The Symptoms

Marriage Browse

2012-01-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Because she is one of the few people still speaking to me after all these years, I spend a lot of time with my wife, Melissa. And my desperate need for her constant attention means I tag along on routine excursions I might usually avoid, and that would surely have gone more smoothly without me. In essence, I am a clingy, needy pain in the ass, inviting myself along to food and clothes-shopping trips to quell separation anxiety – trips that my presence invariably complicates. Fortunately for Melissa, she has become adept at ignoring me.

The Fountain of Youth

2011-11-15T21:15:00.000-08:00

Middle age has its share of embarrassments – the uncontrollable girth, the aching joints, the sudden tendency to crank up the volume when Genesis comes on the radio. Come to think of it, still having a radio at all at this stage is an embarrassing sign of aging. But we can also be encouraged by having outgrown certain juvenile attributes. For most of us, the worst of our acne is long behind us, we don’t have to take algebra tests anymore, and thanks to endless reruns on cable television, we no longer think that the Six Million Dollar Man was the greatest show in television history. We’ve wised up and left many of our youthful anxieties behind. As for me, I’m mostly thankful that I don’t throw up much anymore.

The Mouse That Bored

2011-10-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

I woke up in a dingy Super 8 motel, not quite sure where I was. I took a look around, searching my memory for a moment, and realized that no, I hadn’t been double-crossed by a dame in a Chandler novel, I was with my friend, Doug, who was still soundly crashed on the opposite bed. How did we wind up here? I had a vague recollection of being persuaded the night before to drive into Georgia to get tattooed, skin ink being illegal in South Carolina at that time. I had been drunk enough to agree, and crawled into the back seat. This was as much as I could recall.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Angina

2011-10-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

When the wife and I moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina a few years ago, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that this was desolate hill country, with only the barest hints of civilization. I knew the locals rejected all efforts at cultural encroachment by outsiders, and that the only community activities that held their interest were Sunday school and high school football. I knew there would be no music scene, no alternative newspaper, not even an FM radio station. I knew that Spartanburg did not produce great composers, Pulitzer-winning journalists or pioneering footwear. Being a Carolinian from birth, I accept the typical Southern disdain for interest or effort as a given.

The Evel Dead

2011-10-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

They tell me it's Evel Knievel's birthday today. Coincidentally, I stumbled across a tape of the Evel profile from the Biography channel last week and enjoyed watching the brutish and arrogant Knievel get pummeled over and over again. There was no greater showman. Except maybe this guy.

Get Out of My Dreams and Into My Mylar

2011-10-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

I was browsing in the bookstore not long ago, thumbing through the various Kardashian bios that constitute our modern literary offerings, when two teenage girls came dashing around the aisle. They were adorable; rosy-cheeked, sporting sweatshirts and Converse, all wide-eyed and excited about life in a way that adults can only attain by prescription. The first girl stopped in amazement as she spotted the wall of identically-sized manga paperbacks. Her big, brown eyes flashing behind her glasses, her widening smile revealing her parents’ excellent dental plan, she squealed to her friend with girlish glee.

“Oh my GOD!! They have COMICS here!!!!”

The Worth of the Cool

2011-10-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Over the years, with my kneejerk rebellion in full jerk, I’ve resisted adopting any overarching philosophy of life. I don’t think the Golden Rule applies in every situation, I don’t twelve-step my way towards anything and I don’t believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people. I don’t make lemonade out of life’s lemons, I don’t stop to smell the flowers and I don’t hang in there, baby. In fact, I’ve found just about any advice on how to live one’s life usually turns out to be crap. Playing hard to get doesn’t work, and neither does taking it one day at a time. I’ve been faking it until I make it for decades, and not only did I never make it, but felt like a phony in the process. Looking back, I find there’s really only one methodology that I’ve been able to effectively apply to life’s many hassles, and that is to Be Cool.

Zen and the Art of Throwing Away Broken Junk

2011-09-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, while exploring the ruins of my grandfather’s shed, I found an old wooden ladder. This was a basic, folding stepladder, covered in paint drips, that my grandfather had likely used for decades of household repair. Nothing exotic about it. But the ladder, though I had never seen it before, had a quality I instantly recognized: a half-assed repair job. The spreader hinge that keeps the ladder locked into place when it unfolds was missing on one side. And my grandfather, rather than spending 89 cents at True Value, had wrapped bailing wire and electrical tape around it in a huge mass as a replacement for the missing part. This struck a familiar chord because it looked like the kind of laughable craftsmanship my father has exhibited over the years, and wasn’t too dissimilar from the sort of ladder repair I might attempt myself.

Jack Kirby

2011-08-12T15:50:00.000-07:00

From Knievel to Krushchev

2011-07-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

The full-color book collection of portraits is officially for sale. Get the skinny here.

A Hypochondriac's Cure

2011-06-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I discovered a cure for hypochondria. I’d been looking for a cure for most of my life, having suffered from perpetual, obsessive inventory of personal symptoms for decades. The mysterious, internal disease had yet to be diagnosed, but the symptoms were many, ranging from heart palpitations to potentially fatal numbness of the fingers. Sometimes even an intense awareness of my fingers could qualify as a symptom of…something. The anxiety had already driven me from my job as a college art instructor and had eyes to ruin my blossoming career as an unemployed freelance illustrator.

The Eternal Struggle

2011-04-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

Interviews from the Heart

2011-04-20T12:29:00.001-07:00

A couple of years ago I got a call from a Washington Post reporter, asking for an interview. She’d seen some comment I made online about owning a product called TV-B-Gone, a keychain remote that can turn off almost any television, and was writing a story about the device. The interview didn’t go well. I mentioned using the remote at an Applebee’s, and becoming concerned that the waiters who kept turning the TV sets back on would find me out.

If My Wife Talked to Everyone the Way She Talks to the Dog

2011-04-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

Buzz Stop

2011-03-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

In the seventh grade there was a bus stop right outside my house, but I never hung out there. Every morning I snubbed the pale, bookish, grade-grubbing children loitering at the closest stop and walked several blocks to wait for the bus with a much seedier crew of juvenile losers – MY people. Despite the best efforts to designate bus stops according to geographic equality, classism has a way of overriding convenience in the social sphere of middle school.

Life's Sideshow

2011-02-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

(Click to biggen.)

Midlife Ophiuchus

2011-02-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Insofar as I gave a damn about astrology, I was pretty satisfied with my designation as a Sagittarius, the sign of the lazy, philosophical dreamer who writes poems between naps. The Sagittarius follows his own interests, pursuing higher education to suit his whims, seeking a “big picture” understanding of the world (all the better to dismiss your petty concerns as major bringdowns with the potential to harsh one’s mellow). He craves creative adventure and independence, avoids commitment and lives like a badass motorcycle rebel jonsin’ for kicks.

I See Myself Reflected in the Fanboy Stranger

2011-01-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

There in the convenience store, he unashamedly purchased the largest soda and the largest bag of cookies. He flaunted the resulting waistline, wrapped in a t-shirt that trumpeted his love of kiddie krap. He had my beard, my nerdy reading glasses, and if I'm not careful, my gut. I thought my own geeky indulgences for sugar and Spidey were well-hidden in my public guise. But the Fanboy Stranger revealed the truth: they recognize us by our shoes.

Half-Mast: Don Van Vliet

2010-12-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

There's so many things
to feel and see while you're awake
they're just out of reach
out of grasp
yeah out of reach
and just as many; maybe more
the minute that you sleep
so I got to throw my preach
skeleton breath
scorpion blush
I have a crush on your skeleton
watch out unsuspecting stranger
you'll fall off the log
headfirst into dreams
end up screaming
this will comb the wolf
and that will comb the fog
what will peen the rain
what will preen the hog
oh you mean earth
and hell over you
and laugh at your tire tracks
if you get up
skeleton makes good.

"Skeleton Makes Good" - The final song on Don's final album.

More Thrdgll Propaganda

2010-12-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

Now available in paperback and hardcover: The Infinite League and Other Pedestrians. Check it out here.

Still Only 25 Cents

2010-10-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness: money is not an infantile wish." – Sigmund Freud

In the early Seventies, I saw a photograph of Hagar the Horrible cartoonist Dik Browne in Parade Magazine. I knew who Dik Browne was because, even at this young age, I was completely absorbed in the world of comics and determined that cartooning was going to be my future occupation. Browne was photographed at his drawing board, as all cartoonists are, grinding out another series of comic strip panels (or at least pretending to) while beaming at the camera. This already looked like the Good Life to me, sitting on your butt, drawing cartoon junk all day, but there was one detail in the photo that really convinced me that this guy had hit the lotto. Browne had a can of soda by his table.

Halloweak

2010-10-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

After several decades of consistent failure, I have to conclude that I suck at Halloween. It’s embarrassing. I mean, I pride myself on being a creative type, moderately well-versed in geek culture, and I’m certainly a fan of the holiday and all its paraphernalia. But I’ve never been able to make a worthwhile contribution to the festivities. Even as a kid I usually made a last-minute scramble to throw some reasonable facsimile of a costume together, just enough to qualify for candy collection. Maybe that was the problem – I got the candy anyway. I was rewarded for minimal effort, even though I felt instinctively that I should be trying harder.

The Dysfunctional Hulk

2010-10-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

Loitering in my local Barnes-a- Million (as Evitt calls it), I was thumbing through a Marvel Masterworks book, a hardback reprint of early comic books with horrific digital color. Coming across the section featuring Fantastic Four #25, I had one of those electric jolts of repressed memory that I imagine are becoming more common in this age of repackaged nostalgia. I realized that this issue had been the very first time I had seen the Incredible Hulk.

The Infinite Cosmos

2010-10-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

It’s surprising to me now that I even found the idea of LSD appealing. I’ve always been a self-control freak and I was already having major anxiety issues with pot by the time I was in high school. I should’ve been able to predict that acid wasn’t the drug for me, but it took quite a number of pulse pounding, panic-riddled freak-outs to convince me I wanted to stay lucid.

Thunderella

2010-09-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Manhammer

2010-09-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

Betty Brutus

2010-09-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Adventures of Caleb Fraid

2010-09-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Proposed cover for the Caleb Fraid vs. Thrdgll single. (We'll see what C.F. has to say about it.)

Alvin Greene: Man of Action!

2010-07-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Fellow South Carolinians, join the Greene Revolution by downloading and printing the Greene Machine flyer here: http://thrdgll.tripod.com/alvin.pdf

Alvin Greene has a bold plan to put Carolinians to work making action figures of the Greeneman himself. What could be more fun? Sure, Greene seems to have only the vaguest cognitive awareness, but remember, even if he spends his time in the Senate staring into space and drooling on himself, he'll do less damage than Jim Demint!

Half-Mast: Harvey Pekar

2010-07-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Product!

2010-06-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

The Prints sales page is finally here!

Passing the savings on to you:

2010-06-05T18:11:00.000-07:00

Bedbugs Bites Again

2010-04-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Digitally remastered for the 21st Century, the classic Dream Diary strips from the 1990s return in a brand new, expanded and annotated edition. Subconscious guest appearances by Andy Griffith, Dolly Parton, William Shatner, Woody Allen and many more. Introduction by Jim Woodring.

Click to sample:

Mustard Belly

Kansas

Muddy

64 pages of Freudian comedy, 8 1/2" square TPB, with extensive notes and sketches. Painstakingly retouched and relettered.

BUY IT!!

OLD!!!

2010-04-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

Kate Clinton and David Vitter, drawn for The Progressive.

Fernando

2010-04-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

Pet portrait commission.

Elderly art!

2010-04-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

I can't remember what this was for...a poster for...something...

I'm kicking myself now for not writing "My God could beat up THY God."

Came to me in a dream on the night of W's reelection.

Something to buy!

2010-03-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

Now available in analog format (formerly known as print): a 30-page collection of classic comic stripism by world-renowned crackpot recluse Ashley Holt. Bitter attacks on sweatshop labor, Southern culture, conspiracy theorists, Anne Geddes, The Walt Disney Corporation and more, all in handy 5 ½ x 7" pamphlet format.

Sample strips:

Redneck Expert

Stereotypes That Never Caught On

No War!

Only $5 U.S. shipping included (please inquire for foreign shipping)

Who dat?

2010-03-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

Name this super hero and win something made of paper.

Madonna and Child

2010-03-05T08:35:00.000-08:00

Melissa Lynn Earley and her "baby," Petey.

2010-02-18T11:10:00.001-08:00

Quoting Thomas

2010-02-15T20:53:00.000-08:00

Bedbug Evolution

2009-12-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

My latest Bedbug dream image. I don't know who this guy was, but he started chasing me with those axes when I trespassed on his property. He only let me go when I promised to buy him a CD by K.C. and the Sunshine Band.

Just for kicks, I've posted the sketch stages, from teeny thumbnail scribble to anal-retentive finish. Consider this a cautionary example.

Embracing My Roots

2009-11-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

Self-promo image drawn around the time Mel and I moved to Spartanburg to live on the Holt family farm.

Decisions, decisions...

2009-11-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

2009-11-01T16:48:00.000-08:00

Promotional postcard for the fine folks at Art-0-mat, drawing by me, design by Clark Whittington. Art-o-mats dispense original works of art by way of refurbished cigarette machines, including the paintings of my wife-person, Melissa Earley. Learn all about the Art-o-mat plan of world conquest here: www.artomat.org.

2009-11-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

A portrait of Right Wing Jesus, drawn shortly after the election of G.W. Bush.

New Doormat, TX. site!

2009-09-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

A cornucopia of classic recordings from Caleb Fraid's Dorrmat, TX. label on a brand spankin' new website. Caleb still has my long-lost Four Hankie Triumph cassette available, plus our notorious Lyrix Xchange splitter tape. Also starring Charlie McAlister, Ribeye, Michele Glaw and many other musical lunatics. Have a gander: http://www.doormattx.com/

2009-08-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

2009-08-16T14:11:00.001-07:00

Just for the hell of it, here's Stephen Hawking reading the "Cups" story below.

http://thrdgll.tripod.com/slurpee.mp3

Runneth Over with Cups

2009-08-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

Long ago – they tell me it was 1973 – the 7-11 convenience store chain released a series of Slurpee cups with images of DC Comics super heroes printed on them: http://www.glassnews.com/images/dcchecklist.gif. These were cheap, plastic cups in which the neon-colored concoction of syrup and crushed ice was dispensed. Usually, the cups featured a never-ending parade of sports stars, which held no interest to an avid indoorsman like me, who spent most of his free time coloring or playing with bugs. Having developed a growing interest in the cartoon likes of Superman and his cape-wearing ilk, I was very excited that this form of merchandising was taking a break from the Aarons and Clementes to serve up a few men in tights. Draw your own Freudian conclusions.

Gone But Not Forgiven

2009-07-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to determine if the condemnation of Robert McNamara is fully deserved or merely convenient. Mind you, I’m no Bob apologist. McNamara was instrumental is selling the Gulf of Tonkin incident as Congressional justification for the war in Vietnam, even though the evidence that U.S. Naval ships had been fired on was flimsy, and was eventually concluded to be non-existent. The Left despised McNamara for his technocratic number-crunching, which treated body counts as negotiable overhead, with apparently no grasp of the moral implications. In due course, the Hawks blamed him for the design of limited police actions in lieu of full and decisive military victory. Regardless of your view of the Vietnam conflict’s ultimate failure, Robert McNamara shoulders the blame. And maybe he should.

Half-Mast: Jesus of Neverland

2009-07-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

I hated Michael Jackson. I hated him in the way every young sophisticate turns his nose up at popular culture when he enters his teens. Jackson was the cherry on top of a huge mound of ‘80s mall culture; Pac Man, Care Bears, New Coke, Rubik’s Cubes, parachute pants and Casio keyboards, kiddie crap now all sun-faded and broken on thrift store shelves. He was the King of Pop, anathema to a kid embracing drugs, punk rock and adolescent alienation. He was the definition of “heavy rotation”, his 15-minute Thriller video being the one bit of MTV programming that could force video-addicted youth to change the channel. He was a media-inflicted rash that wouldn’t go away.

2009-07-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

A quickie portrait of Karl Malden, dependable character actor. I managed to throw this one together on the fly, scratching out the drawing in ballpoint and utilizing the scanner and good old MS Paint at work. Pablo Lobato suggested he needed a "butt nose". I tried it, but I just can't do that to poor Karl, whom I liked. I try not to engage in cruel and unusual caricature. If you're looking for that, hit up some of those guys at Disneyworld.

Escape from the Planet of the Angels

2009-07-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Even in 1976, at the height of her stardom, it was considered trite and superficial to like Farrah Fawcett. But everyone did, of course. All the guys had that ubiquitous poster, all the girls were blow-drying their hair to Farrahesque perfection. And how cold-hearted would you have to be NOT to like her? She was thin, blond and cute, with an impossibly toothy smile and a twinkling, little girl charm – the perfect blend of innocence and sex appeal that has forged America’s Sweethearts for generations.

Husker Did

2009-06-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

Husker Du: Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton.

The rock and roll biz, as we all know, has always been about selling teen angst to other teens. Subsequently, rock musicians are expected to be at the height of their creative powers at around age 18. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid barely old enough to plug in his Marshal. Sure, there’s the fluke Lennon/McCartney prodigies that can spew pop masterpieces between math classes, but most kids that age don’t know an A chord from their assholes. Pop songs ain’t rocket science, but expecting the average garage band to sound sweet enough for FM is a tall order. There’s a 99% chance your band is excruciatingly shitty.

Bye Bye, Buzz

2009-06-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Evitt sent me the above image, using one of my Infinite League drawings and some gimmicky website or other. I like the effect of seeing Ash art appearing on these old television sets, as if I had my own Saturday morning cartoon in 1976. In reality, I’ve never had that kind of opportunity to be Part of the Problem. But I have to confess the sight of these crummy old TV sets has me feeling overwhelmingly nostalgic.

Two-Toned Memoir

2009-06-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

Color version of a black and white classic. Not an easy task eliminating all that crosshatching on the original. (Click for bigness.)

Half-Mast: David Carradine

2009-06-06T21:14:00.000-07:00

It is 1974. I am five years old. My brother, 9 years my senior, has just finished watching his favorite television show. He enters our shared bedroom to engage in what has now become a weekly, post-prime time ritual. He stands with feet wide apart, his arms slowing whipping the air, his fingers in tight, claw-like configurations. He says nothing, his eyes gone trance-like. He slowly tiptoes toward me (being careful not to “tear the rice paper”, you understand), moving in to strike. He will now proceed to pummel me senseless for the remainder of the evening.

America in tatters?

2009-05-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

Someone, several years ago, burned a flag somewhere in our neighborhood. I don't know whether it was burned ceremonially or in protest, but ever since, I've been finding bits of the flag like those above regularly in our yard. I'll leave it to you to determine the symbolic significance of this.

Antique Thrdgll Musix

2009-05-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a little unpublished number from around 2001, one of the last recordings committed to tape on the old cassette 4-track. An awkward instrumental called "Pat Doesn't Have a Mink Coat":

http://thrdgll.tripod.com/patdoesnt.mp3

2009-04-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, 2009 is shaping up to be the year of the Ashley portrait - perhaps this was the positive change the Obama campaign kept promising?. Here's the Grumpy One's mug done up Atari 2600-style by bead artisan extraordinare and domestic life partner Melissa Earley. I look like I'm made of styrofoam pellets, just the type of makeover I've always longed for.

Who will step up to render the next portrait of Ashley Holt? Come on, people. Never let it be said that when the torch was passed you did not heed the call...or some such Kennedy-esque motivation. Round head, beard, big "Andy Rooney" eyebrows and you're done. Get to work!

His Brownness

2009-04-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

B&W and color versions of just-completed self-portrait. I think I've captured my eternal bitterness and snobbery pretty accurately. This being one of the few pen and ink (ie - Flair pen) pieces I've attempted in recent years, I went way overbaord with the hatching, which looks good on the original, but closed up severely when I scanned it. Ah, whattayagonnado?

A bit more realism than usual on this one. I'm not sure why - it just came out that way.

Salve Arm Adventures

2009-03-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm still working through this season's midlife crisis. While I'm trying to decide if I'll ever make any sort of art ever again, enjoy this lost episode (click to swell):

"You kids get offa my lawn!"

2009-03-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Portrait of Screaming Ashley by the legendary JJ Ohlinger.

(No, I am NOT missing teeth. Mr. Ohlinger has given me excess gums for reasons I know not.)

Suspenders and a bra?!

2009-02-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

Lumberjack illo for this year's FLUKE anthology. (Click to gigantify)

2009-02-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Online commentator Benjamin D. Brucke tries to point out the hypocrisy of my argument that Dave Sim can't draw hands...and inadvertently creates a thing of beauty.

Symptoms Include: JJ Ohlinger

2009-02-07T19:29:00.001-08:00

Portrait of the infamous JJ Ohlinger; artist, impresario, matador and onetime Queen for a Day contestant. Those who consume the free food of Greenville's numerous art openings will recognize JJ by his world-renowned midget toss and angelic rendition of "Papa Don't Preach", no gathering of the arts community being complete without them.

Be sure to check out JJ's award-winning artwork here, featuring portraits of all his sexual conquests.

A Toby by Any Other Name...

2009-02-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

(I'm late, but I'm still at it. Click to supersize.)

However...

2009-01-27T17:32:00.000-08:00

While awaiting Obama's Socialist Utopia to save us all from economic doom, I have been forced to accept a soul-sucking, full-time job with an 80-minute commute. This, I'm afarid to say, does not bode well for my plans to document the year of 1977 in caricature form, nor engage in many creative projects at all, practical or otherwise. It does, however, give me the perfect opportunity to engage in one of my regular nervous breakdowns, in which I completely reevaluate my pathetic life's goals, perhaps giving up art entirely for the billionth time to become a nun or a racecar driver or both.

While I'm climbing the walls over this existential conundrum, please at least TRY to enjoy these animated insanities written by the completely batshit Troy England Evitt III:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8WZv87HnHA

Ev created these with the endlessly-entertaining moviemaking site, www.xtranormal.com

Thrdgll Communiques will resume shortly. Avoid panic buying.

Giving me the business (while possibly stealing it away)

2009-01-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Comics Journal message board regular Paul Salvi is making me nervous. Noticing I had omitted the Superboy actors from my Krypotonians of the Silver Screen collection, he decided to fill in the gaps by doing an effective Ashley Holt impression. Great, more competetion, just what I needed. Here's John Haymes Newton and Gerhard Christopher, both Superboys from the syndicated show of the early '90s.

The Powah; A Play in One Act

2009-01-17T06:57:00.000-08:00

(Conversation I had with Melissa first thing this morning:)

Ash: I dreamed that you were fighting for farmer’s rights.

Mel: Yeah?

Ash: You went to work at the Chapman Center (local arts center where she works in real life) and you came home all Jane Fonda’d up, with buttons and leaflets, talking all kinda “power to the people” stuff.

Anti-social networking

2009-01-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I deactivated my Facebook page. It was kinda cute playing "look how fat they got" with photos of people from 8th grade for a few days, but I just couldn't take it anymore. Facebook's format encourages (almost demands) the most base, trivial idiocy imaginable. You'd open the "wall", whatever that is, and be greeted by crucial updates about the lives of your so-called friends like, "Becky Tinkertoes is washing dishes" or "Wallace Chumpchange is wondering what kind of socks to buy". I was sorely tempted to write something along the lines of:

Stephen Ashley Holt is contemplating the meaninglessness of a Godless universe that includes death, famine, disease and the copyright stranglehold of the Walt Disney Corporation while listening to Wagner and slowly and methodically stabbing himself in the forearm with a pencil.

But Facebook won't let you post a statement anywhere near that long. Its format inspires only short, clipped, W. Bush-style exclamations - "Kenny likes milkshakes" or "Theda go night-night now". Frankly, it brought out the worst in me. My contributions to the Facebook arts were rather mean-spirited and I apologize to those with wounds that won't heal.

Come on, people. We're living in the information age. We could be expressing grand new visions for life in the new millenium, sharing our deepest, innermost longings and perceptions, or constructing manifestos around great scientific and technological breakthroughs. People, we can allow caricature portraits of figures from 1977 to span the globe at the speed of light!! But instead you're telling the world that you just watched Seinfeld and ate a taco.

This is not the information superhighway that Al Gore had in mind.

Gilmore No Mo'

2009-01-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

(Click to biggify)

This one's early, but who could wait to draw the ultra-dreamy Gary Gilmore?

Not long before his execution, Michael O'Donahue wrote a special Christmas song dedicated to Gary's case, sung by the cast of Saturday Night Live. The transcript is here: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76jgilmore.phtml

Symptoms of '77

2009-01-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the post below, I've embarked on an insane project: spending the year chronicling the events of 1977 with caricatures. Like you, I also assume that this task will never be completed - such are the empty promises of the blogosphere.

Why '77? Well, the first entry, the explosion of punk rock in the form of the notorious Sex Pistols, is just the beginning. 1977 was a banner year for ridiculous pop culture, the peak of the Me Decade's self-obsessive opulence, a Washingtonian experiment gone South and a virtual feeding frenzy of tastelessness and triviality. All this years before Reagan and Mr. T. I believe 1977 to be the year that American culture went into permenant recession - when we turned from the mirror of social relevance that marked the '60s and early '70s and decided to just party like it's 1999.

Join me in the Retroverse as we try to learn from the history we are doomed to repeat.

I hope you like long hair and sideburns!

The Filth and the Filthy

2009-01-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

(Click to enbiggen)

Yma Lives!

2009-01-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

Damon Devine, caretaker of the official Yma Sumac website (and former caretaker of Yma herself), has added my portrait of the Queen of Exotica to the homepage. Delve into the rich life of this mysterious and etherally talented superstar: http://www.yma-sumac.com/

Hear the Voice!

2009-01-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

Please enjoy the high octane artwork and inspired testimony of brilliant, lunatic visionary, James Garlett. His peculiar brand of humorous wisdom makes me laugh until I wretch forth the demons. He's one of my all-time favorite sentients.

Rantings from the Pulpit

Who knew?

2009-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

When did I get a page on Lambiek?

http://lambiek.net/artists/h/holt_ashley.htm

The Infinite League vs. the Miscellaneous

2008-12-26T16:34:00.001-08:00

Presented here in its entirety (with big, stupid color added) is last year's action-packed mini-publication from Wide Awake Press: The Infinite League vs. the Miscellaneous. As a special offer, a signed copy of this long-out-of-print mini will be awarded to the first among you who can tell me where the Rocket Rogofsky character first appeared (hint: I didn't invent him). Enjoy!

Coverboy vs. the Toast

The Captain Fires Back

2008-12-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

Look what the mailman brung me! An actual autograph from Captain Marvel himself! Do YOU have Captain Marvel's autograph? No, you do not.

John Davey's letter says, "Enclosed is your punishment for your unflattering comments on 'Shazam'!" I deserve much worse punishment, wouldn't you say?

Half-Mast: Bettie Page

2008-12-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

Bettie Page, the Marilyn Monroe of the fanboy community, passed away on December 11. Though she was once the most popular pin-up model of the 1950s, Page dropped out of the public eye for decades, adding mystique to her legend. Like most geeks of my generation, I learned about Bettie when cartoonist Dave Stevens "cast" her as the Rocketeer's girlfriend in his comic book of the early '80s. In the years following, her photos, as well as contemporary artists's renderings of her likeness, became obligatory among the comic book set. By the mid-90s, you could find more "Bettie Pages", in bondage gear and trademark bangs, than Batmen and Darth Vaders at Dragon Con. (Personally, I thought it was a huge improvement over the comic conventions of old.)

My Business with Small Biz

2008-12-12T17:25:00.001-08:00

Illos appearing in this month's issue of Small Biz (reproduced, appropriately enough, at a very small size). The two guys are famous economists. I've never heard of them and neither have you (sort of like being a famous illustrator). As always, there was no digital cheating on the conveyor belt art - I drew every one of those damn boxes by hand. I was daunted by the prospect, but it turned into a relaxing, meditative exercise, free of the frustration and panic of trying to get someone's eyebrows right while the deadline looms.

Mike Mussa, the guy at the bottom, is one of those cases where he's gained weight in recent years, but isn't quite a "fat guy". So it's not like drawing William Conrad, where you just start with a big circle, but his features don't have the distinction of his younger self. You have to shoot for somewhere in the middle, an unsatisfying outcome for a caricaturist.

But all in all, a very enjoyable gig, working with very appreciative people. Hope they call again!

Half-Mast: Forrest J Ackerman

2008-12-10T22:38:00.001-08:00

King of the monster geeks, Forry Ackerman, died this week at age 92. He was the first of the seemingly-indestructible trio of long-lived sci-fi pals - Forry, Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen - to pass away. In the pre-VCR era, Ackerman's vital periodical, Famous Monsters of Filmland, gave glimpses of classic horror and science fiction films to those too young to remember (and couldn't see unless they showed up on TV). As we all found out when video came our way, most of the movies weren't half as good as Forry's magazine made them seem.

Ackerman's collection of monster movie memorabilia was legendary, with tours provided by the man himself for decades. Sadly, with no museum offering to buy his various masks, lobby cards and robot suits, he was forced to sell most of the collection piece by piece in recent years. A damn shame. I mean, the Smithsonian will spring for Warren G. Harding's pajamas but they won't buy Karloff's neck bolts? As a nation, we've lost our priorities.

But those of us who know the score will look to our Wolfman Soakies and glow-in-the-dark Hunchback model kits and salute the man who opened the Chamber of Horrors for our juvenile minds. Arise, Forrest J Ackerman! May you keep Van Helsing at bay.

The John Davey Variation

2008-12-05T08:48:00.001-08:00

Yesterday's post, with my Shazam portrait and accompanying anti-70s rant, inspired more email in a single day than any work I've ever produced. (And thanks to those who included birthday wishes/sympathies.) This was exciting, of course, but interesting in that almost everyone (save the not-quite-right Caleb Fraid) agreed with my assessment that the show was butt-awful. It's a sad reality I guess we have to accept: poor quality television brings us together as a people. All you have to do is say, "Gary Coleman", and a stranger becomes a friend.

Anyhow, I figured I should post the companion piece, which you'll notice is slightly similar to the first. Above is John Davey, who portrayed Captain Marvel after the first season of Shazam. I preferred Davey, who seemed like a regular Joe compared to a TV weatherman-type like Jackson Bostwick. Davey struck me, in spite of his red ballet tights, like the sort of guy who would tell you to "pop the hood" if you said you were having car trouble.

That took a little sting out of those endless lectures about lying and not judging people by their gender, but not much.

They Owe Us Ten Years

2008-12-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Michael Gray and Jackson Bostwick in the 1974 CBS series, Shazam.
How is it that, during my childhood of the 1970's, the Japanese could keep me completely enthralled with cheap, rubber monster suits on shows like Ultraman and Space Giants, yet here in America, "the greatest country in the world"TM, Saturday Morning entertainment was like watching paint dry after a shot of Nyquil? Case in point, the 1974 - 77 Shazam series. The set-up sounds pretty exciting to a kid: Young Billy Batson and his elder companion, known simply as The Mentor (this was pre-NAMBLA, remember), traveled around in a big camper van*, getting into all sorts of dangerous predicaments that required Billy to magically transform into Captain Marvel, super hero extraordinare. Man, this oughtta be good!

Half-Mast: Studs Terkel

2008-11-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

I had intended to post my tribute portrait of the legendary Studs Terkel in a more timely manner (Studs died on Halloween), but was held up by an actual paid assignment (I was just as surprised as you are). Then, thanks to poor planning on my part, I got caught up in the trance-inducing patterns of Terkel's trademark shirt and hat, which I wound up having to produce pixel by pixel over the course of two days.

Software-savvy illustrators often ridicule me when I reveal this secret: I do the bulk of my digital work in MS Paint. That's right, the built-in paint program your two-year-old uses to make color squiggles, that's what I'm working with. I started working this way when I first got the computer and never stopped. I tweak the image here and there in Photoshop at the final stage, but I've never been able to get the level of control in PS that I have in Paint.

But that means that I have to manipulate my scanned line art by hand/mouse, filling in most of the lines with color so they'll dissappear into basic shapes. It sounds crazy, but I hate working in layers (as with Adobe Illustrator) and the process usually goes by quickly.

Usually. Unless that quick 'n easy trick I was going to use for Studs' shirt doesn't look right, and my only recourse is to go back in and salvage the pattern a centimeter at a time.

Serious cramps in my back and mouse hand. But I'm sure a friend of the working man like Studs would appreciate what I went through.

Half-Mast: Yma Sumac

2008-11-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

(Click to enlarge the legend.)

Fans of classic exotica, give your copy of Voice of Xtabay a spin and pay tribute to the amazing, multi-octave stylings of the original Lounge Diva. You'll imagine yourself in some strange, tropical island...or perhaps attending a party at Jackie Treehorn's house. She may not have been a real Peruvian princess like her press kits claimed, but she was royalty in high fidelity.

(Apologies again for the double post/email. Another premature upload - the eyes needed work.)

Damn You, Daddy, Damn You

2008-11-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth

For impressionable kids of the early 1960s, one of the gatekeepers to the simmering counterculture was rot rod pioneer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Ed combined suped up cars, surfing and bug-eyed monsters to create t-shirts and model kits of intoxicating vulgarity. His signature cartoon character, Rat Fink, was a revelation for misfit children confused by their own disenchantment with the Wonderful World of Disney. The jittery, fly-covered rat was the sort of crude scrawl the kids might draw themselves, only to have the art confiscated by a disapproving teacher or scout leader.

The only reason...

2008-10-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

...and I mean the ONLY reason I'd want McCain as president is so I can enjoy Tom Toles' drawings of his big babyhead.

And the Beat Gets Squashed

2008-10-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

As you can see, a considerable amount of distortion resulted from my long 'n skinny portrait of Bill Burroughs being crammed into an 8 1/2 x 11 cover for Beat Scene. Ordinarily I'da cursed a blue streak about it, but in this case, I felt the squashing actually improved the likeness a good deal. (I sometimes try a little digital squash and stretch myself when trying to get Linda Lavin to look less like Peter Tosh or some such.) Plus the publication itself is exceedingly hip, and I think the cover as a whole is pretty fetching. Thanks to Kevin Ring and the fine folks at Beat Scene.

Class of '53

2008-10-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

I've been hammering out a few practice sketches from the 1953 Garnet and Black (the University of South Carolina annual). I'm not going to post the original photos because that will reveal how far off the mark my likenesses are. Anyway, these were scanned directly from lil' teeny tiny sketches, hence their lo-res appearance.

This here's Wilfred Day Novit, an Outstanding Senior. Google turns up nothing about him, so I suppose he took that education back to the farm, never curing tennis elbow or arguing in front of the Supreme Court or winning a Pulitzer for his expose on Jackie Kennedy's hats. What a waste. He may as well have gone to art school!

As far as I can tell, Miss Bobbie Ward wasn't a student, but a "sponsor" of Pi Kappa Phi. Never having been a beer-funneling fraternity douchebag, I have no idea what that means. I suppose the Pi Kappa boys just passed her around like a doob. Poor kid. You can't tell from my portrait, but she was cute as hell and deserved much better.

Flee, Puny Humans!

2008-10-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

Illustration for the fine folks at the Student Press Law Center.

Your inner dyke?

2008-10-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

Sorta-kinda Ellen Degeneres I just finished for The Progressive. Seems she's been announced as a new model for Cover Girl makeup and Kate Clinton, author of the piece, wonders what sort of demographic Ellen is supposed to attract.

Fortunately for Cover Girl, Ellen will make a much more photogenic spokesgal than my portrait suggests.

Stripping in the Closet

2008-09-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

More "lost" doodlings from the Secret Artwork Burial Ground (click images to enlighten):

People! You know I hate 'em! Walking around, talking about stuff, wasting my oxygen. There oughtta be a law! Here's a tantrum about the state of male public dress that's sure to secure my standing in the "you kids get offa my lawn" stage of cranky, old geezerhood.

Finally! A comic strip that speaks from a liberal point of view! That's right, Reaganites, I've never abandoned my juvenile, teenage pothead views on society's problems. I give money to homeless alcoholics, I fully support pornographers and prostitutes, and I root for the drug dealers when I watch The Wire. I may even marry a couple of drag queens and adopt a Mexican kid just to piss you off. Feel free to pray for my everlasting soul if you must.

This doodle technically qualifies as a Bedbug. I dreamed the strip idea, woke up at 3 am, giggling and scrambling for a pen. It really, really irks me that my subconscious is so much funnier than I am.

When in doubt, make fun of rednecks.

Out of the closet at last!

2008-09-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Had to track down my college diploma for a job interview this morning (I feared I might have thrown the near-useless piece of paper away) and ran across tons of old artwork. Indulge me as I purge these bad memories. A lot of this stuff immediately went into hiding right after I drew it. (Click to enlarge, as usual.)

The cover artwork for the Lyrix Xchange cassette, wherein Songmaster General Caleb Fraid and I wrote and recorded songs using each other's lyrics. Caleb's natural tunesmanship so outclassed my own that I still can't bring myself to release an official CD version of the tape. (Someday, I'm just going to hold my breath and plunge right into a box set release of all my old, ratty 4-track recordings and be done with it. But not today.)

You can tell I'm not used to this sort of tonal rendering, but it was an experiment I wanted to try (and may try again). I drew the whole thing as line art in ink and made a halftone copy, so light the lines were barely visible, on cardstock paper. Then I used the faded linework as a guide and went to work on the paper with whatever pencils I had lying around. Since I never do this kind of shading and such, it looks a lot to me like the stoner art I used to doodle in high school. In other words, an underdeveloped technique.

Note my acoustic bass guitar, a then-new purchase from the pawn shop down the road. I still use it today, in spite of its horrible buzzing and fret clicking. Can't throw out a perfectly good bass.

Fan art drawing of Avatar, created by Terry Collins and Al Bigley. At least he used to be Avatar. Trademark conflicts with some comic book imprint or other forced the boys to change his name to Geminar before the book was published by Image. Geminar can be seen these days as the host of Bigley's excellent how-to book on cartooning effects, Draw Comics Like a Pro (which, as we all know, is short for prostititute).

Unfinished strip from 2001. The final panel adequately expresses my critical evaluation. I have no idea what was supposed to be in the word balloons - surrealistic gibberish, no doubt. A product of desperation and creative malaise. I'm sure to engage is more of this exact type of pointlessness in the future. In fact, that's a promise.

Cut paper experiment from 2000. I have no idea where this appeared - maybe a cover for Charleston City Paper? Something to do with summer reading, obviously. I think the message here is "reading is gay".

Anyway, this was the sort of thing I used to do to achieve color before I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age. The piece was xeroxed onto various sheets of colored paper, which were then cut out and reaasembled. I think I picked up this stunt from Bob Staake, who also "went digital" around the same time. You can see where the rubber cement has discolored the paper over the years. Trust me, when it was new, it was vibrant and stunning.

Strong Ever Meulen influence in the figures here. Well, maybe YOU can't see it, but I know where my head was.

Don't know what to tell you about this one. I probably drew this during one of my frequent nervous breakdowns. It's one of my favorites. On the left is an early version of El Guano, a character that pops up often in my sketchbooks, but has yet to materialize in print. One problem is, just like with Avatar, I discovered that Rick Veitch also has a character called El Guano (in Maximortal, I think). Rick ran so many of my Bedbugs strips in his Rare Bit Fiends comic back in the day, I'd hate to piss him off.

But hell, what can I do? His name is El Guano, he can't help that.

You had to be there...

2008-09-14T20:52:00.001-07:00

Click to engulf...I mean enlarge.

Hub-Bubbling

2008-09-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

By the way, the aforementioned ABC Show, featuring my Q Monkey below, opened last night at the Hub-Bub Showroom Gallery. I'm linking to their site, even though they've erased all evidence of the show there. I promise you, the work is in the gallery until October 3 and it's pretty damn cool.

We had a good time at the outdoor Art Mart today, though I only threw together a few Beat and Supermen portfolios at the last minute to hog a small piece of Melissa's table. We are sunburnt and exhausted, but it was good hang with real people for change, instead of you imaginary internet gremlins.

Anyway, Hub-Bub is here: http://www.hub-bub.com/

No Punk in Podunk

2008-09-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

I drove into Cowpens for another Podunk day of babysitting dumbfounded mouthbreathers while playing the Minutemen CD I snagged in the used bin last week. It’s the first two albums from D. Boon and the boys on dear, old SST. Yeah, I know Greg Ginn sold out Negativland over the whole U2 lawsuit and I’m not supposed to like SST anymore, but you don’t wreck teen nostalgia that easily. The records have that raw, flat Spot production that makes a Southern Californian punk record from 1981 sound the way it should, bringing me back to my days of wandering the suburban wilderness in search of someone who would buy me beer.

Questionable Monkey

2008-07-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

My contribution to the upcoming "ABC Show" at the Showroom Gallery here in Spartanburg. I've been experimenting with CMYK color separation-type effects using graphic elements other than dot patterns (in this case, the letter Q). I'm pretty irritated that the patterns are uneven, leaving those visible streaks in the color, but I'm still working on the problem.

The letter Q, by the way, evolved from an ancient Egyptian symbol for "monkey", hence the monkey.

Bashing my brethren...again

2008-07-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

Click to stimulate.