Kyle Baker's Plastic Man

This was my favourite comic series ever. Hardly anybody seems to be aware of it now, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, their relative obscurity makes me feel like I'm in on some kind of secret, which is always fun.

The writing and art in this comic were absolutely hysterical. Sadly, it only lasted 20 issues, and two of them were 'guest' issues done by a different guy. The last batch of issues, comprising one long storyline, never got collected into a trade paperback, so I suspect they're pretty hard to find now. As such, I don't think I'm causing any trouble by uploading a few of my favourite panels from some of those issues... Sorry for the crappy quality. All those tiny dots gave my scanner a headache. These do not do justice to the actual comics.

The first four images are from issue #15, the fifth one's from #16 and the last ones are two consecutive pages from #17. The first few pages of that issue, showing the teenagers' party in full swing, are especially great, but I didn't want to scan all my favourite drawings-- this is just a tiny sample of the greatness.

New Cartoon Character!

Here's my newest character. I'm currently working on a cartoon with him. It should hopefully be more like an old theatrical cartoon, and a little less talky than my Space Goose ones are. The character is loosely modelled after early 30's characters like Flip the Frog, Bimbo, Bosko, Mickey Mouse, etc. He's supposed to be a fish, but at the same time, he's not supposed to look or act like a fish. Sort of an exaggeration of how Flip the Frog didn't look anything like a frog for most of his career. That seemed to happen a lot in old cartoons, and I think it's hilarious.

His name is still undecided. I originally wanted to call him Fester Fish, but then realized that I'd stolen that from the Addams Family, so that wouldn't work. I mean, Fester IS an actual word, obviously, but using it as a deliberately gross name is exactly the same idea as "Uncle Fester".

So now he's probably going to be Flakey Fish, as suggested by my sister. It's a pretty good compromise between having the effect I want, and blatantly stealing an existing joke-name. It sounds a little cutesy to me though.

Other names I'm not really considering, but amuse me--
Flavio Fish
Fyodor Fish
Fineen Fish
Fidelio Fish
Hornyhead Chub (a real kind of fish... You learn something every day!)

Fester or Flakey - Which name do you think I should use? Or does anybody have a better one?

Anyway, here's a little statue thing of him I'm working on. I still need to paint it.









































And of course this is my dog sleeping in a fetal position.