Chalkboard Drawings: The “JLA, Part One” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

Thrift Store Finds: HPB quarter bins

I did a little digging in my Half-Price Books’ quarter bins recently and pulled out about $6 dollars worth of DC Comics from the recent past.

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Superman #165 (DC Comics)

This week we’ll be looking at Superman #165, published in December of 2001 by DC Comics. The book was written by Jeph Loeb and was something of an all-star “jam” issue featuring a who’s who of popular superhero comic artists. Cover prices was $2.25.

Superman’s been involved with some great Christmas stories in his 75 year history, but this one is different in that it’s highly connected with several ongoing stories within the Superman family of titles. In brief: Lex Luthor has just been elected President of the United States of America. Superman is obviously quite conflicted about this development and spends this issue visiting with the various members of the Justice League to get their take on the recent election results.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “Look, Up in the Sky!” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

I decided on a Superman themed week based on enjoying doing a similar thing with Batman last year.Batman’s had a whole lot more recognizable iterations than Superman so…

Monday’s drawing is a take-off of the original Superman #1, originally published in 1939.

Thrift Store Finds: The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #10 (DC Comics)

This week, we’ll be looking at The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #10, a digest-sized collection of comics published by (you guessed it!) DC Comics in 1981.

Cover price is .95 cents… I paid $4 dollars.

I know what you’re thinking: $4 bucks is kind of a big purchase for me book-wise, you’re right! When I’m at thrift stores, I mainly stick to lower priced paperbacks. I found I couldn’t resist this one, mark-up be damned.

DC Comics got out of the digest business in the mid 1980’s but for years, digest sized presentations of their comics were a regular feature at newsstands and grocery stores across the country. These days, Archie Comics is the last company standing in regards to the digest… and there’s a very definite reason for that. Most Archie comics are meticulously drawn in a house style pioneered by cartoonist Dan DeCarlo. Comics drawn by the company today match DeCarlo’s style from the 1960’s. This gives Archie Comics a wealth of back catalog from which to draw for their current digests.

The art and writing for superhero comics has always been a bit more faddish – trends and artistic styles come and go with the times. A Superman comic from the 1960’s looks almost nothing like a modern day Superman comic, save for some cross-generational touches (the “S” shield, the cape, and so on). While Archie can seemingly reprint stories forever with consumers being none the wiser, most of DC’s back catalog has been rendered quaint by time.

This Best of DC Digest is subtitled Secret Origins of Super-Villains and contains six stories focusing on the baddies of the DC Universe. The majority of these stories look to be drawn from DC’s Silver Age of comics but although creator credits are given, the digest doesn’t give any notation of where and when the stories come from. I found this to be somewhat annoying but it makes sense given the time this book was published that this information would not have likely been at the forefront of reader’s minds. Some Googling does reveal the sources of these books and I’ll include them in my appraisals, but as far as I can tell, the first comic story in the collection is original to this digest.

Thrift Store Finds: Superman – Miracle Monday

This week’s Thrift Store Find is Superman: Miracle Monday, written by Elliot S. Maggin and published by Warner Books in 1981.

Cover price was $2.50, I got it for a quarter.

This is the second in a series of paperback novels Warner Books published, presumably in conjunction with their Superman franchise of movies starring Christopher Reeve. Superman II was released in theaters in 1980; presumably this book was in bookstores to capitalize on that film.

sketchbook: world’s finest

Elliot asked me to draw him a Batman and a Superman and here it is.

Happy New Year! I still have two days of break left… I should probably start grading and preparing for the second semester, huh?

Christmas Comic Cavalcade: DC Comics Presents #67

In our final Christmas Comic Cavalcade of 2012, let’s look at DC Comics Presents #67, published in 1983. This yuletide comic was plotted by Len Wein and E. Nelson Bridwell, illustrated by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson.

That gorgeous cover is by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, by the way…

odds and ends: cincinnati comic expo 2012

Fast becoming an annual geek tradition, I’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday at the Cincinnati Comic Expo.

As regional comic shows go, the CCE has been growing like crazy in the past three years and 2012 promises to be the biggest yet. The Guest of Honor include four of the artists (Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, John Totleben, Thomas Yeates) who worked with Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing, a comic I loved as a teenager. It’s a nice get for the show and I’m looking forward to getting all four gentlemen to sign my hardcover collection of these comics.

Geoff Darrow is also going to be in attendance at the show. Darrow’s probably best known for his work with Frank Miller on Hard Boiled or his own creation, The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. Back in 1995, I met Darrow at a comic convention in New York where he signed a “suitable for framing” poster print for me.

Now, this print’s been through a LOT in the past seventeen years. It’s hung on walls in Western New York, Boston, and Ohio. Ellen and I hung it on Elliot’s wall when he was a baby! I’m pretty attached to it, and my kids are too. I’m hoping I can get Darrow to add Elliot and Henry’s names to mine at the margin at the bottom.

Of course, those of you who read here regularly already know, the real reason I like going to comic shows is the shopping; those dollar back issue bins are like catnip for me. I’ve also a few “holy grail” comics I’ve been looking to acquire for years. They’re always ridiculous things though, with no real monetary value. For example, this CCE, I’m hoping to locate a copy of DC Comics Presents #67

…the issue where Superman teams up with Santa Claus. I realize that is a pathetic “holy grail” but it fits perfectly within my spectrum of interests, no?

I will, no doubt, regale you with my finds next week.

chalkboard photo post: new year, new drawings

I debated long and hard as to whether I wanted to continue posting my chalkboard doodles for the upcoming school year. After three years solid of Sunday postings, I’ve done just about every character or situation I can think of. Further, I often draw the EXACT same drawings, year in and year out. It’s the nature of the job. Just as I teach Romeo & Juliet to every new group of Freshman, I’ll continue drawing myself as various superhero characters on the blackboard.

I’ve decided to keep posting these however, because… quite simply, they’re popular. I understand very little about “site views” and all that jazz, but when I do look at that widget, these are always amongst the most viewed of my posts… and that includes the comic. Over the past six months, a number of these have become popular on the website Pinterest. I know less about Pinterest than I do about site views, but if people are liking something I do well enough to share it somewhere, I should probably keep doing it.

Anyway, here’s the first drawing of the year. I decided I wanted to go big for the first week so I designed an elaborate Welcome piece for the Class of 2016 which took up the entire space of the classroom’s chalkboard.

I have to be honest- this was a larger undertaking than I anticipated! I thought I’d only need a half an hour to draw this beast, but it took double that when you figure in the sketch planning I needed to do to fit in as many characters as possible. I tried to run the gamut of cartoon characters that I found interesting and were relevant to someone who’d be in 9th grade this year. The only one I might have missed the mark on is Yakko Warner, but as established this summer, the characters are making a huge comeback, if only with my sons in our house.