"This city is heading for a disaster of biblical proportions."

- Dr. Peter Venkman

A behind the scenes peek at "Young Liar", the next piece to be included in my Comics Destroyer series.

The overall temperature throughout Chicagoland has been unseasonably warm for the middle of March, breaking all sorts of records for consecutive days 70 degrees or higher.  In fact, today's forecast should make it five-days-straight with temperatures reaching 80 degrees and up.

I don't know about you, but I'll certainly deal with a little human sacrifice and epic mass hysteria down the road if it means a few more days of working outside in this gorgeous weather.

Mere minutes after happily walking through the door with fresh canvas for my next Comics Destroyer painting, the mailman dropped off a copy of Brandon Graham's King City, recently collected into one massive 424-page volume.

Jasper insists he barked at the doorbell first, which apparently means he has dibs...

This is going to end badly.

MEETING NEIL IS EASY tends bar at your local DECAF PLANET every Tuesday and Thursday.

Head down.  Drink up.

Pencil, pen, gouache, color pencil and ink on bristol board.  8.5 x 11 inches.

A D D E N D U M _B _

Somewhere buried in a recent blog entry I may have prematurely mentioned that all future Comics Destroyer-related items would be posted primarily in their own exclusive home located at COMICSDESTROYER.COM...

Unfortunately, due to an uncontrollable rash of maniacal, egotistical and petty "irreconcilable" differences, I have now DIVORCED myself completely from that idea.

If you've had the chance to visit COMICSDESTROYER.COM over the last few weeks, you will now sadly discover that the original URL it forwarded you to has now gone kaput, kablooey, down for the count, down the tubes, down the drain and dead - as if millions of comics suddenly cried out in T E R R O R, and were suddenly silenced.

So whether you type or bookmark "COMICSDESTROYER.COM", "NEILKLEMZ.COM", or "MEETINGNEILISEASY.COM" into your web browser, all roads will lead you H E R E.

I apologize in advance for this heinous display of deceit, deception, and obvious misinformation.  But it's for your own good.

And I'm pretty sure there's plenty more where that came from.

T H A N K _ Y O U_ _ _ _

RISING ABOVE IT ALL...

DOOM!

DOOM!

DOOM!

"Torment" was the name of the first story arc that appeared in the first five-issues of the new ongoing Spider-Man comic book published by Marvel Comics in 1990.  Written and drawn by Todd McFarlane, the first issue would go on to sell approximately 2.65 million copies, a record at the time, and helped start the next wave of development in the "Modern Age" of comic books - most notably the formation of Image Comics and the speculator boom market of the mid-1990's.

About a month or so shy of my fifteenth-birthday, I was apparently the epitome of a total sucker and fool and an ideal target market candidate, as evidence by the M U L T I P L E copies of the entire "Torment" run recently discovered inside my comic bins.  Still meticulously zipped up and locked away in acid-free bags and boards, I even wrote "readable" on the ones I deemed okay enough to open up and look at, so not to ruin the potential $$$VALUE$$$ of my future "investment".

With a little patience, you can easily snag each one of these puppies today in mint to near-mint condition for barely a nickel above original face value. 

With that in mind, let me just get the heck out of the way and introduce to you my first LARGE -scale COMICS DESTRUCTION:

"Torment"

Multiple copies of Marvel Comics (1990) Spider-Man issues 1-5,

matte medium, gloss medium and enamel on canvas.  36 x 36 inches. 

Here's a slightly tighter shot zooming in just a little bit closer to the canvas.  Feel free to click on the images to enlarge:

Attached to this canvas in some form or fashion is the entire "Torment" storyline, and by "entire" I mean the ENTIRE storyline!  In total: five copies of Spider-Man #1, three copies of Spider-Man #2, and two each of issues 3 through 5.

I spent an entire day going through the whole story with a scissors and razorblade, one issue at a time, cutting each and every single panel out that I could.  For pages that were printed on both sides with story and art, I simply chose the ones I liked the most (duh).

Thank goodness for multiple pages of strategically placed advertisements!

I then took all of the individual panels and randomly glued them out of sequential order onto the canvas.  This would serve as the backdrop for all of the cover artwork, which were gathered and individually torn through a paper shredder, resulting in the "guts" that make up the majority of the piece. 

Here are some more detailed close-up, angles and perspectives as photographed by Andy Marfia:

We tried lighting and capturing it as best as we could as though it would appear hanging inside an art gallery - at least a gallery that would provide the mood specifications that I feel would work best. When I debuted this piece yesterday at Dan Con 2012, the first thing I noticed was that the large amounts of bright fluorescent lights saturating the room didn't do the depth of the piece any real justice.  And, to my surprise, the lights flattened it out to the point that even though there was this pretty HUGE three-by-three foot piece propped up standing behind me, not a whole lot of people noticed it.

But the feedback I did get from those who commented on it was awesome and I'm definitely looking forward to continuing this exploration of r(e)cycled comics as a predominant medium...

At least until the moment I realize that there is something potentially inherently wrong with this idea.

DOOM!

DOOM!

DOOM!

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and DESTROY comics... and I'm all out of bubblegum."

This SUNDAY, MARCH 4, I'll be appearing with Mikey at DAN CON 2012 in beautiful Orland Park, Illinois!

Feel free to stop by our tables and check out all the original artwork we'll have for sale, along with some other neat little treats, goodies and surprises!

This could all be lies, by the way.

For more information about DAN CON, please click HERE.