Two From The Vault - Winter Wishes

Well as the year draws - well, not for Agent Rob as he hasn't put (meaningful) pen to paper in months - to a close it's time to ponder the miracle of Christmas (like "how is this blog still going?!".... Indeed, "why is this blog still going?!!). So here's a pair of oldies from the vault to keep things ticking over during the winter (something's gonna) break. This first effort, arriving somewhere during Rob's  transition period from tight pen tip lines to fully fledged brush pen addict, is obviously (one hopes!) riffing on ending of The Wizard Of Oz....

This rather primitive horror - it's a whopping 9 years old, c'mon! - finds Rob in early (really not nearly as good as he thought he was) mode. Anyway, thanks for reading and we'll see you in early 2020 for our legendary - everyone else uses the term regardless so why can't we? - UndergRound Up of the Year....

Two From The Vault - Drewer....

This is the original 'pitch' for Drewer, originally created for the (long time dead) Comics Corner Ning site. (I think this early look was in part inspired by the stylings of Steve Mason of The Beta Band.) The image was accompanied by a (private) page of A4 that outlined the initial story and developing ideas....

Above is the cover for the never realised second issue - printer problems stalled the first issue and, by the time it limped into the public (comic) consciousness a year late(r), all the creative and drawing momentum was gone - truth be told working in a sharper, realistic style is, in terms of paying attention to continuity and maintaining artistic and character consistency, absolutely EXHAUSTING! Over the proposed 4 issue run of short stories each cover was to have featured a main character's face in a similarly distinctive moody style. Still, for anyone remotely interested in how things might have played out, you can just mush Tom Hardy's Taboo into the Jaoquin Phoenix vehicle You Were Never Really Here and you're pretty much there.... 

Three From The Vault - Prison Pit

Another 'fanboy favourite' here, from Prison Pit, a piece I titled 'Ryan's The F**kface' - as per nicking the pose from 'Rodin's The Thinker'.... as opposed to the possible interpretation that 'Johnny Ryan is The F**kface' - and which was indeed deemed "f**king awesome" by the great man himself. Obviously I've cribbed a lot of my usual John Miller stylings for this effort, but it's hard to deny that the Prison Pit comic has definite (black and white and distinctly jaggy) shades of Agent Johnny too (as Braw pal Spanky noted when he first fired it my way). Digging through the 'art caddy' at Hope Street Studios only recently I found two more aborted pages, inked but never scanned and given that digital once over. So, (almost but not quite in)complete, with lush new 'path of least resistance' digital backgrounds, I can phone the pair of them in here at last....

One From The Vault: Mimi & Auu

Ah, good timing for this piece of, well (rare!), 'fanart' (after a fashion) of Mimi and Auu, the titular (an appropriate term in many ways) characters from John 'Chaos' Alexander's gleefully chaotic manga-esque comic. A favourite of both Agent Rob and 'Khaki-Kohort' Adam J. Smith, the early issues in particular freewheeling along on a (un)healthy stream of 'anything goes' (un)consciousness the familiar manga tropes fired through a typically addled West of Scotland filter.... Rob clearly remembers, as if a dream, seeing a clutch of manic pages one time at the local comics meet only to be surprised when the project finally surfaced from the under, er, underground (with many thanks no doubt due to the canny steerage of John Chaos's fellow mischievous cohort - and online scourge - Kurt Sibling) many years later, kicking off a steady run of completely crazy comics that, er, sort of lost the plot when they finally got around to finding the plot. Then again, with #9 impending it seems Rob has a few issues to catch up on....

One From The Vault - Tropical Man

My attempt at a character as created (in real time? I forget) by my nephew, James Miller. Those are apples gripped by the cables from his backpack and at the end of those emerging from his wrists/gloves we have mangoes....

Seven From The Vault - The Final Programme

Well this is a strange fish languishing at the bottom of the unfinished (indeed, 'never to be finished') barrel. Seemingly not content with knowing any better than drawing bad knock offs of recognisable characters Agent Rob presents to you an attempt to adapt (the opening chapter of) Michael Moorcock's 'The Final Programme', featuring Jerry Cornelius....

I can't quite recall the reasoning behind the 3 panel layout, together with the fixed vanishing points, angled backgrounds and the like - I can only think it was a means to help set out and (presumably) accelerate the, er, creative process, such as it is. Worth it (just about) for the top panel of the 3rd page (immediately below), the monkeys sitting moodily atop a tree....

This looks to be me at the height of my Eddie Campbell phase, attempting (and failing miserably) to ape(!) his wonderfully rough and (print) ready approach to the comic page. Of course, I'm forgetting that E.C. can actually draw and that, should his drawing fail him, his infallible inking will save the day. Still, there's something pleasing in the form of the later lettering and speech balloons....

For those of you who have not seen the stylish 1973 film adaptation of 'The Final Programme' I would highly recommend it. On first viewing I found it somewhat disjointed and not altogether engaging and therefore ultimately unsatisfying. A second viewing, courtesy of Talking Pictures TV, fared far better and I look forward to seeing it again in the future (in whichever multiverse it may be screening)....

Nine From The Vault - The Dog Who...

After the runaway (from) success of The Campbelton Bogle it seemed the next logical step for Agent Rob was to become quickly embroiled in another long (but quickly) drawn out attempt to bring a children's book (by a different writer) to published life....

I think the only real change was (at the writer's request) trying to break away from my default 'hooded brow' look and adjusting the dog's nose. Again, like The Bogle, these pages are scanned from tight pencils, contrasted and then digitally coloured - looks like I was aiming for (and widely missing) a crude felt tip pen effect here. Well, I guess I got the 'crude' part bang on target, um....

Unfortunately The Dog Who didn't even make it to (self-)print and only these pages were finished(-ish) for the author's proposed publisher punting. The resounding silence that followed can only mean it stands rooted, waiting patiently at the gates to development hell....

One From The Vault - The Campbeltown Bogle

The original character rough loose pencil sketches, contrasted and coloured for The Campbeltown Bogle and the Farmer. Undertaken to give the writer an idea of the general direction of the art (and in doing so helping nudge some of his latent ideas along)....

Three From The Vault - The Royal Weeding

By Royal Diss- Appoint - ment.... Seems somewhat apt to share this today. Quite possibly the strangest thing Agent Rob's ever drawn, published in Wasted Comic to coincide with the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The initial idea was cooked up in collaboration with the Emperor - who at that time was working with the mighty Alex Ronald on the initial Vampire Vixens strips, also for Wasted - but as the back and forth dried up I ran (at something of a directionless half-pelt) with this vaguest of ideas. That it took me until this post to christen this "The Royal Weeding"  kind of says it all. (The boy on the donkey in the final panel of page one is based on a take on the kid Mark from Gentle Ben that I used to draw in Secondary School....)

If it's not entirely apparent (anyone?!) the strip is Prince William trying to recollect all the crazy things that went on at their wedding, his memories/flashbacks triggered by what's happening on the beach. So there we have The Royal Yacht Britannia pitching up in a fountain in Las Vegas and Elvis helping out with yet another ceremony. And, if feverish, fizzled-out finales are your thing then this certainly fails to deliver - it seems Will has married Kate.... and (the mystery man is) Prince Harry! I think we're missing an, "awrite, bruv?" from the second to last panel to complete the eclectic tale. Still, nice zippy art from my official "rattling any old scripts out to help plug the gaps in Wasted" period....

Two From The Vault - The Illustrated Man

Has it come to this? Yep, we're deep into clearing out the hard disk drive territory, and so begins an (occasional) series of blogs "From The Vault" featuring unpublished and unseen odds and sods - it's mostly sods, to be honest! - from Agent Rob's ramshackle digital archives. To kick things off we have two variations on Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man* as intended for entry into the Barbican's 'Into The Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction' 2017 competition. A mixture of it being craply drawn - the idea of a body covered in countless tattooed staring eyes with those that are real, those that should be visible in the head, obscured is moderately inspired - then subject to endless 'digital toil' (AKA polishing the turd) and finally missing the deadline (it was 6pm and not midnight as assumed) all contributed to its lack of, er, anything....

The figure and his tattoos were two separate inked drawings, the latter digitally dropped in under the former after scanning, and the background and lettering - easily the best thing about this - were then added digitally (and doubtless subject to much further tweaking). I'll confess that I whole (and half-) heartedly regret mentioning the idea for this competition entry to a friend and that his obvious enthusiasm for its realistation, and evident disappointment at its actual materialisation as presented to him, pretty much killed off any remaining feelings of confidence in the piece. Still, can you imagine (as I did then and still do) if Frank Quitely had drawn this? Geez, it'd be amazing! Anyway, the five excellent (vastly superior and very deserving) winners can be seen here....

*Incidentally, the book itself contains maybe the finest short story ever written, 'The Long Rain'....

One From The Vault - The Wildebeests....

Two From The Vault - Na na na na na na na na....

....(not that) Batman! Fresh from the yellowed Braw archives! It's a long long time since Agent Rob used to watch these, er, "classic" 40's serials during the summer holidays, but he was impressed enough by the primitive feel (and brawling) to work up a plethora of headshots of Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft - who played the titular heroes - around the time. Something of the basic feel of the show appealed, that that's how Batman really would have operated in the world had he existed then. If DC have a Batman '66 then consider this a pitch for Batman '44....