INFLATION WILL NOT "DOOM" US!!!

Well, we're just about at the end of the first month of 2023!  Time flies when we're having fun, eh?  At least I hope y'all are having fun.  Awards Season is in full swing here, so everybody should have their Oscars pool going by now!  I'm actually really behind on my movies at the moment.  I saw a few last year, but none truly blew me away.  None of them were bad, but none truly stood out either.  Sometimes the best you can hope for is to break even.  Better than feeling deflated!  Speaking of which, today's stars aren't feeling the least bit deflated.  In fact, you might even say they are swelling with pride!  Well, swelling with something at least!  Don't believe me?  Scroll down and see for yourself!  Enjoy...

 

The Balloonus Flower.  You just can't afford to be fooled by its beauty!  Doom and Bogs certainly learned THAT the hard way!  One touch or sniff, and you're turned into a balloon!  The affects are, thankfully, only temporary, but you'll be swollen and floating until all that gas passes from end to end!  This art was done as a thank you to my good friend, Joshua Hauke.  Josh is certainly no stranger here, being one of my closest friends in comics.  We both broke in together and even started tabling at cons around the same time!  It was always a really cool coincidence that our tables would always be either right next to each other or in the same aisle, and with a mutual love of all things stupid and goofy, it didn't take long for us to become friends.  To this day, we still bounce ideas off of each other and make a yearly pilgrimage to the Super 7 store during Comic Con.  His latest book, Doom's Day Camp, the tale of a normal boy named Doom who's charged with corralling a group of mutant kids in a post apocalyptic world, is a huge hit and I actually had some input on it!  Josh was kind enough to send me an advanced copy, which included his own take on inflated Doom in it.  Well, I had to show my appreciation, which leads to this explosive piece!  Josh loved it and even agreed to add the Balloonus Flower to the next Doom book (I'm holding ya to that one bro!)!

And so ends the chapter on January 2023.  I sure hope you all enjoyed the buoyant art this month and look forward to starting 2024 off on an inflated foot as well!  We'll be back next week to get February off to a good start too, so be sure to come back and see!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later! 

PLANET OAT, AS PLAYED BY A SPHERICAL UNICORN!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  We are past the halfway point of January CRAZIES!!!  And THAT much closer to the XFL, Shamrock Shakes and WonderCon!  I tell ya, I am excited for the coming year!  Sure, there'll be challenges, but I know we'll all face them head-on and be all the better for it!  But enough about the future.  Our minds have to be tuned into the present as well, and right now, my mind is on unicorns!  A unicorn that belongs to a little girl named Phoebe to be more precise!  Which unicorn is that?  Scroll down and see!  Enjoy...

Those pesky unicorns.  Always in the LAST place you'd think to look!  In recent years, I've devoted Fridays to doing Fan Art for friends and artists I really admire, and among the many that I hold in high regard is Dana Simpson, the creator of the beloved comic strip Phoebe And Her Unicorn.  Dana was a pal on Twitter for many years and a very encouraging type, so I always try to throw some Fan Art her way when I can.  She had recently done a storyline where Phoebe and her unicorn, a rather pompous mare named Marigold, played a game called "Planet Oat."  The point of it was Marigold played the planet and Phoebe had to find her, only, she couldn't!  In the end, it turned out Marigold had been turned to stone by a Gorgoncorn and in fact needed rescuing, which, as far as left turns go, definitely goes down as one of the wildest!  At the time though, I had laughed about it and said "Wouldn't it be a hoot if all Phoebe had needed to do was simply look up the whole time?"  Well, my concussion-addled brain started spinning, and out came this art!  Dana, thankfully, loved it and agreed it would've been a funny twist.  She also loved the Lord Splendid Humility Easter egg I planted in the background too!

Well, only one more week to go in our CRAZY Inflation Buster Special, but fear not!  We won't leave any of you feeling deflated.  We're floating off on a high note with some gut-busting laughs, so be sure to come back and see how it all ends!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

BAFFLINGLY BUBBLED BY BUBBLE'S BUBBLY BOBA!!!

We are back!  Not that we were ever truly gone, but not a whole lot happens on this blog in between posts, which isn't to say nothing happens at all.  It's just that not everything's interesting enough to post!  You know what is though?  FAN ART!!!  Especially helium-filled fan art!  So lets float on in to see what's gonna be combatting inflation in this week's CRAZY Inflation Buster Special, shall we?  Enjoy...

Lesson one folks: NEVER let Bubble Fox make the drinks!  It almost always goes awry!  This piece was done to celebrate the first anniversary of my pal Dave Brown's web comic, Planet Joey, the tale of a Canadian boy named Joey who's forced to move to literally the middle of nowhere and start afresh with his family, which also includes a very suave, sophisticated, talking bear named Herb.  Dave had done a guest comic for Bubble Fox where Joey spikes Herb's coffee with helium, causing him to bloat and float along with Bubble Fox himself!  In this fan art, I decided the little squirt needed a little payback, so Bubble gave both of them some "Bubble Tea," though it was actually unintentional!  I had a lot of fun with this piece, but had to replace the colors on Joey's shirt digitally as the marker I used originally just wouldn't blend.  Pro Tip Kids:  Don't use Sharpies for colors.  They're okay in a pinch, especially if its a really small area to color, but for larger spaces, they just get streaky and it's obvious.  If you're using markers, PrismaColors and Copics are the way to go.

And that's all for today, but we'll be back next time for a game of make believe that really expands upon the concept of hide and seek!  It'll blow your mind, so be sure to come back and check it out!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

WE'RE BLOWING UP 2023... LITERALLY!!!

Welcome to 2023 my dear CRAZIES!!!  While another year has passed into the sands of time, the current one has started and is already showing plenty of promise!  Sure, January's a bit slow, but we're roughly six-weeks away from some pretty cool things happening:  Pink Halloween (aka, Valentines Day), the relaunch of the XFL (Covid's the only reason it shutdown last time.  Accept it haters!) and, most importantly, the return of Shamrock Shake Season!  And there are plenty of cool things coming after that to look forward to as well.  So let's dust off the holiday rest and set our sights the future because it's looking bright!

Looking bright?  How can I say that when inflation looms?  Well Mr. Sour-Face, let's just say I know the perfect way to combat rising inflation.  How?  Simple!  You fight inflation WITH inflation!  The comedic type!  Don't believe me?  Scroll down and I'll prove it!

See?  Aren't you laughing already?  I mean, it's not a permanent fix, but it at least made you forget about the real deal for a little bit!  Back by popular demand, we've brought back the CRAZY Inflation Buster Special, though admittedly, I don't recall if that's what I called it last year!  This piece came from a now defunct Twitter art collaboration called #DrawMoor, run by Becka Moor.  For a few months in 2021 and 2022, she'd put out a theme and we each drew our interpretation of it, quite similar to the old CRAZY Cartoon Experiments I used to host myself way back when.  This particular theme was "An Elephant, Dressed As A Clown, Making Balloon Animals."  Obviously, I was gonna take this one to comical extremes, and it got over quite well with the Twitter crowd.  Sadly, Becka left Twitter recently (one of many actually), and it looks like her #DrawMoor challenge went with her.  It was fun while it lasted though, and I look forward to sharing the other pieces I did for it in future posts!

And that's it for the first post of 2023, but fear not!  We'll be inflating our grosses a LOT over the next few weeks, so throw on some stretch pants and be prepared for some gut busting laughs!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!