Archive for November 25th, 2010

#24 Joey

| November 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

Joey is a wrestling fan, a smark (smart mark), and he usually roots for the indie guys or heels. He and his buddies get together after every televised wrestling show and dish on the previous night’s events.

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This is from a new idea about a bunch of wrestling fan buddies that talk about, well, wrestling, in comedic fashion. Some spoofage, some hi-jinks, and some good old fashioned strip humor.

The tentative name for this was “Smarks”, but I discovered that name is already in use for something similar. So it’s no an unnamed idea that I will explore further on down the line. 🙂

#24 The Turducken

| November 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

#25 Mind Soldier

| November 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

#24 Mandrilonicus Rex

| November 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

Sorcerer Pope of the primate kingdom. Bow before him.

Day#24 Baron Bleebharan, Rebel Artist

| November 25, 2010 | 0 Comments
#24 Baron Bleebharan for Wheeler's Orbits by Jande Rowe

#24 Baron Bleebharan for Wheeler's Orbits by Jande Rowe

“Self-Portrait of a Failed Abstract Artist”

by Baron Bleebharan of  the Outer Rim Artists Colony, circa 2420(GR)

Day # 24: A Balthrazhod: Baron Bleebharan.

The above self portrait of Baron Bleebharan, a Balthrazhod artist and framing specialist from  the Outer Rim Artists Colony is said to be the only surviving work of his abstractionist art, though numerous of his maverick landscape works exist even today in the Bleebharan Museum of Natural Art. Below is an excerpt from the BalthrazWiki, sans citations:

“Semi-sentient beings settled a minor planet in the Outer Rim of the Galaxy millennia before the Earth was even a mote in Sol’s Corona. The original settlers were looking for a world of natural beauty so that they might have a bountiful place to begin their artists colony far from the censure of their fellow Balthrazhods. They settled in quite well as a matter of fact, painting up the local fauna and flora and displacing some thirty one thousand indigenous species not to mention enslaving two humanoid species ( the prongles and the fitchrils, both races that would have hunted each other to extinction had the Balthrazhods not taken a shine to their dexterity and  their sensitivity to colour. The dexterity allowed them to do all the kinds of work the Balthrazhods eschewed, leaving the masters to devote all their time to their art; the colour sensitivity allowing even greater range and depth in each piece as the closer to perfection became the work, the more easily the fitchrils would succumb and faint away –rather like Earth canaries who, exposed to the gases emitted in coal mines would falter in their joyous singing and fall from their caged roosts for the betterment of coal miners everywhere).

As the eons of devotion to art progressed, so too did the Balthrazhods, both spiritually and artistically, however they tended to neglect their physical selves and over those same eons became somewhat turgid and slug-like. Those of the Balthrazhods who were able to harness their creativity tended to become more and more abstractionists in temperament, not to mention personally abstracted, to the point of changing their own forms to match their gastropod-like temperaments.

Those who failed artistically tended to become merchants. Of what, you ask? Oh, art supplies and framing, of course.  But those of us here on Terra Firma would not recognize the difference between a Balthrazhod Art Supply Shop and a Balthrazhod Museum of Fine Art.

Baron Bleebharan was one of those failed Balthrazhod artists. Other Balthrazhods had passed judgement upon his works and would have, every one of them, given him the thumbs down if in fact they had anything resembling thumbs by this time. Still, a tentacle curled in contempt had the same effect on a fellow Balthrazhod as the leering thumbs down of an Earth man, secure in his beliefs in The Way Things Worked, had on artists of his own kind.

Baron Bleebharan’s own preference, nay passion, was landscape painting. He abhorred the traditional abstractions (they made him suffer from a vertigo similar to the effect they had on the fitchril slaves), preferring, himself, to capture nature in the raw. The Frilcar of the mountain sunsets, the verlact of the still abundant flora, the streevit sparkle of a marshland spring. These were the colours that moved his turgid juices until he could almost feel it within himself to actually move an inch or two under his own power.

He was filthy rich as most failed artists on the Rim world  were, but he longed for the recognition of his more abstractionist peers. Since he couldn’t help himself, he continued to paint his little landscapes in the face of certain disdain all while he built up his framing business. His reputation as a kooky maverick  brought the curious to his shop (where he even braved the inevitable censure by framing and hanging some of his own curiosities), who then were dazzled by his brilliance in his capacity as an expert and creative framer and when they left his shop they did so after giving the Baron their framing order.

At one point the King and Queen Balthrazhod visited his little shop and came away not only deeply moved (not by his landscapes, of course but by his framing techniques) but determined to provide him with some small reward of stature in the eyes of the world. They gave him a Franglaaesk of his own, a rich reward something along the lines of a Barony in our world. He was told it was a verdant land, filled with all the fauna and flora he could ever want to paint. But he never quite got moving enough to go and visit it. He did send his prongle slaves and they reported in the abstract as they had been trained, that it was a very nice piece of land, complete with an artist’s loft castle and a crystal falls.

As time moved inexorably on, Bleebharan’s yearning for the approbation of his peers finally turned sour. So sour in fact that he decided he’d had enough of the colony world and struck off into space to find perhaps some entities out there if not his own kind, at least maybe of kindred spirit.  And so he had his slaves prepare his last will and testament, leaving all his worldly goods (those left behind) to a Museum of Natural Art, for which he also supplied the funds and the slaves. Then he had them build a ship and fill it with supplies and his favourites of his landscapes, as well as the tools of both his trades, and off he shot into space where he soon ran into a spot of trouble involving a pair of humanoid trade runners who refused to be slaves or artists, but were willing to trade goods and barter services on a fairly equal basis. At least he thought it was fairly equal. These “humans” intrigued the Baron Bleebharan and he found their energetic to-ings and fro-ings entertaining to say the least.

Meanwhile back on his home colony planet, his Museum of Natural Art became a huge success with the younger generations of Balthrazhods, starting a whole new movement in the colony much to the shock and disgust of the diehard older generations. The Baron had left his home to wander the wide universe looking for artists made in his own image (so to speak), and in his rush to start over left behind him the very ones he sought. There is a lesson in this tale, but I’d rather not bore you with proverbs –especially since the Baron Bleebharan got to meet and spend some time with Wheeler and Ikey of Wheeler’s Orbits. And that, of course, made the whole thing worth it after all.”

Enjoy!

#30 Black Cobra (6)

| November 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

Here was the toughest of the seven Black Cobras. #3 was pretty tough, but this one…I knew I wanted a female version of the Black Cobra in here, but the execution could have gone either way.

Concept: Ms. Cobra/Renae Hornsby-Collis – the Bronze Age Black Cobra.  #5 is her father; #3 is her uncle.  She becomes Black Cobra in the mid 70’s when her father never returns from Vietnam. Typical 70’s heroine (Colleen Wing/Misty Knight by way of Dave Cockrum/John Byrne). She becomes a mother and retires, but vows to continue the legacy with her son, Devon. She is very protective of her son, but she trained him for this.

Design: Let’s take these one by one.

(#1) As per my concept paragraph above, I wanted the early version to be very similar to the 70’s heroines, since that was her primary decade of exposure. Sexy, but functional. Not easy, so kudos to real comic book artists that do this kind of thing every day. The bare midriff was a staple of the times, and I had to get the cobra design on there somewhere, so the boots were chosen. (DESIGN REMOVED)

(#2) I have this idea that after a certain point (maybe the 80’s) she changes her tune and becomes a more martial arts centric character. I should have put the logos on the boots, but since I had the spot on her chest, I put it there. She begins to look like she’s embracing her part in the legacy of the character.

Art (above) by Ricardo Venâncio!

(#3) Here, we have her in her mentor role, and I wanted to show her all grown up, a little older and wiser. The pants harken back to Black Cobra #2, which, again, is an effort to call back to her legacy. Note that there’s no cobra logo on her. Since she’s not out in the field, I figured she didn’t need one, but we can always put it as a patch on her arm.


Copyright © 2010, Vito Delsante.