News!

Happy to add another comic to the Superhero Edition of Dear Inner Demons. And several more on deck including one completed already which you will see next week!

I’ve got several things I wanna cover in this blog entry:

1. The HULK
2. Bob Ross
3. Geequinox
4. Contest Winners

There are some fun interwoven threads through those topics too. So let’s get to it and start with the fella this comic features: THE HULK….

THE HULK OF MY YOUTH

My first memories of the Hulk, believe it or not, are from when I was only about two or three years old. I remember living with my mom in an apartment and I remember playing with THIS action figure, amongst others:

Some of you may say, “oh sure you ‘remember’... impossible!” But it’s true. Two things stand out: I remember the FEEL of his socketed arms, and how they moved, and the resistance. I also remember feel of … his SQUISHY RUBBER HEAD!

Strangely, that head stuck around for a lot of my childhood. But the second thing that I distinctly remember from that time when I was around 2-3 yrs old was that one night I had left my Hulk action figure close to the radiator, and the next day discovered he was a bit melted on his hard plastic foot. I remember the feel of that indentation on his foot, and the rough edges around it where the plastic rolled up a bit. It’s these tactile memories that are the reasons I know that these are true memories, and not prompted by photos or my Mum telling me of them.

I can actually put myself back into the body of my two year old self and go right back to laying on my tummy on the brown carpeted floor in the living room holding the Hulk figure (post-melting injury) in my hand and playing with it. I also had some of the other figures. The one I can remember are:

Spiderman (whose squishy head I remember)
Aquaman
Robin (I remember Robin’s soft plastic shoes)

You can see them pictured here:

Anyways beyond the memories of the figure as well as the comics (of which I had several) my love for the Hulk was rejuvenated in the 2012 Avengers movie. I have to admit though that despite it’s mediocre rating, I also did enjoy the Ang Lee version with Eric Bana, because of the comic book quality of the editing and feel.

Now. What better counterpart to the rage of the Incredible Hulk than the serenity and calming nature of . . .

BOB ROSS

Gosh darn it Bobby how the heck do you DO it??

“That'll be our little secret.” - Bob Ross

Hi Bob!

There are certain things that get burned into our head from our childhood, and “Let’s give this happy little tree a friend” is a quote that will forever be rattling around in my wacky brain.

“...everyone needs a friend.” - Bob Ross

For those of you who don’t know, Bob Ross hosted a tv show called “The Joy of Painting” which played fairly regularly on PBS for about 10 solid years, from 1983 to 1994. I would have been a kid at the time, and I distinctly remember being TRANSFIXED by the hypnotic voice of Bob and the pat-pat-pat of his brush against the canvas.

“Shwooop. Hehe. You have to make those little noises, or it just doesn't work.” - Bob Ross

It was some bizarre form of meditation. I wasn’t into painting at the time, so it was purely for some strange form of entertainment that I would watch him paint time and time again. It cannot be argued that he made it look effortless and the result would be pretty spectacular:

“In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers. But when I get home, the only thing I have power over, is the garbage.” - Bob Ross

Another glorious thing that Bob provides are GLORIOUS QUOTES. Which you can see smattered about this post. I encourage you to use them, freely, and completely out of context. Here are three more for your entertainment:

“As my son Steve says, just 'smoosh' it in there. It's not a real word, but people seem to know what it means.” - Bob Ross

“And just go straight in like you’re going to stab it. And barely touch it...barely touch it.” - Bob Ross

“Haha, and just beat the devil out of it.” - Bob Ross

Now obviously I have a great affection for good ol’ Bobby. Well hold onto your hamburgers for what follows….

Oh, and if you are looking for a little wind down time, just take a watch of this (the intro ALONE will be worth clicking play on this gem):

AN ODDITY OR TWO

I had a booth set up at an event this past weekend called GEEQUINOX and one of my neighbours was my con/show buddy Isabel Pineau, the brillz artist behind An Oddity or Two. I have quite a collection of Isabel’s pins going. So when there was a lull at one point and I was checking out her pins for new ones to add to my collection you can imagine my JOY when I discovered this BOB ROSS pin:

What makes this strangely serendipitous is that I had JUST had this Hulk comic printed! What!

Now we lead into more about WHAT I had this booth and comic printed FOR….

GEEQUINOX

The event that I was showing my wares at this past weekend was the second annual Spring Geequinox

annnnnnnd....PHOTOBOMBED! haha:

As some of you may know I am a graphic and web designer as well as illustrator of this comic, and I decided to sponsor the event and thusly designed and built the Geequinox website

CONTEST

So I had a ballot box set up at my table during Geequinox...

I was collecting souls, ER, I mean NAMES... uh.. yeah names...to do a draw for TWO things . . .

A prize pack of my Retro Video Game Prints (nine prints total):

annnnnd . . . a portrait commission!

AND I actually decided to do a THIRD draw (because I love giving stuff away) for the large format captionless print of todays comic:

Check out The Dear Inner Demons Facebook Page if you’re curious of the winners. AND to keep track of upcoming tables I’ll be at!