Where the Sidewalk Ends

I will have a piece in the 05Sep11 issue of the New Yorker. I suppose someone (Film Forum, Anthology Archives, Lincoln Center?) is showing the film “Where the Sidewalk Ends”? I don’t know. It was not explained to me what this was for. I was simply asked to illustrate a piece regarding the noir film “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” It is quite different than the Shel Silverstein book of the same name, and came before it.

The film was directed by Otto Preminger who also did the classic junkie film “The Man with the Golden Arm” starring Frank Sinatra. And, for all you graphic design historians, featuring titles designed by the great Saul Bass.

I had never seen the film before so I watched it this weekend. The scene I came up with does not actually occur in the movie, but I wanted something that hinted at some drama and had a relatively dynamic composition without slavishly copying an actual scene. Also I was asked to include the two main characters if possible.

If you have never seen the film I recommend it as a well crafted noir. But the ending is a bit too contrived and unconvincing. The actions of the main character implied a resolution that was more fatalistic than the mildly syrupy redemption he was granted. Sure, he didn’t mean to be bad, but he was a brute to the core and should have met a brutish fate.

The Hooded Utilitarian Poll

Comics blog the Hooded Utilitarian just conducted a best comics poll recently. I took part with my top ten list, which you can see here. And you can see the overall poll results here.

Thanks to Mr. Robert Stanley Martin for inviting me to participate and the massive amount of work he had to do to consolidate, calculate, organize, and display the results.

 I have been really surprised at how many great looking comics I have never heard of have been turned up by reading the other participants’ top tens. I think this was a really worthwhile project. Go check it out!

Nearing the end of “Severed Limbs”

Well, it suddenly occurred to me. I am near the end of my second book, “Severed Limbs”. The first draft at least. I have been working on it, more and less, for the past three years already. There have been many other, less ambitious, projects in between, but I started it before I had quite finished “The Moth or the Flame”. So, to be this close is quite exciting for me.

I have one more scene to complete on the first draft. And then, by my calculations, a few months of revisions. Hopefully the book will be complete and looking for publication by early next year. But, unless something catastrophic occurs, it definitely will be ready by next Spring.

Here is the final page of the next to final scene. Some of Fred’s encounters are reverberating through his mind, while he is also worried he may have made a drastic mistake in his course of action.

(This page has already been slightly revised. I scanned in an earlier version just to get a sense of what it would look like fully inked and that is what you are seeing.)