David Tristman's "Big-Un"

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Stalker -- Super Trash

Here's something I've done as a submission to Floating World Comics' Super Trash film festival -- a poster for Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, one of my favorite films.

If you're familiar with the film, hopefully the imagery here makes some kind of thematic sense. The film is about - in the simplest terms - a journey to a room that is purported to grant your deepest wishes. At one point a broken light bulb appears in the film; I liked the familiar notion of light bulb = idea, so I started with that, then enlarged it to represent the room where ideas become actual.

I wanted to evoke the slightly psychedelic Eastern European film posters of the era (60s-70s) so I threw a watercolor wash behind the drawing that hopefully suggests this, as well as imitating the color palette of the film: mostly greens and blues. The film is also filled with water imagery, so I left the linework transparent. I experimented with color in the light bulb and logo, but I wasn't as pleased with the results.

For Tarkovsky's name I questioned if I should simply use one line near the logo, or somehow design his credit to further suggest the film's images and themes. I repeated the line of text until I had a block of text that looked less like words than it did the tangled rows of electrical wires, fencing and train tracks that pattern the film. However the image was a little harshly edged as it was, so I faded it into the color as you see here.

Were this a DVD or book cover, it would be neat to have the three figures on the spine; as it is here, I wanted them to be as isolated as possible with nothing but empty sky above them.

Everything here is hand drawn and lettered, but this is the first time I've assembled all the bits in Photoshop -- it's a bit daunting but I can certainly see the advantages.

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Hello Dummy inks

11 x 8" on cardstock

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Hello Dummy pencils

11 x 8" on tracing paper

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Bleep Bleep

11 x 8" on typing paper

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Hello Dave inks

11 x 8" on tracing paper

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Hello Dave pencils

11 x 9" on tracing paper

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Candy Man inks

11 x 8" on tracing paper

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Candy Man pencils

10 x 11" on lightweight paper

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Snoop

11 x 14" on sketchbook paper

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Evel

8 x 11" on cardstock

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Poe inks

12 x 9" on cardstock

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Poe pencils

12 x 9" on tracing paper

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Brass & Strings

Pencil preliminary for a never-completed illustraion of Juan Garcia Esquivel, greatest musician of the 20th century. What a coincidence -- this is the worst drawing of the 20th century!

8 x 11" tracing paper taped to typing paper

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Curses rainbow

9 x 8"' tracing paper

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Curses color sketch

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Curses 7" b

9 x 9" tracing paper taped to typing paper

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Curses 7" a

9 x 9" tracing paper taped to typing paper

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Curses logo on t-shirt

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Curses logos b

8 x 11" cardstock

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Curses logos a

8 x 11" tracing paper taped to typing paper

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My Bad extra page

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My Bad page 1

11 x 17" tracing paper panels mounted on lightweight paper

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My Bad sketches

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My Bad cover

11 x 17" lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "Slow Motion"

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - " De Ja Vu"

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "It's A Living"

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "Action Figure"

11 x 6" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" 6

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" 4

11 x 6"

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" 3

10 x 5" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" 2

11 x 6" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" 1

6 x 7" on lightweight paper

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The Poor Square - "How Many Licks" misc

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The Poor Square - "The Worm"

21 x 3" six panels on lightweight paper, taped together on back

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The Poor Square - "Zzzz"

11 x 7" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 6

11 x 9" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 5

5 x 8" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 4

5 x 7" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 3

6 x 8" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 2

11 x 8" on lightweight paper

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Time Spent 1

11 x 8" on lightweight paper

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Ghost Story 2

4 x 5"

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Ghost Story 1

Two panels from a one-pager adapting a poem by Amy Fusselman called "Ghost Story." I saw the poem in her zine Bunny Rabbit, can't remember which issue. She was kind enough to allow me its use for the strip. Some time later she had a book (which I haven't read) published by McSweeney's.

5 x 5"

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To Gird With Love

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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Big Jerk back cover

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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Big Jerk inside front cover

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Big-Jerk cover

In 1999 I collaborated with my friend David Tristman (who programmed this website) on a book called "Big-Jerk". We had each done a few issues of our own mini-comics - his "Big-Un" and mine "Jerk" - thus the new title. The interior stories were done separately but we teamed up for the covers. I drew the initial image, which he then finished with his own drawing and added color.

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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No Thank You

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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Jerk #4 title page/indicia

11 x 17" on lightweight paper

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My Psychic Powers

11 x 14"

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Shady Lane

11 x 15'

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Jar Jar

4 x 5" on lightweight paper

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Milky

11 x 12" on lightweight paper

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Alley

11 x 14" on lightweight paper

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Will Draw For Food

I wanna say this is from around the year 2000, but, as usual, I dunno. This was the cover for a pamphlet I put together and mailed out to about 500 art-directors and publications hoping for some illustration work... anything at all... Of course, I got not a single response -- naturally, in hindsight, imagining this image greeting an AD after opening the envelope... well, what did I really expect?

6 x 9"

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Testicicle

A drawing of Johnny Ryan's "Sinus" and "Loady" characters (a color version of which can be seen at his site here).

8 x 8" on typing paper

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"Yew mean, uh, like them there, uh... "

This nimrod was conjured from my pen at the request of Kurt Wolfgang, though for what book or purpose I have no idea, nor have I ever seen any finished project. I'm thinking it was an idea that fell through, as Kurt was probably devoting more time to his own cartooning and receiving plenty of attention for it -- and rightly so.

4 x 5" on typing paper

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The Match spot

7 x 5"

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Zine World cover eccentric

Obviously this is a self-portrait (and a flattering one, at that.) In the late 1990s zines were getting a fair amount of attention (some of it genuinely respectful and sympathetic, most of the rest of it either breathlessly ardent or condescendingly glib) from the "real" media but it was clearly not the "revolution" some in the zine community thought it was (or might be.) I made this cover to look like an old National Geographic or some other kind of pseudo-academic journal that might take any arcana as its subject. Now, of course, every housewife and grandmother has a blog and I haven't seen a real zine in years, though I know they still exist.

11 x 17"

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Zine World cover poet

Doug (and many others) were very vocal regarding their dislike of the poetry that frequently appeared in zines. I wrote what might be a typically bad example for this cover... except that I actually like the poem, if I may say so. And I like the drawing, too. Maybe my favorite of the covers I did for ZW.

11 x 13"

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Zine World cover bus

11 x 17"

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Zine World cover cop

11 x 17"

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Zine World cover wings

I thought this was a pretty good cover when I finished it, but not long after I grew to hate it. The image had already been printed on ZW but I still felt compelled to "fix" it as much as I could, if only for myself.

So I made a photocopy of the first cover and drew a whole new background, etc. around the figures... not sure if it made any difference, really.

11 x 17 (each)

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Zine World cover cat

This is an unsused cover, and not one that makes much sense... something about the underground? Not sure. The triangle in the lower right corner is the result of a missing paste-up.

11 x 17"

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Zine World cover #1

As Doug Holland's Pathetic Life neared its conclusion, he informed me that he was about to begin a zine review-zine called Zine World, and he asked me to come up with some covers for the first few issues. At the time Factsheet Five was really the only major publication solely devoted to "zine culture," and I'm guessing he was tired of the relentless boosterism and lack of critical reviews in F5 , wanting to present a more honest - but no less enthusiastic - appraisal of the work that was appearing in the underground. And that was another point of contention, if I remember correctly: he felt it was pointless to review magazines he considered "aboveground," particularly those with ISSNs, so he refused to do so in the pages of ZW. Clearly this was a more political, divisive stance, and he had no qualms about taking it.

Also at this time, the zine and comics communities were still feeling the effects of the Mike Diana and Answer Me! legal cases, and I thought I might address the former on my first cover for ZW. I came up with the most outageous image I could think of, but also one that would specifically relate to the issue in some way. Diana lived in Florida at the time of his conviction and I seem to recall Florida having a history of unusually conservative and backwards political decisions, so... well, you can see the results for yourself. I submitted it to Doug, telling him I thought the cover was essentially a bad joke, and I honestly had no intention of it ever seeing print. Frankly I've never liked overtly political art and never had any intention of ever making any such statements in my own work. So of course, Doug loved it and wrote me the most effusively praising letter I ever received. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he was increasingly resolute that this was the perfect cover for the inaugural issue of ZW. Suffice it to say that most of our readers (and most of the staff!) felt otherwise. The letters we got in response to that first issue were pretty amusing. It's amazing how upset poeple get about nothing.

10 x 12"

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Pathetic Life spots

8 x 10 typing paper taped to typing paper

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Pathetic Life cover #25

I believe this was the cover to Doug's final issue, #25. It was an amazing end to an amazing series. It's hard to say how much of what he wrote really happened to him, but that's missing the point... he was writing about subjects and from a point of view totally unrepresented elsewhere, and doing so with a wickedly subversive and hilarious wit. I feel pretty lucky to have been associated with him and his work.

9 x 11"

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Pathetic Life cover

11 x 14" on lightweight paper

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Pathetic Life cover #22

11 x 14" on lightweight paper

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Pathetic Life unused cover

This is one of a few covers I sent to Doug that he never got around to using. From his letters I gathered he intended to continue the series after #25 but for various personal reasons focused his energies on other projects -- such as Zine World.

11 x 12"

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Pathetic Life cover #16

11 x 12"

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Pathetic Life cover #23

I believe this is the cover for issue #23 of Doug Holland's excellent "personal/diary zine" Pathetic Life. I started reading his stuff around issue 10 or so, and enjoyed his writing so much I sent him some of my art hoping he'd A) review it, and B) let me draw a few covers or illustrations for him. At the time PL was pretty spartan visually; most issues had no artwork at all -- which was fine since the writing was so strong. But he seemed excited about using my drawings, so I worked up about half a dozen covers - generally based on one or two lines from previously published issues - and sent the batch to him. He ended up using them all, beginning with issue #16. After he finished the series he was apparently planning to revise and collect the content in book form, and he intended to use this image as its cover. I sent him the original art... the book never appeared, and a couple additional years later, he more or less vanished completely. This is one of the few pieces of work of which I'm actually proud, and I really wish I still possessed the original. Are you out there, Doug?

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Duplex Planet

Three stages of a page drawn for David Greenberger's Duplex Planet Illustrated, published by Fantagraphics Books many years ago. This is a photocopy of the pencils.

This is the actual inked original on bristol

Later on (after the page was published) I wanted to add additional tones to the image, but for some reason ended up doing so on a full-sized photocopy.

11 x 17"

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Jerk #3 cover

11 x 17"

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Sperm-man

Well, this is embarrassing - sorting through some papers today and found this drawing of, um, Superman, that I did in high school (mid-80s... that's not embarrassing, that's just depressing). Yes, there was a time when I wanted to draw for Marvel and/or DC Comics, or their short-lived non-union equivalents like Comico, First, Eclipse, Dark Horse, etc. That's a whole other story, and quite a sad one, *sniff*.

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Curtains

7 x 7"

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Me and My Hand - "Barney"

6 x 5"

5 x 5"

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Me and My Hand

Look at my hand. Count the fingers...

And so began another exercise in abject narcissism, entitled (oh how clever!) "Me and My Hand." My hand and I have been through a lot together, I have to say. It made for great reading. Right!

Now -- who wants a massage?

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Full of Stabs 2

8 x 10"

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Full of Stabs 1

5 x 8"

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Sick

11 x 11"

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Salt & Chicken

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The Agony of Defeat

8 x 11"

notebook paper

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