stART in the Park is TOMORROW 6/1/08!!

Sunday June 1, 2008
11:00am - 4:00pm
Beaver Brook Park, Mann and Chandler Streets
Worcester, MA
FREE!!



100+ artists and crafters, performers, food vendors, kids activities, organizations and more!

A day long celebration of arts, crafts, culture, cuisine and fun in the sun! Join us for a free celebration in Beaver Brook Park on Mann Street in Worcester, MA. Bring a blanket and spread out a picnic lunch or purchase food from area restaurants and caterers.

Items available for purchase include arts & crafts, produce, decorative and edible plants and more - be a responsible member of the community and sustain local small businesses!

Visit the stART in the Park webpage:

www.startonthestreet.org

I will be selling and signing copies of Diary of the Black Widow and Confessions of a Peculiar Boy... and Other Stories as well as selling copies of my signed prints and doing sketches all day long!!

See you there!

What I feel the next Batman film should be...

...well, I have a feeling the next film will have something to do with Two Face. Which means the character will be done like the comic book and Batman: The Animated Series and not like the crummy second rate version of the Joker Joel "I am a complete hack" Schumacher turned Two Face into in Batman Forever.

Which was the lousiest title this side of "Attack of the Clones".

If you haven't seen Batman Begins yet, you really have to go out and see it. I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed Christopher Nolan's approach at creating a Batman film. Even the Frank Miller style Batmobile grew on me. But what I liked most of all was how they used (spoiler alert... sorry) Liam Neeson as Ra's al Ghul. He was always one of my favorite Batman villains just because he seemed very inspired by the James Bond villains of that time.



I'm hoping that they return the character for a future Batman film. And I think it would be really great if they used the graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon as the basis for one of the films. If you haven't read it yet, it's definitely up there with Dark Knight Returns, Killing Joke and Full Circle as one of my favorite Batman graphic novels.



I'm also hoping that if they return the character of Ra's al Ghul, they also introduce his daughter Talia. And the Lazarus Pit.

If you haven't had the chance to read it just yet and you're either a comic book or Batman fan, go out and get yourself a copy!!

The Bat-Man

Batman is one of my favorite costumed heroes. He was the only reason I would watch the Super-Friends.

I had been toying around with doing an illustration of the Bat-Man for a while now. Ever since I started doing pen and ink work exclusively in 2000. The inspiration started again when I was looking at Andy Fish's Batman art for the upcoming Bat-Man 1939. Which is going to be off the hook!!

I suppose I was going for a Sons of the Silent Age style Bat-Man. I suppose if Douglas Fairbanks was going to star in a Bat-Man film, this is the way it would look in my mind. But a great deal of the influence came from the stiff wings of the first Batman story as well as the two Tim Burton films.

But I was also greatly influenced by the costume from the Batman serials of the 1940's. Yeah, they're awful. But I like them. And I like the whole idea of Batman looking like just a man in a costume.

Most Batman fans know that his costume is pretty much bulletproof and flame retardant and everything else. But I liked the concept of Bat-Man appearing human and having to rely on his own wits to get him out of a situation.

I also wanted to give the impression of the costume being made out of some sort of army canvas. I had gotten the chance to wear my Grandfather's army jacket a while back and I thought about how heavy the material made it feel. So, I kept that in mind when I was creating his wings and even his costume.

I also wanted to make the costume less of a form fitting leotard and more of a uniform. Hence the army canvas look.

Despite having no super powers, Batman has proven over the years NOTHING can kill him. None of his villains have succeeded in killing him.

And even Joel Schumacher two crappy Batman movies couldn't kill him!!

Doctor Who news!!

My love for the classic science-fiction show Doctor Who has been well documented (mostly by me) and trust me it takes a lot to pull me away from the television on a Friday night to miss an episode.

Yes, I am that sadly rabid of a fan.

But for all of you who are fans of the show like myself have probably heard the news that series producer Russell T. Davies is stepping down from his role as producer and handing the reigns over to Steven Moffat.

Which has been done many times in the show's history with the moves from Barry Letts to Philip Hinchcliffe to Graham Williams to John Nathan Turner.

I suppose the transition from John Nathan Turner to Philip Segal's 1996 Anglo/American production of Doctor Who with Paul McGann can fit somewhere in there too. With that you had a good actor as the Doctor, good set design for the TARDIS and good special effects for the time.

But a really lousy script.

Nevertheless, each producer has brought something new to the table. Good or bad. And what Russell T. Davies did in his time is brought Doctor Who back and made it a hit. Without having it so mired in the past that the show is stale and not having it so far removed from what the show was about that it alienates older fans.

That made him perfect to bring the show back. However, many of the stories he wrote were far from that. But he is such an oddity when it comes to his writing. He can write some scripts that are absolute clunkers and then he would make a complete about face and write an episode that would leave me all wide-eyed and excited!!

Probably one of the best "season finale" writers in my humble opinion.

And now he's leaving the series in the very capable hands of Steven Moffat. Steven is no stranger to the world of Doctor Who. He wrote the very funny (and well written) Children in Need sketch in 1999 The Curse of Fatal Death starring Rowan Atkinson (along with Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley) as the Doctor. And he has written some of my favorite Doctor Who episodes in the current series The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances and The Girl in the Fireplace.

And lastly but not leastly Time Crash which was the first multi-Doctor story on television since The Two Doctors with Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton.

So, I will be very eager to see where he takes Doctor Who when the show returns for a full series in 2010.

Improved Pub Scrawl flyer

I changed some of the text slightly to make it resemble the Narragansett label a little more. I also made the background red so it looks like the Narragansett label and not an advertisement for Moxie ;)

The Worcester Pub Scrawl Sunday June 22nd!!

More news about a potential Drink and Draw style event...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been continuing to chat with fellow Undercoverfish contributor Pete Beaudoin of That's Entertainment fame and other artists around the Worcester County area through Myspace and Facebook about the possibility of starting a monthly (or bi-monthly) event similar to the extremely popular Drink and Draw which takes place around the country. Tenatively, the event will take place June 22nd at Ralph's Chadwick Diner in Worcester MA.

I will have more definitive information up as soon as I possibly can. But mark down June 22nd somewhere on your social calendar because THAT'S when we hope to have everything going.

Until then, stay tuned!!