(New) Odds & Ends

1) Concept art for potential sequel to Cat Burglar Black: Never steal from a haunted house!

I've been mulling over a couple of different ideas for a possible sequel to CBB. I own the characters and am free to choose another publisher for any sequel(s). Right now I'd like to do something a bit more light-hearted -- particularly after the original CBB, Delphine and The Hidden (due this summer), all of which were relatively heavier than a lot of my earlier stories.

2) Finally had a chance to finish up some leftover portraits from last October's UNMASKED series. (I did about 100 thumbnails which got reduced to about sixty drawings; Then I did a bunch that didn't work - those got tossed; Then there were some I started but abandoned for some reason - like these four which I recently finished up. If I ever do an official collection of all the UNMASKED portraits, these will most likely be in it after all... ) In descending order: Midnight Visitor, Mad Devil, Fungus Face, Smiler.

These and more recently added to

Comic Art Collective - Art by Richard Sala - Original comic art from top artists

FEAR

An illustration from the early 1990s. I forget what the magazine was, but the article was about anxiety and/or paranoia -- in other words, right up my alley!

Comic Art Collective - Richard Sala - FEAR Original comic art from top artists

My Father's Brain (part 1)

This strip was reprinted in my book Maniac Killer Strikes Again! in a somewhat altered state. Here is the original version as it appeared in the long-out-of-print anthology Blab #8.

Scroll down for part 2. (Yes - once again I have to divide the strip up - this time because of Blogger's limitations on image posting.)

My Father's Brain (part 2)

Wonder Woman?

Yep - Here is a drawing of Wonder Woman I was commissioned to do in 1998. I included a couple of her (Golden Age) adversaries in it as well (I love the eccentric, old-timey art of the original Wonder Woman artist, Harry G. Peter). The composition is based on the cover of the first issue of my comic book Evil Eye for reasons I can no longer remember...

Bambi Bembenek comic strip for Playboy

Here is a comic strip I was hired to draw (from a script) in the mid-1990s for Playboy magazine. It accompanied an article called "The Bambi Bembenek Story." Click the image to blow up real big.

Four Illustrations

Four examples of original art from my archive of magazine illustrations.

From top to bottom:

- Psychology Today (Can't remember the article, but it looks interesting!)

- Newsweek (So glad no one asks you to draw those old computers anymore; I must have drawn a hundred of them -- it was so hard to make them interesting.)

- Details (Mom has boyfriends)

- New Times (Video dating; This was a cover of a weekly, one of many I did "back in the day")

It's sad to keep hearing about how the magazine industry is dying - at least for someone like me who always loved them (probably since buying my first copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland). I can't imagine my life without all the cool magazines I loved to read growing up. And, even though I majored in Fine Arts in college, I always had a secret desire to somehow one day get my art into magazines. Eventually (it's a long story!) it happened and I was in a LOT of magazines during the '90s & '00s. If I hadn't decided I wanted to concentrate more on comics, I might still be doing lots and lots. I loved the whole process -- the phone call, the sketches, the deadline, the all-nighter, the feeling of accomplishment -- and seeing the work in print a month later...

I have no idea whether the magazine industry is really "dying" or not (what am I, Criswell?) -- I'm just glad I had the chance to do so many fun & silly drawings I would otherwise have never thought of doing.