The Penguin

Announcing the Die Katze signing event at Red Fox Comics! Join Joe Haines (inktographer/editor) and Rick Schlaack (pencilographer/director) for this mind-blowing experience on Wednesday, 1/20/16. Don't miss it!

Dear fools...I mean, Gentle Reader: Die Katze Numbre Uno is here! Yes, it's that Lovecraftian/Silent Movie/Iams commercial-mashup you've all been waiting for, the comic you didn't know you needed until suddenly it appears, like a cool breeze on a hot day (said cool breeze being the musty sepulchural emanations of an ancient crypt)! It's officially out on 12/22/15, but the box of comics is in my hot little hands as we speak, so feel free to knock me over on the street and run giggling away with it. Like Nike sneakers and Beanie Babies, it's sure to have some killer resale value. Niche economic bubble, anyone? No takers? Durn. Behold, your new master. Her only weakness? Mondays! She hates Mondays... Now, of course, it comes down to marketing and merchandising. I'm going to see if I can print up some buttons and such; I wouldn't go so far as to make plushies, but that might be an option someday. We're having a book signing for it - Red Fox Comics ...

Yup, so deer camp happened...I had fun. Didn't get anything, though. Saw one doe walking along, but I let her pass, thinking "There's probably a buck behind her!" There wasn't. And nothing for the next three days. Grrr. Weirdly, the probability of getting a deer drops off exponentially after the 15th of November: the lack of hunting pressure beforehand surprises the deer, and with all the hunters blasting away, they keep moving. Afterward, all except a few die-hards have gone home, and the deer remember their anti-human tactics: stick to the deep, thick stuff. Another possible factor was the niceness of the weather, which is a double-edged sword - great for sitting, bad for getting the lazy old whitetails off their asses. I mean, come on, guys! Do your job and strut out in front of those crosshairs, instead of being all, "I want to live another year"... Jerks. Anywho, I still had a good time. And now that I'm back and (relatively) refreshed, it...

Happy Novembre, compadres! Hope you all have had a lovely Limbo Month. Actually November isn't that bad, for a "why can't we just skip this and get to the good part"-month. February is the worst, in my opinion; though March can be pretty awful too, it's at least exciting with all that deadly black ice and windstorm activity. Unlike these months, November has two events I'm actually excited for: Thanksgiving, and Opening Day of deer season. (Wikipedia) Yessireebob, it's Toikey Time/Watching the Lions Lose (sorry)/Annoying Relatives Roulette Month. Drag the deep-fryer out onto the deck, stock up on peanut oil and fire extinguishers, and prepare to baptize your favorite mutant Meleagris gallopavo  in twenty gallons of boiling nut-fat. When the deep-fryer knocks over and burns the deck to a cinder, order pizza. After the impromptu faux-Italian feast, commence the making of nachos, to be consumed with brewed alcoholic beverage of your choice in front of th...

As a comic book artist, I sometimes meet people with Great Comic Book Ideas. This can be irksome; they are mostly semi-avid comic book readers of the Marvel/DC stripe, and have never written or drawn a comic before (except, maybe, a short period in 8th-grade homeroom). Generally they want me to collaborate with them in developing the script, and then have me work for free on their Awesome Idea, while they sit back on a pile of money, surrounded by models. As irritating as these people are, every now and then you find a diamond in the rough - someone with the capacity to actually create, who has within them the brick-headed, nervous drive required to be a comic book storyteller. That's why I always listen politely to the Idea Guys, praising the noteworthy elements of their concept, and then offer what I call "blackjack" advice, harsh reality padded with gentle assurances: "If you develop your idea into a script, I can take a look at it and offer technical advice...

This is your captain speaking.We are about to take a 5-year journey of 2.4x10^13 miles through a near-vacuum with limited gravity, to the probable location of an alien world wending its way through a trinary star system. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy our trip to Proxima Centauri...oh, and don't eat too much or go crazy. Or get cancer. Thank you for your cooperation. (Source) Yikes, that sounds like a horrible plane trip. You've probably heard about the spectacular hurdles we humans would have to overcome in order to actually reach the nearest non-solar star, the most basic of which is that outer space is going to kill you even inside your flimsy metal spaceship, and you'd need a planet-sized food supply for the journey. I'll run them down real quick, just in case you've forgotten all the gleeful little buzzkills awaiting us: 1. Speed/time/distance 2. Fuel 3. Food 4. Communication 5. Social/psychological problems 6. Microgravity 7. Radiation 8. Spa...

The movie: Kill Your Darlings (2013) Directed by: John Krokidas Starring: Daniel Radcliffe (Allen Ginsberg); Dane DeHaan (Lucien Carr); Michael C. Hall (David Kammerer); Jack Huston (Jack Kerouac); Ben Foster (William Burroughs); David Cross (Lou Ginsberg). Kill Your Darlings follows a young Allen Ginsberg as he enters Columbia University and takes the first tentative steps in his poetry career. There he meets the irrepressible Lucien Carr, who introduces him to William Burroughs, and later Jack Kerouac. The four form a literary circle dedicated to "The New Vision" which focuses on, in Burrough's words, the "derangement of the senses." The gay Ginsberg immediately falls in love with the attractive and volatile Carr; but Carr already has an admirer, the intense, sinister professor-cum-janitor David Kammerer. Kammerer has pursued Carr from school to school, and appears to be merely a predator out to control Carr's life. But as Ginsberg becomes more e...

Just a little something I whipped up at work: © 2016 Richard M Schlaack Groovy monsters, digging some bat- poetry in a coffin- house. Enjoying the likes of Allen Ghoulsberg, William Burrows, and Jack Scare-o-whack. And what's the title? You guessed it: "Howl". Rick Out.

I love telling stories...ghost stories, most of all. In honor of the upcoming Spookiest Month (October, in case you're wondering), here's one of my favorites: Taily-Po They say that when the wind is high and the moon rides like a heavy-laden galleon over seas of cloud, and the air is cool and sharp with cinammon and wet-rot, and the few leaves left in the trees clack and clatter like dry bones dancing...that's when the lights rise out of the swamp, and men don't walk abroad at night. Because it's out in the moist and fetid brackish backwaters, the drowned cemeteries where the muck clings and the slime grasps at your boots like a noisome lover, that the worst of the spirits dwell. And at midnight they roll in with the fog. Old Man Jenkins sat puffing his pipe by the fire in his little cabin at the edge of Big Musky Swamp, quite alone except for the hound dogs who whimpered in the kennel out back. His room wasn't much to look at - rough boards, dirt floor, ...

The Movie: Creepshow (1982) Director: George A Romero Starring: Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielson, Ted Danson, Stephen King, et al. This movie was written by Stephen King, and features makeup work by industry legend Tom Savini. Following the format of old EC and DC horror comic books ( Tales from the Crypt , for instance), it consists of five short tales of terror - "Father's Day", "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", "Something to Tide You Over", "The Crate", and "They're Creeping Up on You!" - framed by the story of a father punishing his son for reading a Creepshow  comic book. Depending on how you view retro horror comics, the stories will either make you groan grotesquely or giggle ghoulishly. I fall into the latter category. Watching awful people receive their comeuppance at the talons of a gore-dripping corpse is immensely satisfying, no matter who you are; it speaks to the kid inside you, the little angry fearful ...

The Movie: La Residencia/aka Finishing School/aka The House That Screamed (1969) Directed by: Narciso Ibanez Serrador. Starring: Lilli Palmer as the Headmistress, Madame Fourneau; John Moulder-Brown as her son Luis; Cristina Galbo as Teresa, the new girl; and Mary Maude as Irene, the sadistic trustie. A new girl, Teresa, shows up at a dreary French boarding school run by the authoritarian Madame Fourneau. Even during the first hours of her stay, things are weird - she keeps feeling like she's being watched. Things get no better when she finds out what the girls get up to in the woodshed with the delivery man, and has run-ins with the sadistic Irene, who operates the dark underbelly of the school. But soon girls are turning up missing, and there is a murderous madman on the loose. Will Teresa escape the school with her life? At first I thought this was going to be an Italian exploitation film (boarding school girls! Sexual liaisons! Lesbian headmistresses! Murder!) and ye...

Just an odd thought...I tend to feel like the hero of my own story. Everybody's against me, but by God they're stupid and wrong, and I have to make sure they know they can't get one over on ole Rick. I wasn't born yesterday. I may not always be right, sure, but I know what's right for me, and ain't nobody in this world is gonna take me for a ride. But after a while I have to ask myself: am I the hero here, or just a villain? This was all brought on by my night job, washing dishes at a bar in Lansing. It sucks. It really, really sucks. I suppose if you're used to that sort of thing, it's a pretty damn good job, good pay, etc...but I'm ambitious and frustrated. Cleaning up other people's messes makes me irritable. It's a mix of lonely solitude interrupted by annoyance, spiked through with the paranoia that somebody else is making me do their job. For a while it was okay because I got along with everyone, but we just had a rash of firings, a...

Yes, you heard that correctly, sportsfans! Blind Alley Comics is going digital. Entering the internet age. Gettin the Ones and Zeros. World Wide Webbing. We just talked with web designer Rob Hix, who has generously agreed to design an awesome site for a pitifully small fee (we're kind of embarrassed about it). You'll be able to buy our comics and posters, both digital and hard-copy; view our awesome artwork in all its glory; see upcoming releases and view ancient history (of our work, that is); and find great links to other cool stuff that's floating around in the websphere, all alone. The site itself will be pretty immersive: lots of cool animations, an art gallery that's really a shooting gallery, and a creepy, gritty nighttime atmosphere. You're gonna love it, I guarantee it. It's gonna be a lot of work, but I think we're up for it. Rick Out! Update 1/28/16: As happens in life, our website plans have stalled a bit. Hopefully we can get back in touch...

No theme, just sketches I have laying around the office. I draw compulsively, so hopefully I can continue to upload these. Trying to do an attractive girl with a long nose. Meh. Dutch Master-type scenario. Again with the big nose. Shakmar - a species I invented for an epic story. Chickened out when it came to draw the background. I think they're watching a military parade, but use your imagination. T-rex at home. Deinonychus at home. Alamosaurus , a late-Cretaceous sauropod from the Southwest United States. There were long-necks around at the time of T-rex, but they were vastly different from Jurassic species like Brontosaurus or Diplodocus. Alamosaurus was an example of Titanosaurids, which arose in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. T-rex, by the way, would largely have left this sauropod alone - his specialty would have been duck-bills or Triceratops. And finally, Oviraptor. Sometimes my dinosaurs deliver messages for me. More coming! R...