HALLOWEEN BONANZA!

The backbone of any decent Halloween store is its collection of rubber masks, and the backbone of any rubber mask collection is the premium, top-of-the-line masks. Most people can't afford them, but they're great for getting people into the store.



This year is understandably light on pricey masks. People are worried about the economy.



That's not a bad thing if it nudges people into making their own masks. Home-made masks are always better than what you can buy. Of course it doesn't hurt to reference ethnic masks for inspiration.




There's no limit to what you can make yourself.



Here's a home-made skull pumpkin.



Graphic designers haven't disappointed this year.




I'm always curious to see what the Panamanians come up with...





...and it's hard to beat the Africans.



Picasso meets the Incas!




We need a good Ub Iwerks mask!




The people who made these (above) call themselves Commanches, but I see Aztec and carnival instead. Good costumes, though!



An oceanic mask (above). How do they manage to make these things so spooky?




Upward-tilted masks always look great!




More oceanic (above), but it's only one step removed from African. Once the Oceanic and African people found out about each other, the two styles were bound to blend. That's my hunch, anyway.




Uh oh! The Africans got hold of Jack Kirby and Picasso! Sigh! It was bound to happen sooner or later!



In case you were wondering what I'll be wearing on Halloween, here it is...sort of. John gave me some lederhosen a while back, which should go perfectly with this.

AN ESSAY ABOUT CARTOON BACKS

Just some more random thoughts about back shots.

How do you like this drawing by George McManus for the Maggie and Jiggs newspaper strip? Mc Manus no doubt liked back shots because he had a strong graphic sensibility and back shots were a chance to use value to unite lots of people into a single shape. There really is such a thing as a group mind so the technique re-inforces the way the group actually behaves in the story.

Check out the shoes and spats that feel like wooden clogs , the mysterious eye-like back buttons, and the heads that fit into the collars like ice cream cones.




Sorry about the bad cropping and the blur (above). I'm working with an unfamiliar scanner.

Anyway, how do you like the way Davis and Kurtzman arranged the rhythm of the panels on this "Lone Stranger" page? Front shot, back shot, front shot, back shot...then three similar panels that gently morph from a back shot into a profile. Veeery nice!

But that's not my favorite thing. My favorite thing is the way back shots are given almost as much attention as front shots. That's unusual. Artists usually emphasize the front because that's the way people like to be seen and photographed in real life.  Take that away from a character and there's a feeling that the character's not in control of his own story, that a director's hand is evident.  The character's denied the right to conceal his most vulnerable side. He has no privacy, and something about that is funny.

Let us digress to ask, "What is a back?" Let's face it, for a guy it's a ball of hair on a spinal chord leading to a dirty old butt. The good side of everything faces forward; that's the side you want the world to see. The back side is...well, what's left over. If your shirt is going to ride out, or your pants sag, it's probably going to show up first in the back. The flab you conceal in the front is only concealed because you pushed it to the back. Dandruff collects there, as do "kick me" signs. Lay on the grass and your back is full of dirt and spiders. The gloves that look so heroic and manly from the front, just look like plain old workman gloves from the back. Dramatic actors are allowed to hide all this, and aim their best assets at the audience. Comedic characters are expected to bare all for the good of the show.

So that's what I like about the Lone Stranger. He's funny because he's a helpless pawn, made to be humiliated by an artist, yet he's full of self-confidence and a spirit of independence. Back shots help to convey that.



I often dread looking at the back shot character models generated by normal studios (the profile above is from Spumco, definitely not a normal studio). For them the back shot is a mathematical extrapolation of the information in the front. It's pretty obvious that they think the front is where the action is and the back is just information.


Thank God for John K! When John draws a back he always adds something of interest. The back should always contain new information, not visible from the front. It should always give us a new insight into the character.






Milt Gross (above) loved backs. He didn't worry about the details of technical draftsmanship, he just dove in and had a good time. Notice that his 3/4 back shots of the heads are really profile poses. Lots of cartoonists drew backs of the heads that way, sometimes even in animation. Nobody ever notices.



Me, I like to draw the back of the head dimensionally, even in print cartoons. There's something funny about it. T. S. Sullivant (above) was a master of that kind of humor.




Chester Gould might disagree. He hardly ever used back shots in Dick Tracy, in fact he'd go to ridiculous lengths to avoid them. How do you like the delicious awkwardness of the drawing above? I guess Gould couldn't draw backs, but who cares?


Al Capp picked up on Gould's back shot avoidance when he parodied Tracy in "Fearless Fosdick." Fosdick never gave us a look at the back of his head, even when the shot cried out for it, as it does above. Of course, Capp made the right decision, and so did Gould. It's funnier this way.

MY KID SHOOTS HER PARENTS

I'm too sleepy to put up a proper post, so I'll just relate an incident that happened 15 minutes ago, just before I sat down to the computer.

I'd just watched a TV movie with my wife and daughter called "Five Little Pigs," an adoption of the Agatha Christie book of the same name. In the film ace detective Hercule Poirot is hired to find the truth about the fatal poisoning of a famous painter which resulted in the conviction and hanging of his wife. The whole thing happened years before but the daughter feels her mother was innocent and wants the real killer brought to justice.

DON"T READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW THE END OF THIS STORY.

The damning evidence against the mother is that immediately after her husband's death she was seen wiping fingerprints off the poisoned beer bottle, and frantically throwing things into the lake. It looked like she poisoned her husband and was getting rid of evidence.





WARNING: I REVEAL THE END HERE!!!!

Well, it turns out that the mother really was innocent. When she realized a murder had been committed she assumed her 15 year-old daughter had done it, and changed the evidence to make it appear that she, the mother, had done it. She knew the daughter was a good person and would regret what she'd done, so the mother decided to bring the blame on herself. She even allowed herself to be hanged for it! I...er...changed the details a little to simplify it, but that's the gist of it. It was a good story!

Anyway, after the film I said to my wife: "Wow! I understand that reasoning completely! If our kid shot us impulsively, I'd do the same thing. In the moments before death I'd try to bugger up the evidence to deflect attention away from the kid. She's a good egg and would surely regret the crime later. If we're going to die anyway, we might as well set it up so our kid has some kind of life after we're gone."

My wife said, "That's ridiculous. Our kid is an adult now. If she kills somebody she should take responsibility for it."





"No," I said, "that's too severe! With my last ounce of energy I'd dip my finger in my blood and write on the floor: 'the killer was a pickle-nosed guy with a gold tooth who shot us through the window.' "

My wife said, "Well then I'd write with my blood: 'Nope, our daughter did it!' "

I replied that with a miraculous final burst of energy I'd write, "Don't listen to my wife, She's addled from the pain. Seek the guy with the nose."





My wife replied that she'd write: "I am NOT addled! Our daughter did it!"

Needless to say, it was frustrating to have my final testament contradicted this way. Our daughter was silent up til now, listening to us argue. I wondered whose side she would take. Finally she said, "Mom's right! If I was mean enough to shoot you, I'd deserve to take the fall!"

Not the answer I was looking for, but I somehow got a good feeling from it, as if maybe we'd raised our daughter better than I'd realized.




OK, I'm going to bed!

STILL MORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!

OK, I gotta stop this and post about something else for a change...starting next time (I hope).



Even decay looks good when colored like this (above)!

Ah...the evil child (above), a staple of the horror genre.

I'll bet these masks (above) look better when they're all together, and not separate. 

I think the blonde hair (above) is a wig sitting on top of the net.

A mask (above) sculpts a human face?

The village dude (above) becomes a zombie.

Wow! I wish I had a mask like this (above)!

A ghost threatens a child (above).  Contrary to the common PC wisdom, kids love to see other kids threatened by supernatural creatures. It all depends how it's handled.

Maybe the world's next Napoleon (above) is attending a grammar school near you.







Thailand has some sort of ghost ceremony which requires kids to wear beautiful, colorful costumes. Boy, I'd love to see this!




A little minimalist for my taste (above), but I'd buy it!



Making the Minotaur (above) crazy is a nice addition to the old legend.



Dog ghosts (above)! Why not?

An Elvgren witch. (Sigh!)

EVEN MORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Pete Emslie just wrote in to remind me that there's a  book out on Basil Gogos, the cover artist for "Famous Monsters of Filmland." magazine.  Mike F reminded me that he showed it to me a while back.  The offset reproduction is only OK, but it's handy to have all those cool pictures in one place.  If you're not familiar with Gogos then check out these samples (above and below). Click to enlarge.

This one (above) isn't by Gogos, but I couldn't resist throwing it in.  Ackerman (the editor of Famous Monsters) had good taste in his choice of artists and designers.

That's all I have to say about Gogos for now, but just for the heck of it, I think I'll add some vintage horror posters, artists unknown. Check these (below) out! Isn't Halloween a great holiday!?