Bat "Mark Anthony" Masterson

@batmasterson.batfu.ink

254 Followers 340 Following

A fountain pen-stained harpooner, if that's your idea of a good time. Made in Canada. Wanted by comics authorities. Had Matter. Busy now.

I'm not gonna quote King Mob.

According to the news, "बप्पा की मूर्ति को अलग-अलग तरीकों से प्रेजेंट करने का ट्रैडिशन काफी लंबे समय से चला आ रहा है. इससे पहले भी बप्पा को 'स्पाइडर मैन' वाले लुक में दिखाया गया था. इस लुक में गणपति बप्पा की मूर्ति को देखकर लोग भी चौंक गए थे." And why shouldn't they be?

The terrible state of search in today's internet leads us to understand this photo of a celebratory Spider-Man-themed statue was taken in Hyderabad, India during a busy Ganesh Chaturthi prior to 2007. No word as to whether the guy wearing the askew Spider-Man mask (who knows the camera is there) was the sculptor. The kids seem happy.

Scene from "Black Books" where Bernard has gone mad with culinary power, but we've changed the caption to read: "My show can cook anything. My show can cook... Bits of shows!"

On board Red Dwarf, Dave Lister awakens with a cast he doesn't remember getting. His uptight crewmate with the brothers looks on. This is part of what I mean when I say Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is being Doctor Who even when it's not referencing Doctor Who directly.

Spanish-language version of "Zap! Pow! Look out! Comics aren't just for kids anymore... Fuck it. Fuck it." panel from FLEX MENTALLO #3 by Quitely and Morrison.

"Glycon", a mixed-gods portrait of a medium by Alan Moore. (1994)

Learn more or less here: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/chapter-5-the-moon-and-serpent-grand-egyptian-theatre-of-marvels

"I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, uh- women sense my power and they seek the life essence. Hh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake."

No tenemos tiempo para amor, General Ripper! This is Mandrake the Magician, created by the Master of the Mustache (Lee Falk)! Why is he so groovy? What shapes does he throw? Who let him bring doves onto the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? READ ON FOR MORE!

I don't know. This is a cropped version of the cover for Dell's "Four Color Comics" #752. A quick search can't tell me who painted it or how I came across it (sorry, General Ripper) in 2007. The artist's model was playing older, though. You can tell.

Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite, fifth-dimensional imps, are into it.

Doctor William Maxwell "Will" Magnus does Open Mic Poetry Night in the labs.

"DROP IT.

I HAVE A
PARTICLE WAVE RAY
GUN AND BIPOLAR
DISORDER!

I HAVE NO IDEA
WHAT IT MIGHT DO TO
YOU IF I PULL THE
TRIGGER."

(panel from DC's "52" - Week 49. Dyvers hands include Geoff Johns Grant Morrison Greg Rucka Mark Waid Keith Giffen Eddy Barrows Dan Green Rodney Ramos Eddy Barrows David Baron & Rob Leigh)

Linus in a haunted universe.
https://www.animationartgallery.com/LInus-Animation-Art-Production-Cel-p/pnccs111.htm

Lee Bermejo's "Freshly Grated Cheese" (2007)

I actually have no idea what this illustration of flagrant crime scene disturbance is from. The "The Dark Knight" film and the "Joker" 128-Page Giant comic came out in 2008. Even the "Batman: Arkham Asylum" video game wasn't until 2009. Of course, it's not like any of these things were built just days before release date. Actually, everything is just days from anything else as long as you put a multiplier on it. This file did appear on my hard drive just 537 days before the release of Bermejo and Azzarello's "Joker" Super Size Spectacular.

I'm terrific fun. Ask anyone.

The implication in this greyscale illustration is that the Joker has murdered a man three times - once with the poison that makes your eyes go all Brian Bolland, once with a bullet to the chest, and finally by reducing him to an Italian stereotype.

Wizard of Oz convention party. I've forgotten most of these people's names, but ran into them again at Doctor Who conventions, so that's all right. The point is, here are my favorite goggles being worn by someone else. He's also wearing a "Dorothy" t-shirt, based on the world-famous, certificate-winning photo-comic starring Catie Fisher.

A collapsing house on a street where Philip K. Dick once lived holds a room that holds the extruded mind of a man wearing the best bug-eyed red-lensed goggles the world has known.

Circa 2005, a man in goggles he bought at Disneyland offers you still water in a green martini glass. This is his office. Hope you guess his name.

Mister Campbell and Mister Moore.

Eddie favors a white shirt and he's got a camera on the table even when he's getting his picture taken. He's also got a beer and blue jeans.

Alan sports a black shirt and he's got a pack of cigarettes presenting a lighter his way/ He's also got a lemon and black trousers.

They want to talk to you about your mum.
https://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2007/04/mr-black-mr-white-encore.html

Robert Downey, Jr. chews bubblegum in an emotionally complex way and then looks at the camera in this scene from KISS KISS, BANG BANG

"Bee Twins!"
*yes, el seed*
"Just the other day, I am thinking, 'You know what I hate?'"
*you hate the humans*
"I hate the humans."
-The Tick, Season One Episode Six

“It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.”

Excerpt From
Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Tag Team Championship bout from FIST-A-CUFFS, the internet sensation of 2007! SENSE IT!

On the left, we have "RAGNAROKKER" BY PAUL CONRAD and "KAPTAIN KNIFE KAFKA" BY DAVID RUBIN, doing business as THE PAIN BROTHERS.

Flying in from the right gutter, it's "X-RAY-RAY" BY MARIS WICKS with "FLAMIN' GRANNY" BY JOE QUINONES. Together they bring terror as SKIN AND BONEZ.

I don't know who won. The Pain Brothers seem more sort of monster-weapony types, while Skin and Bonez have science-magic weirdy wiring.

The original blog that hosted these seems to be gone — health and safety violations, one would imagine. I understand the appeal of professional wrestling. Honest.

Well, Mycroft, my skills tell me that the central message of the piece is 'Don't Overthink Things, Really'.

Technically, technically, this is an illustration of Bruce Banner, the Undunkable Hulk, knocking the block off an Iron Man robot drone. Gerald Parel done it as the cover for the Invincible Iron Man comic #19. Never read it. Probably never will. Love this image, though.

Clock your Inner Tony. Turn his pretensions into confetti. It's the only way for a Woodman like you to get things done.

I'm shocked, shocked, to discover my green-shirt Kirk and be-shielded Cap gamboling in here.

This file is named "capture03.jpg". But what is that we are witnessing? The capture of a moment in time? The capture of attention from multi-shirted muscular men in mustaches? The capture of the Caped Crusader and the Man of Tomorrow? The capture of ink into suggestion and form, the capture of paper into pixels into meaning? The capture of a heart?

"Tell me..." he says. "Why didn't you fly off back to Metropolis?"

"Well..." There is a moment to adjust posture. Pull your elbow back over the chair to rest. It opens the chest, exposing you a little more. At the same time, the other hand shifts forward along the table. Not much, not offering. Just the same motion. The pull and the push away from him and toward him. Slight. Natural. Human. Casual eyes now.

"I thought you might like some company."

The Beloved Entertainer.

Remember FIST-A-CUFFS? I sure didn't. 20 years ago, back on the internet, artists would make up characters and people would pretend to have seen them fight, then decide who won. It's just like regular superhero comics, just without all the tedious publishing and reading.

This is Paul Pope's black-and-white inked drawing of a Fist-A-Cuffs card girl holding up the card for ROUND 3. https://pulphope.blogspot.com/2007/04/ding.html

Electric whisk that arrived today has a counterpoint: "🚫Do not wash the main unit!"

Lord John Whorfin (an actor) is sorry to step in here, but it's like Roger Rabbit behind the wall, unable to stop himself from finishing the bit.

Speaking of the unkillable spirit of off-putting crassness that haunts the industry, here's Wonder Woman in her "Diana the Bicycle Courier" outfit reacting with wide-eyed horror to the Joker's threat to murder everyone in the building with the dynamite he's got strapped to his chest. As a joke, though, as a joke, Brian Bolland's made it look instead like the villain's got his willy out.

These tight pencils of a leering Joker in a raincoat were for the cover of Wonder Woman #96, but unused, according to the filename.

it is better to burn
out
than fade
away

forgive me
the prize
was so quick
and so ning

Such a fine line between cheesecake and... sand.

But hey! Sea-Goin' Lil at the beach! Drawrn in black and white and pencils and whatnot by Steve Mannion.

You can tell it's Lil because of her leather army biker hat and the skull and crossbones that have moved from her tube top to her bikini bottoms and the fact that the picture has LIL! written under it. You can tell it's at the beach because she's on a towel. There's also a wireless radio, a jug of XXX next to a rocks glass and a pipe, a bottle of korAtan lotion, a pleading lobster, and the paperback copy of FRANKENSTEIN in her hand.

This all happened to me once, actually.

The Rock of Boston

Daffy Duck gets a gun in his beak during a friendly card game with Nasty Canasta in "My Little Duckaroo" (1954)

He just showed up unannounced.

It's Eddie Campbell's drawing of Johnny Depp as Inspector Abberline with big hands or a tiny hat. The black and white line art is sort of in the "From Hell" style, but come, sir, this is the twenty-first century. We are men of wealth and taste now, are we not?

"That's an excellent question; I've no idea," says Billy Quizboy.

Settings>Notifications>Reminders in MacOS.

Silhouettes Against Flame!

It's Mike Mignola showing off again, only this time with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Nothing about it is realistic, yet it all works. The lighting's wrong, the shadows are wrong, the glowing eyes and the chunky boots don't make sense, but you, if you're me, know exactly who this is and where they are and why. The best, in the center of it, to have a good time.

Batman and Robin will never die!

Iridium is a common tipping material for fountain pens. I don't even know who made this nib (it's on an unbranded pen that has a big metal elephant head mounted to the cap), but you can see "IRIDIUM POINT" stamped into it. Why do starships need iridium for power? Ask Verbal Kint.

Pete Milligan and Jamie Hewlett's Hewlett & Martin's TANK GIRL★THE ODYSSEY from Vertigo Comics and DC. It's got a Brian Bolland cover wiv Tank Girl and Booga onna couch. I just found this copy in my collection today, because life's funny that way.

He never really leaves you.

Again we come back to the noble face in the water, an echo of him in fairy lands radiating his shadows in time. Remember how beautiful he look, his face full of beard and trauma even, color in his cheeks against the pale berth. The sovereign goes into the water. The sovereign comes out of the water.

Poor Kay's watching from the shore. [not pictured]

Cover image of Fables #62 by James Jean. This one's smaller than the two I posted the other day. Sometimes it seems like that.

Bryan Talbot portrait of Bryan Talbot Bryan-Talbot-ing.

From the filename, I think this was part of the promo for "Alice in Sunderland", but the master seems to be putting his brush to page of "The Tale of One Bad Rat" on the easel. A portrait of Robbie the Robot on a desolate heath hangs behind him. On the marble mantle stands a Lady Liberty. Scattered across the desk we find a martini glass and what I believe might be a Moebius tome. There is a fern in the foreground.

Somebody took the 2004 She-Hulk cover where Jen is in workout clothes doing the 1943 Westinghouse Electric Worker the Woman pose and added design elements from the actual Westinghouse Electric "We Can Do It!" poster but then added 2006 Civil War "REGISTER NOW!" text so I suppose it's a triple-reference piece. This is homage on a homage. Get Frank Pembleton down here right now. This is a red ball.

She-Hulk art by Mike Mayhew. Westinghouse Electric War design by J. Howard Miller.

Alfred, an out-of-focus black cat, has ensconced himself in a bag which he now devours. "SMILE," (says the bag) "WE SWITCHED TO PAPER"

Gary Cole as the boss in "Office Space" - a film which I don't remember all that well, but it's a real Darmok.

Look, I'm not a cartoonist, I don't read physics, but this sort of thing happens a lot in panel-work and I just don't get it. Batman is striking with his right fist, left-to-right from our perspective. The impact signifier (a big yellow starburst lingering in the air) is on the left of the panel. The clocked Joker is falling in the foreground, his spine folding back right-to-left so that his head is also on the left, under the impact. I don't know. I've never hit anyone in the jaw or been hit. I guess the idea is that the force of the blow has spun hm around, but his jaw isn't following the turn. To me, it seems the Joker has been struck by something directly out of frame to the right, while the Batman has popped a balloon with tremendous gusto. Ha-pla!

This is one of those "make-a-funny, pass-it-on" images where someone has used digital Wite-Out on the dialogue in a way that allows *you* to make Batman say whatever strikes your fancy. Imagine that! You in charge of Batman!

A solid black sperm whale, Dick Noir, exhorting you to "CATCH YOUR DREAMS!" pictured on a Daiso plastic water bottle. What a sellout.

"But first— I bake!"

J.G. Jones' 2005 Dr. Fate pencils for the cover of DC's"52" #42, with notes to colorist/finisher Alex Sinclair. I have no recollection as to what went on in the comic story, but here it looks like a storm octopus from space wears the Helm of Fate and it's about time, too. Even cephalopods need structure every now and then.

The notes amuse me in the way a comic book writer's "I know, I know, but *you're brilliant* and can sell it" instructions always do.

"Hey Alex, One of the tricks to this cover will be making the light different on the shiny gold helment [sic] and amulet, and the yellow of the cloth cape + Gloves. I'm thinking of the way Adam Hughes does metal lighting."
[so two different yellows, and make a reflection of the tentacles in the helmet, sure, no problem]
"Stormy, Blue-Gray Sky- Have fun with the Clouds"
[as published it has red clouds]
"Think H.P. Lovecraft's Chthulu on the tentacles- creepy, glistening. Go dark as you need wherever it makes sense-- My wash is just a rough guide."
[Oh geez, I almost went with Derleth's Cthulhu. Thanks for the heads up.]

Richard Dadd's Sketch of an idea for Crazy Jane from 1895. It would take almost a hundred years for her first appearance in comics.

J.G. Jones' DC "52" Buddy Baker thumbnails for the issue 43 cover, and other strings of words that sound insane from outside the American comic book scene.

One of the things I quite liked in Grant Morrison's "Animal Man" run (which this is not, but hang on) was the notion that pencil sketches are body horror for comic book characters. When they see themselves rendered or reduced to that atavistic exposed state it is the proper nastiness of seeing through time and essence to what a derangement of accepted reality our essential matter is actually built with. It's beyond the X-ray negative skeletonization of the Dalek blast, the solarized circulatory amoeba glow of an Altered State. Our scaffolding is real stuff and it destroys what we think is us. Animal Man was not the first or last comic book hero to meet his makers.

Hold up. Listen. Jones tries out some pencil sketches of various crucified versions of him, evoking the Coyote Gospel along the way, but settles on one that's cropped in. This lets us see his jacket more, arms raised in what might be an embrace, and puts a picture of his family in place of his heart. Artist notes say:
"— Animal Man in dead Christ pose
— Graphic silhouette w/that photo of his family that he carries superimposed in black+white
— Rings of 'Animal Powers' as another graphic element"

Come in. Come in. Buddy Baker will see you now.

All signs point to this being from Virgin Comics' Garth Ennis' JOHN WOO'S 7 BROTHERS.

I mean, come on. The red and black apocalyptic sky, clouds, and lightning. The monster-sized penis with hands and hair. The careful ear for dialect in the dialogue, "I'm a muthafuckin' dragon, bitch!"

If my abduction about this panel is correct, the art is by Jeevan Kang.

Henry Fonda as Turkish Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath"
"Aç insanların karınlarını doyurması için kavga çıkınca, orada olacağım."

DOCTOR WHO MONTHLY

(used to be Doctor Who Weekly, became Doctor Who Magazine - we all go through it. This is #80 with a big ol' Tom Baker smile.)

Monteverde Axis magnetic fountain pen in matte purple on a black LIFE B5 Noble notebook cover. You can pretend that's stardust.

James Jean painted this picture of a scene I wrote that was performed one night only near the John Greenleaf Whittier statue in California. I didn't even know he was there.

Matt Sellers played the man in the pond. We had underestimated how cold the water would be that night. We had no idea.

“It is Ken, of course, who is dead. It is his casket I hammer now. Obviously there is something hallucinatory in the hammering of caskets. Whenever I hammer a nail into the outside of the casket, I can hear someone, on the inside, also hammering a nail. That’s the trouble with this burial business; it’s hard to know who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside, whether the living bury the dead or the dead bury the living.
“The dead bury the living,” Ken said. He pulled his coat tightly around his shoulders and walked a few yards ahead of me. “The dead never return to the living; it is the living that return to the dead. People search out the ghosts they find.” He walked silently ahead of me for a while and then stopped. He leaned against a heavy box and looked at me with something like pity. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said.
I think I’m going to be sick.”

Excerpt From
THE SCROLLWORK ON THE CASKET
Jack Spicer
https://books.apple.com/us/book/my-vocabulary-did-this-to-me/id6445084787
This material may be protected by copyright.

Yuko Shimizu illustration of, well, it's kind of yin and yang, innit? Taijitu type thing. A naked male figure and a leather body-suited female figure curled around each other. They're sleeping on each other's knees, using their own hands as pillows.

I've honestly no memory of what project this is from. Matrix vibes, really. But in 2007? Maybe I dreamed it.

It's a red bloody Dalek whippin' his eyestalk 'round to say **DALEKS ARE INCAPABLE OF LOVE! FOOL! DO YOU NOT YET UNDERSTAND WHY WE ARE HERE? CAN YOU NOT SEE THE DALEK MASTERPLAN?**

Part of the Valentine collection from 2007, you see.

This was during the time when Doctor Who still slept in my mind. I remembered it. I could make jokes about it. I knew there was a new show on. I could get discs from Netflix to watch bits from the '80s I'd missed. The beast was turning in its sleep. But I did not yet have images in a folder labeled "Doctor Who".

"Haley Campbell's Pa Eddie Campbell" — four-panel strip by "mister J."
https://www.hayleycampbell.com/about/
https://www.eddiecampbelldammit.com/about
https://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2006/11/eddie-campbells-pal-mr-j.html

Across this standard newspaper comic, cartoonish Eddie Campbell, be-glassed and thick-browed, stares at a computer monitor, working at a keyboard with his three-fingered hands. In the final panel, he is covered in stubble and webs, a spider dangling from his ear.

EDDIE THINKS:
I've mis-typed my own name, yet still found a link... to someone else who also mis-typed it.

...what if there's a whole bunch of people talking about me or reviewing my book that the made the same mistake?!

Campell...
Camphell...
Cambill...
Camp Hill...

CAPTION:
Hours Later

EDDIE THINKS:
How does Alan Moore ever get anything done?

I once embarrassed myself in front of Eddie Campbell in San Diego, owing to enthusiasm and ignorance. I'm sure he's forgotten it. He has a lovely smile.

George Bluth, Sr. once again regrets the agents he has chosen to be instruments of his will. They seem imprecise.

DC Villain Valentines! Collect 'em all!

THERE IS NO LuTHOR
[image of animated series Lex Luthor in his groovy green and purple chunky armor with arms outstretched]
WITHOUT "U"

I find Luthor fascinating. I must not think on why.

You asked for it! DC sent it back in time to 1963! SUPERBOY'S SECRET INVISIBLE WICKED+DIVINE ORIGIN!

This is Card 19 of the Curt Swan Tarot, where he has linked iconography of the Chariot to the Moon's landscape. In both Arcana there are normally two animal figures, but Swan suggests that in the light of the inner eye's truth there is simply the appearance of two natures that can be represented by one complicated, uh, thing.

Look, the full moon's there in the night sky, there's a pyramid on either side (one light, one dark), there's a face out of place (in this case it's Superboy's face on a lion in a "Donna Saved in the Library" way), there's clouds and chisel marks that suggest water and insects... my brain just does this, okay?

Read the true sacred mystery here: https://www.progressiveruin.com/2007/02/10/superboy-sphinx-is-watching/