The Comic Critic Reviews "The Adventures of Robin Hood"

I find it difficult to describe how much I love The Adventures of Robin Hood. There are so many things that make it great. First, the color. Technicolor is not just one, but multiple layers of film, each layer a different color. The result was not merely color, but deep, rich color perfect for fantastic settings. Years later, this would prove an advantage in film restoration. The designers of the day took advantage of strong colors, installing as many lurid hues as possible. Next would be the thespians. Not only do you have several lead actors, but also a plethora of talented character actors, each one nearly stealing a scene from the next. Then you have the script, with dialog ranging from simple to flowery, depending on the scenes. And there are action sequences with individual fights, grand melees, and lots of arrows. A professional archer was hired to shoot all of those arrows, so stuntmen and regulars alike had real arrows shot into balsawood hidden under their clothing. And then there’s the music, as rousing and flamboyant as could be desired in such a swashbuckler. The Adventures of Robin Hood is a shining example of what could be accomplished under the old studio system, when a cast of hundreds could be summoned overnight. It’s also a stellar example of what Hollywood could do, taking a legendary tale and making it even more magical. As for the tale of Robin Hood himself, most movies made afterwards couldn’t help but borrow from this wonderful, lavish work of art.

Winner of three Academy Awards.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Harold and Maude"

For others, Harold and Maude is a dark comedy, but for me it’s a perfect romance movie. A truly great romance movie is more than two people falling in love. Romance is more than sweet gestures and kind words. Romance is about delving into the world, exploring it, and then sharing that exploration with the one you love. In Harold and Maude, Harold is delving into the only world he knows of, full of isolation and loneliness. Many find these states of being comparable to death because both isolation and loneliness are defined by an absence, and death is the ultimate absence. The sadness and grief that follows in death’s wake are overwhelming tortuous emotions. The juxtaposition of absence occurring with death to the overwhelming emotions of grief is a source of confusion for Harold, and in his travels to clear this confusion he meets Maude. Maude is a great explorer of the world. We glean that she’s seen her share of horrors. Her outlook on life makes no time for sadness, loneliness, or grief. She doesn’t conquer them so much as disregard them as meaningless to following the spirit of life. She finds joy in every moment. She is a force of nature. Harold and Maude is the perfect romance because it’s two people sharing with each other their discoveries of the world with love and understanding. The humor is wonderfully dark. It’s extremely easy to see the writer’s commenting on America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and drawing parallels to the story. Keep that in mind and the already rich minefield of wonderful surprises Harold and Maude has in store for you will become even more entertaining.

The Comic Critic Reviews The Graduate

The Graduate is a unique coming-of-age film. Most coming-of-age films are about the journey from child to adult. Often they are shown as journeys, sexual experiences, or acknowledgements of the need to take on adult responsibilities. Uniquely, The Graduate takes those themes and twists them, leaving the hero with very little self-assurance. We find him at home from his college journey, having a sexual affair chained with questionable moral behavior, and struggling with himself over what his true responsibilities are. He’s been thrown onto the reef of life by a siren’s song. The folk music of Simon and Garfunkel swirls around our hero’s world and is the perfect backdrop as we watch and wonder if our Odysseus will pull the wax out of his ears or shove it in further. In the history of film, The Graduate brought an entirely new level to the coming-of-age story. And because very few movies since have been able to improve upon the tale, The Graduate will remain one of the best movies ever made.

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 Return of Stickman #1494

This true event reeks of such high irony that I think everybody wrote this same scene in their head when they heard the news.

The Comic Critic Reviews House of Wax

I’m a huge Vincent Price fan. How huge? His was the first movie actor’s name I memorized. I loved watching him perform. Watching him meant watching a lot of horror movies, and every young boy enjoys horror movies. Vincent Price carried himself with a regal, sophisticated air. He was immensely charming, polite, the quintessential gentleman. His bearing was so elegant that his victims apologized for being such a bother when he slid the knife in. Price’s ability to encapsulate menace with such movement and expression enthralled audiences. While he’d played a number of worthy roles before, it was in The House of Wax that he eased himself so easily onto the throne to became the king of horror. It seemed he’d been there all along, the quiet monarch always in command. The House of Wax was a tremendous box office draw. The rage for 3D films had just begun. That, along with Vincent Price’s performance, gave House of Wax a long run, establishing it as one of the 50s classic horror films. There’s a Blu-ray 3D version available now, but I only hope that I’ll eventually have the opportunity to see Vincent Price in a re-release on the big screen, The House of Wax in all of its 3D glory.

The technology was so new, they had to show this trailer at the theaters:

Tacoma Public Library Project

I just finished up on a project that was a lot of fun. The Tacoma Public Library asked me to do a series of eight cartoons featuring kids reading books in interesting places and situations. What made the project challenging was the images are going to be used into two different size formats, and in two different shape formats. One size would be nine inches by nine inches square on mini-posters. The second size would be two and a quarter inch wide round stickers. This meant that the images would need to have detail scalability. It also meant that I needed to create the image with three zones. Zone one would be the middle of the image and be the center point. Zone two was the image where the text would fall (with an option to remove the text). Zone three were the corners, where I’d have extra bits that would be seen only on the square layout. David Domkoski, Community Relations Manager of TPL, guided me in my efforts and we are both very happy with the results.

Technical Note: All of the blacks in the images were made with a color combination of; C: 20, M: 20, Y: 20, K: 100. This rich black helps the black stand up to the vibrant colors while at the same time removes any chance that white slivers will appear next to the black in case a bump in the registration occurs. Something that I’ve seen happen in the past when producing stickers on rolls rather than sheets.

The Comic Critic Reviews Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring

I remember going to see the 1979 version of The Lord of the Rings with my brothers. My oldest brother Randy was a huge fan of Tolkien, as was I. My brother Cliff gave me a box set of the books for Christmas one year. I still have them. And I thought the movie was great. Just like my brother Randy I had great hopes that in a year or two we would be seeing the next movie. We all knew, just knew, that there was no way that The Lord of the Rings could be captured in just one movie. But our hopes dwindled as each year passed. Then I heard that Peter Jackson, yes, the same guy how made Bad Taste, was going to do it. Deep inside me, an old ember of hope for a great Lord of the Rings franchise, one that I thought died out years ago, blazed forth like the faith-blind zealot. It was going to happen! I was going to see it! And it was going to be glorious! Later I learned that Peter Jackson was inspired by the 1979 version. How could he not? It was pretty cool.

SlamBang Media Interviews The Comic Critic

Check out episode number 15, where I'm interviewed by Allen Freeman of Slambang Media.

The Comic Critic Reviews True Grit - 1969

John Wayne might have been buried in June of 1979, but as far as I’m concerned, he never died. He starred in over a hundred films, most of them westerns, and I think I’ve seen them all. And when it comes to True Grit, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it. I didn’t realize just how solidly this film was implanted in my brain as an icon of the western genre until I heard that the Cohen brothers were filming a remake. My first reaction was, “Sacrilege!” I confess that I over-reacted. I’m now looking forward to see how the Cohen brothers pay homage to the movie I love so deeply. And I felt compelled to review the original before I review their remake.

The Comic Critic Reviews Tron

Late in 1982, I transitioned from being a teenager who had just entered college to a twenty-year-old young adult. That can be an awkward age for anybody. Watching Tron is a strong reminder to me of what that time was like. Like me, it still reeked of the ‘70s, with its bell-bottoms, long hair, and multiple Disney movies starring Jeff Bridges. I tried all sorts of things to be cool. Some of them worked, but most of them crashed and burned and can only be looked back on as the hilarious idiocy of youth. Now I find Tron both painful and wonderful to watch, just like reading my old journals. Oh, I was such a geek.

Speaking of being a geek, here is a video I made this morning.

Cartoons and Poetry Together

In Tacoma was a poetry reading to celebrate the city's new poet laureate. Poets were encouraged to pull in other types of artists into their readings. There were musicians, dancers, and, yes, cartoonists. Elliot and I went old school with transparencies and an overhead projector.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Black Narcissus"

My good friend, Polly Law, lists Black Narcissus as one of her all-time favorite films. I remember seeing it on television when I was in my preteens. The questions I had then I still have now: “Why don’t we get to see more of the Old General?” and “Why didn’t that actor go and get those long legs of his tanned before starting this role?” and “What is up with that hat?” Watching the film as an adult, I enjoyed all the same key moments I did when I was a kid. But while I find the film greatly enchanting, I am still left wanting it to go on longer, even after all this time has passed since my last viewing. Still, I might give it another viewing …say in about another 30 years.

Polly Law says: Black Narcissus has it all- a dense script rich with subtext, deep characters, gorgeous visuals, lots of sexual tension, and a guy with long legs riding a very short pony.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Tortilla Soup"

I’m a big fan of foreign films. Never a fan of dubbing, I’ve always loved listening to the words the actors originally spoke. Yeah, it’s true you have to read subtitles quickly. And there is an art to the subtitle. Size, color, and frequency are all important. While I will endure or even enjoy subtitles, there are lots of people who just won’t bother with them. For the U.S. market, a lot of foreign films have been remade with all new actors and settings to go with the all new language. Some become big hits like “Three Men and a Baby;” others fly under the wire like “Shall We Dance?”. This one, “Tortilla Soup,” hits the middle ground and does okay. And I just can’t help but think that the soundtrack helped.

Ukulele Phil and the Hula Kids

About a year ago I created a logo for Ukulele Phil and the Hula Kids. The logo consisted of three elements, each a figure. I created the figures so the elements could be used together or separated and moved around. The tiki head, ukulele and such. Phil has been taking advantage of this as he puts together swag and posters. He send me this, his most recent poster.

The Return of Stickman #1055 and the Jeff Hawley visit the Cartoon Museum

The question I want to ask the BBC, my source for this story, is why they are bothering to report it when the lady still has to complete the practical?

In other news, my good friend and fellow Talon of The CLAW, Jeff Hawley, went to see the Monsters of Webcomics exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Months ago both he and I submitted strips for the exhibit and here is a photo of Jeff pointing to a Stickman strip as it popped up in the virtual exhibit. Thanks for the shot Jeff.



Jeff does a webcomic about a talking tree called Logjam.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Fido", and The Return of Stickman #1048

October has been “Zombie Month” here at the Comic Critic. This version of the walking dead places us in an idealized 1950s America. Except all the cold war paranoia has been replaced with Zombie paranoia. And those mid-century high ideals have a hard time meshing with the gruesomeness of the living dead. Both zombie film aficionados and John Q. Public are in store for plenty of laughs as homage is doled out to early American sit-coms. Fido is a lot of fun.


Every time I start writing a comment on a Stickman strip I come up with another idea for a stickman strip. I wonder if this topic is a dead horse yet. Will that stop me?

My page for CLAW-tu Barada Nikto #3

I'm a founder of a group in Washington State called The CLAW. Our newsletter is a bit different than most groups in that it doesn't contain any "news". Even the format is different than other newsletters. The CLAW creates tiny six paged comics called "trashcans" which are created from one 8.5 by 11 piece of paper folded and cut in a unique way. We then take these little treasures and sprinkle them around the city of Tacoma to various bistros, coffee shops, and stores. They are highly sought "found" items. This is the third issue and the them was "Tacoma, City of Density", a play on the city's real motto, "City of Destiny". You can download issues #1 and #2 here.

The Return of Stickman #1014

Both The Return of Stickman and The Comic Critic have been selected for inclusion in The Monsters of Webcomics exhibition at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, and will be featured in the Virtual Gallery along with a wide array of webcomics from around the globe. This historic exhibition will include over 100 artists, making this one of the largest exhibitions in the Cartoon Art Museum’s 24-year history.


Monsters of Webcomics opens to the public this Saturday, August 8, and will run through December 6 at the Cartoon Museum. You can find the full press release for the exhibition here: http://cartoonart.livejournal.com/29650.html Additional information about exhibitions and events can be found at LiveJournal (http://cartoonart.livejournal.com), Twitter (@cartoonart), on MySpace, and at their Facebook “Fan” page and their “Causes” page.

Christmas Poster Art

Here is a poster I just finished for the SPGA/Seattle Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild. I drew all the people separately, then layered them together in Photoshop. My plan is to reuse this art. Next time, I’ll remove some of the larger text, shift the people around, get rid of the Guild logo, and bingo! I’ll have Christmas card art ready to go.