Fathers Day...

I had an idea for a WW2 era Captain America and Bucky drawing. I loved those Kirby issues where the acrobatics were part of their character. They worked as a team facing all obstructions. I also tried my hand at inking in solid bold strokes kind of like Chic Stone. His inking was so solid that Jacks figures just leapt off the page. I did this drawing on spec. Maybe someone will buy it, as I still have until the end of the month to hand over the money to my friend in need. Anyway it is inked, on 11x17 plate finish strathmore board. 

This is a version of the above colored with the limited palette of the old comics industry. I have been playing with different ways to color my images in prep for deciding which way I want to color 'Solo Flight' when I get it all done. 

I did this Creature on spec to start off the commissions, and it sold....thanks David....I had never drawn a creature before, except when I was a kid I tried it a few times after seeing the movies. My favorite Universal monster as when I was a kid I was a big fan of scuba diving. Loved all the shows like Sea Hunt, Aquanauts, and the movies like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I ended up getting my aqua lung license and doing some diving in some off time in the service. Last real dive I made was in the East China Sea many years ago. Couldn't do any of it now a days, but I do fondly remember it. Deep sea adventures and space stuff were high on my list of kid dreams.

This was a commission I knocked out this past week also, from a friend who used to game with a small group I was part of a few years ago. He was rereading the first Burroughs' Mars books and wanted a shot of John Carter. When I was a kid I was always a bigger fan of the Tarzan stuff than the Mars stuff. And that has kind of carried over. I tend to not draw John Carter but this was one of the first I had ever done, and finished to this stage. I guess access as a kid is a big thing...there were the great Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, comic books, and the novels. I always enjoyed the mars books, just preferred the jungle adventures. I would think in todays world, off world adventures is the next frontier. When I was a kid Africa was still mysterious, not that it still isn't...just we have taken some of it away. 

So on this father's day I would like to salute my dad. We had our differences for sure. But I never really got to know him. He died when I was young. But that made him more of a legend in my eyes than ever. He was a mystery to me, but he was my dad. I spent a good deal of my life as a diesel mechanic because of his ghost. I wanted to be as good a mechanic as him. Hell I wanted to be able to anything as good as he could. But I never made it. I was a good mechanic, but I was never a builder like him. I felt he could do anything. He built a swing set for me and my brother when we were kids, and that swing set still stands today. I imagine that when the world is finally blown apart in some horrific event that a chunk of earth will float off into the cosmos with that damned swing set still intact. So happy Father's Day to you dad...and happy father's day to my sons who are fathers and doing a better job at it than I ever did.