Worth The Meeting?

May 9, 2013
  We had a very contentious Design Review meeting yesterday. Lots of loud talking and swearing on my part. Got a headache, even. Got into it over the effectiveness of our house ads. I come from the institutional-ad school of marketing (Got Milk?) and Ken Amorosano comes from the ask-for-the-order school of marketing (Buy Now! Operators Are Standing By! Call This Toll Free Number!). This leads to ads that start out like this:





Then when Ken gets a hold of them they turn out like this:





The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, although to my tastes, this is how you create excitement for a product:





We also talked at length about the incredible sales of our back issue catalogue. We made many thousands of dollars last year selling True West back issues which are paid for, so every sale drops straight to the bottom line (listen to the cartoonist cat talk the biz lingo!).

Anyway, after fighting for an hour and a half about the pros and cons of the above ad campaign, we determined that a retooling of our back issue house ad was in order. This was assigned to Rebecca Edwards, and here's what she came up with:


Now THIS was worth the meeting, right here. Love this ad. It has a big idea and is very specific and then asks for the order in a very clean way. This makes me very happy.


"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."
—J.B. Priestly

Wyatt Earp Made It Famous

May 9, 2013
   We had a meeting yesterday about doing some new T-Shirt designs. Robert Ray came up with this one:



Would you buy it?

"Get to fighting, or get away."
—Wyatt Earp

Five Doc Hollidays for The Price of One

May 8, 2013
   Been working on getting some of my recent Doc Hollidays up on the new bobbozebell.net website. Here are some of the new arrivals:



 
"Doc's Last Gunfight"



 
"Doc's Last Gunfight #2"



 
"Doc Looms Large"



 
"Doc's Disgust"



 
"Doc's Last Gunfight #4"



You can see 'em and buy 'em right here.



"I was raised. I just didn't grow up."
—Doc Holliday wannabes everywhere

Follow the Oil

May 8, 2013
 Been studying old photos of Route 66. Thanks to the NAU archives and Sean Evans.



I was struck by how in the old photos there was so much oil in the driveways of the gas stations and on the highway as well. Makes you realize how much cars have improved in almost every arena. I think my favorite new development is the CD player and the radio stays on after you shut the vehicle off and will not turn off until the door opens. This answers the old complaint that your fave songs starts playing as you pull in the driveway and you have to leave the car running to continue listening. Ah, it's the little things.





   Remember when some sections of the old Route 66 were concrete and would have seams every fifty feet, or so, creating a train track rhythm-of-the-rails effect. Also, when the concrete started to crumble, it made for some ugly driving. Took this off a photo near Flag of a Whiting Bros. gas station. It actually shows one of their long patented signs at left and I need to extrapolate it out. Haven't found any photos of the old WB signs. I even went to college with Bill Whiting at U of A, but he has nothing.



"People in flight along 66. And the concrete road shone like a mirror under the sun, and in the distance the heat made it seem that there were pools of water in the road."
—John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Doc Holliday Artprint

May 7, 2013
   It's Deena Carolina Bell's birthday today. She's 33 and expecting.

   Had some interest in several of my Doc Holliday paintings which appear in the current issue of True West. This is the cover image:

 
"Doc's Last Gunfight 1", 11" X 15", gouache, artprint $45 plus $5 P&H

You can buy this sucker at:

bobbozebell.net

Also worked on The 66 Kid this morning and nailed the Cliff Notes version of the story:





"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."

—Henry J. Kaiser

The Wild One vs. The Mild Bun

May 6, 2013

 Drained the pool yesterday. It has only been twenty-some years since we last did it. According to our pool guy, you're supposed to do it every four years. Had to rent a pump from Home Depot ($35) but it did the job. Filling slowly as you read this.



And, as I mentioned, I cleaned all weekend, throwing away a ton of reference materials, but then balked at these two items:





The Third Draft of The Batman script by Sam Hamm (1988) and The Comics Journal (1980), which has an ad for the "13th Annual Comic Art Convention" at the Statler Hilton, held over the fourth of July weekend in 1980. It was here I saw Iggy Pop, met sci fi legend Harlan Ellison who famously said, "People criticize sci fi as being 95% crap, but 95% of everything is crap."



Words I have long remembered. Speaking of crap, I watched The Wild One (1953) yesterday. Pretty weak movie, really, although it's the first biker flick and on that scale it's in the Gone With The Wind stratosphere. Loved the costume on Johnny (Marlon Brando) and dug the waitress, which led, indirectly to this series of sketches:













Okay, now we get into the Wild One poaching. Great waitress in the film. Love the 1950s look.









 

“If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
—Frank A. Clark

Iron Man vs. Iron Man Will (to throw stuff out)

May 5, 2013
  Went and saw Iron Man 3 last night. Kathy's choice. I thought it was pretty amazing in terms of sheer production values and set pieces but ultimately kind of boring: the twisty ending is just over the top effects and a complete Comic-Book-Geek-out. What they spent doing it and how they did it is nothing short of off-the-charts incredible. Still, when I go to a movie I want to enjoy an actual story.

  Made me realize I need to step up my game in the graphic novel orbit. Came home and whipped out this little study of the Blue Swallow Motel (from a photo Jim Hinckley sent me):


As I mentioned, I promised Kathy I would clean out the garage (my side is completely filled with artwork, art reference and research materials including boxes and boxes of photos filed by category (Gunfighters with guns, Apaches with Guns, Mountain men with guns, horseback riders with guns and, of course, clouds.) I easily filled a big trash container with tons of reference materials and old magazines, but I'm balking at a couple items: A Third Draft screenplay of Batman (1980) by Sam Hamm and a couple other semi-gems. Still debating. Kathy says, "Do you want your kids having to throw it away?" Ha. No, but sheesh. Kind of cool, no?

I have a box of books and mags to go to the library, but there are some items that are, just well, kind of personal:

I found an April, 1980 The Comics Journal which has an ad for the New York Comic Art Convention. Thanks to the generosity of Phil Sueling (who put on the conference and paid for my airfare to come) I attended at the Staler Hilton Hotel over the July fourth weekend that totally changed my life. My first trip on an airplane, first trip to New York, first exposure to big time cartoonists. Stan Lee was there and announced that Batman would be made into a movie (at the time this seemed almost ridiculous, but of course, now Marvel is a movie studio! See, Iron Man reference, above). Anyway, do I save the Comics Journal magazine, or scan the ad and keep it, in the cloud?

Also, in the Comics Journal is this intriguing critique of comics in general:

"Comics are not of any consequence. Basically, what they are is a form of popular illustration that deals in melodramatic adventure and simple humor. Their interest is to the anthropologist, not the art critic. Their aesthetic interest is small because they've ignored modernist theory and because the ideas they express rarely escape the mundane."

It is uncredited, but was most certainly taken from a scathing indictment of the form back in the day. The irony is, the review kind of nails Iron Man 3 and all of the Marvel movies.

"May the 5th be will you."
—Ricky Gervais

Tall Tales On The Mother Road

May 3, 2013
   Crazy story: a lonely kid goes on a summer road trip with his parents and ends up riding in a '55 Caddie with three "starlets" heading for the coast. His Norwegian parents are mortified to see him looking out the back window of the disappearing Caddie. It's all a mix-up, of course, and the story has a happy ending. One of the starlets ends up being famous on the silver screen.





The kid had other adventures on old Route 66 and some of them are even true.





True Story: I'm doing the Yginio Salazar story for the next Classic Gunfights. Yginio was only 15 when he jumped out of a burning house in Lincoln, New Mexico, straight at a row of Winchesters. He was shot in the back and shoulder and was left for dead. Kind of crazy what happened next.





"Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true."

—William Inge

Sixty Six Sick Chicks

May 2, 2013
  I'm reading "The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir" by the filmmaker William Friedkin (The Excorcist, The French Connection) and he certainly has had a crazy up and down career. He is brutally honest about the first documentary he directed for the legendary documentary wizard David Wolper, (who by the way did "Appointment With Destiny" about the OK Corral fight). The Friedkin doc was called "The Bold Men" a pilot for an ABC series. He and an editor spent six weeks doing 12-hour-shifts a day, six days a week, stopping for lunch only. When they showed the finished doc to Wolper and a room full of executives, the big dog had a cow. Wolper took off his shoe and threw it at the screen, busting a hole in it. "This is the worst piece of shit I've ever seen!" He screamed. A fellow director chimed in, "F--king awful! A simple idea, and you assholes made it incomprehensible!"

"I was crushed," Friedkin says simply. Wolper had another guy recut the entire film in a week of sixteen-hour-days and the subsequent showing was a critical and commercial smash. And, amazingly, Friedkin didn't get fired and went on to make "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection."

Anyway, Friedkin opens the book with an anecdote about receiving artwork from a fan who loved his movies. Friedkin didn't like the artwork and threw it away. Turns out it was by an upcoming artist named Basquiat, who started as an obscure grafitti artist, then graduated to primitive paintings and his artwork now sells in the $14 million dollar range. Which brings us back to: what in the hell is worth saving?



Unfortunately, we Baby Boomers are prone to saving everything. Got this tidbit from Gay:


“It’s a tidal wave — you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what’s coming,” said Julie Hall, a North Carolina liquidation appraiser and author of “The Boomer Burden: Dealing With Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff.”

Boy Howdy. I resemble that remark. I collect hats (150+), I collect books (1,200 and counting), I collect postcards (800-ish), I collect Route 66 signs and related stuff, not to mention the piles of artwork I have created from my days at New Times to National Lampoon to True West.

When Kathy and I were in the cafeteria in the Hotel Mediadia in Madrid, I overheard a professor type talking about the fifties and the rise of the consumer society. He quoted President Eisenhower saying to the American people, "Buy." And the American people said, "Buy what?" And American business said, "See the USA in your Chevrolet," and the American people said, "Cool. I can do that." So we bought and bought and collected and bought books and magazines about collecting until the entire country is overrun with storage sheds on top of storage sheds for all of our crap. Or, is it treasure?

When we were returning from Spain I heard a news report in the Chicago airport about all the crap we save and some crazy statistic about each man, woman and child in the country has seven cubic feet of crap and that we're drowning in our stuff.

I made a vow to Kathy that I'm going to fill a big trash barrel tomorrow with some of my junk. The bad news is, I could easily fill ten of them but I'm afraid of throwing out a treasure. I realize this is where hoarding starts.

For one thing I have all these sketchbooks that I have filled with notes and ideas. Here's today's page of sketches about a seedy, noir type tasked with delivering three call girls to the coast:





Good idea? Or just more crap to throw away?

"It's much easier collecting than dispersing."
—Bill Dunn

Giving Iginio Salazar His Due

May 1, 2013

Of all the fighters in the McSween house on July 19, 1878, the youngest was Iginio Salazar, 15. He was shot twice, in the back and shoulder and survived.



Whipped this out this morning before I came into work. Iginio is second from left. Yes, that's the Kid grinning, at left.

"Advise persons never to engage in killing."
—Billy the Kid

The Fickle Finger of Fate

April 30, 2013
   As you may have guessed, we are doing a major feature on the mysterious journey of Billy the Kid's trigger finger. Yesterday I went home and whipped out this scratchboard to illustrate the article (the finger allegedly ended up in a mason jar):



It got the big thumbs down in today's design review. Too dark and oppressive. So I went home for lunch today and whipped out this version:





And, to illustrate the trigger finger in a mason jar I merely walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a jar out of the pantry, poured in some whiskey and dropped in a finger I had been saving from an altercation I had with our pool guy two weeks ago:



Took another angle for insurance:



Okay, so it's not a real finger, but what is it? And, to be historically correct, were Ball jars available in 1881?

"There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it."
—George Bernard Shaw

Why Save Anything?

April 30, 2013
   Went for a walk this morning at about seven. Still cool out although it's supposed to get into the high nineties. Met three women coming down Old Stage Road as I went up:



When we passed I heard the woman closest to me say, "I have all these family heir looms and I don't know what to do with them."

This hit a chord with me because just this past weekend I had inventoried several compilation family videos I had converted to CDs at iMemories, a new company that specializes in converting all the mish mash of tape and film onto one, clean format (that will also probably be outdated in a decade or so). These "family heir looms" included classic scenes of our kids doing a music video, singing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", playing Death Lizard, and Tommy trying to count to 100 and getting stuck in the mid-thirties and trying fake his way out. . ."37, 38, forty-nine—Seventy-TWELVE. . ."  I thought it would be fun to show to Deena and her husband while they were visiting from LA for Deena's baby shower.

We never got to it, but we did watch half of Louis CK's HBO Special "Oh, My God" where he does a bit about nobody watching videos you post on Facebook about your kids. He also lampooned the lunacy of videoing your daughter's dance recital and missing it because the iphone or iPad is in front of you and your real child—"in high def"—is standing right in front of you and you are missing it. And, he predicts adamantly—Why are you doing this? YOU WILL NEVER WATCH IT.

On the compilation CDs I have been inventorying them on the weekends, picking one at random and watching it. In one I watched last weekend, I used my new video camera to document the places I worked. There I am walking through KSLX in 1991 and documenting all the employees doing their jobs. Jeanne Sedello is there as is Reid Reker and a bunch of sales people I don't remember.

I also went down to New Times and did the same drill, walking through the entire building and stopping people, asking them what they were doing (it's interesting to me most the management types flipped me off). Virge Hill award winner Paul Rueben is there, so is Dave Walker and Dewey Webb. Ward Harkavy is there (I believe he is now the editor at the Village Voice). The computers are ancient! Clunky boxes, with small screens and bad resolution. In production they are still pasting up ads on boards!

  Cut to me in Anton Chico, New Mexico (I flew to Albququerque and rented a car) tracking Billy the Kid. Then I'm at the unveiling of the Puerto de Luna historical marker and the reenactment of Billy the Kid's last Christmas dinner at the Grzelachowski family home. The event was put on by Joe Bowlin (now deceased) and features many of the locals in that area. The sheriff of Lincoln County, James MacSwain portrays Pat Garrett and Billy Cox portrays the Kid:



I had another oldtimer from the area Johnny Eastwood portray James East:




I also interviewed two oldtimers from Fort Sumner who actually knew Deluvina Maxwell. Highly interesting to me, but is it to anyone else? Or, is Louis CK right?: nobody is ever going to watch it.

So, why save it? Does it matter? In Tombstone they saved most of the files and paper regarding the mines but what we really want to see is Doc Holliday's shotgun (which wasn't his, but you get the picture). Saving the past is a futile effort because most of the stuff we save is not worth the effort.

On the way back from my walk, I met the three women coming back from their walk and I said, "So, what did you decide to do with your family heir looms?" They laughed, realizing I had eavesdropped on their private conversation. But they were gracious.



The gal in the middle said she will probably give them to a neice. Good call, but even as she said it I thought to myself, "It's going to be a burden to her and she will grow to resent having these boxes full of family history and when it comes time for her to pass them on, my guess is the next neice will throw them away.

So, is anything worth saving? Obviously the Sam Dedrick kids are damn happy their great uncle saved a little piece of tin from his youth. The little tin is the only known photo of Billy the Kid and recently sold for $2.3 million dollars.

What to save? That is the question.

"Ninety-five percent of everything is trash. [But, oh that five percent.]"
—Harlan Ellison

When Badass-Grandma-Hotrodders Fall Into Your Lap

April 29, 2013
  When I was in my twenties and thirties I had these road dreams—fast cars on the desert. Two-lane Mamas floor boarding full-blown hemis, taunting every gearhead they meet and screaming off into the night. It was a persistent dream that infected my day time thoughts. I gradually realized these powerful dream images might make a strong story line in a road picture. They weren't all Argosy Babes, either. I had one particular dream sequence where a tiny, old grandmother with a beehive hairdo is driving a bad-ass car and she pulls up along side a car full of gearheads and doesn't even look over. She's smokin' a Virginia Slim and it hangs off her lips like a dead chigger.

   Anyway, a great, big, juicy setup for a midnite road movie set piece. My problem was simple: where in the hell would I ever find decent art reference for this?

   Last Saturday, I was driving into the Beast on Cave Creek Road for Deena Bell's baby shower when I spied a yellow muscle car up ahead.



After I snapped off a couple reference photos with my phone, I pulled up along side:




"Pay attention: the universe is trying to help you."

—Old Vaquero Saying

The Joy of Being Carded

April 29, 2013

   Drove down into the Beast twice this weekend. On Saturday, Deena Bell Bortscheller had her baby shower at Lux on Central Avenue. The place is so hip there is no name on the front. You have to KNOW it's there. It was packed.





This is a pic of Lori Holly taking a photo of the Two Mamas, Kathy and Deena. The Deenster is expecting in June. It's a boy.



From Lux I went deeper into the Beast and had a late lunch at Gallo Blanco.



Had a street taco and posole and a Negro Modello. Pretty sweet little lunch ($14, plus $6 tip).

Drove in again on Sunday at noon to attend Channel Eight's Check Please Eating Extravaganza at Cityscape on Washington. Outdoors venue, place was packed. Great food and wine. Actually got carded (I quipped to the dude who carded me, "God bless you. I haven't been carded since Nixon was president.").



Saw Hayes Carll last Thursday night at MIM. Great venue. A mini-Grady Gammage room with wonderful acoustical designing and intimate setting. Too bad the sound was muddled. Couldn't hear the lyrics, even at four rows back. Kept looking around to see what the problem was. Still enjoyed the tunes but it did dampen the effect.





Got up this morning and worked on The 66 Kid. He's a little bit Brando, a pinch of James Dean with the swagger of Bruno Mars.





Also, put the guy in the following sequence:




"Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere; and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself."
—Old Carkid Saying

Agitating Myself On Purpose

April 26, 2013
I read with interest that Louis CK has a special computer (I heard he disabled it with a bolt) he uses to do his work on.

"When it's time to write, I have one computer that has no ability to get on the Internet. Because the ability to just move your finger less than a millimeter and be looking straight into someone's pussy or at the new Porsche, or a whole movie—To Kill A Mockingbird, let's just sit here and watch the whole thing!—it's too much. So if you put a couple of moves between you and that, you've got a fighting chance."
—Louis CK in Rolling Stone

He goes on to say when you reach that moment of agitation, you need to stay there, not bail and go buy something or look at porn.

It's so easy to do now, which makes it tougher to actually grow, or get to a place where inspiration can strike, which, he claims is waiting for us, just on the other side of agitation.

It was with this idea in mind, I once again challenged myself "to stay in the moment". For me I need to bypass, or at least forestall, the addiction to email and posting right here! Hey, it's fun, it's actually part of my business plan and it's helpful in many ways, but if you're trying to write and draw a graphic novel, it's, well, wayyyyyyyyyy off purpose.

Like I did when I went on my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings, I basically told myself I need to do six drawings every morning before I can look at my email. Here's today's sketchbook page:




The feral dogs notes are from my walk this morning when a neighbor's dog got out and attacked me. As for the drawings, I didn't say they had to make sense. I made the commitment to do six sketches. And, of course, as random as these scenes are, they somehow start becoming a story. Isn't that crazy?

Long live agitation, the basic fuel for creativity.

"Treat mom to a margarita this Mother's Day. Remember, you're the reason she drinks."
—Old Vaquero Saying

Solo, Duo, Trio, Quatro

April 25, 2013
 I ran into Chuck Hall, as in the blues band—Chuck Hall And The Brick Wall—at the post office yesterday and, while standing in line to get a package, Chuck told me he and local blues legend Hans Olson are thinking of doing a special show at a venue downtown (Phoenix) and they're going to call the show, "Solo, Duo, Trio, Quatro" because at Janie's (a cool little bar next door to us) they've been doing a three hour set that starts with Hans opening as a solo, then he's joined by Chuck and they do some tunes (Samantha at Janie's says they are killer together), then Hans sits down while Chuck's trio jams on, and then for the finale Hans comes back up and plays with Chuck and his band as a foursome: thus the title, "Solo, Duo, Trio, Quarto". Dang, is that hot, or what. Hope they do the show before 11 at night so I can come. They're thinking about the same venue where I saw John Hyatt (something Ballroom).

Speaking of which, I'm going to see Hayes Carll tonight at the MIM (Musical Instrument Museum). Hayes is the musical heir to Outlaw Country in the vein of Ray Wylie Hubbard, Towns Van Zandt and Guy Clark.

Just heard that John Cusack is set to play Brian Wilson in a biopic of the genius Beach Boy. I'm all in, but personally I think Jack Black would do a funnier take on the nervous breakdowns.

Noodling several 66 Kid ideas and also a Billy the Kid Trigger Finger feature layout we are doing for the next issue. I posted a cover prelim sketch yesterday.

I also received a new book of compilations comics from the classic cartoon "Bringing Up Father" yesterday (it was the package I was standing in line for at the post office, above) and used it to study the style of George McMannus and his crisp style.





I see quite a bit of influence on later cartoons, for example Marge Simpson is somewhere in the line work and facial symbols, but then when it comes to originality, I think I side with ol' C.S.:



"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of then, become original without ever having noticed it."

—C.S. Lewis

Born Under A Good Sign

April 24, 2013
  Working on a couple things this morning. Did a different approach to the next cover:





And I'm also working on a sign I grew up under:



This is the legendary sign that loomed over Al Bell's Flying A on Hilltop (a suburb of Kingman), Arizona, circa 1957. Learned a ton here (I was the designated Ice Jugger).



"The only thing standing between you and greatness is you and literally millions of smarter, more talented and ambitious people than you. Good luck."
—Khalifa

El Encanto Is The Scene of Much Hilarity

April 23, 2013
  We have been so busy we have missed a few birthdays at the True West World Headquarters, so Carole set up a luncheon at El Encanto to celebrate the birthdays and say goodby to a couple folks (an intern) and hello to another staffer (hello Sheila!). Great day to be outside. Sat on the patio and had a nice leisurely lunch. I had the pescado (sea bass):




Left to right: Ken, Sally, Sheila, Darren, Meghan, BBB, Carole, Sheri, Greg, Chad, Rebecca, Leah, Robert, Sue, Lucinda and Tommy.

"Great ideas originate in the muscles."
—Thomas Edison

Was The Lone Ranger Based On A Black Lawman?

April 23, 2013
We have an intriguing article in the next issue that makes the case that the Lone Ranger was probably based on Bass Reeves, a black peace officer. I'd love to tease Cowboys & Indians and their cover (which will be on the newsstand at the same time as ours) and at the same time piggyback on the juggernaut of Disney advertising and promotion that is going to be flowing very soon. With that said, whipped out this cover sketch this morning




What do you think?



"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Great News for Not-So-Gentle Tamer

April 22, 2013
   Just got the word from Bronzesmith two minutes ago:

Not-So-Gentle Tamer Has Been Funded And Is Going to Be Cast
We have fantastic news!!!!!!Thanks to a very generous donation from North Central University, we are able to begin casting the 10 ft tall AZ Centennial Monument “Not-So-Gentle Tamer”. Thank you to everyone who has shown their support of this historic piece that honors our great state and the women who helped tame the West. A special thanks to our artists, Bob Boze Bell and Debbie Gessner, and their incredible talents, to the Prescott Area Art Trust, The Prescott Valley Arts and Humanities Council and the Town of Prescott Valley where the monument will be located. We can’t forget Lora Lee Nye, who commissioned Bob Boze Bell in the first place and sold Ed Reilly the first raffle ticket, and Ed for having a vision that benefits our great state for generations to come.

 
The 10' tall Not-So-Gentle-Tamer with BBB and Deb Gessner, the

sculptor who brought it to life.

I believe Ed and his crew are shooting for a May 31st unveiling, so mark your calendars for the big event.

"We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world."
—Helen Keller