I’ve been receiving some nice comments to the website the past couple of days about the recent February 12th Funky Sunday featuring one of my Silver Age comic book pastiche/homage’s to a favorite old comic book character and the artist who drew it. I’ve talked about this before and why I enjoy doing it, but watching the Grammy Awards that same Sunday provided a new perspective on why it’s such fun. Tony Bennett received a Grammy for an album of duets that he had done with a number of contemporary singers, and I suddenly realized that with my old comic book recreations, I’ve been doing something similar. Once I have the idea for one of those tributes worked out and know what my characters are saying and doing, I take the art from the old comic book and re-ink it, sometimes inserting my own characters into the older cover. When I was preparing the very first comic book homage, I was talking with comic book artist John Byrne about it and he suggested blowing up the old art and inking over it. He said it would be a lot of fun and it is. In a way, it’s like getting to do a duet with some of my old artistic heroes and the process only increases my respect for their talent. Inserting my own characters along side the older ones simply completes the duet. It’s a chance to work alongside artists with whom I would never have the opportunity to work. A lot of these older artists dreamed of doing a syndicated strip, and I always dreamed of doing superheroes, and, in our duet, we both get our chance.
