Dr. Frankenstein: "It's alive...it's alive...!"

Well, here we are. This is the first blog site created specifically by and for Rick Schlaack. Never has the world witnessed such an event. There will be a ticker-tape parade, complete with marching band, armored limo, and enormous balloons.

Welcome to RixPix.

This is a blog site dedicated to comic books, animation, cartoons, and pretty pictures in general - hence the "pix". A major portion of this site will also be devoted to a rising star, wunderkind, and all-around good guy - namely, me - who is trying to get his start in the heady world of Sequential Art. Hence: "RixPix".

Now you may ask: "Rick, what sort of comic books, animation, cartoons, and pretty pictures will you be reviewing?" The answer is: whatever I feel like. Whatever strikes my fancy. Whatever inspires, or infuriates, or exasperates, in that big nebulous universe called "art". Hopefully coherence will emerge out of chaos, or at least a general pattern; but don't be surprised if I'm praising Bernini sculptures in one paragraph, and ranting about Disney in the next. I might also throw in some curmudgeonly sociopolitical commentary, just for kicks and giggles.

As of late, this blog is under construction; there's still a lot of work to do, and I can't figure out these darn interwebs.

I'd like to give a shout-out to Comics Obscura, and especially Jay Jacot, our editor/manager/everyman. Many of my activities will be in conjunction with his. Keep a sharp eye out for our upcoming anthology release of Comics Obscura, and for a separate publication we call Comics Obscura: Split Decisions, both featuring moi. I'll be at the upcoming XcapeCON, too, with some of my CO buddies.

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The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor to you Jurassic Park aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of...

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi...

Raptors II: I might owe Luis V. Rey an apology...

Hello, patient readers. I've blogged about Raptors before, specifically Deinonychus and the problems of depicting dinosaurs in general. In an earlier post, I was wrestling with the then newly-popular preponderance of plumage on our favorite Terrible Lizards, and while I finally conceded that Deinonychus and Co. were probably fully feathered, I whined and hemmed about the amount of feathers and griped about how dinosaur lineages with no evidence for feathers at all were now being given fabulous coats. In the midst of this, I decried the new crop of bad paleo-art, using this image as my piéce de resistance: Credit: Luis V. Rey, from his blog . Essentially my big scientific argument ran along the lines of, "Looks dumb, therefore wrong". It seems now that I might have to eat that argument, slathered in Nelson Muntz' Gourmet Ha-Ha Sauce ...with one important caveat, which I'll get to later. Since writing that blog post - in fact, several years later - I'...

The Penguin

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