The Mask of Fu Manchu - I had wanted to continue working on my Universal 50's Sci-Fi movie posters, and have been playing around with a couple different ideas, but nothing had completely clicked. Sometime around Halloween though, I bought a boxed set of MGM 30's-era horror films, called The Hollywood Legends of Horror collection. It featured the films Mad Love, Doctor X, The Return of Doctor X, Devil Doll, Mark of the Vampire...and The Mask of Fu Manchu.

I had seen Fu Manchu once, about 10 years ago, and didn't remember much from it. But watching it anew, the movie really came alive for me--it's totally insane. Depravity of all kinds, torture, rioting mobs, severed limbs...this film has everything, and was made before the Hayes Code really cracked down on movie content, so they threw in everything but the kitchen sink here. And presiding over it all is Boris Karloff, an old hand at this stuff, and Myrna Loy, for pete's sake, who had a legendary career in much more respectable films ahead of her.

Anyway, the dang movie got me inspired, and I started messing around with the Karloff potrait--I had had an idea in my head of what he should look like, and how he'd frame the rest of the poster. So I started on it, and old Boris came together quite well. Then I came back to it a day later, and the ideas just kept comin', where to lay in the type, what colors to use, all of it.

One of my biggest issues when I try to do these retro-type posters is, try as I might, they always end up looking too modern to me. I find that my design--what looks "right" to me--tend to lean toward a more modern look. This time, though, I found the right color combos that looked cool to me (lighter, more subtle instead of the in-your-face tones I normally use), but also genuinely old-fashioned (I was also looking at actual Fu Manchu posters also to know what to try differently). When all was said and done, I felt that this design could actually pass for vintage, maybe. I even spaced the type of the co-stars in a manner that looks weird to my eye, but I know is also time-period-accurate.

London After Midnight - I was obviously on some sort of creative tear here, since I jumped into this one the day after finishing Phantom. I knew that this was the other really iconic image that Lon Chaney is remembered for, even though the film itself is now considered a "lost" film.

To be honest, once I had the main image of the piece, the rest of it came together fairly easily--the only other element I knew I had to nail was the font. I knew the font should be more ornate than most of the ones I've used, mostly because this was an MGM film, which tended to be that way, aesthetically.

And since Chaney was pretty much the whole show in LAM (promotionally, at least, since I obviously haven't seen the film), I didn't think I needed lots of pictures of the other cast--just one would do it. Overall, I'm very pleased with how this came out.

Mark of the Vampire - I had originally thought about re-doing my Dracula poster, since I thought the main portrait of Bela was the weakest part of it. But who am I, George Lucas? I decided to leave that piece alone and move on to another Bela-as-a-vampire movie, Mark of the Vampire.

MOTV is really more of a mystery/thriller with some horror elements thrown in, but Bela does look just like the Count here, and to give the film even more visual kick is the addition of Carol Borland as a female vampire. So I knew I had to include her as well, and I wanted to stay away from the traditional blood-red color scheme and go with something more muted. I wonder how Bela felt being the face that sold the movie, yet it's Lionel Barrymore who gets top billing?

Mad Love - Right after finishing MOTV I had wanted to do another one, so I jumped right into Mad Love, a truly demented thriller starring Peter Lorre who I knew would provide a real grabber of a central image--his bald head and beady eyes makes for an unusual main character.

It was nearly impossible to find any images of Lorre's co-star Frances Drake--the object of Lorre's obsession--so I ended up having her be a lot smaller than I had planned, but I think in the end it worked out. I like the abstract graphic hand reaching out to grab Drake, and how it works against the main axis of the piece. The off-kilter lettering helps with the whole something-ain't-right feel, too.

In terms of the classic 30s MGM horror films, I'm pretty much left with Devil Doll, Doctor X, and The Return of Doctor X. Since I find DD to be pretty dull, I think I'll be visiting the good(read: evil) doctor soon...

The Bride of Frankenstein - I am a HUGE fan of the classic Universal Pictures' Classic Horror Monsters films--Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Invisible Man. I recently purchased a DVD set of all these films, and while I worked with them playing over the past month, I kept trying to think of some way to pay "tribute" to them, and have fun in the process.

So I came up with the concept of producing a series of posters for the films, pretending as though they were being re-released in theatres. I wanted to have them be a combination of retro and modern design styles. I kept thinking, what would catch my eye while walking through a theatre lobby?

I wanted them to have a cohesive look, since they were all part of this imaginary reissue series. But, of course, they each needed to look distinctive, too--from the Grand Guignol horror of the Frankenstein films, the moodiness of Dracula, and the later, more studio-backlot-ish style of The Wolfman.

Bride of Frankenstein was my first, and I think my best attempt at these. It looks classic and modern at the same time, and the blood-red background helps set the tone for a film about death, body parts, and graveyards.

Frankenstein - Obviously a direct companion piece to Bride, this, Bride, and the Invisible Man are the only ones where I use the more fanciful, script-y font for director James Whale's credit.

Obviously, the Jack Pierce-created makeup for Frankenstein's Monster is on of the recognizable characters on the planet, known to everyone whether they've seen the film or not. Having this beautifully iconic an image as the center of the poster does half the work for you.

The curved title, receding into the distance, works well I think with the placement of the cast, and the flat lower-half of Frank himself.

The Wolfman - Each poster features tag lines from the original ad campaigns. The Wolfman's tagline (too tiny to read here, it's "Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright"), fit just perfectly in the moon-shape behind Lon.

I feel this poster has a more direct, pulpy feel, to match the newer approach of 1940's-style Universal horror films.

Dracula - "While I love the colors on this one, now that I look at it, I think the portrait of Lugosi as the Count looks a little too goofy to really convey the horror of the story. If I ever get really motivated, I may re-do the central image and keep the rest." --Me, March 2007

Dracula was the last of the first set I had worked on; and I think I got a little ahead of myself, in that I was so excited about what I was doing that I wanted to finish it and have all four to look at, even though the Lugosi portrait was weak and I think the color choices were iffy, at least compared to the others. It's always bugged me that Dracula was simply not the best possible job I could've done at the time.

So while I was doing prep work for Hunchback of Notre Dame and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein(below), I decided to redo the Lugosi portrait to something less goofy and more sinister; in particular I love that sharp angle of his cape over his his right shoulder. The original red I used was too bright, so I went with something a little more subtle. And finally, I put in the background color a little more carefully and added the cobweb.

I am infinitely happier with this one, and now I feel like it's just as good as the other ones in the set.

The Mummy - I think this contains one of my most arresting central images--the crepuscular face of Boris Karloff's Imhotep. I went through lots of fonts looking for something strong and vaguely hieroglyphic-y, but not too modern, either (I didn't want any comparison to the look of the 90s Brendan Fraser remake...ugh).

One of my original intentions was to have these posters have a repetitive, consisent look, using the same approach and even images if appropriate. So the Mummy poster was a nice treat, since two of its four main characters are played by two actors from Dracula, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan, so I simply got to re-use their portraits here. Gee, why couldn't Universal those guys in every movie?

The Invisible Man - I was determined that The Invisible Man poster would be my crowning achievement...in my head, I saw the main image of Griffin (played by the great Claude Reins) as a nearly invisible one, fading into the background, which I thought would look go over like gangbusters.

Then I tried it, and...it just didn't work. The IM main image looked muddy, not transparent. It had none of the power I thought it would. Oh well. Not wanting to entirely give up on the idea, I went transparent with the logo, which I thought looked just great (aided immesurably the cool-o found I found to use). Since, unlike the other films, IM gave off no "feeling" of color to me (the sandy oranges of The Mummy, the Grand Guignol red of Bride of Frankenstein), I decided to play up the invisible thing once more, but going with all blacks, whites, and greys.

The Phantom of the Opera - For Phantom of the Opera, I completely ignored the fact that the film, unlike the rest, was shot in color. I worked on the main image in color just to see what it looked like, but it stuck out so much from the rest that I decided to stick with the program.

I'm not too sure now about the use of yellow on the insets, but I do know my favorite part of the poster is the Phantom's shadow, cast upon the logo at the bottom. I think it's really neat.

Creature from the Black Lagoon - And finally, one of my favorites, The Creature From The Black Lagoon. For reference on all the various characters, I found a whole book on the film on ebay. After I got it in the mail, I realized it was part of a "Monsters" film book series for kids that I read and re-read when I was a wee lad, attending Johnson Elementary all those years ago. The Creature poster went pretty smoothly, all coming together like I saw it in my head. One nice touch that was an accident was the Creature looking directly at "the beauty" played by Julie Adams, a nice (to me, at least) metaphor for the obsession the Gill Man develops for the comely Miss Adams.

And, now that I look at it a while after its completion, I realize I inadvertantly reflected the approach of the later Universal films with this poster--the Creature one is more filled, more "noisy" somehow, more trying to grab your attention than the somewhat more classically-styled era of the Frankenstein films. As horror and sci-fi became more commonplace in movie theatres, each film had to be a bit more loud, a bit more Startling! and Shocking! to get an audience to pay attention, and I think I've (again, accidentally) conveyed that here.

I had an enormous amount of fun on these; and I hope it shows. Most of all, I would hope that if something like these ever did get used for this purpose, that they'd maybe get a few new people interested in seeing these great films.

There are some more classic Universal films, but they're mostly sequels of their original hits, not leaving me with a lot of creative interest in trying them. But who knows? Universal did a lot of great 50s sci-fi films...

I didn't have too many iconic characters left to choose from, but then I realized I never tackled the original 1925 Phantom of the Opera--arguably one of the most famous monster faces of all time. Luckily, when it came to putting the poster together, Lon Chaney's visage is so famous, so intriguing, and (still!) so creepy, that it really helped make this one of my more successful monster posters (IMO).

I had originally drawn a lot more of the Phantom, including his arms and more detail on the cloak. But after seeing how it conflicted with the type at the bottom, rendering the rest in black made a lot more sense. Sometimes I have to sacrifice my own time and effort to make something look better in the long run, and this is one of those cases.

I enjoy doing these monster posters so much, and I get such a good response from them, that even though their many times the work, I always finish one of these up feeling very creatively satisfied. Luckily Steve liked it too, and before long it'll be hanging on one of his studio walls along with other genuine monster merchandise, so it'll be in good company!

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - I had decided there was at least one last classic monster in Universal's stable that I hadn't tackled, and that was the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Since I've done so many of these, putting this one together was fairly easy and a total pleasure--Lon Chaney's make-up as the Hunchback is so visually dynamic, even all these years later--that having that as the central image starts you out on the right foot. I think the most difficulty I had was picking the font, trying to find something not too cartoony but still remaining "loyal" to the ones Universal used on the original posters.

I had briefly wondered if there were any other Universal monster films worth doing up like this--Son of Dracula(a pudgy, Lon Chaney, Jr. Dracula? Nah), House of Frankenstein?(too many of the same characters), Dracula's Daughter?(nothing, but nothing actually happens in that movie--really, go see!--so nah to that one, too). So I figured Hunchback was it, until... (see next!)

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein - Then realized there was one more film, and one of my all-time favorites, too--Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Not only would it give me my first chance(incredibly) to do portraits of my favorite comedians, Bud and Lou, but it would allow me to do a lighter, sillier poster, but still within this series. I did get to re-use my Wolfman piece, but I had to do a new Frankenstein(since this was Glenn Strange, not Boris Karloff, under the neck bolts) and it timed out perfectly just having finished a new Bela Lugosi Dracula.

I had just as much fun putting this one together, maybe a little more because it gave me an excuse(not that I need one) to watch the movie all over again. Working on this one felt like a great way to wrap up this long series I started four years ago, not knowing they would become the most popular, well-received pieces I've ever done.

And as much as I love the overall design I came up with for these, I think I want to try something different so it's time to officially bring this series to an end, just like Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein did for the Universal horror monsters.

This Island Earth - I had wanted to get around to doing a new set of Universal film posters for a while. I had pretty much done every one of the classic monster films of the 30s and 40s (with some exceptions) and had decided to move into their classic sci-fi period of the fifties. And even though most of the films were still in black and white, I knew I probably wanted to do them in color, to help convey the new ideas and concepts these films were all about. While the classic monsters were based on supernatural and more earth-bound origins, the fifties films were all about science gone mad. (Knowing I had to do them in color is probably what kept me from doing them for so long, since I knew they'd be so much more work)

One of my favorites from this period was This Island Earth, one of the preeminent sci-fi films of the time. Aside from the unusual setting and tone, the thing most memorable about the film to me was the introduction of the Metaluna Mutant, the mute alien creature in the second half of the film. I knew I had to have him peering out towards the viewer, pincher at the ready.

Even though it was a lot more work having to worry about color, this piece really came alive for me, getting to use these beautiful, bright, bold colors. This thing really pops for me. For the most part, when I look at my own work, all I can see are the flaws or the things I could've done better/ But this piece just gets better to me every time I look at it. I just love this thing.

The Mole People - Having been filled with confidence after finishing TIE, I wanted to jump right into another one immediately. Another favorite was The Mole People, starring B-movie staple John Agar, and produced by essentially the same team that did TIE (as well as Creature of the Black Lagoon). Also, MP had another great, unique monster in the Mole People themselves.

I have a small, 4" high figurine of a Mole Person, so to get the kind of lighting I was looking for I pulled him off my shelf and shot some moodily-lit shots, which was a real help. And while I don't think Mole People came off as well as TIE (the colors don't pull together quite as well to me, and the actor portraits I think are less consistent), I still think it came off pretty well and I plan to get around to doing more films from this great era of sci-fi films.

Joel Martin - "The Man Behind the Music" - This was a piece I was commissioned to do for a magazine article on Joel Martin, a music producer and entrepreneur, who has worked with people as diverse as Eminem, George Clinton, and The Romantics.

They wanted some sort of rock poster type feel for the cover, but that was the extent of their ideas. I had planned to just put together a rough for them to look at, but when I sat down on a Saturday afternoon(with Johnny under my chair, snoring contentedly, and Sports Night: The Complete Series on the DVD player) something came over me--in an instant,

I had an idea in my head what the poster should look like. I had originally thought of a late 60s, psychedelic poster, like for The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. But then I thought a better idea was a riff on those classic, fun, dynamic Motown Records concert posters--that way I could work in pictures of some of the famous people he's worked with, instead of just being stuck with a picture of a guy nobody recognizes. As I kept working, the damn thing kept getting better and better, and each little piece fell into place like clockwork.

By around dinnertime, I had produced this--the rare piece that actually looks better on the screen than it did in my head(that never happens). I had forgotten to eat lunch and other than to take Johnny for a walk, I never stopped working for about five and a half hours.

Unfortunately, soon after this the whole project fell through(d'oh!)--the article, now finished, focused more about his past than the people he worked with, and the magazine decided to run photos from his life rather than use any illustrations at all.

So while I'm of course disappointed the piece never ran, I am so glad I saw this through to the end, because it's instantly become one of my all-time favorite pieces, and it was a total joy putting it together.

The Poster Project - March 2008 - For a few weeks in February and March, I was having a tough time getting motivated to do any new illustrations outside of my normal client obligations.

This bothered me a lot, because normally I am very prolific, and doing all this extra work has paid enormous dividends for me--I get to hone my skills, I get to see what kinds of designs and ideas "work" and which don't, which helps me come to any individual client a better artist. Also, I simply enjoy the process of sitting down at my desk and creating something. It's relaxing.

But for whatever reason I just couldn't get motivated, until in early March I picked up a book of posters designed by the design agency Modern Dog. They started in the mid-80s, a brought a really fresh asthetic to the art of poster design. I had never even heard of these people, and here was page after page of beautiful, inspiring work.

I ended up reading the whole book in one sitting, just before I went to bed, and after I turned in I found I couldn't sleep. All of a sudden I started getting all kinds of ideas and had an overwheling desire to start being creative again.

So the next day I decided to start on what I informally call The Poster Project--I would design and execute one new poster, on any subject, in any style, per day. I would force myself to try and come up with the best stuff I could. If I didn't, fine, but at the very least it would get my creative juices flowing again. And boy, did it!

In August 2004, I was contacted by American Prospect, a political magazine about doing several illustrations to accompany a series of articles called "A New Progressive Era?", all concerning what a Kerry Presidency might be like, how to achieve it, etc. The art director there wanted a series of WPA-styled "posters" to illustrate some of the themes of the articles, as well as a one full-page piece to kick off the whole thing.

I was given several of the articles and other topics and asked to choose which inspired me the most. I settled on the above six, ones dealing with building the labor unions, equal rights for gays and lesbians, investing in infrastructure, leadership, getting young people to vote, and how to take on the curiously-named The Right. One thing I definitely wanted to do was approximate some of the various styles of WPA art--the abstract silhouettes of Building a Better Tomorrow, the fun, loose The Time is Now, the more cartoony A Good Investment, the serious, propaganda-ish Equal Rights. I wanted lots of different colors and ways of using them, and with the text, a somewhat-serious-yet-cheerily-optimistic tone, which the WPAs had (no doubt reflecting the tone of the man whose administration created the program, Franklin Delano Roosevelt). I wrote the text myself, mostly just to show themagazine where I thought their text would go.

To my delight, when I submitted the pieces, the magazine was so happy with what I had come up with that the art AND the text remained unchanged--I had managed to strike the exact tone AP was looking for. There's only been a handful of times when a piece I submitted went from my first "draft" to printed page, and it felt like that, for this assignment, I could do no wrong.

The final touch to all of them was just to entertain myself. Most of the WPA posters had a small credit line on each, listing where they were made--"Chicago Works Progress Administration", etc. So I added the line "Works Progress Administration Marlton, NJ" to each one, just to give them each a little more verisimilitude--my new favorite word, and one I finally stopped using incorrectly!

Brothers 4 Life - A good buddy of mine named Markus hired me to do a piece for a relative of his, Julius, as a graduation present. Julius has a good buddy named Manny Hernandez who are, as they call themselves, "Brothers for life."

They had a picture taken of themselves, and wondered if Markus knew any artists who could turn it into something more. The light went off above Markus' head, and he told me his idea--to portray the BFL's in the context of a 70s Blaxploitation movie poster, like for movies like Super Fly, Cotton Comes to Harlem, or Coffy. This sounded like enormous fun!

After finding out some likes and dislikes of the guys, I searched for a nice, super-groovy 70s font and started throwing it together. I added some girls in bikinis, the skyline of Atlantic City, a Red Cross (Julius is a RN), and another relic of 70s blaxploitation films, a huge Caddy. I also added a movie rating, and a logo for American International, a studio that produced many of these movies. The hyperbolic tagline at the top is also my own invention.

Those 70s posters were full of multi-colored backgrounds, featuring the people and places of the movie, so it was fairly easy putting all the above elements together. I set them all with lessened and varying transparency, that way the BFLs really popped off the poster. Since my style isn't drawn with colored pencils or painted, there was a limit to how close to the look of those 70s posters I could get, but I think I achieved a nice combination. I was also happy that this piece looks very different than a lot of my other work--lots and lots colors, as opposed to the limited palatte I frequently use. Markus and family really like it, too, and it's great to know that the subjects got a real kick out of it as well.

Carnac the Magnificent - I loved--love--Johnny Carson. Always did, even when I was a little kid, and didn't understand half of the jokes. When the Carson Tonight Show began it's last-couple-of-months-wrap-up, each show filled with the hugest names in showbiz, I watched it every night. Most of show biz is phony, of course, but watching giants like Clint Eastwood or Steve Martin stop in one last time made me feel that this emotion was real. Looking back on the shows now, I'm struck by the gentleness of Johnny--he got laughs at other people's expense of course, but it never seemed as callous as a lot of the comedy nowadays.

Right after Johnny died, I wanted to do some kind of piece, some sort of tribute. I caught a pic of Johnny as one of my favorite characters of his, Carnac the Magnificent (Answer: "106 in Los Angeles." Question: "Under the Reagan plan, how old will you have to be to collect Social Security?"). Knowing that Johnny started out as a magician, and that it was a favorite pasttime of his, I thought, why not do a Carnac concert poster?

Once I had that idea, it was enormous fun putting this together. I know I wanted a mid-60s ultra-show-bizy look, with all those weird squiggles and star shapes. The opening line "Silence, please" was, of course, what Carnac would always ask for before attempting to divine the answer in the envelope held to his forehead. The show had to be at 11:30pm, the time that the world got to see Johnny, every night for 30 years. I fiddled with it for a long while, moving eah little piece back and forth--I designed the living hell out of this thing. It had a white background for the longest time, and then when I sort-of accidentally dropped black in the background, it pulled together for me, giving me that late-night, night-clubby feel that I knew I wanted.

Maybe this is a show you could go see, in some nightclub in the sky...

Cat O'Nine Lives - This was soooo much fun. Even though posters are double, triple, etc. the amount of work than doing just one portrait piece, I never have more fun than trying to arrange all the various elements, like it's a big jigsaw puzzle and the ultimate solution will reveal itself if I just keep going. The time seems to fly by, hours and hours, yet it never seems like work.

This time I wanted to try a noir thriller. I knew I wanted the classic noir icons--hard-boiled cop/detective, cityscape, shadows, and of course a sexy babe, preferably one that looks like she could kill you or kiss you. Not wanting to borrow a title or taglines from any established movie, obscure or no, I went for a run to clear my head and try and think of a good title.

About halfway in, I knew I wanted a sexy babe with some sort of cat connotation..Cat O'Nine Tails? Not bad... The Cat With Nine Lives? Hey, wait a minute...

So once I had the kitschy title in place, the whole thing started falling into place. I have a book (a couple, in fact) of classic film noir posters, and I really liked the hero-behind-or-up-against-a-real-or-metaphorical-wall motif running in a couple of them. I knew I wanted our hero looking at this mix, tempted but (of course) wary at the same time. I kept contrasting the colors between the two til I settled on almost a total split of hot and cold. Somewhere along the line I came up with the idea this was part of a series, which gave me the chance to create a second logo for it..."A New Johnny Chance Thriller!"

After adding some small details, like the bullets and the cat's eyes, I stopped and looked back on what I had created. And I really, really liked it.

Dark City - I recently read a wonderful book called Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller; it's a big fun book all about the film noir movement in movies of the 40s and 50s, the people that made them, and all the juicy details involved. Going through the book, I couldn't help but reconnect to the original inspiration for my art style--it was the stark black and white shots of Orson Welles in The Third Man that got me thinking about how you could convey information with just a little bit of color and shadow.

I've also thought how sad it is that most of these films are not available in most local, Blockbuster-minded (in more ways than one) video stores. So I decided to come up with a poster for the film festival of my dreams: an all film-noir marathon, showing nothing but a combination of my favorites (Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, Phantom Lady) and Films I Haven't Yet Seen But Want To (Narrow Margin, Detour, Scarlet Street).

I used what I thought was an iconic image--the guy's got a gun, sure, but he looks a tad nervous (an element in nearly every Noir film). I decided to limit myself entirely to black and white, something I hadn't done in a long time. Since the book was the inspiration for it, I named this imaginary festival in its honor. Once I added a suitable overheated bunch of taglines ("Murder at any moment! Suspense in every step!"--nicked from the poster of the ultra-obscure 1947 film Desperate), I had eveything I'd ever want to see in a Film Noir Festival poster.

Welcome to Dark City...but watch your step!

Obama '08 - I wanted to do an old-style campaign poster, pure and simple. This is one of the rare times that the image in my head came out on the screen almost exactly verbatim.

I like the big open spaces, the intense, no-detail white shirt, and the slightly old-timey font, complete with inspirational quote. It feels a little like the Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster, which is also something I had in mind when doing this. I definitely waned a "brighter tomorrow"-type feel, but not beat you over the head with it.

Maybe sometime I'll get up the guts to send this to the Obama campaign directly...

*Update* Since I wrote the above, I did indeed find the requisite guts to send it to the campaign, offering my services to them as an illustrator and/or graphic designer. Maybe Sen. Obama will be walking by some staffer's computer when its on their screen, point to it, and exclaim: "I want that guy!"

Oilcan Drive - My buddy Sean Tiffany--my first Kubert school roomate--has always been a fountain for comic book ideas. He's come up with a couple different totally complete worlds and the characters that inhabit them. Like me, he's done well for himself as freelance illustrator, and we're in regular commisseration about our similar career paths (plus I know he's home during the day, like me).

One Sean's newest ideas is OilCan Drive, a comic about a rock band set in the a post-apocalyptic world. There's music, fun, adventure, and a bass-playing monkey! But don't take my word for it--go to Sean's website and check it out for yourself.

Anyway, for Sean's birthday, I wanted to do some kind of OCD piece for him. I had in mind those classic, 60s-era house ads DC Comics used to run for its books, as well as a rough, scrappy kind of look, but with a semi-jokey tagline so you'd get the sense of what the book was like. The DC-house-ad part shows in the "Look for This Cover!" line, pointing to the cover as if you could go to your local newsstand and pick up the first issue (if only...).

Anyway, I sent it to Sean, and, thankfully, he really liked it. He told me he wants to use the piece for the possible OCD music CD (Sean, in addition to being a great artist, also dabbles in music, the bastard), which I took as a real compliment. So, hopefully sometime in the not too distant future, we'll get to see (and hear) more from Oil Can Drive!

Silence of Night - This image came to me, almost fully-formed, while I watching a Boris Karloff movie one afternoon. I made a mental note to work on it later, and then, afraid I'd forget, got up to do it.

This is another one of my made-up wish-list movies, and this time I thought I'd try my hand at 'literate horror', an informal genre that was pioneered by Val Lewton in the 40s and picked up somewhat by films like The Haunting, Curse of the Demon, and Rosemary's Baby.

This film was put together by a dream team for any horror-film fan: Vincent Price, star of approximately 10,000 horror films, Claire Bloom (The Haunting), a screenplay by master horror/sci-fi author Richard Matheson, and directed by longtime Lewton director Mark Robson. I imagined a screenwriter and director who wanted to give long-time horror star Vincent Price a chance to something more subtle, more serious, and maybe more frightening than the usual boogie-man parts he was doing (like the one Boris Karloff got with Val Lewton back in the 40s).

To that end, the poster would be more subtle, less in-your-face. It would highlight one bold, distinctly vague-yet-unsettling image, and try to establish what kind of horror movie it was. The only thing I added was the silhouette of the mysterious stranger--is he discovering that skull, or did he put it there? The fact that it also looks just a little bit like a tombstone only underlined that sense of uncertainty to me...

Sisterhood of Sin - I hadn't done one of my fake movie posters in a while, and was itching to put another one together. Each time I do one, I think they come out just a little bit better than the last one. The last one I had done, Cat O'Nine Lives, was a 50's pastiche, so I knew I wanted to try and mimic another era of moviemaking this time around. I sat down with my lapboard and just did some rough sketches and then tried to write some taglines to match.

I liked the idea of multi-panel look, and that immediately read to me as late 60s/early 70s-era movies. So I created my own exploitation film, The Sisterhood of Sin. It would have sex, violence, crazy dialogue, maybe some car chases...and no time for subtlety (as the poster suggests). It would feature actresses from some of the more notorious women's revenge films and in my fantasy world would be the ne plus ultra of this kind of film. It would star the late (*sniff*) Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, who, in her title role in the soft-adult version of Cinderella, was instrumental in nudging me down the path of Becoming A Man. Thanks, Rainbeaux.

I put this together over a few days, piece by piece, and really enjoyed myself. I think this has a nice, open, fun look, and totally devoid of subtlety. I wish they still made movie posters like this today, and I wish I was the one doing them.

The Strange Case of Mr.X - I'm not really sure how or why I started this piece, or how it ended up here, but, not for nothing, here's a movie poster for "The Strange Case of Mr.X" a movie that does not exist, directed and starring a group of people that never all worked together at the same time.

I had originall wanted to try doing some portraits in a more simple, cartoony style. I had just finished the exhausting NBA All-Star Game art, which were highly detailed, and wanted to try something in the totally opposite direction. I didn't want to bother with a likeness either, and just see what I could do with a creepy-type portrait and nothing else.

So, starting with the creepy close-up, I added the mad-scientist-like red-tinted glasses, a spider-web-and-bloody-hand-print background, and tried to imagine a movie that would fit what I had already created. Since I was doing the whole thing from scratch, I thought why not just make up a movie, as well? So I had horror movie legends like Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, of course) , Peter Lorre (Mad Love), and Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein) in a movie directed and produced by the team of Jacques Torneur and Val Lewton (Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie).

This poster is a little more comic book-y than my Universal Horror posters, and I think that's fitting, since it matches the style of the artwork, and I wanted to go in that direction anyway. And because I can never leave well enough alone, I do plan to do more in this style, and maybe create a whole slate of Movies That Don't Exist But Would Be Great If They Did.

The Alamo Drafthouse - The Alamo Drafthouse is a super-cool retro old-time movie house located in Austin, Texas. The owners and operators are real movie fans and try to make seeing movies a unique and memorable experience. They are friends with two friends of mine, Dan and Harry, who are half of Jersey's own Exhumed Films. After a recent trip to Texas, they came up with the idea of hiring me to create a one-of-a-kind movie poster as a way to say thanks for their hospitality while Dan and Harry were visiting. The AD owners are big fans of 60s spaghetti westerns, so Dan gave me some parameters of what he thought would be appropriate; the rest was up to me.

I knew immediately what kind of look I wanted--one grabber of a central image, and alongside it a collage of images, probably