July 22 2010

Dear Vaughn Bode,

I was fifteen when I first saw your work. It was like the brightest light bulb I had ever seen went off in my head. Lush, vibrant and toothsome, your cartoon universe is a place that I’ve visited with joyful satisfaction time and again. You’ve been gone since 1975 but the spirit of your work has been kept alive thanks to the sweat of your son, Mark and graffiti writers the world over who made you their Godfather. They painted your characters on the sides of trains and drew endless inspiration from your typographical stylings. Since you were such a big sexy perv, I thought it would be apropos to wish you a very happy (would be) 69th birthday.

Ben

http://www.markbode.com/site/vaughnbodetwo.html

The 180 degree rule is a storytelling principle that dictates that the “camera” should not rotate past 180 degrees during a scene because then all objects on the left side of the panel will be flipped to the right. This creates a jarring effect for the viewer and can lead to confusion and quite possibly…even death!

Or so we’ve been lead to believe.

When I was a youngin I used to walk around comic conventions with my portfolio and ask pros to critique my work. A couple butt faces would flip through my pages, find a break in the 180 degree rule, and then scoff at how I’d never make it in this industry.

The truth is that the 180 degree rule CAN be broken. What?? BLASPHEMY you say?!! I’ll explain…

The point of the 180 degree rule is to prevent confusion amongst readers…but what if you want your readers to be confused? What?? BRILLIANT?!! Allow me to continue…

Breaking 180 degrees can be used to great effect during scenes in which the protagonist of the story is shocked by a certain event. This creates a symbiosis between the reader and the protagonist because they are both experiencing the same emotion…confusion.

A great cartoonist who breaks 180 degrees all the time is Osamu Tezuka. I attached a fight scene he did from “Buddha” below.

The last panel on this page breaks the 180 degree rule (note how in panel #2 the bearded character is on the right side of the page and then in panel #5 he’s on the left side).

The bearded character is shocked and confused that his bow and arrow were knocked out of his hands by the boy. As a reader, we are also left disoriented as the characters have instantly switched positions on the page.

90% of the time you see a cartoonist breaking the 180 degree rule they are in the wrong/being lazy…but occasionally you see a master like Tezuka break it to such awesome effect that it blows our minds out of our butts!

Remember: art theory is not about memorizing rules, but about understanding them.

-Professor Dov

A good time was had by all at this weekend’s MOCCA Fest-i-vool.  I had a major win by legitimately getting in for free (I have my ways, apparently) thus saving myself a cool fifteen bucks.  Saturday was Subway’s “customer appreciation day”-two-footlongs-for-the-price-of-one, but Dov didn’t want Subway, so I was UNABLE to save myself another cool two-fifty. Maybe next year.

It’s great to see friends and acquaintances (to say nothing of the handful of folks I worship at my art-nerd alter) at  conventions, but the sensory overload begins frying my brain as soon as I hit the floor.

Dov and I had the first 12 pages of “The Prince and The Pooper” to show and the reception we got was encouraging. We’ll begin serializing that comic online a page weekly in the near-near future. Stick around, wontcha?!

What I’ll remember most from this show was that I brought my 1981 Dungeons and Dragons ‘Fiend Folio’ to collect yearbook style monster doodles in. It was a pretty good idea if I do say so myself! All in all I collected over 50 doodles, drawings and sketches
from bigshots and buddies alike.

Maybe next year I’ll bring the ‘Deities and Demigods’ handbook and ask for doodles of GOD.

-Ben!

Ben and I are hard at work on our new book, “The Prince and the Pooper,” which will be a follow up to “Dingleberry Blues.” In this book I am drawing all the characters and Ben is doing the backgrounds.

The story is basically an over the top, politically incorrect comedy-adventure that brings up serious questions about the quest for success, the corruption of power, the meaning of religion, and the importance of friendship.

It is also filled with psychadelic visions, an assassination plot by the pope, alien abduction, religious warfare, and a menage a trois.

Fun for all ages!

This will be the longest book either of us have ever worked on (48 pages total) which is both pretty exciting and frightening when I think about how long it’s going to take. The project will hopefully be done sometime during the summer…maybe.

We’re not posting any pages on our site just yet, but I took a photo of some random pages so you guys can get a taste.

–Dov

 An aspect of my approach to comics is “comics as a transmission of personality” (I think this is an idea seeded by Evan Dorkin, either in conversation, or gleaned from his awesome Dork #7…can’t remember). In animation (but not so much in comics) artists are consciously focused on the acting-quality of their character; HERE, in these comics, the artists focused on the INTER-acting (see how that works?) qualities of their characters–kind of like improv-theater. Summer 2007.

These first two examples were commissioned by Pearl Paint. Or, at least, they were done by me and my manager, Joe Vega, while on the job.

This first one features my character ‘Clint’ from ‘Clint and Rosebud, those  freewheeling tramps’…

In this second example, Joe leads. This one is pretty nerdy and includes a quotation from “Star Wars”…

This five-page comic was done by Dov and myself the day before I got the worst sunburn of my life. I drew ‘Feldstein’ and Dov drew the other character…

—————–

OOOhhh!! Dov is really kicking my ass here! First he calls me out on my lousey spelling and THEN his final panel makes great use of a wide-shot, the negative space adds a great comedic tension! Time for Feldstein to get down to business…

The goal with all these comics was for the artists to communicate only on paper (”paporily”?). However, when I study the first five panels of the page above it’s pretty obvious that we MUST have done a little verbal-coordinating once Dov drew panel two (note how he hid my horizon line with his character’s mustache and then, later how the third horizon line breaks to accommodate the nail-biting panel.)

—————–

It ends a little (ahem!) abruptly, but we had alot of fun trying to get our theoretical point across: That despite the content of the strip, some of my sillier comments above and even the name of our own website, art done in tandem isn’t a competition. It’s about teamwork, not one-upmanship.

-Ben

Ben was recently featured on the blog “Covered” (coveredblog.blogspot.com) for his rendition of “War is Hell” #2. Considering it a challenge, I took it upon myself to create a cover of my own…one that would not only trump Ben’s, but send him crying under his bed sheets. I went through the small stack of superhero comics I have in my room and came across Bogdanove’s “Fantastic Four Vs. The X-Men” mini series. For years Ben has claimed that this is the greatest X-Men story of all time, so while roaming around NYCC this year I decided to pick it up for $4 (not bad). I sat down with it after the show, excited to rekindle my childhood.

I couldn’t tell if this particular series was terrible or if all superhero books are terrible and I just never noticed when I was younger. The best (worst) part of the series is the covers. What’s depicted on all 4 covers has nothing to do with the contents of the books…but the best part is that each one has something terrible happening to little Franklin Richards (possibly the most annoying character in Marvel history). The first issue has Reed laughing at a crying Franklin after beating Franklin’s mother to a pulp. The second issue has Wolverine telling Franklin to STOP crying after he kills his father. The third issue has Havoc wearing a Dr. Doom mask(?) and shooting Franklin from behind. The fourth and final issue is of the X-Men being lynched (nothing actually bad happens to Franklin in this one…it’s just weirdly gruesome).

For “Covered” I decided to redraw the first issue with Reed laughing in his son’s face as he mourns the death of his mother. I tried to copy the colors as closely as I could and heavily referenced the way Austin inked the original (is it me or did Austin ink every book in the 80’s?) I was very happy with the way it came out…unfortunately it wasn’t good enough, as I got a rejection e-mail the following morning from Covered. I figured it would be a shame for the world to never see it, so I’m posting it below on this blog (with the original next to it). Enjoy and let me know what you think.

–Dov

Ben and I just got back from SPX (Small Press Expo) in Bethesda, Maryland. I enjoy this indie comics show a lot more than MOCCA in NYC. The Marriot in Maryland is cleaner and cooler (temperature-wise) than the NYC venue. Also, all the tables are closer to one another which makes for a more cozy atmosphere. Overall SPX is the best convention I’ve ever been to…and I’m never going back. Over the past 2 years I have grown to hate going to conventions. It’s physically taxing to sit at a table for 8 hours straight trying to persuade people who have no interest in talking to you to talk to you. Just getting them to talk is a challenge…trying to then sell them a book is nearly impossible. Most people have their excuses ready at hand: “I’ll be back later,” “I have no money,” “I’m just taking a quick tour of the whole show”…all lies. It can be frustrating when you know you have the best and cheapest books at the whole show. At one point I encountered someone who told me that he would’ve bought one of my books except he spent his last $15 on a mystery package. This man spent $15 on a brown bag wrapped with a shoe string filled with unknown contents. He’s lucky I didn’t come across the table and slap him in the face! Who are these people?! …Maybe I just don’t know anything about marketing.

Some highlights of the show:

1) Getting to meet Kevin Huizenga and forcing him to autograph my new Simpsons Treehouse of Horror comic (which ended up being the biggest piece of indie shit I’ve ever read).

2) Having to wait 2 hours for our food to arrive at the hotel restaurant as the Top Shelf guys at the table next to us received a 5 course meal.

3) Discovering the comic “Rice Boy” by Evan Dahm.

4) Having someone recognize my sketch of WWF wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude (I gave her the drawing as a gift afterwards).

5) Selling my last copy of “The Poonies” to an old woman.

–Dov

Ben here,

Here’s a comic I dug up while packing my apartment. It’s dated August 2006 and was done in a single night by Dov and myself over Colt 45’s (”works every time”)…if nothing else this piece shows how much your skills can improve over three years of hard work and study.

The ‘jam nature’ of this comic is interesting (sez me): I wrote and drew the first page and Dov wrote and drew the second page. For the final page we alternated penciling and inking each panel (eg: Ben pencils panel 1, Dov inks panel 1 / Dov pencils panel 2, Ben inks panel 2)…So, in some ways this piece laid alot of the process-groundwork for our comic ‘Dingleberry Blues’ ( http://benvsdov.com/dovs_comics/db_index.html )

At the time I was working in an animation studio and was told by my bosses that the comic was “Harsh”. I disagree, if anything it isn’t HARSH ENUFF!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

post script: please excuse the scan-job…just think of it like some of the lettering gets left to your imagination!EXCITING!!