So I guess this’ll be our token (late) Christmas post. Here goes…

I came across this pic following Christmas dinner at my dad’s, where part of the festivities this year involved my step-mother dragging out all manner of dusty, arcane photo albums. Now, some of these I could probably reproduce in blueline and painter for you by now, but others, like the one where this photo came from I’d never seen before.

In the Winter of 1996 I was working part-time here at Silver Snail Comics, trying to get my fledgling illustration career off the ground. Long story short, I made this 7 foor tall Jack Skellington for their Christmas window that year, out of PVC pipe, chicken wire, insulation foam, and a ton of black tissue papier mache. My buddy Chris helped immensly, and did a bang up job carving the head. Comics wunderkind Cameron Stewart (yeah, he worked there too…) also made a ginchy Zero that you can’t see because I’m obscuring it.

I’d often wished I’d gotten some pictures of it, and completely forgot that my Dad, actually did.

I should point out that I look nothing like this today. I actually looked nothing like this back then too. ‘This’ being a lot like like Lurch, but then you’re not supposed to be looking at me. Look at Jack.

Track of the Day: Arabian Dance - Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Additions: Freshened up the music recs, and added Brian K. Vaughan’s real site to the Reading section, because he has one now.