Pirates of Orange County

While waiting for takeoff on a California tarmac this week, I found myself surrounded by a family that had just visited Disneyland. Their pirate merchandise inspired me to draw this cartoon. Just as I started to respond to their question, “What’s with the cockroaches?” the captain informed us that we were being towed back to the gate—and our flight had been cancelled! Everyone was too distracted to listen to my Disney Magazine cockroach story… Oh, well.

Lurid Paperback Cover of the Week

I got an email today from a fan of a website I took down a few years ago, Mark Monlux’s Lurid Paperback Cover of the Week. You might have seen the inch and a half blurb about it on the second column of page 185 in the November 1999 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. It received a fair amount of attention, which probably had more to do with the subject matter of politically incorrect and morally offensive paperback cover art from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s than my skills as a writer. Back in the early days of paperbacks, there were no PC police to reprimand publishers for using sex to sell their novels.

Each week I posted a cover from either my or another collector’s collections and waxed nostalgic about its artistic or historic merits. As much as I enjoyed maintaining the site, the number of hours in a day is limited and I wanted to pursue creating some webcomics. (see The Comic Critic and The Return of Stickman) Thus, my time in Internet space was reallocated. Still, it was a lot of fun. Here are a few of the covers I’ve posted over the years.

Octopus Remote Shuffle

Here is something I worked on this week. It was kind of hard getting any work done earlier this week since roofers covered the house like ants. Their pounding and the constant racket of air compressors made it very hard to concentrate. Now that they are gone, leaving behind a beautiful roof, the cat and I can calm down.