWORK No. 6 jettisoned the notion that it was a school newspaper and the majority of its 12 pages was filled with funnies most of which all tied into the T-Square Massacre theme! Gerry Giovinco’s Star Duck spoofed The Empire Strikes Back; Bill Cucinotta’s Punk Duck taunted the mysterious T-Square murderer: Matt Wagner spoofed Death Wish; John Rondeau did Tales of Suspense; Nickie Boston’s and Anna Miyaji’s Spineless Wonder was offered a good deal on a T-Square by a street vendor; Andrew Maltz was Thinking; William Bryan’s Cat Man was meanaced by T-Square-Headed Sharks.
…and, of course, The Brady’s Last Vacation came to a gratuitously violent and tasteless conclusion. It was a two-parter.
Sheesh! All I can say is thank God for digital lettering!
Well, it wasn’t the greatest work I’ve ever done, but I had TWO installments in that issue of DUCKWORK, and I was a full fledged Duck! If they had a private crapper, I would have had a key! I had ideas for future strips that were going to be bigger and certainly better drawn. DUCKWORK was going to be bigger and better. It was going to be great!
But sadly it was not to be. Issue No. 6 was Duckwork’s Swan Song.
Next Time: Epilogue
No, You’re Out of Order!
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
After I started posting my experiences with DUCKWORK, I had found this issue from April of 1981 stuck inside the pages of a later issue. This is the second issue of DUCKWORK.
I was still in high school when I picked this issue up. It must have been when I went to interview at PCA. I went with my Father and I brought a portfolio stuffed to overflowing which included drawings, mechanical drawings, paintings, photography and an 8mm projector and movie screen in order to show the interviewer the 8mm opus The Huns which I directed. I was afraid that I would be rejected so my Dad and I figured that we would bring in everything including the kitchen sink. Well, we didn’t bring in my baby pictures, but we thought about it. Little did I realize I had little to fear from rejection. I’m pretty sure that if you walked upright and could legibly sign your name, you were in. I kind of got that feeling when the interviewer said, “Oh, and you got good grades, too. Nice!”
This issue was a 12-pager with only 3 pages of comics. Gerry had a full paged adventure of Star Duck. The others were Amazing Comix, Sick Pup Funnies, Cliches Illustrated, and a tiny 3 paged comic that’s a little hard to make out in the copy I have.
There’s also a special shout out from Gerry to Evan Nurse who was a Junior Duck at the time.
I must have picked it up at the front desk, and 29 years later, here it is again!
After the interview, my Dad and I decided to make a day of it in the City of Brotherly Love. We ditched my portfolio and took a long walk. We ended up traipsing up the Parkway and went into the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Dad was born and bred in Philly, and it’s something he used to do in his youth. He enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
Dad at the PMA long before our walk there.
I wish I had a tape recorder to capture Dad’s roving commentary at the Museum. It was hysterical! I’m laughing and getting a little misty-eyed as I’m typing this.
Don’t miss our thrilling conclusion: DUCKWORK’s Swan Song!
Naked Lady Falling Down The Stairs
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
DUCKWORK No. 5 came out in November of 1981, and I think this was the last issue of the year. Mid-terms were coming up and everybody was going to be way too busy to squeeze out another issue before winter break.
It was the 16 page Sex Issue complete with centerfold which was a ducky spoof of Botticelli.
Star Duck latched on to the orbs he was admiring in the previous installment; Punk Duck got a shovel and made like Ed Gein, and the movie poster plumbed the esophageal depths. There was also Spineless Wonder, Peter the Prick, After the Fact Comics, and my first contribution to the pages of DUCKWORK, the first installment of The Brady’s Last Vacation.
In the story, America’s favorite television family, the Brady’s, crash land in the Andes and are forced to eat Alice. The brief description is a lot funnier than the atrocity I committed with my brand new set of Rapidographs to a perfectly fine piece of bristol. Oh, well. You had to start some where, and it was my entry into the pseudo-fraternity that was DUCKWORK! There was no hazing or alcohol poisoning involved and nobody whacked my butt with a paddle. All I had to do was turn in a crappy cartoon!
We were having fun and that’s what counted. They were heady times in the DUCKWORK office. Comics and movie magazines like Prevue, Fangoria, Starlog and Cinefantastique littered every surface. Frank Miller was in the midst of making a name for himself with his run on Daredevil and the sword and sorcery genre was poised to conquer the cinema as Conan the Barbarian was soon to be released. I was looking forward to the big screen barbarian, but I was really charged up about the teaming of Stephen King and George Romero for the horror film to end all horror films, Creepshow! It was an exciting time for a comic nerd, and it was an exciting time being a Duck! There was an “Our Gang “ feel to the whole escapade, and Gerry Giovinco was Spanky McFarland inviting us kids to put on a show!
I’m not sure who Alfalfa was.
To be continued…
Does Head Cheese Taste The Same Coming Up?
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010DUCKWORK No. 4 – October 1981
If I hadn’t done so earlier, this was the issue that convinced me to venture up to the 13th Floor and drop in on the DUCKWORK offices. Gerry’s cartoon of a vomiting duck placed in front of a halftone of the school building at Broad and Pine cracked me up – duck puking! HAR! HAR! Vomit cartoons are funny! – and also made me ask, “How’d he do that?” I didn’t even know what a halftone was at the time and wondered how he mixed his cartoon with a photographic element. Nowadays it’s easily done digitally, but back then with stats, Rubylith and board work, it was a lot more of a hassle!
Again, I don’t remember how things exactly transpired, but some time late in 1981, I was up on the 13th floor meeting Gerry Giovinco, Bill Cucinotta and some of the other ducks. These guys LOVED comics, and we could talk about them for hours on end and did. It was amazing how much time could be whiled away in the tiny, cubbyhole-like office on the 13th floor. We certainly talked more about comics and fantasy movies which were exploding at the time than we did illustration or, God forbid, art. DUCKWORK was a respite from all of that. It was a haven safe from window screen sculptures and pages upon pages of ruled pencil lines.
DUCKWORK No. 4 had 12 pages! It had news, an editorial, a serialized story, poetry and plenty of comic strips including the continuing adventures of Star Duck, Punk Duck and another movie poster spoof.
DUCKWORK No. 4 also had a notorious record review of the band Head Cheese by Kyle Skrinak. I’m hoping that Gerry or Bill chime in on this because I am fuzzy on the details. For some reason this band was well connected to the school. Head Cheese sold copies of their album for $3 at the student services office and the school’s art supply store (think Soviet bread line). Well, Skrinak writes his review, and it ain’t pretty. It did make me laugh out loud when I reread it, but I didn’t think it was as vicious as legend had it. This was the era when Creem magazine was regularly disemboweling music acts in their pages. Besides, we were in art school. Wall “crits” were a lot harsher than what Skrinak was dishing. It didn’t matter. DUCKWORK had to apologize.
I never cease to be amazed by the internet. A search turned up a Head Cheese video! Who knew they made a video? This is for a song called Jungle Jam which Skrinak referred to as “…the coup-de-gras (or poop on the grass) song…” Take a listen and a look and let me know if the Ducks had anything for which to apologize.
Pretty rough, eh? Of course, this is back when people thought Liquid Sky was a great movie and also thought performance artists were making “powerful statements.” This was par for the course at the time.
Further research shows that Head Cheese changed their name to Book of Love and were a successful synth-pop band in the club and dance scene. Their songs appeared in the movies Silence of the Lambs and Trains, Planes and Automobiles. They toured with Depeche Mode. Who knew?
MP3 downloads of Book of Love’s music can be purchased here. They do an interesting remix of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.
When we meet again, I promise to get back on subject! To be continued…
