Story ©1982 by Larry Hama, Artwork ©1982 by Mark Armstrong
The year was 1981. I got a quick reply from DC. Once again I failed to break through the slush pile and got a form-letter rejection. Marvel took a few months longer to respond, though. When they responded it was in the form of a phone call, probably from Denny O'Neil, but perhaps from Larry Hama. They liked what I had sent and would be sending me a script for a story for Bizarre Adventures, a black & white newsstand comic magazine published by Marvel. The story, “Recondo Rabbit,” may well be the only funny animal war story ever done, combining funny animal humor and sight gags with the horrors of war.
I got the script by FedEx which was a fairly new service called Federal Express at the time. Most all my communications with Marvel would be by telephone and FedEx. The script, by Larry Hama, featured a rabbit with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after a tour in Vietnam. The script called for the first and last pages of the story to be mostly photocopies of the same panel. But being very gung ho and ambitious at the time, I asked for and received permission to do the first and last pages in airbrush.
Story ©1982 by Larry Hama, Artwork ©1982 by Mark Armstrong
The story was written by Larry Hama who would later become editor of the Spider-Ham comics, and the inker was Joe Albelo who would later become my inker on the Spider-Ham stories I penciled.
Story ©1982 by Larry Hama, Artwork ©1982 by Mark Armstrong
Larry Hama had been in service and had been to Vietnam, but I hadn't. The John Wayne movie “The Green Berets” was conveniently broadcast on television right at that time and I got some inspiration from that. Also, my father loaned me some souvenirs and memorabilia from his time in Vietnam, and I was able to use that as reference material. And, as I drew the story, I listened to the Country Joe and the Fish song “I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEyg61LC4g . We didn't have YouTube in 1981, and I wouldn't get a computer until 1998, but I did have a Country Joe and the Fish record album I had gotten in a remainder bin for something like fifty cents. If you want to read the story with the same background music it was drawn to, read it while listening to “I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag.”
Bizarre Adventures #31 has a cover date of April 1982. In 1982 we had a big recession and I hunkered down and did a few other things.
The Hardboiled Animal Comics #1 containing the “Roger Buck” one-pager is dated 1982. “Roger Buck was actually done in 1981, and was meant for Dennis Budd's Surf City Comics & Stories, but Dennis did not put out any more issues of Surf City after the issue containing “Surfin' Neanderthals!”
Hardboiled Animal Comics was published by Tim Fuller, who did the cover story for the Charlton Bullseye #2. Tim aspired to be publisher, and asked me to contribute. I had that unused “Roger Buck” piece in unused inventory, and sent him that. I also contributed to the jam-art cover.
The jam-art cover was done by Tim sending the same piece of bristol board to a series of contributors. I think I was the last one it was sent to, and I had to squeeze Roger Buck into the background. Had I known I was to be the last one to work on it, I might have done more with it, but I tried to leave space for still other contributors. I did sign it at the lower left-hand corner, but apparently there was a mishap at the printers and only a last portion of my name appears—half of the O, and the NG.
Also in 1982 I did an airbrush cover for The Duckburg Times #14, which was a fanzine devoted to Carl Barks and published by Dana Gabbard. The cover featured the early Oswald Rabbit and the early Woody Woodpecker, and referenced the fact that Oswald did not start out as a Walter Lantz character.
I first learned of the existence of airbrush paintings as an art form back in high school. I used to build model airplanes of balsa wood, tissue paper, fabric, rubber bands, and small gas engines. In the back of a model airplane magazine was an offer for a brochure for Paasche airbrushes. I wanted an airbrush to apply “dope” (lightweight airplane paint) to my models, so I sent off for the brochure.
What I got back was a booklet that reproduced gorgeous airbrush paintings. Then, when I went to Daytona Beach with a youth group, I saw an airbrush in action where a guy was doing airbrush paintings on t-shirts at a shop close to the beach. I was hooked on getting an airbrush.
The university where I got my BFA in drawing had no classes on airbrush painting. However, one of the instructors, Bill Armstrong (no relation) was familiar with them. He advised me to get a Thayer & Chandler model A airbrush, as he considered the Paasche brushes to be junk. He also advised me to use compressed nitrogen rather than compressed CO2 as a propellant, as the nitrogen would be less harmful to one's health over the long haul. I found a book on airbrush in the SMS library, and also bought a book on airbrush at the National Art Shop, where I purchased the Thayer & Chandler. I bought an air regulator and rented a tank of nitrogen for quite a few years until I finally got an air compressor. And I did, later, get a Paasche brush with a motorized reciprocating needle for doing detail work.
Besides Bizarre Adventures #31 and the cover of The Duckburg Times #14, I did a color air bush painting of Jack Bunny that appeared on the cover of Critters #8, and a black and white air brush painting of Jack swinging from a Fit to Print logo for Cat Yronwode's TBG column. I probably would have done at least one air brush cover for Charlton had I continued on there.
I’ve never tried doing an airbrush painting either in Photoshop or in Gimp, mainly because you don’t get to have any original art doing it that way. But I’ll probably get around to trying it out some time if there is a good, usable, digital equivalent to friskets.
Next up in this series, I discuss Spider-Ham.
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