The Comic Critic Reviews Matango aka: The Attack of the Mushroom People

I can’t help but wonder if Matango inspired Gilligan’s Island. You have a small crew of people with different roles in society cruising the high sea for jollies when a storm comes up and shipwrecks them. In Matango, the island on which they are shipwrecked has barely anything edible on it. Most of the movie is spent revealing the various crew members’ truly cruel and selfish natures as they struggle to survive starvation. It’s a dark and uneasy story compared to the kindhearted Gilligan’s Island, where everybody cheerily works together on their island rich in its bounty: bananas and coconut radios. It’s Matango‘s dark, brooding atmosphere that makes it so creepy. And also creepy is that the mushrooms’ poisonous nature is known, but never truly accepted (except towards the end of the movie). The mushrooms are more than an obvious physical metaphor on human society. Or maybe it’s the evil of peer pressure. Or it might be a bit of both.

Tonight I will be participating in a Pumpkin Carving Contest hosted by the CLAW. I'll be sure to post photos of the various pumpkins later.

The Comic Critic Reviews Food of the Gods

It is a scientific fact that human brains take a long time to develop. The frontal lobes that are in charge of reason and cognitive thinking don’t become fully formed until we reach our twenties. This explains why teenagers make lousy choices and show poor judgment. It also explains why, for years, I thought Food of the Gods was a great film. Perhaps part of it had to do with my favorite horror B-movie from earlier in my childhood being The Killer Shrews. I guess there was something about giant rodents that just spoke to me. Watching Food of the Gods as an adult, I’m more than a little horrified, not only at my youthful bad judgment, but also at the treatment of rats during this film. I must warn the would-be viewer that you’re most likely going to see footage of rat snuffage on an epic scale. As a kid, I was very into grisly carnage. As an adult, I only like grisly carnage if it involves latex and dyed Karo syrup.

Tonight I will be part of Tacoma's First Night celebration. The CLAW will be at Brooks Dental Studio, 732 Broadway, Suite 101 during the course of the evening. We will be drawing people as Snakes in honor of 2013 being the year of the snake. There were folks lined up last year. I'm hoping to make up for last year when I couldn't attend due to the flu.

The Comic Critic Reviews Prometheus

My friend John Draper (who is not a member of the CLAW) and I went to see Prometheus together. He’d seen it already and wanted my take on it. The debate held during the monthly cartooning session of the CLAW was extremely entertaining. In fact, I’m sure Stowe would say that the debate was far more entertaining than the movie. I used it to showcase this review because there’s a very large portion of the movie audience out there that’s highly frustrated. It was also a struggle for me to avoid hearing or reading any discussions before I got a chance to see the movie—and I wanted to capture that in the strip as well. Of course, the amount of the debate relayed in this strip is miniscule in comparison to the time we spent hashing over Ripley’s Scott’s latest effort. You can find plenty of the controversy on the Internet if you’re interested. Warning: They’re full of spoilers.

The Making of a Poster

When my friends Michael and Chy Shaudis told me they were going to start a Zombie Festival called Tacoma Zombpocalypse, I was thrilled. And I immediately signed up to have a table at the event. I first met Michael and Chy when Michael became a member of The CLAW. It was only natural then that Michael would call upon some of the talent at hand to do a series of posters for the event. Mark Brill did the first poster.

 

I first saw his poster at Crypticon where Mark Brill and I were sharing a table. The Shaudis's were also there sharing a bit of table space with Poison Apple. Now it was my turn to create a poster. Mark Brill already used the Tacoma Dome as a landmark and I didn't want to repeat that. I did want to play off the "Zombie Hunter" character he created. The next landmark that came to mind was the neglected Old City Hall Clock Tower. I remembered that James Stowe, another member of The CLAW, submitted a poster design to the Grand Theater back in 2008.

 

I always thought it should've been the winning entry. I was bummed when it wasn't used. Stowe is a great guy. A couple of months ago at a CLAW drawing session we all pulled sounds out of a hat and had to draw a picture which used that sound. The sound I drew was "Tchakka!" I drew Stowe cocking a shotgun.

Stowe thought it was great. So I decided to pay an homage to both Stowe's art and the man himself but using both of these elements in my final poster design.

And that my dear friends is the story of the making of this poster. Limited signed editions of this poster without the copy will be available in the near future. I will let you know when they come off the presses.

The Return of Stickman and the 24 Hour Challenge

A couple of weeks ago my good friend James Stowe, fellow founder of The CLAW, and all around fantastic guy, asked me if I would draw Stickman participating in the 24 Hour Challenge - in 24 panels naturally. He would then apply the art to a fantastic poster design so that we might be able to promote the event at Comic Book Ink. I think he did a great job on the poster. So here is the poster as today's Return of Stickman strip.


By the way, Stowe and I have once again renewed our yearly bet as to who will finish the contest - first (or if at all as the case may be.) Please stop on by to provide us with meat dishes or donations to the CLAW Student Scholarship Fund and you will end up in the cartoon.