Most people seem to think that Frank Frazetta leapt fully formed from the brow of Crom, but the truth is he cut his teeth on humour comics before entering the field of violent paperback covers. And sometimes, as in his very first comics work, he was able to combine the two.

Thumpetty thump thump, thumpety thump thump.

We’ve had to deal with a few incidents here at I Was Ben as to fellow bloggers attempting to identify the people responsible for their favourite posts. So far there are only two people writing for this blog, as can be ascertained by the tags at the bottom of each post; my brother Gary, pictured on the left, reporting from Japan, and me, on the right, checking in from The Great White North. I hope that dispels any further confusion.

I promised my Macho Movie Review co-host Nagy that I would show him last week’s America’s Next Top Model, which had the contestants posing in gladiator wear, so here’s a taste. In our most recent podcast we discuss Hercules and the Moon Men (which is public domain and available here and elsewhere), choosing movies by their cover art, Alan Steel’s glistening pectorals, woods porno, and whittling.

It wasn’t until I had walked out of my local comic book store on Free Comic Book Day with a copy of the EC Sampler that I realized my mistake. For some reason I thought that, because it was printed on newsprint, the EC Sampler would be similar in quality to Gemstone’s earlier reprint series. I have no idea what I was thinking.

The stories found within the Sampler have all been recoloured in the same manner as the recent hardcover EC collections, making them damn near unreadable. If the purpose of the Sampler was to entice consumers to pick up the EC Archives, it had precisely the opposite effect on me. My girlfriend and I have been considering buying the Archives for awhile, but after witnessing first-hand the excessive use of gradients and other unnecessary forms of sloppy Photoshop hackwork, we’re going to have to pass. Thanks for helping us make an informed decision, Gemstone.

I was walking around town yesterday with a fellow teacher of the white devil’s tongue when he sprang some wild doodles on these rollin’ orbs of mine! It blew my MIND!!!! Argh!!!

 I could go on forever about about ol’ Suehiro, but I really just wanted to say how great it is to feel genuinely sick when seeing somebody’s artwork! I haven’t had such unsettling feelings since the days in my Grandparent’s cottage reading those old horror stories with skeleton boys and catwomen clawing at people’s faces.

Suehiro Maruo’s work is not only great in colour and draftsmanship in general, but it brings to me the feeling that if I walked into somebody’s room with his work on thier walls, I would never come out in one piece!

Unfortunatly, most of Suehiro’s fine work is either not available outside of Japan, or not translated. Thankfully though,  the fine folks at SAME HAT! SAME HAT! not only have many great articles on him, but have much of his work online and some translated manga by him too!:

I haven’t been able to check out much of Suehiro’s Manga work yet, but judging from this story alone, I’d say you’re in for a real treat! Poison Strawberry! Dig!!!