The following was written about two or three weeks ago.

Another cover for The Week with D. Trump. Ugh. What is his appeal? I hear people say he "speaks his mind". Or "He's exposing everyone to be the phonies we knew they were". He's weirdly prudish. He'll insight people towards violence at a rally and then act like he's shocked that there was violence when he appears on Good Morning America. And there is the problem. It's a profit motive... I forget which movie had that line in it. Anyway, the news is for profit. Smart intelligent conversation and debate isn't as exciting as two "men" running for public office prudishly talking about their dick sizes on national television. Cock talk gets better ratings ie., bigger profits. The press coverage of the village idiot for entertainment has given the idiot a big forum to vomit his idiot rhetoric to people who are sick of uninspired politicians.

Bernie Sanders is the scary person to the Democrats because he has inspired a lot of people. Just not enough. The press ignores him because he talks about issues, and he is a gentleman to the people he is running against, and he is the only one (similar to Trump) that isn't owned by large corporations. Although I suspect Trump has some people he owes. Sanders also speaks his mind. Sanders has also exposed the establishment in the Democratic party. And a big media bias as well.

I'm not going to post any more Trumps here unless it's about his failure to get elected. Feel the Bern!

Original color sketch. Everything was OK until...

They suggested a dark blue back ground. I feel that the red back ground was more emotional and was a little more raw. The Week isn't that kind of magazine. I think this goes with their character.

2016 is not starting out in any positive way. The first cover I do for The Week Magazine is Iran and Saudi Arabia squaring off. I joked in the meeting that it would be more accurate to have a Yemen guy vs a Syrian or something like that since Saudi doesn't do any of their own work. Syria is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, also America and Russia, and Turkey and Kurdistan, and leastly Syrian people against the Assad regime... OH! and the occasional bombing by France or Britain just for good measure. At least that's what I've been able to see so far. There are a few other groups in there as well I'm sure, but to sum it up it is a chaotic stupid mess. So here we go 2016! AND it's an election year. Oh boy. I have a feeling I'll be doing illustrations about a lot of stupid tings this year, enjoy the first of many.

I'm not sure what the folks at The Week magazine will want to focus on for the cover this week, but it seems a lot of attention has been going to Trump these past few months. I'm aggravated by that. Trump the business man I was more or less indifferent to. But as a politician, he's freak'n scary! I never thought a non career politician would have been so awful. But what Trump's run for office really shows in all it's bluntness is this is what all the other politicians are, and that is the political rep for the wealthiest corporations in America. Take Hillary, donors to her super PACs are throwing in million dollar checks. I'm sure they expect some access to the president if she wins. She might as well wear the company logo on her "president" name-tag. All but Bernie Sanders has a super PAC. Trump has probably donated to several of these super PACs even now to protect his business interests.

I predict Trump will be a footnote by the 2nd or 3rd primary once the real campaigning kick in. Not because I think he's the worst person to be running for president of the group, but because going by past elections, the unorthodox guy who is going strong early usually isn't the one that we see getting the nomination. I still have a nagging feeling the fix will go down and we'll have a Bush vs Clinton choice in November. At least things will "only" continue into a downward spiral.

Quick posts of art for a while. Lots of busy work lately and most of it not art. Sometimes that's how it is. When I don't have the time to devote my brain to a fun project I want to create, I revisit things from my past. About twenty years ago I used to ink Dr Strange every month for Marvel comics. It was a lot of work but a great learning experience. I also did finishes on the Ghost Rider story for Marvel Comics Presents every two weeks and penciled Animal Man for Vertigo comics every month. I had no life back then! I always liked the Ghost Rider , but Dr. Strange was the book I would have loved to make. I would think about the character a lot and analyze how he was handled.

My impression was no one looked at it as a book they wanted to stay on. People I penciled had even lifted whole splash pages from other super hero books but changed it enough that the editor didn't notice. Being the guy who was inking it, I noticed it and it was probably the most aggravating part of the job! It was a typical argument that editors always heard from inkers. "I can draw better than that guy!" So I never said anything even though I thought I had a legitimate case. How can this guy be better than me if he had to copy another artist's anatomy, composition, and line-work???

I like the potential for how bizarre and visually psychedelic Dr Strange stories could be if they were handled by Moebius, or Roger Dean, of (what the hell) even me! Instead of some guy whose heart is really in to doing Wolverine, or Spawn, or Superman. Not that they aren't great artists that do that, but there is a subtle difference when the artist is actually inspired to work on the character that will always give it that extra punch.

Inks by me. You might find this very pose in an Image comic book by Mark Silvestri.

An experiment in the old sketch pad.

Truthfully, I haven't thought much about Dr Strange in a long time. I was imagining some strange other dimensional sub-world. Some kind of white globes growing, maybe they are pods or some magical egg that contains either an evil spirit or a good spirit. Also an experiment in my sketch pad with a little ink and minimal gouache.

#Comics #DoctorStrange #surreal #illustration

Refugees in a mass. My girlfriend is for open borders. I must say that makes total sense from a compassionate human being. I think "compassionate human  being" would be the ideal person to strive for. Most religious people, mostly christian, that I've talked to through the years seem to have this theme that they strive to be a better Christian, a better Buddhist, a better Muslim... Maybe not in such direct words but the "struggle" is a common thing. In a non religious context a struggle to be compassionate seems to be a comparable term.

Unfortunately the world has many people in decision making positions who come from different points of the "struggle". I think people start out with good intentions. I have watched a lot of sci-fi movies with aliens and thought, like in "Independence Day", people from different countries, religions, and families, or whatever would put aside their differences to resist the alien invasion. I'm not so sure anymore.

I guess if you look at the refugees in this context, you can either see them as the invading aliens and the different countries are all on different pages on how to deal with this. Or the refugees are a world wide problem (not evil aliens) that everyone in the world needs to come together to solve this problem.

Some people choose to blame things that have already happened. This is not a solution for the present. What we can learn from the past is that we've done a horrible job in most cases. No country seems willing to take in refugees, and if they do, are willing to spend the money needed to help acclimate them into their society. Germany has made a good attempt, and I've seen what Turkey is doing first hand. Turkey seems to treat them pretty well unless they are Kurdish. But still, it's no way to live. No country seems to have an end goal, so whatever camp situation a refugee finds themselves, that is as good as it will ever get until you die or until you can't stand it and you try to risk everything to go somewhere else.

Open borders seems like a good solution. As an American, I can go almost anywhere in the world if I can get a plane ticket or whatever. Many Syrians could easily afford plane tickets. Let the airports sort out any bad apples in the bunch. But know there might be some people that slip through and that's the price we pay for being the better human being. Watching people lose hope and wait out a miserable existence until they die when this doesn't need to be, makes us horrible people.

Cover for The Week (cropped) Syrian refugee crisis.

Cover for The Week. Oregan massacre. A few people killed in America and it's a national vigil. Thousands killed in another country and we just blame others. Not that our national vigil changed anything.

Cover for The Week. I guess I should have replaced Obama with French President François Hollande. Or maybe have Obama in there with Putin also beckoning Hollande. Or replace Putin with an Daesh member beckoning Hollande.