THE CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2023 IS ON!!!

 

OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW?!?  THEN YO ASS BETTER CALL SOMEBODYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Sorry CRAZIES, just channeling my inner Road Dawg there!  Huge, HUGE news today!  The San Diego County Fair is back!  Wait, no, that's not it!  I mean, it does in fact start today and with any luck I'll be there, but that's not the big news!  The big news is that after a ten month wait, the CRAZY COMIC COUNT COUNTDOWN is back!  And just two months after we counted down WonderCon no less!  But we'll get to that very soon!  There's something else on the horizon that also needs discussing...

For many years now, I've been taking part in the Team Cul De Sac art auction that takes place every year at HeroesCon in Charlotte.  Its goal is to raise money for research in the fight against Parkinson's Disease.  Although much progress has been made in recent years, there's still a lot of fight to go, and I'm strapping on my gloves for a few rounds myself!  This year, I'm donating not one but TWO pieces of original CRAZY art to the auction, hand-colored and ready for framing!  First up:

"Behold, Mighty Alice!"  It wouldn't be a Cul De Sac art auction without art honoring the star of the Cul De Sac strip, ALICE!!!  Done on vellum paper with Alice herself and the blacks colored in PrismaColor markers and the background colors and highlights rendered in oil pastels, this piece features the adorable and zany Alice Otterloop dressed in her best homemade superhero duds and brandishing her treasured plastic knife!  A must for any Otterloop Family enthusiast!

Next up:

"BUBBLLE FOX!!!  FOOOOOOSH!!!"  You've heard of "ULTRAMAN!!!  SHWAAAAA!!!"  Well,  Bubble Fox makes a noise too when he transforms.  Those heliums tanks can be quite loud when releasing gas!  A true tour de force of mixed media, this piece featuring Bubble Fox in buoyant frame was also done on vellum paper with his fur rendered in colored pencils, the blacks, gray tones, eyes and helium tank colored in with PrismaColor markers and the backrounds rendered in oil pastels.  A must have for any fan of insanely obscure webcomic characters!

And there you have it!  For those not in the know, Cul De Sac was a brilliant and hilarious comic strip created by Richard Thompson, without question one of the greatest of all time.  At the height of the strip's popularity, Thompson was struck by Parkinson's Disease.  Though he tried to fight on, he eventually couldn't and had to end the strip in 2012, passing away himself in 2016.  Every year the auction raises money for research against this awful disease and artists from all over the world do their part by donating original art!  If you're a fan heading out to Charlotte in a couple of weeks, won't you please stop by and bid on some pieces?  And if you're an artist who can't attend but would love to donate, checkout the above pic or this link to find out more!  Let's kick Parkinson's ass once and for all!

And now, on to that OTHER big piece of news for this week: COMIC CON is coming!  As is tradition here at the CRAZYVERSE, we'll be spending the next couple of months looking back at the fun of SDCC's past as we countdown to the BIG day itself, with a few extra for good measure.  So let's quit stalling and set the Wayback Machine to July 2013, as we wander the halls of the San Diego Convention Center and the streets of Downtown San Diego to take in the sights and sounds (Even some smells!) of what is the biggest show in pop culture!  Hold on to your Batman underoos kids! The  CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2023 is officially a go!  Enjoy...

Starting things off with a rare look at some behind the scenes work in the exhibit hall.  Taken from Hall C and looking south towards the Hall H end of the building, you can even see the air wall that separates Halls G and H.  Also visible are the signs for the Hasbro and Mattel booths.  Spent many years working for Hasbro, who oddly cut back last year, despite having a loaded slate.  Hasbro's loss was Mattel's gain and now I have set up both toy giants' booths!

A more intimate look at the Hasbro booth and the doomed Kre-O line.  If folks want knockoff Legos, they just buy Mega Bloks!

My nephew Dante hamming it up while on poster tube duty.  He was just a few months shy of his 11th birthday in this pic.  Now he's a few months shy of his 21st!  Where the hell does time go?  And yes, he still mans that poster tube with all his might!

Watch out!  Catwoman's not as enthusiastic about Batman's mixtape as he is! 

El Chapulin Colorado.  He isn't the hero we need, but he's the hero we deserve!

The Ryse: Son Of Rome display at the much missed Xbox Lounge.  After two up-and-down years at the Hard Rock Hotel in the Gaslamp, Microsoft chose to move their gaming lounge to a larger, and better guarded, hotel in the Manchester Grand Hyatt on the same street as the Convention Center.  So much awesome swag was given out at the Xbox Lounge.  Great atmosphere too.  Also one of the few offsites that stayed open past 7pm.

Ariel's found gadgets and gizmos aplenty in the exhibit hall!

Another missed offsite that used to beckon the badge-less: The Shifty Look Freeplay Arcade.  Put on by video game pioneers Namco, it was held in the courtyard of the Hilton Gaslamp and featured nothing but retro arcade games!  Sadly, Namco shut down Shifty Look, and many of the awesome and hilarious comics that came with it, and the World's been sadder since.  But for two glorious years, we had a pretty bitcoin offsite arcade!

When you just can't decide who to cosplay as...

The legendary Tara Strong!  Might be quicker to name characters she HASN'T voiced!

It's a Tim Burton double feature!  And with Disney's purchase of Fox, there's nothing stopping Edward Scissorhands from showing up in Disney canon now!

A Gaslamp Peddle Bar!  Not an uncommon sight around Downtown San Diego, but for some reason, they're much more fun around Comic Con!  Quick story here: My brother and I had just dropped his kids off with his wife and we were walking back to the con.  As we're waiting to cross the street, I start bopping head around because for some reason, I could hear The Humpty Dance.  My brother noticed as I rarely dancing along with stuff, but he too said he could hear it.  We turn around and there's a peddle bar rolling through the street loaded with cosplayers and the Joker is driving it!  And they're bumping Digital Underground as the ride!  It was just an awesome moment, and it wouldn't happen at any other time of year, save for maybe Halloween! 

The fabled Adult Swim Booth!  Cartoon Network has long had a presence at the con and for awhile, Adult Swim did too, before focussing all their energies on their offsite.  And while I will admit, it was a better direction to go in, I do miss their booth.  Last year, they downsized their offsite too.  Hopefully that was just a little hiccup and they'll be back strong this year.  Unfortunately, the Spike TV booth barely visible in the background won't be rising from the dead anytime soon!

We'll wrap things up today with a visit from the Power Rangers!  Though not the force in pop culture they used to be, the teens with attitude still battle giant monsters to this day, thanks in large part to the vast library of Japanese footage that still hasn't been localized!

And that was Comic Con 2013!  One of my all-time favorite shows, I almost didn't make it after falling off a ladder while setting it up the day before!  Though I limped through preview night, I was able to get better by Friday and made it out on both legs!  It was a great year for offsites and a great year for swag!  Lot's of fond memories of the 2013 edition!

Week 1 of 9 is in the books for the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!!  Never fear though folks, because there is a LOT more to go over the next two months!  So be sure to come back next week and see what 2014 has to offer.  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

IT'S BANANA TIME YO!!!

We have reached the end... Of May!  What?  I do this every month CRAZIES.  It's a staple of this blog!  But it is true, today is the last day of May 2023 and I am actually pretty excited!  Next week, the San Diego County Fair returns with a pretty good musical lineup and all the food and exhibits I've come to love over the decades.  But more than that, Summer is officially here and with it, something super cool!  But more on that later!  I won't waste any more time, so let's swing on into some fun, sound good?  Enjoy...

Talk about monkey business?  What kind of shenanigans were going on to make this little primate so forgetful?  Perhaps he had too many banana daiquiris?  Today's entry switches gears and comes from Pinch Punch Post and was a lot of fun to do.  Oddly enough, I probably actually did have time to work on this one but opted to focus more on action than substance.  Background and foreground elements can add a lot to a piece for sure, but if they aren't totally necessary, ditch 'em!  That's an old Jack Kirby trick kiddos.  And the King knew best!

And that's a wrap and May 2023.  I know, it's kinda sad, but you know what'll turn that frown upside down?  COMIC CON!!!  That's right!  We are officially in that season again and starting next Wednesday, the CRAZY Comic Con Countdown returns!  Over two months of SDCC awesome that I'm always so excited to share with you wonderful CRAZIES!!!  So be sure to come back and help me kick thongs off right!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

DON'T CALL HIM A MANATEE!!!

Back again CRAZIES and still merrily on our way to nowhere!  Okay, that's not entirely true as we're actually here right now, looking at this!  But since I'm not one to open up vortexes that could ruin the space-time continuum, let's just swim ahead to the art, shall we?  Enjoy...

The gentle, rotund, noble dugong.  Similar to manatees, with their tails being more fin-shaped like that of a whale, these gentle giants merely plod along in marshes, feeding on water weeds and plants.  The original art for this Animal Alphabets entry looked much, much better when I first did it.  But sadly the scanner I used just had a lot of distortions on it, so I had to recolor it digitally.  It still looks okay, but really loses the depth that coloring with markers gave it.  Oh well.  Them's the brakes sometimes.

And so it is that another week has passed as we head towards the May finale.  But fear not, because I haven't forgotten to queue up some monkey business to send us into June happy, so be sure to come back and check it out!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

KICKING IT WITH A CASSOWARY!!!

We have reached the midway of May CRAZIES!!!  Amazing how quickly we got here, eh?  Summer's getting closer and closer but before that, we need to get through all the art first!  There's three posts left, so let's get to it!  Enjoy...

Lousy peacocks!  They're always stealing the spotlight from those equally deserving cassowaries!  A particularly large, ornamental bird with striking colors, cassowaries are actually quite ornery and have very sharp claws.  If encountered by one, I'd highly recommend looking at it as opposed to touching it!  The Animal Alphabets parade continues this week with another simple entry that denotes I probably didn't have time to do anything more grand.  What can I say?  Sometimes less really is more!

Well, we're halfway there!  Two more posts to go in May and then something REALLY special will come along!  But that's news for another day!  Be sure to come back next week to see what gently floats by.  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

WHY SO BLUE, WHALE?!?

Welcome back CRAZIES!!!  This is DJ Cray-Z playing all your top cartoon hits at blog station CRZY FM!  Okay, enough with the silliness!  Y'all didn't come here to see me live out my fantasies.  Well, actually, you kinda did, but that's neither here nor there!  Y'all want art and I'm gonna deliver!  So let's skip getting our feet wet and dive right in to the new post!  Enjoy...

Blue whales.  THE largest creatures on earth.  Gentle giants who've been wrongly hunted for centuries, they've bounced back somewhat in recent decades.  Hopefully their numbers will continue to grow so future generations can marvel at them.  And at that size, there is a LOT to marvel at!  Another piece for Animal Alphabets, this one was a lot of fun to do.  Blue is one of my my favorite colors, so it was fun to play with the different shades.  And don't worry too much about the water's temperature.  Blue whale blubber is very insulating!

Another week down as our quest for CRAZY Critters continues!  Be sure to come back next week and see who's feathers we'll ruffle next!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later

HEY THERE!!! IT'S AN ASIATIC BEAR!!!

Welcome to the merry month of May CRAZIES!!!  Summer's just around the corner and I'm already getting excited over the coming festivities!  The Fair!  4th of July!  And, of course... COMIC CON!!!  Alright, alright, I gotta calm down and get ahold of myself here.  I'm still recuperating after all!  For those no longer on Twitter, I blew out my (again) at work last month.  Luckily, it won't require surgery but I do need a lot of rest so that my knee will heal properly.  Should be back on both feet by the end of May, just in time for some BBQ!  While I wait to fully recover, may as well share some art with you fine folks!  Enjoy...

It's a bear!  An Asiatic Black Bear to be precise!  And no, that's not honey on his chest and muzzle.  Bears in Asia, like our friend up above and his cousin the sun bear, typically have black or dark brown fur with striking light tan fur patches on their chests and muzzles!  Also contrary to popular belief, when bears are raiding bee nests, they're actually going after the bees themselves!  Bears do in fact have a sweet tooth, but they are also carnivores.  The bees, nest and honey included, are far more filling than just the sweet, viscous liquid we pour on biscuits!  This piece was done for Animal Alphabets awhile back.  Took a pretty simple approach with it which tells me I must've been very busy that week.  The honest truth is if the art ain't elaborate, it's because I was pressed for time!  Still, I'm pretty satisfied with it as bears are fun to draw!

And that's it for this week!  But don't feel blue!  We'll be back next Wednesday with some art that I'm sure you'll have a whale of a time looking at! Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

AUSTIN'S TACO TIME!!!

Well, we've come to the end of another month.  Even crazier?  Yesterday was my birthday y'all!  And what better way to celebrate than with some fan art?  Fan art for somebody else no less?!?  It's better to give than receive, right?  Enjoy...

Well here is a familiar face to the CRAZY faithful.  It's Austin Verburg, the animated likeness of Austin's Inferno creator Austin Verburg!  And he brought tacos!  I've known Austin for many years now, meeting him on Twitter pretty early on.  He's been a longtime pal in this wild world of cartooning that I live in and is also one of the few Twitter pals that I've met in real life!  He's a cartoonist, a farmer, a cosplayer...  A true jack of all trades!  Can't wait to see what the future holds for him!

That's a wrap on April 2023!  May's already heating up as we start to make our final push towards summer time fun, so be sure to come back next week and see what we have in store!  Until then,  take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!