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AAC August issue, vignette 4

July 12, 2016
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The final vignette concerns Santa Claus’s psychic tussle with a mysterious menace who appears to be Native American. This staredown may have only one survivor.

There was more to my cover design than the four drawings I’ve posted. I embedded them in a template that includes the masthead/logo of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS, and I also added a title and subtitle at the bottom, reading “SUMMER ALBUM ISSUE/featuring SPEED CAMERON, SANTA CLAUS, and their Friends & Foes.” Since AAC is Russ’s brainchild, I’ve encouraged him to make any changes to my drawings, design or title that he wishes. I frankly don’t know how the finished product is going to look–but I can hardly wait to find out.

AAC August issue, vignette 3

July 11, 2016
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The story so far in Vignette 3: That despicable canine cad, Archie Wawa, has used cuffs as coercion to shanghai June Monsoon into a milkshake date at the 5 & Diner. Archie appears, and is, unpleased at the arrival of June’s friend and champion, Speed Cameron.

NOTE: The 5 & Diner is a popular 50s-style soda-fountain-type diner, variously located in the Valley of the Sun. Pictures of James Dean, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Life Magazine cover showing a movie audience wearing 3D glasses, and loads of other memorabilia festoon their 16th Street/Colter location. My daughter Kate and I have been known to pop over there for cherry Cokes and burgers in the middle of the night, though it’s been a long time. I wish I were there right now.

ANOTHER NOTE: These images of vignette panels I’ve been posting were not scanned, but badly photographed for expedience’s sake on the day I sent Russ my cover design. I know Russ and his superstar colorist brother Kyle have a challenge ahead of them, finishing and colorizing my design, but they will be working from the scanned originals and not these unholy photoimages, thank Goodness.

tone in tone

July 7, 2016
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2016-07-07 09.15.46

Last night I finished the design of the cover of the August issue of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS, meeting my self-imposed deadline of midnight by 20 minutes. Now I can go back to this stuff. [smiles]

This edition of this stuff is in a way a blast from the past. It finishes a drawing I’d begun while still the front desk clerk at Sedona Winds, a year and a half and a lifetime ago. The acrostic poem was created today.

tone in tone

tenacity is sometimes silent
oboes, faint but not pianissimo
nudge silence aside for satisfaction
entreating the listener to drowse

Note that there is the mildest violation of my arbitrary Acrostic rules: the last line does not go through the n of In, the middle acrostic word. The last n of Entreating would have fit perfectly, but the text would have been too squeezed.

On this page I wish my brother Harold a happy 64th birthday. This is a first. “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

abs ORB ent (allotrope burden sailboat)

June 30, 2016
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It is the last day of the month. It is my personal superstition that to do things on the last day of the month is to increase the probability of their occurrence on other days. (This also applies to the first day of the month.) So I have cooked and cleaned a little, and, though my heart wasn’t in it, having received two reminders of things over and done with, I’ve created this minimalist acrostic/image card. Abs is for abdominal muscles; Orb is for that “cold-hearted orb that rules the night;” Ent is for that singular creature of J.R.R. Tolkien’s invention, a humanoid partaking of a tree.

An allotrope is one of at least two arrangements of the same atoms in differing array. A burden is represented here as a pack mule loaded down with another’s possessions. A sailboat is often delightful.

Watson and Crick were the scientists who found that DNA, the stuff of life, was double-helical in form. Even Linus Pauling, supernally brilliant as he was, didn’t deduce that.

photo

I have a feeling of deja vu. Have I done this acrostic before?

 

feather weather

June 23, 2016
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20160623_103233-1

fields epithelial and fallow
elevate onward, windborne
and though unpossessed of persona
there is a seeming d e l i g h t
hopping hastening hopscotch
even a waltz-rhythmed dance
raising the sight of the Viewer

Epithelial cells comprise feathers.

Cold Read

June 22, 2016
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2016-06-22 11.41.58

“Cold Reading” is a method of fakery by purported psychics. The late, great Orson Welles did his share, and here describes both how it is done and how it is dangerous for the cold reader, who starts to believe the power is real:

 

And here are my few words, acrosticizing the subject:

Cast a spell to curl the hair
Oust some devils on a dare
Listen for the lost & bad–a
Daughter’s message 2 her dad

Jones/Kelly

May 23, 2016
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2016-05-23 12.18.23

I am really proud that this one exists. First, I had cards but no pencil or pen. I went out of my comfort zone and asked a fellow train waiting person if she had a pen or pencil. The sweet, thinnish, abuelitaesque lady handed over a pen, refusing payment. (Before we got on the train I wrote THANK YOU and my signature, so at least she has a Thank You card.)

On the ride to work I first did JONES on the left side, KELLY on the other. Then I wrote and then drew as fast as I could scribble, with no photo source nor other reference material-just me, the card, and a ballpoint pen I’d just met.

Wotds:

Just a nod 2 2 exceptional folk

O for a punch/line–pray tell us the joke

Nothing so doing-got nothing 2 sell

Effortless focus has set for a spell

Spirit then rises swellingly–GRACE & GRACE live (d) tellingly

slow, please; stop, please; turn around, please

May 4, 2016
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2016-05-04 15.03.53

slow, please; stop, please; turn around, please

optimism needs to be on a leash
for if not
it is unleashed
and what-the-hell holds sway

a man runs for president
and he is famous for his infidelities
and his bankruptcies
and he wrote or had written the art of the deal
and he seems near-identical to the uncaring jerkmeisters
catspaws of the corrupt bank-executive predators
whose fraudulence brought down the 2007 economy
and who got off scot-free

there is vast proof that he lies constantly
and his supporters say “ah well,
all politicians lie”
while he brands an opponent “lyin’ ted”
schoolyard bully style

many years ago there was an english rock band, the who
who did a song called “won’t be fooled again”
but the last line was “meet the new boss,
same as the old boss”

gaaaah
reason and logic may once more fail to carry the day
because there are neckless optimists with distractive shotguns
and a bedrock-solid sense of entitlement
who think letting the fox run the henhouse is a great idea
and will make america great again

brushwork

April 25, 2016
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Friend, you can’t spell Brush without RUSH. If you can make your brush sing the way B. B. King made his Lucille sing, you are blessed. From the tortured ecstasy of Vincent to the Spatterday Night Fever of Pollock, Brushwork reflects the soul.

Bristles UP! Look out below
Releasing pigment we will go
Unleashing swath-razed ribs of color
So Life & Surface are unduller
Have havoc on a ferruled track
Hew HUE & CRY-EYE back 2 back

Go thou and do likewise, Friend. Brush up and have YOUR Brush With Destiny!

spotty lights

April 19, 2016
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slicing darkness we despoil
poison taints our alveoli
overcoats & furs & bling
tee times free of Vijay Singh
tame the land & blame the rest
yes, we flunk the Ethics tests

Questions? Comments? Requests to stop repeating myself?