Family Time
It’s Saturday, and promising to be a bit gloomy and thunderstorm-y, so my daughter and I have some indoor type activities in mind.
I’ve prepared my 16×20 screen printing frame with a fresh screen and a nice coat of photo emulsion (I’m getting better at that with each attempt). I think if she and I each do a design on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper, I can fit both on the screen for exposure and get two separate T-shirts out of it. So that’ll be fun.
She also wants me to go see “Maleficent” with her. She saw it with her mom and wants to see it again with me. I have to say that seeing movies with my daughter is something I’ve been looking forward to since she was born, most especially being able to range beyond the super-young-kid types of movies (though I enjoy plenty of those too). 🙂
She is also suddenly wanting to watch more of the “Legend of Korra” cartoon, which we haven’t watched in a while. For those who don’t know of it…it’s pretty awesome. It’s Nickelodeon’s follow up series to “Avatar: the Last Airbender,” which was just an amazing, awesome, great, wonderful, well-done, touching, engaging… Well, you get the idea. Good stuff. LofK is almost as good. Better in some ways–I feel the art is a tad more sharp and finished–but nothing matches the original AtheLA. Anyway, I highly recommend.
There are also hopes for some bike riding lessons and practice for my little girl. She has had a love-hate relationship with bike riding over the past few years, but she has an upcoming trip with her grandparents that will involve a scenic bike ride, so the pressure’s on. Just hope the weather allows for some practice this weekend.
The Importance of Frenz
Sure, “friends” are important, but I’m talking about Ron Frenz, a comic artist who I want to call underrated, just because I don’t feel like you hear much about him compared to others. But maybe he’s rated highly in the community and I just don’t know it. I, for one, had forgotten about him. But he drew, among other things, some of the Spider-Man comics I remember the most from the 80’s.
Here’s an excellent example, and what I think is a great cover:
I didn’t notice that this was in Russian (?) until after linking the image, but we’ll leave it. The art is what I’m focused on here.
This is issue number 258 of the Amazing Spider-Man from 1984. After enjoying the cool features of the black and white costume that he had acquired (on an alien world during the “Secret Wars” series of comics, one of the awesomest anythings ever), Peter discovers that the reason the suit can change it’s shape and appearance and generate its own webbing is not because its highly advanced alien technology, but because it is a sentient, symbiotic organism that has been trying to permanently bond with him. He is not okay with that.
Anyway, I think this cover is a great symbolic representation of what became an ongoing (and probably overdone) struggle between Peter and the suit in its various forms and incarnations (Venom, Carnage, ad nauseum). This was when the symbiote saga was still fresh. But I’ll speak of that no more at this time.
What I really wanted to get at here is Frenz’s take on Spidey. I have judged many an artist by their take on Spidey, and I always liked Frenz’s approach. But now, looking at him in the context of my recent Ditko craze, I see that Frenz is–intentionally or not–channeling Ditko.
Look at that web pattern, the eye size and shape, the heavy black shading of the blue areas. And pit webs! There’s a lot that’s different about the two artists, but I feel like Frenz was definitely drawing from (heh. “drawing” from…) Ditko’s original look for Spidey.
And he was also the one to draw the “bag-man” scene:
Awesome.
As for my costume efforts…
Still trucking along with the Ditko design, but the changes are incremental enough to not be worth showing yet.
But I do hope to send my “traditional” Spidey template off for printing soon. Gotta make sure all the stars are in alignment. Y’know, financially speaking and all.
Next: Hopefully will have some Family Time T-shirts to show!
Spider-Man Mashup Cosplay Costume: 