Ragged Claws Network

At Adweek.com, I read “Profile: Ralph Steadman - Gonzo art through the Decades” by Eleftheria Parpis:

“There’s a saying: ‘In art there is no such thing as a mistake — a mistake is an excuse to do something else,’” says the 72-year-old artist. “That’s how I feel about drawing and writing. I couldn’t draw very well. I kept blotting things by accident, so I decided to make mistakes part of my work.” Which is how, he adds, his work evolved from the cleaner lines of illustrated books such as I, Leonardo and Sigmund Freud to the messier, frenetic style that later defined his most iconic creations, such as the drawings for Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I caught up with Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen:

I briefly browsed through the posts at GFXworld.org.

I admired the scans of Virgil Finlay’s H.P. Lovecraft illustrations, posted by Mr. Door Tree over at the blog, Golden Age Comic Book Stories: part one, part two and part three. Here’s a tiny taste (the images on Mr. Door Tree’s site are much larger):

I browsed through the latest images from the Phoenix Mars Mission. There are many more available today than there were yesterday.

I read/skimmed a few articles about the Democratic nomination campaign in the U.S., including this oddly uplifting profile of Barack Obama’s “body man” (an unusual term — or at least, one I’ve never heard before — that appears to be derived from “bodyguard”).

I went back to take another look at a small gallery of gorgeous cartoons by Ethel Hays. Love those sinuous ink lines! Love those flappers!

And I checked out Read Yourself Raw to see if the August preview list is up yet. It’s not.

To be continued…

This is a test of ScribeFire 2.2.5, a Firefox Add-on by Christopher Finke. ScribeFire is a full-featured editor that makes it easy to post to your blog from within your Web browser, without having to visit your site and log into your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs. Supported blogging services include WordPress.com, LiveJournal, Windows Live Spaces, Performancing, Jeeran, Tumbir, MySpace, b2Evolution, and Splinder. Supported blogging platforms include WordPress, Moveable Type, Drupal, Textpatter, Roller, and Blogger, as well as any blogging software or platform that implements the MetaWeblog API.

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I added this bit when I opened this post with ScribeFire in order to correct a couple of typos.

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WORKS LIKE A DREAM!

Volume 1 (of 2) of the collected Journey by William Messner-Loebs is available for pre-order at an online bookstore near you. Here’s the cover:

From the publisher: “A realistic and absorbing account of life in the 19th century frontier wilderness finds Wolverine McAlistaire enduring tornadoes, Indians and even the walking dead, all in Messner-Loebs’ unique neo-Eisnerian style. A classic adventure series from Eisner nominee William Messner-Loebs, Journey introduced the world to Joshua ‘Wolverine’ McAlistaire and the Fort Miami settlement populated by both real-life and fictional characters. Now, IDW is re-presenting this acclaimed work in two comprehensive volumes, the first of which collects issues #1-13.”

I would post my own comment on Journey, but it has been a long, long time since I read the comics, which were originally published first by Aardvark-Vanaheim, then by Renegade Press, and finally by Fantagraphics Books, and I simply can’t be bothered to dig them out of storage (I do own them). Anyway, suffice to say, I have fond memories of Messner-Loebs’ work — if memory serves, the series opened with a virtuoso first issue that consisted entirely of Wolverine McAlistaire being chased by a bear — and I look forward to owning the collections, which I know from experience will be so much easier to store and read than the original comics.

Gallery 1, Gallery 2, Gallery 3, Gallery 4, Gallery 5, Gallery 6, Gallery 7, Gallery 8, Gallery 9, Gallery 10, Gallery 11, Gallery 12, Gallery 13 and Gallery 14.

Today on ebay, I purchased the following book from a “Buy It Now” auction: “THE AMERICAN SHORE (Dragon Press, 1978, first trade edition). Author: SAMUEL R. DELANY. Fine copy with reinforced binding and without dust jacket, as issued. SIGNED. According to Lloyd Currey, there were 949 trade copies and 100 numbered copies signed by Delany.”

The book was US$15.00, and the shipping $9.95, for a grand total of US$24.95.

Truth be told, I already own an unsigned hardcover copy of The American Shore; however, as a long-time collector of the works of Samuel R. Delany, I had to have a signed one — especially since the price was so right!

Here’s how the publisher describes this forthcoming book: “Noel Sickles drew comics for three brief years, yet his groundbreaking work on the 1930s aviation adventure series Scorchy Smith is a milestone in the history of newspaper comic strips. Over the past 70 years, however, readers have seen only occasional excerpts of this seminal work. Now, IDW’s Library of American Comics presents Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles, a comprehensive, oversized volume that collects, for the first time, every Sickles Scorchy strip, from December 1933 through November 1936.”

That’s over 300 pages of some of the most beautifully drawn adventure strips ever created. Although Sickles wasn’t in comic strips anywhere near long enough to become a household name — after he left Scorchy Smith, he spent the next forty years in magazine illustration and (later in life) Western painting — he has long been revered among the small group of aficionados who know their comic-strip history as an “artist’s artist,” i.e., an artist whose work other artists — greats like Milton Caniff, Alex Toth, John Romita, and Frank Robbins, as well as scores of other, lesser lights — have looked to for inspiration, instruction… and swipes! Marvel stalwart John Romita has remarked that, during the 1950s, when he was in his 20s, “the whole industry was copying from photostats of the Scorchy Smith dailies by Noel Sickles.” And now, with the publication of this book, you have an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

Bonus Links:

Leif Peng’s Noel Sickles Flickr Set

Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles by Leif Peng, Today’s Inspiration - introducing a week devoted to the art of Noel Sickles, with highlights from the new book.

Well, speak of the devil! A new softcover edition of Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis is available for pre-order right now at Amazon.com at the low, low price of US$13.57. Word on the Web is that Titan Books will reprint more of Loomis’s books if this initial offering is a success. Currently, at abebooks.com, the least expensive used copy of Creative Illustration, hardcover with no dustjacket, is priced at US$109.00. I placed my order at Amazon today. How about you?

Yesterday at Sotheby’s, Francis Bacon’s masterful Triptych 1976 (oil and pastel on canvas in three parts, each 78 x 58 in., 198 x 147.5 cm., 1976) sold for US$86 million at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art, thereby setting a record for postwar art and contributing mightily to a record-setting total of $362 million in sales (including commission) for the event.

Who says the filthy rich have no taste?

Here’re some close-ups…

Here’s a collection of six, classic, out-of-print books by the much-admired illustrator, Andrew Loomis, all available for download, right now, as PDFs.

Thank you, boywonder!