Sketchbook Archives Part 2

So it is that time again, for me to share a few sketches from my first sketchbook.

The sketch on the bottom is from our good friend Mr. Ron Frenz. This is his version of Sandman, lol. His is actually the first sketch in this sketchbook. Remember how I said that the original theme was suppose to be Sandman in my book? At least Ron was nice enough to oblige me. I like his version of Sandman, he looks rather muscular. I believe this is when we first had Ron out at the shops, back in 1993. Mr Frenz is one of our favorite creators. He's old school all the way, and he's drawn just about every major character at Marvel over the years he's been working for them, and his share of DC characters too. I believe we had him out at the shops for the release of Marvel's Thunderstrike in 1993. Thunderstrike isn't around anymore, but the shop was SO excited about Thunderstsrike, Dave painted him as one of 3 characters on the windows at the Calumet City store. If you've never ventured to the Cal City shop, you would see these great action shots of Thunderstrike, Animal Man and Daredevil on the windows. We've had Ron out at the shops several times over the years, since he's such a great guy, and super talented to boot!

The sketch on the top is from 1994. We were lucky enough to host Jon J. Muth for a signing at the Frankfort shop. This was right when The Mystery Play graphic novel shipped from DC. Ah, I remember that signing SO well. The Mystery Play is a Vertigo graphic novel written by Grant Morrison with beautiful painted art by Jon J. Muth. You may remember Muth from his beautiful painted work on Moonshadow. Moonshadow was a 12 issue "mature readers" title originally published by Marvel's Epic imprint. Vertigo was in the middle of reprinting it when Muth was at the shop. Ok, so we have J out for the release of The Mysery Play. Sounds great doesn't it? Well, it was a great signing and it was a joy to meet and hang out with the incredibly talented Jon J. Muth, but there were some problems. The promo poster that DC had made for The Mystery Play read in BIG letters "GOD IS DEAD." Well, you can imagine how a huge window display of these GOD IS DEAD posters went over in little Frankfort, you know "The town with the 1890's charm?" Wow, folks were VERY upset over that, lol. I can laugh about it now, many years later, but at the time it was quite disturbing, what a conservative, conservative town. Frankfort is better now, thank god, but I still don't think it would be very well received if I pulled another stunt like that one.

The sketch in the middle is from Shannon Wheeler, the creator of Too Much Coffee Man! I was lucky enough to meet him at the very first San Diego Con I went to, back in 1994. Great guy and a very fun book! To this day it is still one of Adam's favorites. You remember Adam? He worked at the Frankfort A/F for many years and still comes in and helps out on Wednesday mornings. He just recently got a Too Much Coffee Man tattoo. If you run into him, ask him to show it to you, it's pretty damn cool. Two years ago at the SD con, or maybe it was last year, time just runs together for me at this point in my life, there was a special presentation of the Too Much Coffee Man opera. Yep, you read that right OPERA. I was too busy and didn't get a chance to attend that, but the reviews were VERY good!

Well, that's it for this instalment of my Sketchbook Archives. More next week!