The Penguin

Here's the first sneak peak at a brand-new comic book from Blind Alley Comics: Die Katze #1! First five pages; no dialogue yet, still some work to be done. Be on the lookout for more...still need the cover and everything else...very exciting... Rick Out!

I hope to one day have the privilege of working on a dinosaur fossil excavation. I don't care what species, so long as it's relatively intact (it's no fun just collecting teeth and dinopoop - give me something I can pick at). It's not just the adventurous aspect of the task - although that's a huge part of it, combing the wild rugged landscapes of faraway war-torn countries while dodging sandstorms and petty bureaucracy - but the simple wonder of resurrecting a beast that disappeared unfathomably long eons ago, a creature for whom we have no frame of reference and only sketchy modern analogs. The very name, Dinosauros  - "Terrible Lizard?" True, many of them were "terrible" in every sense of the word, but they're as close to "lizards" as elephants are to opposums: vastly different creatures that happen to occupy the same taxonomic Class. The fact that we have no frame of reference for these creatures brings me to an interesting po...

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...

Just some thoughts on overcoming writers/artist's block. It's the bain of the creative existence, I know; but I'm beginning to feel that it's not as hard to shake as is popularly imagined. This, at least, has been my experience. So what do I do when the keyboard looks like a neatly-ordered mountain range, or that blank paper is staring me down like a polar bear? Some thoughts: 1. The "Inspirational Blitz" is largely a myth. I've had my days where I wake up in the morning, brain on fire, and crack out two comic pages before breakfast, no planning, no preliminaries, and they're just bloody brilliant.  But that's very, very unusual. More often, I'm just sort of bumbling along, drawing and redrawing my thumbnails, tentatively making a pencil mark on the art board before hastily erasing it. And you know what? That second method is probably the better one. Same goes for writing. The artist's (and writer's) brain has a certain amount of fu...