Easter Bunny Kaiju and Gypsy Avenger

Perhaps I was too busy prepping Easter eggs for the Sunday morning hunt to make the lapine Kaiju and giant robot on this napkin look....well...giant.

Or, maybe my subconscious just knew that they were action figure toys and not towering monsters.

After seeing “Pacific Rim Uprising” and “Ready Player One” in one week, I’m not sure I can handle spectating on (or even imagining) any more giant CGI robot/monster battles during the next few days. 

Spider-Man Noir and Gotham by Gaslight Batman

Brothers in Stylish Darkness:

Spider-Man Noir teams up with “Gotham by Gaslight”s Batman.

Our sons are fond of both of these “alternate universe” iterations of  these characters. Darkness, stylish outfits and significant violence...what’s not to like? 

Although they are supposedly separated by a few decades: Batman in “Gaslight” tracks Jack the Ripper in the late 1880’s London, and Spider-Man Noir swings in the 1930’s during the American Depression, they look like they could work together.

A crossover opportunity, perhaps?

Kaiju From “Pacific Rim: Uprising”

Here’s Looking at Kaiju:

(Time to cancel another apocalypse)

Sorry. 

We had to see the robots punching giant monsters sequel. It was entirely unavoidable.

I’ll admit, based on repeated exposure to the trailers, I was anticipating my viewing of “Pacific Rim: Uprising” with an emotion I might describe as dread.

But like it’s predecessor, “Uprising,” proved to be much more diverting than I anticipated. I did not sleep through it, and not just because it was too loud to doze.

One had to wonder how they were going to pull off the Kaiju-robot combination (not just the two fighting, but an actual combo) but they did. And not in a way that was any more ridiculous than the basic premise of the movies.

And how else do you raise the stakes on giant monsters? With a giant monster composed of other giant monsters? Why not?

I hope it is not too much of spoiler to reveal that the creative name of this fellow is the “Mega Kaiju” I looked that up online. It was no doubt named in the movie, but I missed it.

I might have exaggerated his lovely color palette a little bit also, but he was quite handsome onscreen.

Pizza Rat Visits the L Platform

If we were to imagine the Venn diagram intersection of rodents, fast food and the internet...

Well, we don’t need to imagine it, do we? 

A short video clip of a rat dragging a slice down the NYC subway stairs became a social media sensation known as “Pizza Rat” back in the fall of 2015. 

There might be an excess of rats, pizza and internet memes in my life recently, so Pizza Rat seems freshly relevant.

To explain the overdose of pizza and memes, I can only report that I have two teenaged children. 

As for the rats: of course they have always been our constant companions on our daily NYC subway commute. And I had been idly considering the possibility of a pet rat for the pet deprived kids...

But I am thinking about the local rat population much more now since our trash cans have become a busy rat buffet. Our robust, well-fed local rats have proved themselves capable of repeatedly gnawing well-fed-rat sized holes in our heavy duty plastic cans so as to not be denied constant access to our building’s trash.

No doubt they are motivated to enjoy the leftovers from our sons’ frequent pizza dinners. 

Last evening, as I dragged our trash cans out to the curb for pickup, one of our furry pizza crust eaters made an emergency exit, launching his (or her) well-fed body out of the hole into my backside and using the length of my leg as a ramp to scurry for the sidewalk.  

I was disappointed to note that the rat was not carrying any pizza at the time.

(If you are interested in the tale of Pizza Rat, there is always the crazy Zardulu angle to mull over)

Laughing Unicorns from Gravity Falls and Star vs the Forces of Evil

Celestabellebethabelle and Pony Head share a laugh at how seriously uncool those non unicorn persons are.

“Star vs the Forces of Evil” has filled some of the “Gravity Falls” shaped hole in our younger son’s tv viewing heart.  

Both shows have a large and inventive cast of non human creatures (the Bearicorn and the Multi-Bear, to name only two examples)

And Unicorns.

Unicorns that might be described as the cool alpha girls of their respective environments.

When I was a preteen, (and definitely not an alpha girl) I loved drawing unicorns and rainbows, using every marker in the box. Now an aging crone, I just want an opportunity to draw startling yet anatomically correct horse teeth. 

Scooby The Venomous Bat Hound

I may have had a bit too much exposure to Scooby Doo last weekend.

My sons are almost always up for a viewing of a Scooby Doo movie. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the developments in the Scooby Doo empire since the original television series in the late 60’s and 70’s, there has been a lot more since. 

A whole lot more.

There have been an endless number of films in recent years (and I am not talking about the live action remakes) Scoob and the gang have been paired with everything and everyone from LEGOs to Kiss, to Batman to the WWE. And more movies are coming all the time.

I can’t say we have watched all of them...but perhaps all of them that the kids know about.

It is not exaggerating to say that I loathed the show when I was a kid....yes back when the original series was being broadcast, I am that old. I particularly disliked the munchies-stricken Shaggy and his similarly scraggly chin haired dog. 

As a parent, I have come to mostly amicably tolerate those meddling kids. Mostly because, well, there are much worse things out there to watch. (Although I do detest the contemporary incarnations where Velma is dolled up. Or even worse, where she and Shaggy are a romantic couple.)

But after my younger son watched several Scooby movies back to back last weekend, I felt my old hatred come creeping back.

Thus we have a napkin with a evil looking Scooby (I had already drawn him with three heads as Cerebus, so I had to try something else.) 

I couldn’t just make him look malicious and get away with it, so I dressed him as Batman’s companion, Ace the Bat hound. Ace was my younger son’s obsession during his preschool years. 

I borrowed the composition and style from a

“Batman Venom” cover by José Luis García-López. This is a paperback that collects “Legends of the Dark Knight” issues 16-20 and tells the story of how Batman falls apart physically and morally while taking a performance enhancing drug... kind of like my state after watching too much Hanna Barbera. Just kidding.

(And check out how nicely the shell pattern on the napkin lines up with Scooby’s mouth, or don’t...I can’t reasonably expect anyone else to be interested in that sort of thing...)

Case of Drawings

These watercolors are included in the show “or, The New Prometheus” at the Humanities Gallery at Long Island University in Brooklyn opening this week.

These drawings originally hailed from the Inktober project in 2016, and were produced under duress at the rate of one per night. They were mostly on the topic of body and health dysfunction and had tongue in cheek pseudo sciency titles like “Topical Mimesis of Hormetic Stressors”

This was not a popular series of drawings on the Daily Napkins Instagram. As I recall, I managed to scare away at least 200 followers a week during the inktober month. “Where are the Batman Napkins??” Rest assured, there is, in fact, a Batman napkin coming up. 

But for those of you not exclusively interested in Batman...

The show is curated by Nancy Grove and commemorates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein...or, the Modern Prometheus” 

It features fine works by Judith Shea, Todd Lambrix, Andy Ralp,  Matt Freedman and Elizabeth Harney.

March 5-30, 2018, opening reception March 8th 6-8 pm.

(And there is more of this sort of drawing at  @the_good_rash on Instagram if you are really a glutton for dysfunctional health watercolor punishment.)

Internet Famous Canines

Vicarious Social Media Fame 

(relative & brief)

We noticed that a napkin featuring blogger Lance Stewart & Lizzie Wurst’s puppy Theo (from our internet famous dog series) posted on 210official’s instagram received a mere 52,000 more likes our posts usually receive. 

Thanks @210official!

We did have some previous experience with this sort of vicarious social media liking.

A previous Instagram famous dog napkin featuring Logan Paul and his dog Kong was posted on Twitter by Cody Carlile and got at least 1300 more likes than our posting. Sadly, Mr. Carlile blocked our account after we commended him on his popularity and his amazing ability to make a drawing on a “tissue” that strongly resembled our napkin. (I can only assume that it is even more difficult to draw on tissues than on napkins.) 

I was sorry that he blocked us as I had wanted to take a screenshot of the well liked napkin- we are lucky to accrue 5 or 6 likes for our most popular posts on Twitter. I was also enjoying Mr. Carlile’s very modest and sincere responses to the many people on Twitter who commented how amazing his drawing skills were. 

My younger son was quite aggrieved that our napkin had been pirated...and then officially praised by Logan Paul himself. (This was back before Mr. Paul had disgraced himself by behaving inappropriately on YouTube...well, more inappropriately than usual.)

My son wanted to somehow rectify the situation and penalize this Cody Carlile individual for his plagiarism. But I observed that Mr. Carlile appeared to be a non adult person, so it seemed particularly inappropriate for me to pursue him for a bad online choice. 

And, it is always amusing to know that the napkins could be more popular...if only they were not posted by me.

Golem, Zombie and Friends

I am delighted to have the Undead Guy and some drawings included in “or, The New Prometheus” in the Humanities Gallery at Long Island University in Brooklyn. 

The show is curated by Nancy Grove and commemorates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein...or, the Modern Prometheus” 

Also included, fine works by Judith Shea, Todd Lambrix, Andy Ralph, Matt Freedman and Elizabeth Harney

March 5-30, 2018, opening reception March 7th 6-8 pm if you happen to be in downtown Brooklyn.

Black Panther War Rhino

We were very happy to finally see Black Panther with our sons/ underage colonizers. 

But now everyone wants to be licked by a vibranium plated rhino