My History in Comics, Part 4 – Wacko Waddler

 

One of the first pieces I did for Dennis Budd’s Surf City Comics & Stories was a Wacko Waddler half-pager (“Here's Another April Fools' Day Gag”). I can't lay my hands on the issue of Surf City that it appeared in, but I was able to locate the original art and a scan of it is at the top of this post.

While visiting Dennis Budd and his wife Sandra at their home one time, I mentioned I was having difficulty inventing my own characters. Sandy suggested, “Why don't you base a character on yourself?” That kind of threw me. How do you base a character on yourself? Then I got the wild idea of basing a character not on myself, but on someone else's perception of me.

Somehow Dennis had gotten the idea that I was a practical joker (although I’m not). So I decided to invent a character that was a practical joker. Also, Dennis thought I had ridiculously short hair. It was the 1970s; some guys had hair to their shoulders, yet I had the same conservative haircut I have today. So I put stubble on the character's head. Also, I mentioned to Dennis one time that I was more comfortable with the 1950s when I was a kid than I was with the 1960s or 1970s. Dennis replied that he thought I was a throwback to the 1940s. So I gave the character wingtip shoes and put him in 1940s-style over-sized high-waisted pants with cuffs. As for the name, I borrowed part of the name from an earlier experimental character I had called Waldo Waddler. I named this new character Wacko Waddler.

I don't think I used Wacko Waddler for any stories in Surf City, but I did use him in a couple of one-pagers that appeared in the Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom. Both of the one-pagers were the equivalent of two-page comic book stories, due to the tabloid size of the TBG.

 

The first Wacko Waddler one-pager appeared in TBG #388 in 1981. This excerpt is of the first panels, or half of the story. Although Wacko does not appear in this excerpt, he does appear in the remainder of the story.

As for the second Wacko Waddler one-pager, I do not remember which issue of the TBG it appeared in, and cannot lay my hands on my copy of that issue at the moment. The scan I made of it is from a photocopy I made from a physical copy of the TBG some time later. But it probably appeared within several issues of the first one-pager, perhaps the following month. Note that I had Wacko driving the same car I drove at the time, a 1970 Karmann Ghia, a car that is currently rusting away in my garage.

At the time of original publication I included my mailing address at the bottom of those two Wacko Waddler one-pagers, which brought me a lot of fan mail from readers of the TBG.

The main reason I did not do any additional Wacko Waddler one-pagers is that an unusual opportunity came up. In the next post in this series I’ll discuss Charlton, Jack Bunny, and “Rocket Rabbit!”

My History in Comics, Part 3 – Surf City and Super Santa

House ad on back cover of Surf City Comics & Stories vol. 2, no.3, 1979

 Around the start of my last year in college a lawyer named Dennis Budd opened a comic shop on the edge of the SMSU campus. He would later go on to become a judge in the Traffic Court in Springfield Missouri. He was married to another lawyer, Sandra Skinner, who would later go on to teach law classes at one of the many colleges in Springfield. 

Dennis was a Carl Barks fan who named his comic shop Duckburg Books & Comics. He told me he patterned his shop after the Rock Bottom comic shop in Columbia Missouri, and that he opened his own shop in Springfield as an experiment to gain some experience in running a business. 

I showed Dennis some of my work and he started pushing me towards doing funny animal work, as he thought I would be wasting my life doing superhero stories. He started loaning me rare, valuable Barks comics from his extensive personal collection. This was back in the late 1970s when the Barks stories, for the most part, still had not been reprinted. And he did turn me into a Barks fan. 

Dennis did cartooning as a hobby, and then started publishing as a hobby. He started a fanzine he named Surf City Comics & Stories. It was an 8-and-a-half by 11 magazine he had printed up at some quick-print litho shop there in Springfield that usually printed things like sale flyers for businesses. Dennis would have maybe a hundred or so copies printed up of each issue. He and his wife Sandy folded the sheets of paper themselves and used a long-reach stapler to staple the issues together. 

I don't recall whether he asked me to contribute to Surf City, or if I asked to contribute to it. But either way it was inevitable that I would be contributing to it. At the time I felt as if I was doing him a favor by contributing to it, but in reality he was doing me the favor. Surf City got me to doing stories that were longer than a single page. And later, it was one of the Surf City stories that got me the opportunity to do a story for Charlton.

 

The sample I sent to Charlton was the Surf City story “Super Santa!”, which appeared in Surf City Comics & Stories vol. 2, no. 3, 1979. The story featured Chuck Duck, a character created by Dennis, that he named after Chuck Berry. I drew the character more like a duck character of my own, Waldo Waddler, than like Dennis’ Chuck Duck, and gave the character a hairstyle that more closely resembled Dennis’ hairstyle than the hair he put on his Chuck Duck. I did the story under my Mr. Mystery Artist pseudonym. I wrote it one panel at a time, panel by panel, not knowing what would come next as I wrote. Then I drew, lettered, and inked it panel by panel, one panel at a time.

 

I was still doing fanzine art on cheap student art paper. I found that if I inked with a technical drafting pen (such as Rapidograph, Staedtler Marsmatic 700, and Reform Refograph drafting pens) it was just barely possible to ink on that paper without the paper buckling and the ink bleeding and feathering. Hence, that unique inking style that Cat Yronwode would call “Armstrong's quirky inking style” in her TBG “Fit to Print” column.

 

 

The story was basically an extended dream sequence, ten pages long, filled with references to Carl Barks and superhero comics. I did “Super Santa!” at the pace of about a panel a day, starting in September 1979. By December 1979 I had it all penciled and lettered, but had only inked it to the end of page seven. It was a Christmas story, and it was nearly Christmas. So I took the pages to Dennis and suggested he print just the first seven pages. The way I had written the story, panel-to-panel, it could easily have ended on page seven. The only reason I had continued to page ten was that I wanted to do a ten-pager as so many of Carl Barks' stories had been ten-pagers. But I was getting sick and tired of the story after spending three or four months on it and told Dennis I would be happy to let him ink the last three pages. Dennis seemed eager to do the inking of those last three pages, and I think he did a good job.

 

The story was later reprinted in the Fantagraphics comic book Critters #11, 1987. The print quality of the Critters reprint was far superior to the murky quick-print version in Surf City. However, the scans of the story in this blog post are from the original Surf City version. 

So Spider-Ham was not my first experience with a funny animal superhero.

The next post in this series will be about the creation of a comic book character inspired by myself, sort of--and yet not me at all. My History in Comics part 4 will take a look at Wacko Waddler.

 

 

My History in Comics, Part 2 – TBG Covers and Mr. Mystery Artist

 

 

The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom (also known as the TBG) was a weekly newspaper printed on newsprint. It was primarily advertising—retailers selling old comic books, ads for comic book conventions, things of that nature. It was published by Alan Light under the business name of Dynapubs Enterprises out of East Moline, Illinois. It measured about 11 x 17, and issues were typically around 80 pages in several sections.

Alan Light built his subscription base by advertising in mainstream comic books with small display ads. I started subscribing to the publication in the mid-1970s. The TBG was probably one of the things that influenced me towards trying for a career in comics.

I did three covers for the TBG: TBG #303 (Sept 1979), TBG #350 (Aug 1980), and TBG #373 (Jan 1981). I did all three of them under the “Mr. Mystery Artist” pseudonym. Why the pseudonym? Partly for the fun of it, but also partly as a crutch to take the pressure off of doing things under my own name. It permitted me to be less inhibited, and less likely to freeze up and get creative block.

All three were done in pencil, on cheap student-grade drawing paper. I sent all three to Alan Light at the same time, in the same package, and he spread out using them, printing one a year. When Alan asked for return postage to return the art, I told him to keep the art, so I do not have the originals. The following scans I found on the internet. I do have file copies of these issues of the Buyer’s Guide somewhere, in disorganized stacks.

 

While in college one of my original goals in comics was to get in at DC Comics and draw superheroes. Green Arrow was one of the characters I intended to do samples of.

The Doctor Solar cover that appeared on TBG #350 may looked inked, but I achieved that look by using a soft-lead pencil (a cheap no. 1 pencil from an office supply company). Then I used spray fixative to keep it from smudging. I think I used spray fixative on all three. The paper was a cheap student-grade paper sold in the campus bookstore, produced by a special arrangement with a paper pad manufacturer or distributor in Springfield Missouri.

I think you can see the heavy Neal Adams influence in both the Green Arrow cover and the Dr. Solar cover.

With the Warlord cover for TBG #373 You probably notice the heavy influence of Barry Smith’s Conan. You might also notice some influence of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer. Like Barry Smith, I drew every blade of grass. And I did the same thing in multiple panels of the first Jack Bunny story “Rocket Rabbit” in the Charlton Bullseye #2, drawing every blade of grass. 

When I first decided to try for a career in comics my original goal was to do superheroes of the typical sort. These three covers hint at what sort of work I might have ended up doing had I stayed on that path. However, my path was shifted towards funny animals, in part by a comic shop owner named Dennis Budd.

My first funny animal story, “Super Santa!”, was published by Dennis in his Surf City Comics & Stories, and included my Mr. Mystery Artist pseudonym:

 

I’ll tell you more about Dennis, Surf City Comics & Stories, and “Super Santa!” in the next installment of My History in Comics.

 

My History in Comics, Part 1 - My First Published Comics Work

 

I do not know when I first saw or read a comic book, but it was during my preschool years. I recall seeing comic books in spin racks at drugstores and supermarkets and being drawn to them, and I remember looking at comic books my cousins had left at my grandparent’s farm when I was perhaps 3 or 4.

My first notion to try drawing comic book stories came around age 5 when another boy my age was showing the other boys a homemade comic book that his older brother had drawn. The idea that we kids could produce our own comic books was exciting, and the desire to draw my own comic book stories was planted in me, staying with me over the years.

In junior high I read in a vocational guidance book that comic book work was highly undesirable—hard work, impossible deadlines, low pay, low status, no job security, no retirement, generally done by beginning artists and writers or else bottom-rung artists and writers unable to find work elsewhere—and not to be recommended as a career. So I decided at that time that if I were to ever do comics it would be as a hobby.

And I drew my own homemade comic book stories, as a hobby.

When I went to college I went in intending to become a photographer. But when halfway through college, doing a gig as a ‘party-pic’ photographer, I realized that I was headed not for a career photographing glamorous models in exotic locales, but more likely a lifetime of taking wedding pictures and school pictures. And it was time to declare a major.

In my heart of hearts I wanted to write stories and do artwork. And I admitted to myself that the stories I enjoyed most were comic book stories, and the artwork I enjoyed most was comic book art, so I gave in to my natural inclinations and decided to try for a comic book career, even if it meant being a starving artist for the rest of my life.

So I majored in pencil drawing, the one major that the college I attended offered that might apply to doing comic book art.

During my last year in college, in the fall of 1976, the editor of DC's Freedom Fighters comic announced a letter page logo contest in which the prize for the winning entry was an original script. Seeing as I was shooting for a career in comics, I decided that I wanted very much to see and have an actual comic book script to use as a model in writing my own comic book stories, so I submitted a letter page logo.

I don't have any photocopies of the final penciling, but here are the roughs for the logo I did:

I did the final art on bristol board and the art is dated August 28, 1976. I wasn't too confident in my inking, so I sent in just penciled art. I sent it with a cover letter that read, “Well, here's your new letters page logo. I was going to ink it, but heck! You can't expect your paying customers to do all of your work for you.”

I won the contest and they sent the prize script to me along with the original of the inked logo. The logo was inked at DC by John Workman, and that inked art appears at the top of this blog entry. The art with the coloring suggestion overlay I included (mainly to show how I would color the lettering) is below:

The penciling was for an entire logo, including lettering. However, the staff at DC decided they liked the previous lettering better, so they only used the illustration I did of the characters in the book clustered around a letter they were reading, along with a flagstaff that had an eagle on top, a flagstaff from which the flag with the logo lettering fluttered. Although one wing was in shadow and not fully articulated, the eagle did have two wings.

Unfortunately, when they pasted in the old lettering, it went right over the right wing of what had been an eagle with two wings, so the characters were now depicted as standing under an eagle with just one wing. I still cringe to see the printed logo, even today.

 

                                                                                                                                © 1977 DC Comics

 

The logo first appeared in Freedom Fighters #8, with a cover date of June 1977, and was printed twice as large in Freedom Fighters #9. I think they used the logo for the remainder of that series, at least through issue #15, July/Aug 1978.

The next installment of My History in Comics will probably take a look at some cover art I did for the Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, and “Mr. Mystery Artist.”

 

 

Update on the Past Eleven Years

Hello. Eleven years ago I started the Armstrong Comics blog with the idea of doing an online comic strip, but was only able to make a couple of posts before other things came up that caused me to put the blog on hold—things such as the death of my mother, settling the estate, going back to work as a test examiner, and other such matters.

Meanwhile, my eyesight deteriorated. By 2015 I was functionally blind in one eye. And with the other eye, the “good” eye, it was like seeing the world from the bottom of a pond. Everything had a yellow-green tint and looked dim and fuzzy.

I developed double vision, then triple vision, then more. When I would look at a line I would see a “ghost” line above it, another ghost line below it, and another ghost line to the side. Hard to draw when all the lines are made fuzzy by the extra lines layered around them.

Both my father, and my grandmother on my mother’s side, had macular degeneration, which is not treatable. I figured that was what I probably had and resigned myself to never doing artwork again. Came close to giving away all my art equipment, supplies, and related materials.

However, I had cataract surgery done to both eyes in 2019 and the results were amazing. With one eye I now see well enough to drive without glasses. With the other eye I now see well enough to read, write, and draw without glasses. And with the right sort of glasses, I can use both eyes at the same time and see in stereo.

So lately I’ve been toying with the idea of returning to doing artwork. This inked Spider-Ham drawing is from about two weeks ago.

 

Rip Van Winkle wakes up.

Just checking to see if Armstrong Comics is still active and working, if I can still post to it.

Hand lettering a logo.

So I needed a header for this blog.

This being the blog of an artist, it seemed mandatory that the header utilize artwork by me, the artist. And since the header consists of the title of the blog, that meant doing some lettering.

I prefer hand lettering over computer lettering, just as I prefer original art done on paper or physical canvas over digital originals.

Here are the steps I took hand lettering the "Armstrong Comics" header.

1. I started with this thumbnail sketch:

The sketch is 4 inches wide by 1¼ inches tall. The guidelines were added afterwards, to facilitate doing subsequent drafts. Had I realized that I'd be giving an account of how I did this lettering, I would have scanned the initial thumbnail before adding guidelines.

The lettering is not based on any particular fonts or typefaces. I simply did the lettering that "felt right" for how it was to be used. I wanted the look of a logo that could appear on the cover of a comic book.

2. Next I did a tracing paper overlay. Here's the overlay on top of the initial thumbnail:

Here's the overlay by itself:

The only way I've found of doing tight, precise, highly detailed art is to do multiple drafts. Even if the art were on a single piece of paper or a single canvas, multiple drafts are done by using the eraser a lot, or by painting multiple layers.

3. Next I did an overlay of the first overlay, using copy paper (or printer paper):

Using a light box, it is possible to use copy paper like tracing paper. In fact, using a light box, it is possible to use 2-ply bristol board like tracing paper. 3-ply bristol board, though, is too thick for tracing even with a light box.

With each iteration, each tracing, I try to tighten the art. This particular iteration turned out to be a simple tracing, was a waste of time, and could have been skipped.

4. The next iteration though, done on tracing paper once more, yielded better results:

And here's that overlay by itself:

Besides putting a bit more effort into it this time, I wore an "OptiVISOR" binocular magnifier as I did the fourth draft.

5. Normally my next step would be to enlarge the thumbnail-sized art to original-art size using an Artograph--an opaque projector that throws the image onto paper on the table surface, where the art can be traced at the different size.

However, I don't have my Artograph set up at this time.

As a substitute for the Artograph, I scanned the fourth draft, opened the image in Photoshop, resized it using Photoshop, then printed it out at that larger size.

6. Then, using the light box, I traced the larger sized art onto 2-ply bristol board:

The art was now 10 inches wide by 2¾ inches tall.

If the lettering were for use on a comic book cover as a logo, I probably would have done it 17" wide--the maximum size for my scanner. But since it was to be just a header for a blog, 10" wide (the width of comic book non-bleed art interior art) seemed adequate. The reason for doing the original art as large as possible (when doing nondigital art) is that the artwork looks tighter and sharper the more it is reduced for printing.

7. I inked the "Armstrong" part using a No. 3 (.80) Rapidograph technical drafting pen filled with Rapidograph Black India Ultradraw ink (3085-F). The "comics" part I inked with a Hunt #22 Extra-Fine dip pen, dipped in FW acrylic ink.

The inking was done freehand. My feeling is that if part of a lettered title or logo is done freehand, it should all be done freehand. Doing part of it with inking aids--straight-edge, compass, french curve--would make the parts done freehand stick out like a sore thumb.

8. The copyright notice was lettered freehand on bristol board at a standard size for comic book interior art, using a technical drafting nib held vertical with a lettering joint to avoid skips in the ink lines:

9. Then I started a new document in Photoshop, placed the logo and the copyright notice where I wanted them, and saved that file:

10. I did the coloring digitally using Photoshop:

If I were to redo this particular lettering sometime, I might import a scan of one of the pencil drafts into Adobe Illustrator as a semi-transparent layer and do the lettering as vector art in another layer over the pencil layer. Then I would remove the pencil layer.