More Totleben Awaits You...

...here, at Bob McLeod's Rough Stuff website.

More art Bob couldn't fit into Rough Stuff #4 (see yesterday's post), plus John's comments. Check it out!

Other insider info:

Tim and Donna Lucas's Mario Bava book is almost a reality! They just posted these photos of themselves with the ozalids of the book (check it out, especially if you need to know what ozalids are).

How cool is that?

Amazing, too, that lifelong Wizard of Oz fan Donna is now savoring "ozalids" of her and Tim's own creation -- I'm amazed there was never a drug dealer who adopted the term (though it likely didn't exist pre-digital era). It all fits together, somehow.

Ah, it's closer to reality -- and to my own bookshelf! -- and it's looking more than ever like the ass-kicking book of the year! Heartfelt congrats, Tim and Donna! Thanks for posting the pix and update!

That's a lot of book! Tim sez, "Do not drop this book on your cat!"

More post later today -- gotta run!

Imagine That Newt is Orange...

...and then click over to

Bob McLeod's Rough Stuff site to read about this vintage Bissette/Totleben collaboration, our first painted Swamp Thing cover art.

Then, at your local comics shop or via

this link, pick up a copy immediately of Rough Stuff #4, featuring the interview with John Totleben and pencils section by yours truly.

George Khoury's interview with John is truly excellent reading, and (per usual for Rough Stuff) illustrated with some jaw-droppingly gorgeous reproductions of John's pencils for covers, story pages, pinups, concept drawings, etc. John's recollections about our Swamp Thing days are, also per usual, dead on the money right -- though I'll post some comments (in the way of additional info, in part since George asks John about my end of things more than once) later this week, as time permits. In any case, get your hands on Rough Stuff #4, and pronto!

I'm speaking in Stowe, VT tonight at 5:30 at

The Helen Day Art Center; here's the particulars.

Maybe see one or two of you there? I'm working all this morning there at the art center with three groups of regional high school students (11th and 12th Grade) drawing comics -- fun, fun, fun! I dig these sessions, and some pretty lively comics come about as a result.

Ya, I know, it's late notice. Heck, I've barely had time to post anything this week, and this bull run (between CCS workload and WRIF final prep) will continue thus into Friday. As time permits, though, I'll try to catch up.

The Virginia Tech rampage is the fresh national horror; but this has had me wincing over the past week:

One thing to keep in mind as you hear/read the increasingly bilious crap pouring out of President Bush's mouth this week: You know, if President Bush would just finance his war the way every other President in US history tends to -- within his annual budget -- instead of keeping it "off the table" with his bullshit sideline funding via emergency spending measures, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this dilemma. He alone is responsible for this, however much he stridently says otherwise. He is refusing to "fund the troops."

The Congress is, at last, holding him and the Pentagon accountable (literally) for this war funding, and it's Bush's strategic burying/sidelining of the real cost of the war that led to this present showdown. The pork is a false issue -- the real issue is Bush, Cheney, et al set up this situation by never honestly funding this war, thus falsely cooking the annual books. It's Bush's own fucking fault -- however much he blisters the Democratic Party with his mounting rhetoric (and it was Republican votes that landed much of the pork attached to the war bill, BTW, so don't buy into that line of crap, either).

OK, there's other stuff to get into.

More later this week!