Turns out William Messner-Loebs, a fellow comic book creator, had fallen on hard times and was living in a Salvation Army shelter with his wife. So, Neal was rallying the comix community to pony up a superhero or supervillain sketch that he would auction off and print in a benefit book [to be published by TwoMorrows] so as to raise funds twice for the down and out Loebs'. I wrote Neal telling him I would surely help a fellow cartoonist in need and asked his advice as to what I should draw? Neal wrote back, "How 'bout a mysterious hero stripped to the waist battling a powerful alien. The hero's identifying shirt is lying near-crumpled on the ground. Or whatever you like."
Classic!
Time swathes by like a sickle on speed while I put THE QUITTER to bed and nail a bunch of freelance illustration gigs before hopping onto my current Pekar written ESCAPIST gig. A couple of days ago, I get an emergency email from Neal wondering where my sketch was? TwoMorrows had already solicited the book with my name attached and they needed the art work - pronto! Needless to admit, I'd promptly forgotten to do the do. Scrambling, I couldn't commit to a new drawing because I had two pages of art due to my editor at Dark Horse that day!
I rifled through my art studio and discovered "Moloch," a character sketch I had drawn for
niggerkojak when he was in the midst of pre-production for a horror film he'd written in 2003. The illustration looked suspiciously like the INCREDIBLE HULK, but in a tight fitting football helmet [don't ask why]. I called niggerkojak and begged him to let me steal and refurbish the sketch into something usable for the Loebs benefit. A champion of the cause, niggerkojak let me slide and I thanked him profusely. I scrawled the words "Rampaging Hulk" on the sketch and re-jiggered the date. I kinda dug the football trope so I kept it and, a day later, I scanned the image, emailed it to the publisher, and posted the original art to Neal's studio. All in haste for the Loebs cause.If you hear about the auction or see the book, do Loebs a favor, and give a crippled crab a crutch. Thanks!
