Dracula's Daughter

I dunno. I guess I just like Gloria Holden in Dracula's Daugther(1936).

Diary of a Leg Man: Leg Art Comics #2

"Yeah, she was a tease but isn't every woman worth a damn?"--Elmer Batters on the subject of his favorite model.

Meanwhile, back to man's favorite pastime...further sketchbook journeys in the game of gams...

I got asked recently if Crumb influenced my preferences. The answer to that is no. These things were evident to me, in an early form, prior to being familiar with Crumb. Up to a certain point in my late teens, I'd only ever seen the cover to Zap #0. At first it was somewhat dim, but my self-awareness of being a "leg man" was fairly concurrent with puberty itself. How Crumb did influence me later, however, was to empower me to not tuck away my predilections away in the shadows.

That said, Sexton Ming lifted the phrase "crumb girl" from me for his album of the same name (which is explained in the liner notes of this now out of print disc). Sexton and I have gone on at length delineating the female form. Sexton likes "meaty," as he puts it, legs. His lovely wife has meaty legs. I like meaty legs, too.

Of course, there is a fine tradition of skinny leg men chasing big leg women, but what's more important to me than any specific size is the shapely femininity of a woman's legs, that roundness which appears to define womanly shape vs. manly shape. I've started thinking of women as Shapely Superclusters.

"What's up with the stocking thing?" you might find yourself asking. It's a multi-layered subject, complex. We won't solve the mystery here, but here's a few scattered sentences on the subject. For one thing, if this were the 1940s, the jive I'm putting down would be considered normal, and you un-initiated would not be asking me so many questions. Hosiery is pretty cool in general, but really, it is the classic fully fashioned nylon stockings which produce a more fully developed consciousness. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter. But if we have to wear clothes, I know what I like on the ladies, and there's something about the manner in which a fully fashioned stocking frames a woman's leg that just works for me. It's like explaining why one likes a certain song, a certain sound; after a certain point words fail. The way a stocking appears, as if a lovingly cross hatched diaphanous layer in reality, is similar to the way I draw and in essence see the world in general. It all works together.

I wear suspenders for men: dress shirts, dress hats, undershirts; I'm layered as well, and wouldn't ask any woman to consider anything that I'm not prepared to do the masculine version of myself. All you louts that go out in public in your sweat pants can hang out together and talk about how I'm a weirdo.

This episode of Leg Art Comics brought to you by Secrets in Lace.

Spud Crazy 2/3/11

Let's go crazy. I think Prince said that. Yeah, this is the week. The scene is Lexington, KY.

I think I'll grab my coat, hat, and cane and get myself to the world premiere of the new Harry Dean Stanton documentary at the historic Kentucky theater on Wednesday. Then I think the next day I'll stroll down to the opening reception for the art show and release party for the limited edition excerpt of Spud Crazy by Nick Tosches and yours unruly at Institute 193.

Not only is it a book, it's a soundtrack of new music again by me, Robert Beatty, Brian Manley, and Justin Eslinger. Not only is it an opening reception for an art show, Manley & Eslinger (with an unnamed Theremin player) will perform sets of live music during the reception to provide another variation on this tuber theme.

Then at some point in there I'll celebrate my birthday on the fifth, probably with a fifth, and think of William S. Burroughs, who shares the same 2/5 with me as an inception date. My thoughts will most likely consider Burroughs's time in Lexington at the Narcotics Farm. Then I'll probably study upon the fact that Richard Hell, who wrote an intro for this Spud edition (and published a book of Tosches's poetry on his CUZ imprint), is originally from Lexington. Then I'll consider that I almost forgot Hubert Selby, Jr., who was the catalyst for the initial correspondence that would eventually lead to Tosches and I collaborating on this Spud plane we all now live on, and, oh well, yeah, his father was from Kentucky. And with all these thoughts in my head, I'll consider that Spud cigarettes were manufactured in Kentucky.

Then I will take a drink with my smoke and forget about Kentucky and forget about myself and Spud Crazy will seem the sanest game in town. My town, your town, any town. As Nick Tosches might put it, "Are you hip to Cybele?"

Symptoms of Spud Crazy

The indomitable Nick Tosches and myself are working on a graphic novel of Spud Crazy. The first image is a page from this book, the second is a preliminary sketch. On top of that, to kick things off, is a promotional video. Let me explain...

Whatever it is or isn't, it is first showing itself to the light of day as a 30 page excerpt of a work-in-progress (to coincide with an exhibition of those said original 30 pieces of art) published in an "art edition" through Institute 193, complete with an introduction by Richard Hell and an accompanying essay by Bob Levin, packaged together with its own soundtrack by the Spud Imperials (a one-shot band consisting of myself, Robert Beatty, Justin Eslinger, and Brian Manley).

Friends, you can get in on the ground floor here, helping to make this noble endeavour reach full fruition by donating to the Kickstarter pledge drive, orchestrated by the head honcho of 193, Phillip March Jones (193 is a non-profit). Also note that by pledging 25 bucks or more you get almost half off the retail price by preordering the book now. Not to mention that there are several spending options for those of all the tax brackets that include me having to cough up various amounts of original art. Act fast to join the party wagon. For NO CHARGE WHATSOEVER you get to see me do the good bad acting free forming on the subject of Spud Crazy in addition to sneaking a peek at the artwork for the book and hear bits of the soundtrack in a video by Coleman Gunyon and the aforementioned Robert Beatty.

More info coming closer to the 2/3/11 show/book release. Stay tuned.

Fat Elvis and Fat Jim Morrison Team-Up!

Perhaps not the most reverential way to remember Big E's birthday, this gag in my sketchbook was based on a goof in conversation with Jeffrey Scott Holland on a "what if" scenario in which the fat period version of Elvis were to join forces with the fat (and bearded) period version of Jim Morrison of the Doors. Being that riffing with Mr. Holland was the starting point, and the follow-through was executed in the aforementioned sketchbook, this marks a dual posting here and at our Transylvania Gentlemen blog. This ain't safe for work and it is an affront to good taste, so enjoy!

Click this link and navigate the "funny" pages.

Leg Art Comics #1

Let's start with the origin story. Lance Hansen asked me to contribute to his anthology, Seduction of the Innocent, (the concept being artists depicting women reading comics, in the tongue-in-cheek pin-up tradition). My idea was to create a fake comic book cover for an issue of "Leg Art Comics," a cover within a cover as the cover model is also reading another issue of the comic, which includes a feature, "J.T. Dockery Explains...'Why I Am A Leg Man!'" Ripping off the logo from Crumb's "Big Ass Comics," and the image taken from famous leg photographer Elmer Batters, I was playing with the concept and making a bit of fun of my own personal preferences when my particular male gaze turns towards the direction of the female.

Fast forward a bit, and when finding myself with more time than usual spent online due to the shifting circumstances of life, I realized that even without a masturbatory function, I was still making it something of an enjoyable hobby to waste my extra time looking at photos presented on the internet by bloggers and such who shared a similar preference/fixation. And in looking at the photos as something beyond smut, it started to become almost scientific as to why certain images spoke to me. But not so scientific that I could easily "explain why," but I could document these images that spoke loudest to me with my sketchbook.

With this process of documentation of my journey as a leg man begun, it quickly became apparent that at some point down the road, I will collect these sketches into a modest book. That book, of course, will be called "Leg Art Comics."

With the blog, I am presenting a sneak-preview of this project, this journey. And we'll start at the start at the beginning with a foot. Sometimes being involved as I am involved in the enthusiasm of delineating the female leg, there's a common misconception that the female foot is excluded in this equation. The combination of the leg, foot, and haunch creates a holy trinity of legginess, just as, say, the nylon stocking meeting the exposed flesh of the thigh meeting the clip of the garter belt is another holy trinity. One element does not exist without the relationship to the other, and there are even more trinities hidden within this multiplicity of trinities within the leg, but we shall not go further into that now.

This episode of Leg Art Comics was brought to you by Secrets in Lace.

Last Page Blues

I was conscious of this being the last page of my most recent sketchbook as, first, I actually didn't have the money to get a new one, and then found myself waiting another bit on top of that for a back ordered new one to come in the mail. So I also was consciously just pecking away here, adding a bits every so often, making that last page last.

Of course, that's not all that different from the usual stream of consciousness jive I'm often laying down, you might say. But a slight difference for me is that I can feel the passing of time. Recently my health went south, and I've experienced the kind of physical anguish I wouldn't wish on a dog. Some of these phrases and figures seem to predict my plight, document it, and then toss some random other goodliness on top for flavor. "It has memories in it," as I wrote.

I went for the longest I've ever been in recent memory without an active sketchbook going. Luckily meeting a deadline for an upcoming book release/art show in January and working on those pages made me not miss the habit as much as I might otherwise.

For the good times, my fiends, for the good times...