MOON JELLY MONDAYS #10 - Holiday Cards

Today is Labor Day.

I'm sure I can look up what this holiday's all about.

I'm sure there's plenty of angry, militant, and knowledgable people who are vehemently upset with me for not touching upon what this day all about.

So in order to not piss anyone off here, feel free to research what this holiday is about and ignore this post.

If you wish to continue reading, I am using this holiday as an excuse to talk about some "holiday cards" I've drawn.

I remember it was one of things I enjoyed about the holidays. I'd draw my mom a card or my friend's a card.

It was genuine. It was sincere. It just felt good doing.

Why have some greeting card jerk off say things for me? I'm the one who's thinking it!

Flash forward many years later, and clearly I have not grown out of this.

Maybe you're thinking this stuff's sort of personal. To a degree it is, but here it is anyways. The Internet is nothing more than our lives for public display anyways.

This first one I drew was for Gretchen. Instead of drawing her something for Valentine's Day, I thought I'd draw her something for President's Day. I always thought it'd be funny to draw cards for holidays that don't have greeting cards, as if to say the corporations were really that desperate to make a buck.

Maybe this will be a dumb idea I should follow through on and release on etsy or some shit:

Gretchen was working at Starbucks at the time.
What at typical job for almost all the girls I've known in their 20's.

Isn't that what President's Day really all about?

The next card on this list is one I drew for Ann Louise. Again, the occasion was for Valentine's Day. She was the hostess of this open mic. I had hosted in her place before, and just from doing it for a day, I thought: "man, what a shitty, thankless job."

She's a Simpsons fan, so I drew her the "I Choo - Choo - Choose You" card.

Here's the original for comparison.

Next up are a series of "Happy Holiday" cards I did for people around winter time. Each one had the same printed front, but inside, I did some sketches:

"Santa Claus is Not Asian."
(Clearly, this kid has never seen Babes in Toyland where Pat "Mr. Miyagi" Morita did play Santa Claus.)

This was my first time drawing with a brush.
I tried drawing Fritz the Cat and ended up with this awkward thing.

I added this post it just to make up for it.

Mordecai from Regular Show. 

Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
I've never liked how terrible he looks in Special Edition.

Poochie from The Simpsons.

This was a really terrible joke 'cause my friend's name is Chris and this was a Christmas card.
Naturally, I drew a Ninja Turtle.

My friend Chris kept telling me that one of the worst Christmas gifts he ever got was a tree ornament of Snooki from
the Jersey Shore. Naturally, I drew her for him for his card.

My friend Kaetlyn likes to try to date all the girls at once in the game Harvest Moon,
so I drew her the main character of the game. I added a feather and sunglasses to make him more "pimp."

This last one was for a birthday card:

Sadly, I glued on the art so it sort of got bent.

I encourage everyone out there to try drawing cards for people!

MOON JELLY MONDAYS #7 - DOCTOR KILL

I'm just going to say it: Doctor Kill is nothing more than a figment of my immaturity.

I think skeletons are funny. I've always thought skeletons are funny.

I grew up on video games. If you've played enough video games, chances are you have fought a skeleton. They are the most common thing to show up in a video game, especially ones set in a fantasy-type setting.

The permanent smiles. The lack of flesh. The hollow areas of where eyeballs are supposed to be.

Skeletons are HILARIOUS to me.

I remember a kid, my mom used to get this catalog of party favors, and they had these skeleton keychains. I wanted one so badly, but the problem was that you can only buy them in bulk, and there was no way any parent would buy their kid a lot of 20 skeleton keychains. My friend, George, had one, and I was super jealous of him for years. (The dude ended up breaking it.)

So going back to Doctor Kill, the whole joke was basically this:

However, I wanted to make this skeleton even more ridiculous.

I was watching the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Frankenstein video games. He's commenting on how generic the name "Dark Warrior" was for one of the villains, and then quips:

"Then you fight Dark Warrior. Ooooooh. Scary name. How about 'Death Guy' or 'Mr Kill?"

These are purposely bad names. I played around this in my head for a few seconds on how I could possibly make this concept even worse. 

I began to think of Ed Wood's "Dr. Acula," and then it hit me: "Doctor Kill."

It's a dumb name, but man, do I feel that it can potentially be an iconic dumb name.

From there, the rest was history.

I drew a mock cover for Bloodwar X-Treme X-ecution Squad: 20XX, and I included "Doctor Kill" to the team. His design continued in the trend of 90's comics with kevlar body armor, wristbands, and elbow pads. The parts of his design that I feel make him stand out in regards to ridiculousness all stem from the fact that he is a doctor: a hospital standard issue name tag ID, a surgeon face mask, and a pair of daggers, which are supposed to be his operating tools. 

Lastly, I included a high-tech eyepatch scanner. Why? Because it's what's supposed to be a giveaway that this whole thing is a joke. Why would a skeleton with no eyes ever need such a thing?

I wanted to make Doctor Kill to be this thing that would come off as menacing and badass to a 7 year old, but if anyone were to really sit down and dissect it, it's really stupid. I wanted a recurring joke to be that while he is equipped with really intimidating and threatening looking knives, Doctor Kill is not a killer. Contrary to how deadly and terrifying his giant, sharp knives look, they bestow Doctor Kill with healing powers.

I believe this is a good place to stop. Next week: I will talk about the story of Doctor Kill.