Howard Hallis Amazon front page

Another page you can get to randomly by going to www.howardhallis.com is my Amazon.com design. Get to it directly by CLICKING HERE or on the image below:

Schrödinger's Cat Cube #1: Heathcliff and Garfield

I've started a series of 15 lenticular 3D cubes. Each cube will feature 2 cats. Each cat will get 3 sides of the cube. One side the cat will be alive, one side the cat will be dead, and one side the cat will transition between life and death. This is based on the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment and will feature some of the world's most famous cats. Depending on how you roll will determine their fate... and what cat you get!

Here's cube #1, featuring Heathcliff and Garfield.

Confession Bear

 

Got it for $100 less than it was listed for, but still think it was too much for a stupid card.

Nevertheless, I think I can eventually sell the complete set for more.

Card on the left is common, there were 100 made of the red one, 50 of the blue one, and only 10 of the green one.

TONIGHT!! BLACKLIGHT SHOW AND MAD HATTER REUNION @ THE ECHO COUNTRY OUTPOST IN LOS ANGELES!

Saturday, February 15th. $5.00. Echo Country Outpost. 9pm. Blacklights! Special guest stars! Be there!

 

Sam Abraham Lego Set

A Lego set I made for my girlfriend. Happy Valentine's Day!:

 

 

Pilot Wave

Although I'm not an Atheist, I thought an image of Albert Einstein riding the Flying Spaghetti monster hurling Schrodinger's Dice with Heathcliff and Garfield on them was a cool image to draw. To see a 3D lenticular version of this image, CLICK HERE.

On casting Dr. Strange

Since the person who will play Doctor Strange in the movie(s) is likely to be cast soon, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents as someone who has loved the character and would like the films to succeed both for personal financial reasons (since I have one of the two largest collections of Dr. Strange comics and memorabilia on the planet), and for the love of the history and uniquely psychedelic nature of Marvel's magical realms.

Marvel is great with incorporating how technology works in their movies and comics. People can see how Iron Man could be possible. They can even see how concepts like genetic mutation, unstable molecules, Adamantium, Vibranium, Gamma Bombs and Super Soldier Serum can work, but magic has not been their strong suit.

Marvel has not really had magical elements come up yet in their movies. Thor and his band of "gods" are not seen as "magical" in nature, but are explained as interdimensional aliens with much more advanced scientific understanding in terms of how they perform their feats of wonder. Even with The Scarlet Witch set to debut in Avengers 2, her powers will likely be seen as a mutation (since she is a mutant) rather than actually performing as a "witch".

In terms of magic, DC has a much longer history of how magic integrates with their characters. Dr. Fate, their universes Dr. Strange (who was combined into Dr. Strangefate in the 90s when Marvel and DC did a series of crossovers called the Amalgam Universe, just to completely geek out for a minute), first appeared way back in May of 1940. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee never got around to creating Dr. Strange until Strange Tales #110 hit the stands in July 1963. The early adventures of Dr. Fate are very similar in nature to early Ditko/Lee Dr. Strange stories: He would fight magical beings from other dimensions with magic. No science. Magic. Spells, invocations and stuff.

Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison also greatly expanded DC's magic universe. Timothy Hunter was a bespectacled boy magician with a pet owl years before JK Rowling created Harry Potter. And Morrison's The Invisibles introduced ritual chaos magick into the same space-time as Batman and Superman.

DC also had Alan Moore creating characters for them like John Constantine, who is a badass in comic form. (Sorry Keanu Reeves. You're a great Neo and Ted, and you were awesome in that Kelloggs commercial, but you were totally miscast in Constantine. It should have been Sting circa 1982, right around the time he did Brimstone and Treacle).

Marvel doesn't have a John Constantine, Invisibles, or Timothy Hunter. Doctor Strange, more than anyone else, has to fit that bill. That's why the movie is so important. If Marvel wants to move past Ghost Rider and Blade as their only supernatural franchises, this will be their greatest possible hope.

To me, the ideal Doctor Strange would be either Vincent Price or Ronald Colman, but since they have long since passed on, we need to get past that notion until digital technology will allow us to bring dead movie stars back to life.

As far as living actors go, my first choice would be Daniel Day Lewis. He can play anything and looks awesome with a moustache:

He's never been anywhere close to being in a superhero movie, and people would go just to see him do it.

As for my second choice. It would be Johnny Depp. Sure, he's a bit over-saturated with franchises, but I'm confident that his time spent with Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary can bring the psychedelic element the character needs to life better than any other actor of his caliber and status. Plus, he was in a movie with Vincent Price, so he has that going for him as well.

Third on my list is Jack Huston. He's the guy who played Richard Harrow (the dude with half a face) on Boardwalk Empire. Great actor. He was recently seen rocking a Dr. Strange-like 'stache in American Hustle:

 

As for Jon Hamm... I like him, but think he's wrong for the part. Can you really imagine Don Draper saying "By the Winds Of Watoomb, by the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!" without cracking up?

Same goes for Patrick Dempsey. I know seeing McDreamy go from a fictional surgeon on Grey's Anatomy to a fictional superhero who once was a famous surgeon in Dr. Strange would sort of make sense, but it just doesn't bring that psychedelic essence to the plate that Stephen Strange needs.

It was really Steve Ditko's outlandish renderings of the Dark Dimension and beings like Eternity that set Doc apart from all the other original Marvel characters created in the Silver Age. I really hope Marvel/Disney choose an actor that can look at home and believable in those kind of worlds.