The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Monday, May 21, 2012

The Comic Critic Reviews The Da Vinci Code

When I went to draw this review, I desperately wanted to tell the story of how I grew up Catholic and spent many hours with our very clever priest, Father Dugan, doing research for a Boy Scout religious medal. In fact, we continued our conversations about history, theology, ethics, and morals long after I received that medal. I wanted to turn on its ear the nasty mental picture most people currently have of a knowledgeable priest spending hours mentoring a boy. The trouble was I just couldn’t do it in nine panels. And the strip’s storyline barely commented on the movie. As much as I enjoy including my personal history in these reviews, they should at least hold some shred of being a review. I compromised by hashing over various forms of the public’s perception surrounding the movie. The result was a strip more on topic, containing nothing of the story I so desperately wanted to tell about the wonderful time I spent with Father Dugan. See? Your mind went all-nasty again.

And, yes, I now know that car from the movie, to which I refer to in panel nine, was not in fact an electric car but a smart car. But I stupidly thought it was an electric car at the time so that’s how I drew it.

This last weekend I attended the Spokane Comicon. You can see pictures I took at the event here. This coming weekend you can find me at Crypticon from May 25th through the 27th. And the following weekend you can find me at the Olympia Comic Festival on Saturday, June 2nd.