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So, a few people (3 is a few, right? a couple is 2. Then 3 is a few, and 4+ is many, I think…) won a whole lot of money this week, and I am sure everyone, whether you participated or not (they got me for $10), spent at least a few minutes daydreaming about what they would do with 1.5 something billion dollars. Even Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, for whom 1.5 billion would go down in their diary as “a decent Wednesday,” had to take a sec to wonder. After all the family and friends were taken care of, bills paid off and dream homes and cars purchased, what would you do with the remaining billion something dollars?

Thanks to my lawsuit against the creators of the Thighmaster, for reasons I can not go into due to both embarrassment and a non-disclosure agreement, I need not concern myself with these things. But it is still fun to daydream. And for me it always came back to the same thing: I would just keep doing comics. Not trying to “break in” to Marvel or what’s left of DC, but just for myself. I got a small taste of that with the Perfect Storm Kickstarter, where with the backing of supporters I was able to not only concentrate on just Perfect Storm for a couple months, but also bring in help to make the book as good as it could be. It was a great experience, and I am hoping to relive it with another Kickstarter for another Perfect Storm story in 2017, but in between it’s a daydream of mine to just get to create anything I want without worrying about, ya know, bills and food and all that other “real life” garbage that gets in the way.

Speaking of Billions, did anyone catch the first episode of the new Damian Lewis show on Showtime? As you know from my previous posts, we’re huge fans of Homeland around these parts, but the first episode of this new show, well, left us a bit cold. We’ll give it another shot next week, but it will have to improve quite a bit.

OK, back to the topic at hand: Daydreaming about spending Lotto money. In no particular order, here are some of the random things I would get with an excess of cash, after the house and 1970 Dodge Charger that is-

Beatles butcher cover album.
1989 Batman movie costume, which I would wear while walking Rambo.
An original Blowtorch from GI Joe, with all the neat parts I constantly lost as a kid.*
Pre-WW2 baseball cards.
Pearl Jam private concert.
License to produce a M.A.S.K. comic book.
Local baseball team season tickets.**

*A quick eBay search revealed that this is not a billion-dollar dream. $8.98+ shipping later, he’s on his way to Sarasota.
**Depending on if and where we move…

One thing I’ve learned from this exercise is that it’s kinda tough to come up with these odds and ends purchases– I know once I hit “publish” I’ll think of like 10 more…

Rob

For this week’s blog post, I thought I would share something I’ve never done before, done for something I’ve never done before. As I mentioned last week, and as most of you would know anyway, I’m getting married at the end of the month. Megan and I want it to be more like a party with our friends and family then a big, formal wedding, but she also wants a few fancier things that I, as the dude, would never have thought of. One of is a little “program book,” and so she asked me to paint a picture of the venue–Casa Feliz–to use as the front.

This is done in mostly watercolors, a medium I don’t normally use since watercolors tend to just do whatever they want no matter what you had in mind. But since I’m not all that nervous about the ceremony and everything, I figured might as well scare the crap out of myself on a piece that would take many, many more hours to re-do if I goofed it up.

That’s where the word “mostly” comes in. I was pretty pleased with how the watercolors came out but still felt it needed “something” in a few spots, so I whipped out the acrylic and did a few touch-ups. I’m surprisingly happy with the results, but most importantly Megan is happy with how it turned out, so I’ll count that as a win…

Other than finishing this piece, it’s been a bit of a quiet week as far as finishing work, but great in getting new assignments. I’ve got 5 more book covers to work on this month, and a really cool story for an upcoming issue of Flare for Heroic Publishing, as well as The Last Alexandrian and Perfect Storm to continue on. I feel Gary and I may be having a small PS story conference on that towards the end of the month… Outside of work, I like season 5 of Homeland even less during the second viewing (although Megan likes it better the second time around), but we have started Making a Murderer on Netflix which has been amazing. We are on episode 8 so if anyone posts spoilers in the comments section you are so, so blocked…

Lastly, I am writing this on Thursday because we are going away on Friday. Megan has an assignment for her magazine to try out a road trip destination from Sarasota so we are going to the Greyfield Inn for a few days, then back to Jacksonville to go to a book signing by Brad Meltzer! Should be a great trip, which I will tell you all about next week.

Take care all!

Rob

Hello and welcome to my first blog post! Future posts will be about whatever projects I’m working on, or about movies or TV shows we’ve watched lately, or just my rants about the state of the comic industry. But for this first one I thought it should be just a little catch up.

I returned to freelancing full time just over a year ago, working mostly on children’s books and novel covers for various small press authors and publishers. I still do comic book work from time to time, aside from Perfect Storm, the latest being a project with a writer friend of mine named Jeff O’Bryant called The Last Alexandrian. Actually spent this afternoon working on pencils for the first book’s cover, and once it’s altogether I will post some progress pics…most likely in my next blog post.

I’m writing this on December 29th, or 32 days from my wedding to the love of my life, Megan “Pink O’Clock” McDonald. So if in my posts I switch from “I” to “we,” it’s because we wind up doing most things together. “We” could also be referring to my dog Rambo, the only other creature I spend time with, but I’ll be sure to make that distinction clear…

Aside from both of us being sick, we had a great Christmas. As I am sure most of you are aware, if you’re taking the time to read this, that I am a huge fan of Al Williamson, and was lucky enough to own an original strip from him for a long time. Alas I had to part with it, and in seeing my sadness in having to do so, my fiancee promised to someday get me a replacement. Then, with our wedding coming up, she decided now would be the time and tasked me with picking out a few from the X9 reprints to try and hunt down. So I went through all 13 years of strips and picked out a few, and put a star next to the one that was my absolute favorite. As luck would have it, not only was it my favorite, it was owned by the gentleman I was going to get her in touch with to help her track one down, so he would have a great understanding of what what I had in mind.

Then a package arrived on Christmas Eve. Megan decided it would be a combination Christmas and wedding present, which allowed me to see which strip it was she was able to track down, and lo and behold she had managed to actually get the strip I had marked as my favorite! She said once she had explained to Mr. Cuthbert what it was for he was happy to help her out. Here is a scan of the strip, taken just before I finished framing it and hanging it up on the wall–The Williamson Wall!

Well, it’s time to go eat some dinner and start our binge re-watching of season 5 of Homeland. We’re re-watching it to try and decide if we liked the season or not because neither of us were sure if we did upon first viewing. What was your opinion of this season? Feel free to add your thoughts to the comments section of this post–I would love for this blog to be more then just me ranting; an actual conversation. And to do so we’ve gotta start somewhere, so…

Rob