Greenville Comic Con

Any of you suckers gonna be in Greenville, South Carolina sitting behind a folding table this weekend?

I will!

…and you want to know who else?

J. Chris Campbell
Brad McGinty
Duane Ballenger
James “Doodle” Lyle
Bradd Parton
The Dollarbin podcast crew Dealers from all over:
Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find
Dave’s Comics
Darkside Games
Richard’s Comics and Collectibles
Planet Comics
Earl Shaw
Rick Fortenberry
Heroes and Dragons
Dave Shankle
Tower Comics
Comics Wanted
Guy Joyner

Come join the freakout on October 25th from 10 am-4 pm at the Comfort Inn (formerly Days Inn) at 2756 Laurens Road. Behind the BMW dealership and the hobo grave yard. Admission to the show will be $5 or $4 with a can of food to benefit the Miracle Hill Boys Home.

Get a free issue of Rashy Rabbit with a jar of Kraft Jet Puff Creme.

Any questions about the show or table availability:info@greenvillecomiccon.com

See ya there!

Anxiety, Sleep Problems and Depression 2

Do you remember 2005? That’s when I magically turned into a marmot and traveled back in time. However, I will always remember it as the year that I drew my second issue of Anxiety, Sleep Problems and Depression.

I had to play catch-up to my fellow Cute Girl Demographic partners, Jennifer and Brad. Those two are machines, and were cranking comics out left and right, while I was still riding the on the glory that was known as my first Anxiety, Sleep Problems and Depression.

The funny thing is, dear reader, I actually never had any attentions on using Rashy Rabbit again.  After all, if I had longevity in mind, I probably wouldn’t have named him “Rashy”.

Allow me to be frank here, this comic was a failure. It’s without a doubt, the worst in the series. I don’t think I had a clear vision of the story – and it shows.

It’s out of print, and like all Cute Girl Demographic comics, it will never be printed again.

It’s your life though, and I won’t stop you from reading it for free right f’in here.

In other words, I got a new flickr account.


Ration Rabbit

You really never know what your audience is gonna react to and what they won’t.

I printed this as a back up in Anxiety Sleep Problems and Depression #2 and it seemed to go pretty much unnoticed.

Basically, this comic’s text was taken word for word from one of the many letters my Grandfather wrote to my Grandmother back home during WWII. Somehow,my Grandmother was oblivious to the kind of combat that Grandpa was seeing overseas. This was proven by him thanking her for the curtains(!?) she sent to him before storming Normandy.

At least she had the good sense to keep all the letters.

What else can I say? Oh yeah, the comic was beautifully inked by my pal Brad McGinty and all the details were  carefully researched from the pages of Sgt.Rock.

Joy of Hack 2

Chocolate and peanut butter.

Flowers and bees.

Chess and hip-hop.

Some things were made to be together.

The directive for this one: make a King and a Rook look like rappers. Not unlike Tupac, this rapper was shot down for being too edgy.

Hmm, How do you make  a rapper more family friendly? Why going back in time when rappers rapped about having a good time and nothing else, that’s what you do!

I went for a vintage, I mean “old school”, look.  Of course the powers that be ( I mean, the “man”) shot this down on the grounds that kids won’t “get” the reference to the 80’s. Personally, I disagree. That’s like saying I wouldn’t have recognized a hippie as a child, because that, too, was 20 years before my time.  Jeez, I’m old.

Speaking of being old and out of touch, I was instructed to give them modern rap duds. Oh, and I was told not to make the pants too baggy, after all schools are having a problem with that.

So there you go. Rapping chess pieces.

Good ol’Grandma Latta

My Grandma Latta saw a lot of change in her life. After all, she used to ride a horse to school,or so her story goes. Yeah, she saw a lotta change in her 93 years and embraced absolutely none.

Well, maybe she liked a few technologies. She loved planes, for example. She loved to travel. The crazy thing about that she sure didn’t pick up much culture on these world travels. She still referred to her hometown , Lone Tree, Iowa, as “the real world”and only ate with a spoon.

She liked the microwave too. However, everything she cooked was for 1 minute twenty three seconds. So basically, she’d just run her finger across the numbers 1,2,3 and that was good enough for her.

I guess if it were up to Grandma, she woulda been wringing her chickens necks and plucking them for dinner.(which, by the way, she called EVERY meal.) That, after all, was the only “real” way to live!

Sadly, I’m afraid she was a relic of a bygone era. The greatest generation is slipping away.

I’ll miss her and everybody else’s Grandparents too.

Joy of hack

Hello all my imaginary friends out there in blogville U.S.A!

It’s your ol’ pal Josh Latta here at Lattaland and I’m gonna tell all you peons what it’s like to be a real life professional artist!  Don’t get the wrong idea, though. It’s not all bud lites, goodwill trousers and shiny 97 corollas. Yes sir, sometimes this chosen field can be a little less than glamorous.

Case in point: Here’s how art gets watered down and given to you, dear readers, for your consumption.

Usually, I get a call from some poor sap at some boring company that, chances are, you’ve never heard of and never will.  Anyway, if I’m sober and or/don’t have the business end of a shotgun in my mouth, I answer and we discuss the art “needed” – and by “needed”, I mean begrudging commissioned on the whim of some muckety muck higher-up.

Once I have a little more of an idea of what hypothetical company is looking for, I roll up my sleeves and hit the drawing board and come up with some concept sketches to show ’em.

This is usually the point where I hear the word “cartoony” as a derogatory description.  (Fortunately, not in the instance I’ll show you today. These guys actually wanted *gasp* a cartoon character!)

Once I find a design we can agree on, I finish up a concept sketch and send it to whatever cog I’m dealing with in the machine. The said cog sends the image to a middleman who, then proceeds to rip it to shreds. After all, how do middlemen prove their worth without poo-pooing the first draft, right?

Oh oh! I made a mistake. I used a UPA inspired “flat” graphic style. We gotta have more detail than that, right? Where’s the buttons? Where’s the brow sweat? After all, they’re paying the big bucks, they wanna see their money’s worth!  More lines they want, and more lines they’ll get.

Hmm, better- here we have more detail, however, we all know skin isn’t yellow and eyes aren’t pink. We gotta fix that. Oh, and why does he look so goofy? This Professor is supposed to be cool! I have to cool him up by 67%. Did I mention the logo on his lapel is way to small?  We need a giant logo that stands out more. The bigger the better when it comes to brand identity!

Well, if the yellow skin isn’t doing it for them, I’ll try every tasteful color combo in and outside of nature.

See one you like?
NO?

This is when the client ( who is, of course, always right) picks the color combos buffet style.

My client wanted a good ol’ safe caucasian and and a tasteful gray suit. We don’t want anyone to think it’s a lab coat, after all, it’s not!

…and there we have it!

This little guy will be helping folks learn Spanish by standing off on the corner of a page at a quarter inch high!

Super Secret Preview for Rashy Rabbit 5!

Shhh, Don’t tell anyone!

Showing you, my wonderful reader, my pencils makes me feel like I’m standing there in your room in my underwear.

Some eagle eyed viewers may have noticed that there isn’t any text.  Well, that’s because the dialogue is a super, super secret and I cannot even show you, my favorite reader. It’s such a secret that I haven’t written a word of it yet.