THC Characters 1: Sidelong Sidely

Howdy, all of you! Haven't written in a while, being so busy with the Kickstarter campaign (3.5 days left on that, BTW); however, I aim to change that. Here is a very nice scale drawing of Sidelong Sidely, aka the Human Cannonball, from my comic of that very same name.

Sidelong Sidely!

I might as well include a short bio, too:

Sidelong Sidely is the main act at Bob's Traveling Circus. Donning his characteristic red shirt, shiny black gloves, and WWI-era cap and goggles, Sidely fires himself out of a gigantic cannon three times a day, 100 days of the year. Naturally this is not conducive to good mental health. With so many mishaps and concussions, it's a wonder he can still stand upright. He's been hit on the head so many times, his eyes drift out to both sides - giving him an unsettling "Sidelong" glance. None of this is helped by the fact that Sidely often shows up to performances drunk. Despite all this, he's a shrewd old circus hand, and knows Bob's operation inside and out, managing to keep his head down and receive a paycheck every week. The arrival of Walter Dorckley as his "apprentice" throws a wrench into Sidely's just-get-by system, and he soon has his hands full keeping the kid out of trouble.

Comments

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...

A Tribute to Antediluvian Salad

Hello there, gentle readers. As you may have gathered, I'm a dinosaur nut, the Terrible Lizards being the first thing I could draw reliably well. While I love drawing dinosaurs, I've found my technique getting a bit stale lately; it seems like I'm quite a bit behind the times in terms of dinosaur science and our understanding of these creatures. Much of this is cultural baggage left behind in the wake of Jurassic Park , but there's also a fair amount of aesthetic prejudice - that is, "I want my dinosaurs to look or act like this" - and God help any scientist who suggests otherwise. It's the Cool Factor: we want our 'Raptors deadly intelligent, hyperfast, scaly, and able to disembowel a sauropod in minutes flat; our T rexes must roar triumphantly through elegant, shrink-wrapped faces; our Ceratopsians and other large herbivores must be essentially bison or rhinoceras-like. Anything else offends our sense of dino-propriety. What do you mean, Deinonychu...

The Penguin

Search This Blog