sherlock holmes

okay...

as many of you keen-eyed sleuths have undoubtedly realized, this blog has been posted at some rather erratic times over the past few weeks. sometimes at stsrange hours of the night, sometimes mid-day, and oft-times, as is the case with this one, a day late.
and it's not likely to get much better for the next month or so...

but now the reason can be revealed...!

i've been cast in a production of sherlock holmes and for the past month or so have been trying to add rehearsals into my already busy schedule. i tell you this because i'm probably gonna be late with another one or two or six of these blogs over the next month or so, so i thought i'd apologize in advance and ask your patience.

another reason i'm telling you this is to show you the awesome play poster...

this play is being directed by my good friend and one of my very first theater teachers, steve press. when i first became interested in theater, steve soon became one of my mentors, filling me up with as much knowledge of acting and stagecraft and presentation and story as i could absorb! he is a very giving teacher and director and every few years i like to go back and enroll in one of his classes to bone up on my acting and hopefully be involved in a production.
and, as i've said, this year, it's sherlock homes.

i have also usually been the one to design and draw the play posters when i've been involved and have done over thirty of them over the years. but when i sat down with steve to talk about this poster, he asked, having read both tellos and the perhapanauts and loving their work, if craig or mike would have the time or desire to help us capture that dime novel/pulp look we were thinking about. but since i have a third artist that i talk to several times a week, one whom i consider to be yet another mentor in my life, i told steve that i knew someone who might fit the bill better, mostly because he was there!

so the next day i called my pal, nick cardy. we had already talked about the play and my role in it and the staging and all sorts of old sherlock homles movies--both of us preferring the basil rathbone adventures--i asked nick if he the time or inclination to do the poster for us. he said he had already been working on it, describing his design ideas to me over the phone, beginning to draw it before we got OFF the phone, and it showed up in my mailbox three days later.

my friend, jd, also in the play as watson, and also a huge comic book enthusiast, said--once he got his voice back--that it was like stepping into the 70's again. or the 30's. i couldn't agree more.

it is gorgeous!



no one else could have captured the mood we were looking for, the sense of foreboding and mystery. blow it up and look at the textures/patterns on holmes' classic deerstalker cap, the shadows in the dungeon, the wisps of fog...nick is a master!



here's another look at something nick "whipped up" for me. several months ago.
while i was on one of our usually hour or so long phone conversations with mike (wieringo) where mike gets some drawing done and i, unable to write and talk on the phone at the same time, usually try to do some housework or something, i made a turkey sandwich and left it on the kitchen counter on a paper towel when i had to run into my studio/office to check something on the computer. while i was gone, the temptation must've been just too much and my dog jake

was able to reach the paper towel and pull the sandwich down to the floor--! when i came back, he was gobbling it up as fast as he could and mike got to hear me yelling at him and laughing at him and trying to continue our converstaion all at the same time and mike just lost it! he was laughing so hard he couldn't speak for a while. funny.

when i told nick the story the next day, i laughed as well. and when he sent me an "autographed" copy of the teen titan showcase book that he said they sent him too many of, the inside front and back covers were decorated with this...



nick apologized 'cause he couldn't remember what jake calls me in my stories about him and so settled on "boss". i think it makes it even funnier!

anyway, that's what i've been up to and my stories about nick.
more, hopefully on wednesday. or thursday.
thanks to craig for the scans of all this.
and thanks to nick for everything!

smell ya later!
oh, and if you're in town, come and see sherlock holmes!
you'll be glad you did!
todd