Happy Birthday, Frank Faylen!

He's probably best remembered for playing Herbert T. Gillis, father of Dobie on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", a terrific old sitcom from 1959-1963.

That's all the excuse I need to show off this recently acquired page of Bob Oksner original art from issue 22 of DC's Dobie series that captures a fair amount of the show's (and Faylen's) personality.

Of course this time of year, it's easy to catch Frank as "Ernie" the cab driver (opposite Ward Bond's "Bert" the cop) in "It's a Wonderful Life"... a movie that's jam-packed with great character actors.

Monsters and a Dame

This is a specialty piece for the Emerald City Comicon, which we'll be attending March 30 thru April 1. 14 x 17", pen, brush and ink on Bristol.

Robert Mitchum

Layouts for Grimwood's Daughter

These popped up on eBay the other day. You can see the auctions here and here. Stop by and give 'em a bid or two.

Grimwood was drawn from a full script, so even at this early stage, I wanted to work out the line endings and balloon placements. These were slightly text-heavy and I was a novice so knowing exactly how much space was available for the art was important. The final lettering was done by Harvey Kurtzman's letterer at the time, Phil Felix. I think I took over the lettering myself on the later chapters to avoid mailing the boards back and forth.

And, just to see if anyone was paying attention, I slipped in a Springsteen lyric in the last panel.