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Mars Will Send No More

~ Comic books, art, poetry, and other obsessions

Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: comic book collage

pure nostalgia: Marvel Team-Up #2, 1972

07 Friday May 2021

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

and spidey makes four, art, collage, comic book collage, drawing, Human Torch, Marvel Team-Up, memoir, painting, sketch, Spider-man

Marvel Team-Up #2 is a riotous mix of 1970s superhero nonsense and insanely dramatic confrontations between the Human Torch and Spider-man. The villains take control of Spidey’s mind and turn him into a weapon against his friend, Johnny Storm.

Script by Gerry Conway, pencils by Ross Andru, and inks by Jim Mooney.

Oh, the pathos! My suspension of disbelief is only hampered by the fact that Spidey was, by that point in comics history, established as being so strong that a punch from him should have killed Torch immediately. Spider-man isn’t strong on the level of Hulk or Thor, but he packs a wallop that could take off your head.

Regardless, this scene inspired me to use a couple panels as ink studies for chisel-tip markers I’d recently acquired. They create broad, angular lines but also finer lines when rotated 90 degrees. I found I could get a mix of bold shapes and detail lines if I worked at the appropriate scale for the brush width.

Chisel-tip Sharpie Marker study

I cut the pages from my sketchbook and hung them in a prominent place where I see them a few times a day, as a reminder. Sometimes I feel so wrapped up in and trapped by all kinds of stuff, focused on negative things about what’s wrong while my brain tries to solve problems, that it’s nice to have a buddy like Torch: someone willing to yell sense at me when I totally lose the plot. Someone to remind me who I am.

Johnny Storm stands his ground even when mind-controlled Spidey is trying to kill him. Sure, Torch could crank up his flames, “go nova”, and incinerate Spidey to a pile of ash. But it wouldn’t be enough for Torch to save himself. He wants to liberate Spider-man, too. That’s true friendship.

The friendship and occasional rivalry between these two heroes has been going on since the 1960s, and I enjoyed Jonathan Hickman’s treatment in his run on the Fantastic Four. When the Human Torch ***spoiler alert*** dies to save our universe from an invasion, Spider-man takes his place in the FF. Spidey honors his old pal’s last will and testament, and also completes a lifelong dream of joining the FF, a dream that began in the very first issue of The Amazing Spider-man where a much more inexperienced and arrogant Peter Parker tried out for the team—and failed. One especially heartfelt tale on Hickman’s run has Spidey share with Johnny’s nephew, Franklin, about how Spidey lost his uncle, too.

Second marker study of a panel from the same issue.

I got so into Marvel Team-Up #2 that I cut up a copy in really poor condition I got for fifty cents. It’s a crazy expensive comic in better condition, but it retails for about $5 in the condition I found it. I definitely got more than $5 worth of artistic inspiration from it, doing a few other ink studies and also the first painting in my 2013 dream journal series which has a partially visible underlayer of panels concerning the argument between Spidey and Torch, a battle not just for their bodies and their minds but the very essence of their friendship.

Dream Journal #1: Anger

Panels of their conflict fill the angry rift running from the upper left corner to the bottom right of the painting. Over them, I painted and textured layer after layer, including found objects from small pieces of hardware to a dead, dehydrated lizard I found on my porch, adding color washes until they became like a soothing balm for the raging argument below, brushing and pouring and splashing until a peace came over me and I knew that despite what had happened to them, Spidey and Torch would be okay. Their lives and friendship had been torn apart by anger, but they would heal. Their friendship would heal.

In that sense, the painting became a way for me to work though some dark things that had come up in my dreams until I could see the light again. It wasn’t just about anger, as I later titled it. It was about regaining one’s senses and overcoming that emotional disruption.

Another of my dream journal series of paintings began as a collage of the same issue’s cover and random interior images, plus a few add-ins from other comics I was sacrificing on the altar of art at that time, including beat-up copies of Marvel Team-Up #5 and #16. The central panel is a John Byrne and Karl Kesel illustration from a six-issue DC series in the 1980s called Legends.

Collage of comic book panels on canvas.

Spidey’s dialogue “Face it, creeps! This is the pay-off!” appears twice, which suggests I had not one but two copies of Marvel Team-Up #2. But maybe the second occurrence comes from a different and far less expensive Spider-man reprint issue, from which I repurposed a bunch of pages.

Later, I added more and more layers of paint and texture until the original collage was almost entirely obscured. The collage centered on a panel where a character thought, “Perfect! The master will be well-pleased!” Over the years, I kept adding to the canvas, trying to bring it closer to some perfect form. I awoke one morning to see what I had wrought upon the canvas in an inebriated, late-night state.

Dream Journal #9: Perfection

“Perfect,” I said. “Perfect!” Then I laughed like a maniac, probably convincing my neighbors that a real-life supervillain lived next door, because I could not keep a straight face while trying to say, “The master will be well-pleased.”

Years later, I still say this to myself when I feel stressed about some artistic decision. It makes me laugh and reminds me to not take things so dreadfully seriously. But I’ve also learned to build in a buffer of time to step away from decisions made in anger or fear before carrying them out, then come back to them a day or two later with a fresh perspective.

Do I see improvements I could make before acting? Have I realized some potentially negative outcomes I didn’t consider before? Could I improve the ways I plan on communicating with others about the situation? Do I need to do some research to back up my convictions or expose places where I might be wrong?

Then let’s attend to those things now, before we damage friendships and end up punching each other’s lights out in some science-fiction hallway where our actions only serve the villains who seek to destroy us.

Collector’s Guide: The original issue appeared as Marvel Team-Up #2 in 1972 from Marvel Comics. It was reprinted in the far less expensive Spider-man Megazine #2, which you can get for about $2. It also appears in black-and-white in the Essential Marvel Team-Up, Volume 1.

sketchbook sundays: dream journal nine perfection

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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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.

dream journal 9 - copy

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

07 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music, postcards

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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

michael bowhay megamix003

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.

michael bowhay megamix004

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.

michael bowhay megamix005
michael bowhay megamix001
michael bowhay megamix002

dream journal 7: fun

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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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

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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

dream journal 1

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. Ssshhhh. It was only a dream. That’s all it was. Just a bad dream. It’s okay now.

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

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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collage, comic book collage, painting, transparent man

transparent man -001

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.

transparent man -002

Freeing Myself from This Hungry Earth!

30 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

art, Captain Marvel, collage, comic book collage

freeing myself from this hungry earth

 Out of the three or four 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.

freeing myself from this hungry earth - back

 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!

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in quarterly report

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, collage, comic book collage, quarterly report

Perfect the Master Will Be Well Pleased - Copy

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!

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

≈ 4 Comments

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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: I 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. I saw a couple for sale on eBay and totally stole the sellers’ pictures for you. See the gallery, below.

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

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!

01 Tuesday Mar 2011

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in humor

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, 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 1970s — 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.

Comic Book Ads Corrupt 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!

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth

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.

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth

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.

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth

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 a 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.

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth

It didn’t stop with Marvel and DC, this war on the values of our children. With violence at school on the rise, Image moved to capture the 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.

Comic Book Ads Corrupt Youth

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