"A Calendar of the Gods"... again

[This is not really TMNT-related, but it might be of some interest. -- PL]

   "Everything old is new again."

I was recently reminded that a project I worked on back in 1977 with my late brother Don -- "A Calendar of the Gods" (hereinafter referred to as CotG) -- which was originally intended to be used for the year 1978, has -- due to the cyclical nature of calendars -- now become useable again. 

Well… not NOW, exactly, but in a couple of years -- in 2017, to be precise. In going through some of my mother's stuff recently, my sister found and gave to me a small pile of the CotGs, still in their manila envelopes with the little logo patch rubber cemented to the outside of the envelopes. (Well, some of them -- due to their age -- had fallen off. I guess rubber cement is not intended to last that long.)

Given that they will shortly be able to used as calendars again, I'm thinking of offering them for sale via eBay. Counting the cover, each calendar contains thirteen drawings by me, with extra graphic designs by Don Laird.  He also researched the various gods and did the text pieces describing them.

This project was the first thing that Don and I did under the auspices of "Saurian Design", the graphic design business I began shortly after graduating from college. It never went anywhere, and -- sadly -- neither did the CotG. I think we sold a handful of them, and the rest of the print run -- which, if memory serves, numbered 150 copies, and was paid for by Don -- went into our respective closets or other appropriate storage areas.

I think there were about half a dozen with my mother's stuff, and if I'm remembering correctly, I think I may have a few dozen more in my files (also known as "boxes of stuff I've lugged with me through multiple moves in three different states"). For anyone interested in publications with rare early Peter Laird artwork, this might be worth a look. I will post again here if this plan sees fruition.

        Below are shots of two sample months, June and February. -- PL

                                                  

Shellback visit

I stopped in at Shellback Artworks in Wells, Maine, today to see my buddy Steve Lavigne. We hung out together for a couple of hours, during which time I signed a bunch of things, inked a drawing of Steve's in a book for a fan, and did exactly one dozen large TMNT head sketches for Steve.

Here's Steve posing with one of them:

I'm not sure how much Steve is going to charge for them, but I would typically charge about $40 (forty dollars) if I did these at a signing. Steve may also color some of them, which would bump the price up to perhaps double that. If you want to know more, you should contact Steve through Shellback's Facebook page. -- PL

https://www.facebook.com/steve.lavigne.777?fref=ts

Turles?

In yet another "asleep at the switch moment" for the copy editors at comicbookmovie.com comes the following headline from today:





"TURLES"?

Sigh. -- PL

Ask PL #13

If memory serves, it's been almost a year since I did on of these "Ask PL" posts... so I thought it might be time to do another one. If anyone has any questions, please ask! That is, unless they are questions about whether I have seen the new TMNT movie -- the answer is no, I haven't, and probably won't until it is released on DVD/BluRay. Also, I have not watched the new season of the TMNT TV show or read any of the IDW TMNT comics. -- PL

UMass Turtles

There is a nice short piece (on the TMNT sculpture group I donated to my alma mater) which was just posted on a UMass website. Here's the link:

http://www.umass.edu/gateway/feature/cowabunga

It's short, but sweet, and the photos are great! -- PL

Grab bag!

Gary RIchardson just told me today about a nifty special offer, related to the new TMNT video documentary, that Mirage Studios is making for a "TURTLE POWER DVD GRAB BAG", and I thought I should post it here. Rather than duplicate what is already online, I will just post the link to the offer at miragelicensing.com:

http://www.miragelicensing.com/paypal/grabbag.html

Looks pretty cool to me! -- PL

"The Marvel Method"

This post isn't about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it is about comics, so I figured "Close enough!". Maybe I'll post it on my other blog, too.

I was in Barnes and Noble last week doing my weekly "check out the new magazines" thing, when my eye fell on the cover of a new issue of "Comic Heroes" magazine. 

Nothing about the contents, at least from the cover, immediately appealed to me, so I went to the table of contents, where I saw that inside was a story about the famous "Marvel Method" of creating comics.

I was skimming the article when I noticed a familiar illustration -- a self-portrait by Jack Kirby (inked, I think, by Vince Colletta), which I remember seeing print in one of the books DC published during Kirby's sadly brief tenure there when he was doing his amazing "Fourth World" comics. You can even see various references to his DC work in the illustration (note, for example, the little head shot of Orion from Kirby's "New Gods" comic book on the page he is depicted working on).

Of course, this immediately leads to an obvious question: Why in the world is an illustration from Kirby's time at DC Comics being used for an article about the "Marvel Method"? What was going through the editor's and/or art director's mind/s when putting this page together? Could one not find, in all the thousands of pages of art Kirby produced for Marvel, something which would have worked here?

Not only that, but as I understand it, the way Kirby worked on his books at DC during that time was not at all in the "Marvel Method"... so the choice of this illustration is even less coherent.

Weird. -- PL