ComicSpace is like MySpace for old nerds, right?

I am a fan of old comics like CC Beck's Captain Marvel, various Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko comics, and most cowboy comics. A lot of new comics have gone in different directions--places I'm not as interested in I guess. However, there are still great comics out there I enjoy. Savage Dragon and Conan are two good books.



Above are a few of the kids and myself at The Fred Harman Art Museum in Colorado a couple years back. Fred Harman is best known for his comic strip Red Ryder, but after retiring from the strip he went on to paint some of the most beautiful western paintings I've ever seen. This was the same trip we stopped at The Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum in Branson--another great museum.

Recent comic buys.

The comic store is a 50 mile+ trip for me, so, I don't get there as often as I'd like. And, Craig, the owner of Neptune Comics in Waukesha, is always yelling at me for reading comics, "This isn't a library," he complains. I ask him if he's seen how many kids I have and that he should be more charitable, but he just laughs at me. He and his wife are part of the reason I drive so far to get my comics--great people.

Recently I've found some Wisconsin made comics. Sawdust: The Workshed Anthology TPB, Satellite State 1 and 2, and Brandon's Little Problem 1-3. Good stuff. I'll add some hyperlinks in there soon.

Thor was one of my favorite characters as a kid, so, I'm trying to give this one some time. I have 1, 1-3, and 4. Even my twelve-year-old has flipped through them with the response, "There isn't much to read in here."

Marvel Adventures Giant-Size Avengers 1 was a great book. The first half is a new "all ages" Avengers story. Why Storm, Wolverine, and Spider-Man are Avengers I don't know, but it was a good read. The second half of the book is reprints from the late 1940's. Clear and well done reprints and not the muddy hard to read kind you see from time to time.

I liked Marvel Adventures Giant-Size Avengers so much I bought the first volume of the Marvel Adventures Avengers series "Heroes Assembled" reprinting the first four issues.

I found Savage Dragon 132 with a 48 page story drawn by Frank Fosco. I met him twice at the Chicago Comicon. First time I had him, Erik Larsen, and Gary Carlson sign some old Megaton books, and the second time he drew a nice ink drawing of Ethrian for me--the kids has since destroyed the original, but I scanned it, and it should be somewhere. It says ther is a new Ethrian miniseries in the works! Can't wait for that one.

I look through the old and used racks as well as the new stuff, and I found a tattered copy of X-Men 36 for $2--yeah, a fourty year old comic for less than a new comic. I also picked up a used copy of The Green Arrow by Jack Kirby for $3. The introduction by Mark Evanier explains why Jack's wife Roz is credited as inker for these stories--something I always thought was odd.

My secret identity as an artist.

Well, we just moved into a new house and put up some of my old drawings on the walls to fill them up. I guess some of my family forgot/ didn't know that I went to art school way back when and that I could at one time draw pretty well. At least not half bad anyway. Since those days, many children ago, I haven't done much with my "talent" spending most of my time working, raising children, and regaining fine motor control after suffering some nasty nerve damage in both hands, but now that the kids are getting older I find myself with more time for hobbies.

I have had a couple things published here or there over the years. Most recently was the art restoration and re-lettering for the second half of the 1960's Brazilian "Original ("SHAZAM!") Captain Marvel versus The Golden-Age Human-Torch" serial in Alter Ego/ FCA magazine. Don't know which issues exactly because I never did get all of my comp copies.... Maybe my buddy Mark will send me the entire story to post in a gallery?

I'm going to use ComicSpace to post some web comic stuff after I figure out coloring comics in Photoshop--I thought it was cool to have an electric typewriter to type my papers back in art school--I crashed my whole school's server (286) in high school trying to draw a Fantastic Four comic book in the paint program, so, computers weren't ready for art back in my day. I like super-heroes, but I think I'll try to put all of them in the same web comic together so I can do work on westerns and funny animal stuff as well.

Milwaukee Brewer.

My other hobby is brewing beer. My full name is John Robert Gentil-Schlitz, so, growing up in Milwaukee as part of a family named Schlitz and having family members that worked for two other major Wisconsin breweries and more that were home brewers: beer is in my blood.

Beers in my refrigerator (for now).

Wisconsin:
-Lakefront Brewery Holiday Spice Lager Beer
-Water Street Brewery Honey Lager Light

German:
-Hacker-Pschorr Weisse

Domestic/ Imports:
-Do they make beer outside Wisconsin and Germany?!!

Oh, yeah, music....

My brothers have a metal band, Conniption. As you will hear they kick total butt. The album is "in progress" as the drums and most of the guitar parts are recorded--it has scratch vocals, so, it's already something you can listen to, but there's a lot of work left.

I just picked up Sebastian Bach's new CD, and it's one of the best metal albums I've heard in a long time.

My favorite band is The Beach Boys. Hey, YOU like comic books--you should talk.