This thing crawling in the back of your head
This thing crawling in the back of your head
An edition about old superheroes and older action heroes, about how ideas grow and... yeah, man-tits
WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER
Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
I must say I fear the lack of fear. I fear the people who don’t fear the consequences of their actions. Fear the brave ones, the reckless ones, the fearless ones.
But at the same time, we cannot live with fear every second of our lives.
"May you live in interesting times" they say…
Well, please let me focus on the things which make the day-by-day a little lighter.
COMICS! (MY COMICS)
I want to thank to the people who brought the first and second issue of Until my knuckles bleed, for your comments and for recommending the book!
Some links about UMKB #1
Podcast with Tito W. James in comicon.com:
https://comicon.com/2022/02/18/listen-to-my-art-podcast-ep-47-victor-santos-talks-until-my-knuckles-bleed/
Review in Multiversity:
http://www.multiversitycomics.com/reviews/wrapping-wednesday-021622/
Video-reviews:
Graphic policy:
Popculturemaven (min. 05:04):
From the bowels (min. 24:00)
Kapowcomics UK:
If you have done some review, video-review or podcast about my recent work, please send me a link to my contact mail victorsantoscontact@gmail.com, DM or tag me.
HOW THINGS DEVELOP
I think could be interesting how Until my knuckles bleed story has born. Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure about the origin of this story. It has been moving and crawling in the back in my mind for some time… But ordering my digital files I found this text I sent to my pal Frank Barbiere in 2017. I mention our first collaboration, a (exactly!) noir-superhero story titled Black Market. I wrote this:
I have an idea. I think I mentioned it while we were doing the “Black Market” series. In Belgium this weekend I was dedicating French editions of Black Market and I always drew Tiger Bomb. I love that decadent mass of muscles, like the big fat Batman of the second cover of “The Return of the Dark Knight”. I have the idea of something like this mixed with Darren Aronofsky's “The Wrestler”. A guy who was a superhero in the 90s with all this Rob Liefeld’s aesthetics, surrounded by blood, muscles, extreme things and blondes with impossible big boobs and names like Bloodstrike... (I can see hilarious flashbacks drawn with this style) And now he's an old loser with fallen man-tits like Arnold Schwarzenegger in those paparazzi photos... and something happens. I don’t know… Just an idea. The concept in my mind was if Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler was a superhero instead of a fighter.
Of course it's only a ray in the brainstorm but if it helps you even noticing is awful, I´m glad.
And I attached this pic:
The character I mentioned, Tiger Bomb, is this guy, a kind of decadent version of Black Cat:
It is funny how the seed of the ideas born and grew.
I think the story was initially very focused on parody and dark comedy but evolved in a different way… I read some comments about the book: It seems I did a little somber story… I think your first reaction when you hear the plot could be: “Ha, ha… Arnie is old, all those guys are old.” Well, we all will be old, if we are lucky. The more I read and thought about this age of superheroes, the more I began to feel some affection for these chunky pieces of meat, and wanted to know what was lying under their surface. In the end, these characters are the result of a cultural environment, a zeitgeist… And as a teenager, they gave me the shit I need then. So I wrote about them with a feeling I could only describe as “tenderness”.
COMMISSIONS
I never read Kentaro Miura’s Berserk manga but a lot of good friends of mine did, so I knew the story a little. I never had drawn these characters so making this commission was interesting. I tried to explore the opposite visual look and attitude of Guts and Griffith and this is the result:
RECOMMENDATIONS
In the previous regular edition of the newsletter I talked about Unstoppable and its comedy elements. It’s weird but now I’m recommending another Asian action/comedy movie, from Japan this time. I saw Fable and its sequel Fable: the killer who doesn’t kill on Netflix. Well, I think Unstoppable was an action story with elements of comedy but Fable is a comedy with some of the best action pieces I have seen recently. The story tells the adventures of Fable, a legendary hitman forced by his boss to live like a normal guy, without killing and keeping a low-profile. And you know, it’s not going to be so easy.
Like I said, it’s weird because comedies are the most difficult genre to export, due to they are hard to understand without a cultural connection. I was born and live in Spain, and I don't like and understand French comedies… And they are my neighbors! So I saw this dupla without knowing if the humor is absurd… or simply I couldn't get the joke. But the fact is, I found the jokes very funny. So if you have an open mind and simply get carried away, you will enjoy it.
And that’s all, friends! See you soon with a new chapter of GINGER REVENGES!
Victor
Copyright © 2022 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.
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