political 'toon

This one was done as part of a series for Oh! Magazine (1991). At the time the first war in Iraq for the USA was about to begin. The magazine rejected it because management worried about it offending black readers. The publisher was a know-it-all young white guy, who did not recognize the art style or the content as playing off an Uncle Remus story; he had not heard of Brer Rabbit. So the point of the 'toon went right past him.

Ironically, Oh! had no black readers and few readers of any hue. So I ran it in SLANT, the little magazine I then published twice-a-month, a couple of weeks later. It was originally a black and white piece. I colorized it a couple of years ago.

Detached

"Detached" is the title under which I've written a series of short stories. The art to the right is color copy of a piece I did in 1995, developing an idea for cover art for the collection, which I thought was being finished up then at nine stories.

At this point, a decade later, four stories are completed and, alas, there are another dozen or so in vaious stages of completion. Of them I'm guessing now, perhaps three, five at the most, will actually be finished, one day. Approaching the end of 2005, one day still seems off in the distance to the author.

So, for the time being here are links to the four that I've sworn never to rewrite, again -- all featuring Roscoe Swift as the protagonist, set between 1966 and 1985 -- which are now available online for your reading pleasure. They are:

Central Time
Cross-eyed Mona
Fancy Melons
Maybe Rosebud

political 'toon

Oil War

(1991) pen and ink