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.

Friday, July 30, 2010

The Return of Stickman #1198


What makes this strip so funny is my friend Adam the Alien just got electrocuted. I mean, I drew this strip last week based on a true event and he gets zapped this week. Well, I made up the gum bit. Oh, and it gets even funnier. Adam was plugging in a battery to work on his laptop, to complete a project, for me. Now my friend Stowe, a fellow member of The CLAW, is saying that I'm trying to murder him. Please! It's not me! It is the curse of the Princess Leia Bobblehead! Which he won from me when he placed second in a Chalk Off. Of course Adam claims Princess Leia should have been his from a previous chalk off, but for a technicality in the Chalk Off's highly convoluted voting system had me walking home with the prize. But it just creeped the hell out of me, so I put it back in the prize hopper. Now Adam has it, and just looked what happened to him. It's a curse I tell you.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

B-Movie Poster from The CLAW's Open Swim

Once a month The CLAW gets together for an Open Swim were we sit down and draw based on a theme. The theme this month was B-Movies you wish existed. You had just over an hour to draw a poster and then do a one minute movie pitch. Here was my contribution.

She was a Latin Major with a classic 50s look visiting the aquarium in search of the meaning Achteuthis Dux, he was an alien invader assigned to probe and invade Earth, but when their eyes met through the 3 inch reinforced plexiglass they knew that their love was… a queasy internet fetish made possible by a loophole in Japanese pornography laws about an ancient freaky myth.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Comic Critic Reviews "Despicable Me"


I’ve always enjoyed movies geared towards children. I love them when they are done right. And for me, right means a bit of carefree fun with no agenda attached to it, an overarching moral delivered with a light, purposeful touch, and maybe even the word “poop” tossed in. Despicable Me covers those bases and will be a fine addition to your shelf, but see it in 3D if you can. They do a nice job with it in 3D, too.

Friday, July 23, 2010

The Return of Stickman #1187


As much as I know you have all been enjoying the guest strips, my vacation ended a week ago. Thanks to my friends I have been able to get caught up on my back log of projects, finish some immediate "I so need it today!" stuff, and go out on assignment for one of my largest clients. Many thanks to my guest cartoonists for lending a hand. Next week I will be at the drawing board again and you can look forward to, well, pretty much what you have been getting.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Return of Stickman #1186


Connor Bagdonavic's guest strip inspired John Schmelzer to send in a responding guest strip that was good enough to cut into the queue. Fair warning to others, all other guest strips will be sent to the back of the queue. I only put in John's strip here because he is, um, a long time contributor to the strip.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Return of Stickman #1185 and Roller Derby Poster


One of my projects this week was finishing up on a Roller Derby Poster for a big match up between two leagues. My good friend James Stowe has been drawing posters for the Dockyard Derby Dames for a while and got me curious about doing one. The only direction I received for this poster was, "Just make sure it has a rollerskate on it and we'll be happy. So I knew I was going to be drawing a lot of rollerskates. As I was doing research I saw a referee in the background of a photo. I thought to myself, "The poor refs, they get overlooked so often." Thus inspired I knew just what I wanted to draw.

Here is how it looks with the text and logos.

I did put the logos on their own layers and they might get moved, re-sized or deleted altogether before it goes to press. Anyway, I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Return of Stickman #1184


I want to thank Connor Bogdanovic for providing me with a few guest strips for Stickman. I've several projects that have landed while I was on vacation last week and I'm working hard to finish them off. Below is a quickie I did for The CLAW this month.