Work In Progress Part 1

Early stages of a work which will eventually become a dayglow blacklight lenticular.

More rare Dr. Strange stuff

Got these in the mail recently. Superaventuras Marvel #2 and #6 from Brazil. Love the weird re-drawing of Frank Brunner's Dr. Strange Vol. 2 #1 on the first one. The second comic is in bad shape on the spine, but both of these are reprints of the classic Marvel Premiere Dr. Strange run from the early 70's and the covers were too neat to resist... Gotta love how they call him Dr. Estranho there!

Superaventuras Marvel #2

Superaventuras Marvel #6

Also a recent arrival is this issue of Spider-Man Weekly from the UK that reprints the classic Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 story, illustrated by Steve Ditko with a cover only printed in Britain:

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #23

Finally, my wife's Valentine's Day gift to me was an unopened box of Spider-Man The Animated Series Valentines from 1998! These are actually quite rare, and I've been looking for a set for years.

Front of box

Back of box

Art show tonight at La Luz de Jesus Gallery

LALUZAPALOOZA, the annual group show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, features two of my art pieces including my drawing "198 Memes". Opening reception is tonight (March 1), and the show will be up until the 31st.

Dr. Extraño!

Collecting everything Dr. Strange includes finding foreign printings of the Dr. Strange comics first published in America. Especially appealing to me are covers that are unique to that country and not just the original cover with a logo in a different language (although I have many of those as well!)

Some of the hardest ones to find are issues of the vintage Doctor Extrano series that was published in Spain from publisher Ediciones Vertice. The series ran 14 issues and featured original art on the covers never published in the USA. A few were painted re-creations of the American covers done by unknown Spanish artists, others were original works, and all of them had that surreal beauty that made these things one of my grails to track down in the last few years.

These books are rare as hen's teeth, even in Spain. I've never seen one ever listed on eBay, and when my friend visited Barcelona two years ago, he found one copy of one issue in a comic shop and the owner wanted £200 for it. I told him to pass.

Luckily, this year I finally managed to track down the entire series! Their condition isn't mint, but that's not super important to me. They all have black and white interiors and measure about 8 inches long and 6 inches wide. Similar to Manga comics in size and binding actually...

So, without further ado... A gallery of DOCTOR EXTRANO!

Doctor Extrano #1

Doctor Extrano #2

Doctor Extrano #3

Doctor Extrano #4

Doctor Extrano #5

Doctor Extrano #6

Doctor Extrano #7

Doctor Extrano #8

Doctor Extrano #9

Doctor Extrano #10

Doctor Extrano #11

Doctor Extrano #12

Doctor Extrano #13

Doctor Extrano #14

I also found some reprints of the second solo Dr. Strange series published by Mundi Comics:

Mundi Comics #53, reprinting Dr. Strange Vol. 2 #1

Mundi Comics #56: Cover never published in America!

Here's a more recent Spanish reprint of the Strange Tales series from the 90's. This one uses the cover from the "Dr. Strange: Through The 6 Dimensions" book, which has never been used on any comic in the US:

Capa Y Punal (Cloak and Dagger) #12

Finally, a Marvel promotional magazine from Spain:

Marvelmania #3

 

More Dr. Strange foreign covers are on their way and I'll be sharing more in the next few weeks.

Hand drawn Ipsissimus

Just like in the last post, I decided to add another digital collage, Ipsissimus, to The Picture of Everything. Since everything in TPOE is drawn by hand, this piece had to be as well. Here's the result:

Here's the separate layers of drawings I made to compose the final piece:

Hand-Drawn Meme Mandala

When I completed the Meme Mandala Digital Collage in April, I thought it would be a great addition to The Picture of Everything. Unfortunately, everything in TPOE needs to be hand drawn, which is why I ended up drawing the 198 memes, as seen in a previous post. That was only part of the story. I then had to draw and modify the background elements and arrange them in Photoshop.

Here's the Mandala level:

 

Here's the various frames for each of the memes:

 

Borders and border elements:

 

Background: A fiery sun!

 

And finally... The completed image!

Meme illustrations

The Picture of Everything 2012 Detail

A scan of the work so far

The Picture of Everything 2012

Polybius!

I had heard about the Polybius urban legend for years: The video game that caused you to go insane if you played it and was some sort of government mind control experiment in the early 80's. (Here's the Snopes dismissal of the game as a hoax, and pretty good summations of the conspiracy theory surrounding the thing via Cracked.com and Know Your Meme)  It was even referenced on an episode of The Simpsons.

Well, there's some amazing (and consistent) hoax(?) emulations of Polybius that have surfaced on You Tube within the last few years:

The first one I encountered takes you through all the levels of gameplay in about 9 minutes. The next one slows down all the subliminal messages so you can clearly see them. I watched them both and this is my opinion:

If it is a hoax, obvious love and care was attached with making it seem as realistic (and trippy) as possible. (DON'T WATCH THESE THINGS IF YOU'RE EPILEPTIC!)

The other fascinating videos I found are ones that take you through the "Higher Functions Option" menus of the game! (Here's another one and Another one)

By entering code 35, 34, 31, 54, 12, 24, 45, 43, you get to see the various series of hypnotic suggestions that could be put into the minds of anyone who played the game and modified accordingly. Here's some samples:

Great stuff!