sketchbook sundays: dream journal nine perfection

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art, comic book collage, comic book dreams, dream journal, dreams, painting, sketchbook sundays

Sometimes you have those dreams where everything feels perfect. As a tribute to the numerous dreams we’ve had flipping through boxes of never-published comic books, the colors and textures of Dream Journal Nine contain vintage comic books in their depths.

 

 
This little 8×10 canvas has been a companion in the painting studio for two years, the object of many small-scale experiments we would later apply to larger canvases. It was once a light-hearted collage called “Perfect! The Master Will be Well Pleased!”

We’ve had much time to consider the idea of perfection, and we have a new perspective on it now. Perfection is a process, not a static state. Perfection is a verb, not a noun. Perfection is how we shape the world ever closer to an ideal we have in our minds. In reality, nothing is ever truly perfect, but that should not disappoint us too much. We are not trying to attain a state of perfection; we work to perfect our less-than-ideal world and make it more ideal.

On the flip side, you have imperfection. The crackled textures of Dream Journal Nine suggests cracks and imperfections. In dreams, the imperfections sometimes alert the dreamer that yes, this is a dream. You notice something that doesn’t seem quite right. And when you pause to think about it, it becomes clear you are dreaming. The imperfections of the dream world make perfect signposts on the road to lucid dreaming and greater awareness in the dream.

Dream Journal Nine could just as easily bear the title Imperfection, for perfection and imperfection form two sides of the same coin, two halves of the same whole.

We recently published three years of dreams from our dream journals in a 148-page paperback, and also Kindle format, called Three Years Dreaming.

99 Mega Mix

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99 megamix, audio collage, cards, collage, comic book collage

Brian used to tell me about these mix tapes his older brother Michael made. He would take tiny snippets of songs and fill a cassette tape with them. Brian described his brother’s selections as only the part of a song that totally kicked ass. This was in the late 1980s when the relatively new combination of “tape decks” with record players and CD players made music-loving teenagers into DJs all across the nation.

For some reason, I never heard these tapes. I only heard about them. So, when I found Michael on Facebook a few years ago, I asked about those legendary mixes! Coincidentally, Michael replied that he had just completed his first set of new mixes in many years. He called them 99 MegaMixes: 99 songs in 20 minutes! He kindly sent me a 3-disc set with these custom-collaged comic-themed inserts.

dream journal 7: fun

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art, collage, comic book collage, dream journal, dreams, painting

 
Some of our dream journals have addressed pretty heavy emotions, but this one is lighter and happier. This is a dream of laughter and sunshine, pretty colors and shiny things. It’s fun – a dream you wake from, smiling.

We often have all kinds of fun in our dreams. We’ve seen the moonrise on an alien planet and rocked out on stage with Mudhoney. We’ve gone for rides in flying cars and played baseball, made love and attended cocktail parties. We’ve discovered the secret of flying, cuddled kittens, and taken epic treks through panoramic landscapes. And many, many times we have spent what seems like hours going through longboxes full of comic books that have never been published.

This has everything from a latex cast of a toy snake to wire from a fan, drawings from our art teacher to a Marvel Value Stamp, tin foil to jewelry, keys, stickers, and flowers. The stencil for the spray paint, the flowery black shapes, is part of the casing of a fan motor. The loose wires on the left got the staple gun treatment to hold them on the back of the wooden frame.

Dream Journal 1: Anger

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abstract, acrylic, art, collage, comic book collage, dream journal, dreams, painting

 
Dream Journal 1 deals with anger. The bottom layer of comic book panels reconstructs a nightmarish sequence in which two friends fight violently. The anger of this dream traps them in a vortex of repeated panels, their conflict echoed over and over again, surrounded by angry faces like a series of funhouse mirrors gone wrong. This is a dream where you wake up feeling terrible, tense, and on edge all day.

The layers over this collage deal with that anger. It still glows red, almost like a wound, through the diagonal ‘rift’ across the painting. The greens and blues seek to sooth this angry wound. There, there, they say. Hush. Ssshhhh. It was only a dream. That’s all it was, baby. Just a bad dream. It’s okay now. You’re alright.

This piece also deals with letting go of that anger. This isn’t denial. It is acknowledgement and then working through uncomfortable feelings to the other side of them, moving through both light and darkness. Anger is just one thing we cling to in our lives.

Many times we feel anger as a way of protecting something we care about. Anger is a shield we put up around us to keep something valuable from being hurt or threatened. It may form a defensive barrier against feeling an underlying sadness. If we hold on to our anger, though, it becomes a disruptive force in our lives. Sometimes we have to dig deeper and ask ourselves, what are we hurting about – or trying to avoid hurting about – underneath all that anger? By getting to the source, we can diffuse its negative energy.

This painting moves through the process of considering anger, identifying those underlying sources, and releasing that energy in a creative, transformative way. In one of the panels, now buried under layers of paint and collage, the Human Torch shouts to Spider-man, “You’re a free man, Spidey!” It became our mantra for the rest of the piece. Free. To do anything we want. To experience anything. Free to let go of anger and open up to life. Free to create and destroy. You’re a free man, Spidey. Don’t waste that.

transparent man redux

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collage, comic book collage, painting, transparent man

Oh no!
Look what happened to the Transparent Man from 1934!
Another priceless historical artifact destroyed… But it’s fun to put different things on the top edge so he seems to be holding them up or performing some weird incantation.

 

Freeing Myself From This Hungry Earth!

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art, Captain Marvel, collage, comic book collage

 
Out of the 3 or 4 old Marvel Team-Up issues we recently sacrificed to gods of art, this was the most awesome panel. We gave it a little 4×4 canvas of its own to live out the rest of its unnatural life.

 

 
In the recessed area on the back, we added three things. Two of them are seeds, and one is a cicada we painted chrome. These symbols of rebirth and regeneration will help the good Captain with his liberation! The scraps behind the main panel come from a drawing of Phoenix – another symbol of rebirth.

Perfect! The Master Will Be Well Pleased!

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art, collage, comic book collage, quarterly report

Ultra Cosmic Bonus Points are yours if you identify the source comic book for the panel in the center which clearly states this collage is “Perfect! The Master Will be Well Pleased!”

 

Old School Pizzeria Comic Book Mural!

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Christopher Ross, comic book collage, Comic Book Mural, Marvel Super Heroes Fantasy Jigsaw Puzzle, Old School Pizzeria, Olympia

My northwest pen pal sent me this pic of a super-hero mural in Olympia. This beauty graces the Old School Pizzeria at 108 Franklin St NE in Olympia, WA. If you’re in the neighborhood, drop in for a pizza – and tell them Mars Will Send No More sent you! You can even check out their menu first.

Update 1: We shared this image with r/comicbooks on Reddit and learned something. This image comes from an old puzzle produced by Marvel Comics. It was called “Marvel Super-Heroes Fantasy Jigsaw Puzzle.” It had 300 pieces and came in a box that told you all the character names on the back. We saw a couple for sale on eBay and totally stole the sellers’ pictures for you – see our gallery.

 
Update 2: Special thanks to reader Christopher Ross, who wrote to tell us he painted this awesome mural!

Hi. My name is Christopher Ross. I painted this mural 10 years ago for my friends who own the pizzeria. I’m stoked you love it. The owner of Old School grew up with the puzzle. I painted it in 10 days in the summer of 2002. Its all freehand, no projections. It is 17×24 feet, and the 132 characters are life size.

 

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth!

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ads, comic book collage, smoking

When Joe Quesada eliminated all representations of smoking years ago at Marvel, he took a major stand against a propaganda campaign that Marvel had pushed for years.

In the 1970’s, an era of rampant drug use and the dissolution of the nuclear family, Mighty Marvel’s Bullpen was at the front lines of the corruption of the American mind. Here, the so-called Incredible Hulk delivers a not-so-subtle message to troubled youth.

Nuclear power was sold as safe and friendly to the American public – and the minds of children were an atomic battleground. If you need any more proof that the military-industrial complex was pushing nuclear power to children, just look at what they were up to in 1974!

Things didn’t get any better in comic books in the 1980’s. Children were still bombarded with moral relativism and other heinous activities in the form of seemingly innocent messages from pop icons.

As we examine the moral turpitude of comic books, we must never forget the new low reached by DC in the 2000’s. When Marvel’s Editor In Chief Joe Quesada banned all depictions of smoking, DC moved to capture the youth smoking market by unveiling the new JSA – The Juvenile Smoking Association.

In this reprehensible title, all characters constantly chain-smoked, often winning victories over their villians through their superhuman, nicotine-enhanced abilities. Featured revisions of classic DC characters in this outrage included Smokerman, Buttman, Hackman & Hackwoman, ‘Reds’ Lantern, the Black Lung Canary, and a version of the Flash that could smoke a carton in the blink of an eye.

Even as DC continued to promote smoking to children with The Juvenile Smoking Association, Marvel struck even harder with this piece of muck-raking work exposing the manipulation of children into massive amounts of over-priced sugar consumption using toys and trinkets and other “free” promotions.

It didn’t stop with Marvel and DC, though – this war on the values of our children. With violence at school on the rise, Image moved to capture the violent youth market by publishing ultra-violent and satanic titles like Spawn. They filled the books with advertising funded by pro-violence special interests. This ad shows how guns and violence were pushed upon minors as a form of acceptable entertainment years before video games like Grand Theft Auto and the new Wii M-16 Assault Rifle became so popular.