The Northern Lights Have Seen Queer Sights

lol THIS ENDED UP BEING SO LONG but it's such a cute story opening that I had to draw Watson roasting Holmes's messiness for the newspaper and Holmes skillfully maneuvering his way out of having to do chores. It's all canon, even the indoor sharpshooting, except for the bit about the cold bath.

canon text under the cut:

Based on the chapter “The tower of Cirith Ungol”. In my opinion it’s the most beautiful scene that Tolkien had written and I really wanted to illustrate it.

I was seized with a fervor and could not rest until I illustrated one of my favorite scenes from Sherlock Holmes: the Adventure of the Devil's Foot. While Holmes and Watson take a holiday in the Cornish countryside for Holmes's health, multiple people in the nearby village are found driven mad or dead from horror. Holmes deduces a substance that was burned in their presence is to blame. With a bit of the mysterious powder and a gas lamp in hand, he proposes an experiment to Watson...

content warning for drug use!

I'm not sure if it's supported by the canon but in my mind this is the first time Holmes ever apologies to Watson and he is so overcome with emotion that he immediately makes it weird

Text under the cut:

In Plagiarism and You(Tube), Hbomb says "If you consider something so obscure you can get away with stealing it, you do not respect it." Save that line for the next time someone tries to tell you that Roy Lichtenstein brought respect to comics as art.

It's since been pointed out that while Lichtenstein did copy one of Russ Heath's drawings of an airplane getting hit, the painting depicted above was actually copied off Irv Norvick, because Lichtenstein did this so many times to so many comic artists.

In Lichtenstein's defense, he was doing this in a time when comic artists frequently weren't even credited in the issues themselves. In his condemnation, he never even tried to check, nor has he made any move to pay or credit any of the comic artists who recognized their own work later on. Rather than elevating the "low art" of comics, he was widening the gap of financial success and respect even further.

The Hbomberguy of this story is art historian David Barsalou, who has now spent decades tracking down the original art and the names of the original artists used in Lichtenstein's most famous output. Here's the full flickr gallery for the Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein project. Frequently copied were Tony Abruzzo, Ted Galindo, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, and dozens more Golden Age artists who aren't very well known in comics circles, let alone art history books. Many of them died in poverty. That's something that the Hero Initiative, mentioned in Russ Heath's comic above, aims to prevent.

Also, Lichtenstein didn't even paint Ben-Day dots. That's a specific thing.

Another throughline here: Plagarized work is lazy work, and lazy work shows through in the final product.

In a massive stroke of irony, the commercial artists he copied from display much higher classical technical skill than his enormous-scale paintings. There's a delicacy to the brushstrokes, a level of expressiveness, and a clear understanding of form and shadow in those tiny newsprint originals.

The changes Lichtenstein made often omitted or simplified backgrounds and text, used garish primary colors, and—later in his work—undressed the women in the panels. Central to his "iconoclasm" was depicting comic art as even more simplistic and culturally shallow than it already was.

Copyright law offers no help to the original creatives, freelancers on exploitative short-term contracts. Russ Heath explains, “I couldn’t do anything because all the characters that I did draw for comic books were, at that time, owned by the comic book company. So, if they want to sue, they could sue and have a legitimate reason to sue. But they wouldn’t make enough to bother having a suit.” Most of the writers ripped off by Somerton, too, were on contracts which meant they do not have the rights to their own work.

Art historians are correct that Roy Lichtenstein's work raises interesting questions about mass reproduction, parody, and the border between "commercial" and "high" art. The answers to those questions, however, are not flattering to the art world at all.

While I agree with the underlying thrust of this argument in terms of spotlighting the exploitation of freelance artists, I think the equation with Somerton isn't entirely accurate or applicable here. Not out of moral grounds but functional grounds. Liechtenstein never denied that the panels were from pre-existing comics. The issue is that Liechtenstein was paid more than comics' artists, but that strikes me as the problem of the comics publishing industry first and foremost. Likewise, people praised Liechtenstein while ignoring the work of comics' artists themselves. A labor rights issue is being conflated with an aesthetic argument here. That is different from Somerton who plagiarized the work of others without attribution and passed others' work as his own. "The changes Lichtenstein made often omitted or simplified backgrounds and text, used garish primary colors, and—later in his work—undressed the women in the panels. Central to his "iconoclasm" was depicting comic art as even more simplistic and culturally shallow than it already was."

This argument is partially "reactionary" imo. Because you can accuse Francis Bacon of doing a bad drawing of Velazquez's Portrait of Innocent with Screaming Popes, as well as accuse Andy Warhol of ripping off the graphic design of the Coke logos and other brands. Liechtenstein's work was never a pure reproduction and yes altered the panels and stuff out of his own style. In terms of him being anatomically weaker than the original comics...I mean that's a case of style. Whether that's good or better, I don't know. The fact is that Liechtenstein's style is solid enough that it's been homaged in superhero comics like this cover of an ASM comic by Marcos Martin.

As I said the Liechtenstein issue highlights labor rights problems in comics, and the exploitation of freelance labor by artists in other fields. The Liechtenstein issue and the fine art world is a culprit but so is the movie business at a far greater remove. Kevin Feige has earned far more than every Marvel freelancer combined while Ed Brubaker and others fail to get a proper invitation for the premier among other things.

I actually agree with this addition! The long, historically unfair arrangement of the comics industry can't be scapegoated onto Lichtenstein any more than it can be onto comic book movie magnates, but they certainly made money off it. Direct comparison to Somerton, who was being consciously predatory, is unfairly bandwagon-y of me.

But what prompted this post was how illustrative that quote about respect and obscurity is. The notes indicate a that a LOT of laypeople, especially now, did think his compositions were ~inspired~ by comics, not traced from them. Current copyright law and public perception of comic art has long insulated him from reasonable critique.

It's a common reactionary take to dismiss modern art for lack of talent or technique. My goal was to push that line of thought in the other direction. (If we consider Duchamp's readymades like Fountain to be art, what does this say about the industrial designers who created the originals? Is there something intentionally classically beautiful about symmetrical curves of white ceramic? What does it mean that the signature + date added by Duchamp resemble the "low art" of bathroom graffiti? What skills or ideas might those industrial designers bring to the gallery that no "real art" there matches?)

I brought up classical "realist" technical skills in my second reblog as an example of what many people imagine the line is between "fine art" and "commercial art". But to complete the thought, I should have continued to point out the non-realist, non "fine" art technical skills developed by comics workers that Lichtenstein's work displays limited understanding of or interest in: page layouts, the four-color process, hand-lettering and word balloons.

When it comes to personal taste, heavily stylized and anatomically "creative" character work—like Marcos Martin's—is actually my favorite kind of comic art. I LOVE his use of Lichtenstein-isms in ASM #560. This isn't just "homage" but redrawing specific paintings for a comic book fight in a modern art gallery! It's a neat conversation with Lichtenstein's work that ties into the story's themes: pop culture, celebrity, romance media, and the ethics of being paid to produce images the public wants. The villain is a young romantic who is literally two dimensional.

Compare and contrast Secret Wars: Secret Love's cover. This isn't referencing a real Lichtenstein—but as you say, his style is very recognizable. And part of that style is that this, too, is a flattened redraw of someone else's romance comic cover.

I see no connection between the themes of Lichtenstein's gallery work and the stories inside. He's just a famous middleman to catch people's attention. The cost is further overwriting the craftspeople who created the cultural symbols Lichtenstein used in the first place—in the same medium (hell, the same company!) that the new work is in.

A John Romita tribute becomes a Roy Lichtenstein tribute, and the work of Morrie Kuramoto on the comics-specific art of hand-lettering and text layout replaced entirely, to what I would argue is its detriment. I'd be last to claim that this should be illegal, or classified as "not art" compared to the original cover... but it's just kind of a sad reinforcement of a long, unfairly weighted status quo.

A (very) abbreviated history of some very good boys, a comic collaboration with @irenydraws

Here is my little Pippin & Boromir Comic about Courage!!

To give a little bit of Context, first of all I completely made this up haha I imagine this happening sometimes after setting off from Rivendell but before the Mines of Moria! So in the book after Pippin was alone in Gondor for quite some while, he felt very isolated and alone, very little and weak. (especially after being separated from Merry) and there were times where he stood at the walls of Minas Tirith and looked into the Horizon and could see that you know things are about to happen haha so i asked myself if Pippin ever thought about Boromir during that time, I always felt like that they shared a special bond. Maybe Pip reminded Boromir of Faramir especially when they were younger!

Anyways I really hope that you enjoy this little comic, it was so much fun to work on!!

Something about having an universal translator, and learning to understand without it

[ you meet god and she is mostly dead fish. ]

a comic based on this post:

The Bird Daughters. A comic about a bird woman and her dreams. made in the spring of 2023.

The Voice in the Night

(Part 1)

Here's a comic I made for Halloween! Which was yesterday, oops

Retelling The Hobbit Chapter 16: The Song of the Lonely Mountain First chapter / Previous / Next (coming TBD!)

To view full comic: Webtoon/A03 / Tumblr post with links to all chapters

Other blogs: TikTok/Instagram/Tumblr Sideblog

*crumbles into dust after finishing this* Thank you for reading! This The Hobbit webcomic adaptation thing takes a lot of effort to put together and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate every comment. I also really appreciate the people who’ve spread the word of this comic to their friends! <3

And finally, we’re at the Song of the Lonely Mountain! Within Tolkien’s canon, The Hobbit is an in-universe book that was “written” by Bilbo Baggins, who occasionally lies/embellishes/exaggerates things. The tonal differences between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are explained by Bilbo and Frodo/Sam being different kinds of storytellers, with different relationships to “the truth.” This idea is the core of how I’m adapting the novel!  Bilbo is an unreliable narrator who is literally ‘drawing’ from his own limited experiences;  the different art styles reflect the different perspectives of other characters.   The “dwarf art style” in this chapter is inspired by stonework/metalwork in general— but especially by a mix of art deco, Celtic art, and European folk art. 

The central tension of the comic is between Bilbo and Thorin, who each have wildly different ideas about what kind of  story they’re in. Thorin is in a grand fantasy epic, while Bilbo is in a lighthearted children’s book adventure.  The tragedy is, obviously, that only one side of the story ever gets to be fully told.

On a sillier note, a few years ago I had my first gay crush on a lesbian who sang while playing the piano. This chapter is dedicated to the piano lesbian. I hope they’re doing well, wherever they are. XD

I think I might need a bit of a break but I’m hoping for the next chapter, titled “Dawn,” to arrive on January 13th. And your comments/support really do help motivate me to get more done! ^_^

Just for the record this is a real problem I'm having. What does one do with a possibly cursed mystery door in the blackberry patch. Besides ignore it and keep eating blackberries...

[餘知傳] The 2nd Century Warlord (Part 1)

based on the story by @romanceyourdemons art by @its-not-a-pen

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night End of Part 1 This comic was made independently from the creator, I'm just a fan and these are my own interpretations. Notes under the cut:

A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.

a quick zine about. ghosts?? cold ghosts??? for @zinebash

Comic abt orange scented bath salts 🍊