Merry Mammonschanz!

 

Salutations from midst the holiday sprawl! Here's a picture to puncture the pall of this whiskey soaked, bleary eyed, goose-ridden winter; a palate cleanser if you will. It's the cover of the Stuart Moore comic (sans title). Hooray! As we're still laboriously assembling the first issue, I reckoned another lil' refresher would be in order.

I'll cut it short there, leaving us each to stew in our own bloated, burping introversion, contemplating the series of dynastical indignities so recently paraded before our eyes. Incidentally, say hi to your family for me. Peace be upon you and may Mammon sing you to thy rest.

Scrape 'em off the Ground

So here's a fun one, a treat for me. It's Metaxas Krale, one of the three "protagonists" of Space Creep, having just concluded some light brawling. I, rather remorselessly, love this character, love writing him, loooove drawing him. Got some good stuff planned for the li'l guy.


P.S. The above splattery style is an open nod to the great James Harren (harren.blogspot.com), whose work I truly adore.

Another sneaky peek

Hup, just a visual today, two more pages from the current Stuart Moore project. Cheers.

In the Land of Pain, Again.

Alas fair readers, I just accidentally deleted the huge post/review I wrote on Alphonse Daudet's 19th century journal of syphilitic madness: In the Land of Pain. That's about where I am right now, I do so hate these machines and their plottings.

Suffice to say it was a crackerjack post and you should check out the book irrespective of computational treacheries. Here also are the accompanying pictures, first being a brief portrait of the writer in question (circa 1894), the second an homage included in a recent comic I was illustrating. I'm a lil'bit heart broken, going to drown myself in hummus. I love you Daudet.

(And I know what you all are thinking, but Daudet wasn't really an anti-Semitic, not a proper one, not one of the heavy-hitters; that was his son. Suuure, he made some missteps, but he was a creature of his times or something. I dunno', I ate cat food as a child...we all have our faults.)

Klaus of the Golden Pen (also Proust)

       Holy Cow. As some may know, I, your faithful narrator, last summer graduated from NYC's School of Visual Arts. Did you miss it? There was a parade. Anyways, while I consider my time spent there super worthwhile, indeed a righteous investment (excepting that whole first year of "generalized study"), the most indispensable amenity offered was my teacher and, I'd go so far as to say my impromptu Mentor, the Right Honorable Klaus Janson. Any human even peripherally interested in comics should and does know Klaus Janson (Daredevil, Batman Black&White, Batman Gothic, The DC Guides etc.) His gritty line-work and impasto chiaroscuro is a style unto itself; truly inimitable. Pick up his work yo. That leads me to the following picture (I hope posting this isn't illegal btw.)

This is from Daredevil: End of Days #1, a DC book recently out and illustrated by none other than Mr. K. Janson 'imself. Just look at this page. Stare into it, study it. It is to my eye one of the finest works of the medium I've ever seen, no hyperbole. The character! The humor! The pathos! It's a goddamned mimetic masterpiece! I cant stop fawning over it, so I'd thought I'd share it with you people.

One other quick recommendation. I did a previous post about Hillary Mantel's amazing book, Wolf Hall, and I have just started up the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. CROMWELL! In preparation for said event I listened to her interview this Monday with Terry Gross. Ear-experience this thing, it's maybe my favorite of all of Gross's interviews ever. The first half is spent discussing the novel but, in the second portion, Mantel tells of her lifelong, tragic battle with endometriosis. How she's dealt with this junk from tender teen-hood, struggling with issues that could level the best of us, then goes on to write two Man Booker prize winning novels in rapid succession; it's a story both heartbreaking and wholly inspiring. She is my new literary hero. Listening to it, I was reminded of a section in Proust's "The Guermantes Way" (all free online) which I put an excerpt from below. It's about the essential you-ness of your body becoming increasingly alienated in the face of mounting moribundity. Enjoy!

It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us, with no knowledge of us, and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might manage to make him conscious of his own personal interest, if not of our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like talking to an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the sea, and with which we should be terrified to find ourselves condemned to live.
                                     
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

Spectrum19

Yo! Some of you have most likely viddied this image before, perhaps many times, as it's the cover of Space Creep Iss#1. I thought it's worth a post anyways as Spectrum 19, a big annual Scifi/Fantasy art competition, just came out, featuring (not actually "featuring" in the technical sense, more like tertiarily including) my lil' guy here. Anyways, check out the book. I haven't yet got my grubbies on a copy but I'm rather confident the publication will reside, quality-wise, within the upper echelons of bitchen'.

Space Peeps

The Shutter-Station Triumvirate

Hello again friends and relations! Small info dump along with some concept portraits. For starters, the 1st issue of the comic I've been working on with Stuart Moore is done! (Kind of, just a few wrap-up deets/cover art before it actually goes out.) I am very pleased with the outcome, going to drop a couple additional preview pages in a bit. I'll keep my devotees appraised as to it's pending methods of acquisition.

In other news, here are a few drawings related to my own brain-child comicbook space opera extravaganza: SPACE CREEP. The "Creep", as we appell it here in the office, recently got some attention and could possibly become attached somewhere coool, publication wise. That said, the unfolding saga of finding Creep a home is at best labyrinthine and I'm wholly unsure about the time frame or even the probability of said event's manifestation. Here's hoping. Pray for me.

I do remain strong though, bearing the slings and arrows etc. with an almost Diogenes-esque phlegmatism. I've recently started working on a few of the visual design elements of SpaceCreep issue #2, these drawings being early fruits of my labors. The three people shown are to be some of the primary players in the oncoming first act (at least the first draft of them), a sort of governmental Triumvirate. This of course means nothing to you, but they are still pictures.
 
Anyways, I'm going to keep the Space Creep stuff coming, so if you're not yet on board, haven't read the cold open (Issue #1) or have no idea what I'm talking about, please comment on this or email me and I'll happily send you the 40 page Iss# 1 (in the PDF version, not the printed unfortunately) free of charge. Be an early adopter. Live free or die.

Mr. Green

Ezekial Green

A character concept for a new commission I'm working on. Based off that famous mugshot from the 20's.

Welcome to the Crommissary

                                     

Sir Thomas More

Thomas Cromwell

     Here are some doodles from history. The top sketch depicts my newest histo-celebrity bohunk: Thomas Cromwell. Despite Thomas's achievements (a butcher's son-cum-Earl and Royal Chancellor) the Cromwell we are more readily acquainted with is his great grandson, Oliver Cromwell, pappy of the protestant protectorate.

Well, step aside Oliver because T. Crom's in the house. My recent Cromfandom has been ignited after finishing Hillary Mantel's masterful 2009 novel, Wolf Hall. The book starts smack-dab in the middle of the oft lampooned reign of Henry VIII, just as Anne Boleyn enters stage right. The subsequent saga of libertinage and decapitation is no doubt familiar to you. No? Just look to your nearest subway poster and be pedaled the period's most recent revival, that wet-fart of a television drama "The Tudors." Henry VIII is portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers for gods sake! Holbein is rolling in his grave.

What elevates Mantel's version of this tired historical episode is her framing of the ordeal through the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. In literally every other depiction of the time, Cromwell is slandered as an amoral Machiavelli, conniving as he is capacious. Here, we see a very different portrait of the man, one sympathetic to his class struggles, his religious tolerance, his razor intellect. The book is furthermore couched in Cromwell’s overarching competition with the Royal Chancellor: Sir Thomas More. More, normally the lone voice against Tudor corruption, is instead illustrated as the masochistic torturer/fanatic that he most probably was. Watching these giants clash is enormously satisfying, Mantel infusing their repartee with the wit such great minds so richly deserve. It's real good.

To head off any further yawns I'll cease my gurglings and just plain recommend that you pick up Wolf Hall asap. It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, it’s just that good, and I'm about to snatch the sequel (winner of the 2012 Booker) Bring up the bodies. Wherein the first novel we get a peek at Cromwell’s meteoric rise, I expect the next to annal the later, muuuch darker period of his life. Spoiler Alert: like so many of the best stories, it ends in a beheading. I'm going to pick it up next time I actually leave the house. Join me, won't you?

A more heroic space...

Hello peeps. Quick post for my most rapacious fan base. I'm dropping a few pages of the book I'm working on at the moment, title TBA. (The pages are from the beginning and specifically chosen as to give nothing away.)

It comes from the agile mind of Stuart more, a comic writer of no mean pedigree, who started the project as a writing exercise to see how much STUFF could be packed into a script while keeping the story fluid as an otter through an oil slick. It's a little bit of a superhero thing, a lot a bit of a space thing, and all designed by yours truly. For anyone familiar with my own burgeoning comic series, Space Creep, you may notice Stuarts world is a titch more clean and welcoming then my own. More smiling and starched uniforms, fewer fatal prolapses. Needless to say, the whole thing'll be great. Issue #1's completion is immanent. Enjoy.

Copse of the Golden Bear

 This fellow (Timothy Moon) has just wandered into his destiny. From the same story as the last illustration.

The Whore and the Hierophant

This is a quickie illustration based off a story I made with some friends. These are the Delcroixs.  They have plans.

A Brief Introduction

My name is Gus Storms and this is my blog now. It's another step in my campaign to blitzkrieg Internet with my existence, body and soul, like some terrible, virile tornado. I'm telling you, it'll be crazy: illustration posts, Space Creep concept and updates, drawing of animals I like and much, much more! Whooaaah! Are you still holding on? Good. I also might talk about a book I'm reading from time to time, so get with it and strap the f**k in.

Addendum: Despite the last paragraph's invigoration, I expect this project (blogect?) will end prematurely, resolving in much the same way as that little mistake I made during a particularly randy highschool-drama party. That is to say, quickly and quietly aborted. I have mixed feelings, very much leaning towards the negative, concerning this type of shameless exhibitionism...but what the hell, Jonah friggin' Lehrer does it for the New York Times and everything worked out for him, right? Right?!

Lastly, a very quick, very specific message to anyone who reads/looks at this webpage: You're Amazing. Really great. Your intelligence is only outpaced by your talent and poise. The sheer magnitude of your charisma borders on the profane. Also, you're fantastic looking, I'm talking a perfect ten, and there is really no need to take any more s**t from those suppurating troglodytes that call themselves your friends. Seriously, this is just between you and me...shhh shhh, it's gonna be great.