"Post No. 560"

Not having the originals of silver-age Amazing Spider-man issues around these days, I resorted to looking up that reproduced panel (see previous post) that's on the top of that metal pencil box and discovered that it's from issue #49 (June, 1967), page 14, panel 3. This was the issue right before the whole introduction and battle with "The Kingpin" began. Such memories... I was still hardcore into collecting every comic book Marvel produced back in those days. A happy little Merry Marvel Marching Society Member, was I (before Marvel made me so jaded with the tons of crap they produced after 1985 or so). I still love the early Marvel efforts, especially that which they produced prior to 1967. The 1961-63 years of that company are my favorites with "Ant-Man", the more humorous "Fantastic Four", the original clunky-armored "Iron Man", et all. Comics such as those will never be produced again.

Found a beautiful copy of the MGM 1975 flick, Rollerball (starring James Caan, Maud Adams, John Houston, John Beck, etc.) for $4. at a local store. Watched it. Had forgotten just how much I enjoyed that film. It kills me that the same store is still trying to push copies of that godawful Catwoman flick for $25., when anyone can buy a classic such as this for next-to-nothing (and it's ten times better).

Which is the reason for the above illustration. It's a pen & ink that I did in 1977 (Ghad! 31 years ago!) from recalling that movie a couple of years later after seeing it at a theatre, during the first Winter I moved to Bowling Green, KY. to work as a manager of a head shoppe. That first month or so I was there I didn't have much to do. There was a lot of snow on the streets, my t.v. wasn't working right, so I filled up several weeks of doing just misc. artwork and listening to a LOT of old music. I must apologize for the quality of this scan, though, as the original was 11" x 22" and I later had it reduced on a xerox machine to make it easier to send as an art sample, and the reduced effect made it a bit murky and dark, so it lost quite a bit of detail when taken down to a 8-1/2"x11" letter format (then add the reducing it even further to fit THIS format, and...well...). But--If you'll click onto the image that'll will make it a bit larger.

I look back on those days and the artwork I was producing at that time and feel it's probably better and more imaginative than what I currently "try" to do. I suppose I was just more inspired "back then". I think what I lost along the way was the patience for detail, making my work much more simple, cartoony and "undergroundish" (or, perhaps it's just because I don't have the extra time anymore to do more detailed artwork) .

Got in my copies of DC-vertigo's Greatest Hits #'s 1 & 2 today and will be reviewing same after reading them. Got both variations of the cover to #1. Looks like a pretty decent series.