Five Day Art Challenge, Day 3: KaraokeFanboy Press Begins!

Fellow mini-comic artist Eric Mengel (interviewed in the latest episode of KaraokeFanboy Podcast!) challenged me to the Five Day Art Challenge on Facebook, which, from what I can gather, is a call to post five pieces of art every day for five days.  Since I'm working tirelessly to finish Amazing Arizona Comics #10 by Amazing Arizona Comic Con this weekend, I thought to use the challenge as a look back at my comics-making career, from childhood to this very week!

In college, I continued to create original characters, most notably with my friend Brent Otey as K.O. Comix.  I think a K.O. Comix retrospective on this blog is way overdue, especially since some of those old characters will appear in the upcoming Amazing Arizona Comics #10, but I digress.  My solo efforts in my late teens/early 20s included stabs at slice-of-life strips, and, since a big part of my life was singing karaoke, these pages from my sketchbook are heavily inspired by that.

At one point, I tried to develop a series featuring "the Karma Chameleon," a wandering singer that adapted the traits of whatever '80s pop tune he crooned.  (I didn't know then that Boy George shared a birthday with Sheriff Joe Arpaio!  I was already drawing the Agents of F.L.A.G. Day!) That turned into this:

Carrie O'Key, the adventuring bartendress that eventually appeared in Karaoke Comics #2!  (Joe was my barber from Yorba Linda, California, who claimed to cut Richard Nixon's hair when the former Prez was just a kid!)

This page features real people, most notably one of my best buddies Konrad, one of my favorite karaoke jockeys Bill (from the Kopa Room in Anaheim), and some other characters I met there over the years.

Eventually, I began dabbling in drawing my perspectives on current events, and while I was still the center of attention, you can see the seeds of Amazing Arizona Comics starting to bloom:

To be continued!