Operation Monster Force

[JakeEkiss]

Some of my readers are fond of asking artists to draw characters they've never done before when they're buying commissions - one regular at my booth actually got Simon Bisley to draw Nightwing back in August and Simon was like "decades doing this and I have NEVER drawn this guy, I'm going to need to look up reference images." But he was legit entertained to do someone new.

One nice thing that happened to me at shows, because I had this weird, not very popular print assortment, I would get oddball commission requests. One of my favorite was where this young lady comes up to me and is like "I'd like a commission, but I've asked 3 other artists and none of them will do it."

Now, I've been doing commissions a while, and usually this is code for "the thing I want is super gross or sexual in a way everyone finds awkward" but I wasn't getting those vibes so I ask what she wants.

"I want a Hawkgirl..."

Oh boy...

"...and Doc Savage..."

Not the usual choice... where are we going with this?

"... in a suggestive..."

Here it comes...

"but NOT lewd pose together."
...
...
...

"Is that all?"
"Yes"
"3 other artists turned you down for that?"
"Nobody knew who Doc Savage was or how to draw him."
"I am happy to take your money. Let's do this."

And I gave her a (I think) tastefully bawdy piece of Hawkgirl with her arms draped around Savage's neck with him sort of in a straight backed Superman style pose, but with his hand around not so much her waist as her ass. Fun piece, everybody went home happy. Really enjoyed that one, honestly. Basically a trashy romance cover. Loads of fun.

 

[SalemCrow]

"Nobody knew who Doc Savage was of how to draw him."

Did NONE of those people know how to use Google to image search some reference?
I assume NONE of them were Greg Land.

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I'm in the "throw everything into a blender and see what comes out" camp with collecting. ALL my comic figures "inhabit" the same "universe", so Batman, Spiderman, The Rocketeer, Hellboy and Grendel, etc, they all coexist in one world. Supernatural and and scale appropriate sci-fi stuff also goes here. Then ALL my fantasy stuff goes together so Mthic Legions, Fury Toys, XesRay Studios, all of those are together. If I can't fit something into a collection I already have going, I don't usually get it.

 

[docsilence]

"Nobody knew who Doc Savage was of how to draw him."

This made the hamster in my brain fall off the wheel. Nobody at a COMIC CON knew who Doc Savage was? How far has society FALLEN

(Says the dork over here who absolutely has named at least two characters "Doc (something)" as homages to Doc Savage)

I'm in the "throw everything into a blender and see what comes out" camp with collecting. ALL my comic figures "inhabit" the same "universe", so Batman, Spiderman, The Rocketeer, Hellboy and Grendel, etc, they all coexist in one world. Supernatural and and scale appropriate sci-fi stuff also goes here. Then ALL my fantasy stuff goes together so Mthic Legions, Fury Toys, XesRay Studios, all of those are together. If I can't fit something into a collection I already have going, I don't usually get it.

This is my struggle with the ongoing war between six inch and seven inch collections. I really just want to be able to throw Batman, Dracula, Daredevil, and the Ninja Turtles in the same display and have them scale properly, or do fun photo mashups of them and not need to use perspective tricks to get them to size right.

 

[JakeEkiss]

This made the hamster in my brain fall off the wheel. Nobody at a COMIC CON knew who Doc Savage was? How far has society FALLEN

And if you can believe it, this was like 15 years ago even. I can't even blame the kids. I was practically a kid at the time.

 

[JakeEkiss]

"Nobody knew who Doc Savage was of how to draw him."

Did NONE of those people know how to use Google to image search some reference?

It blew me away. And Doc Savage has one of the most easy to remember costumes ever. It was harder to recall Hawkgirl's costume.

My only explanation is they simply had no idea who he was at all, and thus didn't want to take a stab at it and screw up in some weird way.

 

[docsilence]

It blew me away. And Doc Savage has one of the most easy to remember costumes ever. It was harder to recall Hawkgirl's costume.

My only explanation is they simply had no idea who he was at all, and thus didn't want to take a stab at it and screw up in some weird way.

Fifteen years ago I was deeply, madly in love with Planetary and Doc Brass, the Doc Savage analog, was one of my favorite things about it. (This actually reminds me I never ported over the blog posts on my old site from before had to launch a new site when the rights reverted back to me. Oops. Anyway. The line "you want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you every second of every day" is like my own personal mantra to this day.

Y'know what? Hey BBWS/FMF, do a Doc Savage homage figure in here and I'll throw money at ya YESTERDAY.

 

[altcunningham]

Oh man, coming from the other side of that equation is rough too. I rarely did very well in artist alley, and largely it was because my portfolio was filled with either 1) my original stuff which nobody had any attachment to, and were reluctant to spend on because they already knew they liked Spider-Man, or 2) niche characters or renditions of popular characters that people thought were technically good, but hey, don't I have any Deadpool or Wolverine? Where's 90's Jim Lee Storm? Why did you draw only Punk Storm?

And that's a rough one to parse because I could fill my portfolio with Deadpool (or the like), but then the people picking up my work are less and less fans of mine, and more and more fans of Deadpool. And those fans are fickle. The folks I did get to like my stuff came back time and again because I was so oddball, there just weren't a lot of those folks.

We should 1 on 1 this conversation in the future.

 

[supreme_d]

Fifteen years ago I was deeply, madly in love with Planetary and Doc Brass, the Doc Savage analog, was one of my favorite things about it. (This actually reminds me I never ported over the blog posts on my old site from before had to launch a new site when the rights reverted back to me. Oops. Anyway. The line "you want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you every second of every day" is like my own personal mantra to this day.

Y'know what? Hey BBWS/FMF, do a Doc Savage homage figure in here and I'll throw money at ya YESTERDAY.

I almost bought the Mezco Doc Savage for that reason. Doc Brass was awesome.

I really want 1/12 Wildstorm figures.

 

[docsilence]

I almost bought the Mezco Doc Savage for that reason. Doc Brass was awesome.

I really want 1/12 Wildstorm figures.

Honestly if I could just get one set of Planetary's Big Three in true 1/12 scale I'd be the happiest collector on Earth. as it stands I've still got the trio as Heroclix just permanently hanging out on my desk cos the only other option is those unarticulated statues they made like 25 years ago.

 

[Reno]

Honestly if I could just get one set of Planetary's Big Three in true 1/12 scale I'd be the happiest collector on Earth. as it stands I've still got the trio as Heroclix just permanently hanging out on my desk cos the only other option is those unarticulated statues they made like 25 years ago.

I've still got those DC Direct versions hanging out. I've kept all of that old oddball DC Direct stuff.

I couldn't make myself pull the trigger on the Mezco Doc Savage, but I sure thought about it multiple times. The Shadow also. The only Mezco figures that I've ever allowed myself to pull the trigger on were the Black Bolt / Lockjaw combo and the Ultimate Godzilla. I pre-ordered the fomer and waited until the latter hit a 25% off sale. I also HATE soft goods, so Mezco isn't really my jam. I also generally consider pretty much anything not made by the big domestic toy companies outside of my budget range so very unlikely to ever purchase Mezco, Mafex, Loose Collector. Even these Monster Force figures are a tad high for me, although I did allow myself to purchase the General Brown figure.