The Ink Stained Wretch #176 3/12/25

Fur Shur, Weird Jobs, More Emo!

It's time for another of those garish, gnarly, and ghastly gatherings of gossip that are these newsletters! This week our sketch has a totally bitchin' bod, we talk about some genuinely weird freelance gigs, and get all emo at the drawing board again... on with the 'Wretch!

Sketch o'the Week: Laraine Newman!

I'm still doing my "Saturday Night Live" character series and am working on the original cast. Since this past Saturday was "International Women's Day" I thought I'd wrap up the last of the ladies of the first "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" with the wonderful Laraine Newman!

Since this series is supposed to be famous SNL characters and not just cast members, I needed to pick a character that Laraine did that best represents her. That's a tough one because she had no single signature character but did so many different characters so well that she was not really identified by any one. She also famously resisted repeating characters on the show so it was partly by her own choice none of them had a chance to become household names.

There were only a few characters she did multiple appearances as. "Connie Conehead" was one she did many times but I already did Jane Curtin as a Conehead. "Christy Christina" was a bubble-headed bimbo character she played opposite Dan Ackroyd in a cable access channel talk show spoof a few times, but Laraine herself has stated that she doesn't understand why anyone found that character funny, so I nixed that one. I decided to draw her as "Sherry the Valley Girl", partly because that was a character she did play a few times (including revising the role in SNL's 40th anniversary show), but mostly because the character has a historical significance beyond the show. Laraine has been credited as introducing the "valley girl" accent and vernacular to the public consciousness with the Sherry character on SNL back in 1975. That was way before Frank and Moon Unit Zappa did the hit song in 1982, and of course before the 1983 movie no one but hard core Nicholas Cage fans remember.

Premium Subscribers- check out the video of me drawing Ms. Newman at the very bottom of this newsletter...

Freelancing Weirdness

Being a freelancer is seldom boring. While I do some of the same types of projects over and over, usually for the same client like the movie/TV parodies for MAD, sometimes I get jobs doing things that are way outside the wheelhouse. I've done art for beer labels, for people's tattoos, T-shirts for woodcarver's conventions, workplace safety posters, anti-drugs/smoking comic books for grade school kids, designs for 3-D caricature mugs of pro athletes, images for video games, illustrations for exhibits in libraries and museums... a lot of crazy things.

One of the strangest was being involved with a super hero spoof movie project back in 2008 called "Super Capers".

The movie itself was part of what made this job so odd. It was a small budget film that was basically privately financed by producer Ray Griggs, who was also the director, the writer, and played one of the characters in the film. Ray wrote this movie like a love letter to his childhood, filled with gag references to famous sci-fi and action films, comics, and pop-culture characters. One of the characters is a short robot that looks and talks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The superhero team's transportation in a time-traveling RV with a "Back to the Future" flux-capacitor and styling. That sort of thing abounds throughout the movie. The film also has a weird religious message/vibe to it that did not seem to fit what was basically a silly, corny joke film.

Ordinarily you would think such a movie would be filled with no name actors, but that's the weird thing... it was full of pretty recognizable (if not A list) actors. The cast included Justin Whalin ("Jimmy Olsen" in "Lois & Clark"), Michael Rooker ("Henry: Porter of a Serial Killer" and later "The Walking Dead" and "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Danielle Steele (a "scream queen" from movies like the “Halloween” sequels), Sam Lloyd (lawyer Ted Buckland on "Scrubs"), Jon Polito ("Homicide: Life on the Street"), Christine Lakin (CBS sitcom "Step by Step"), and a lot of other actors you'd recognize like Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Taylor Negron, Oliver Muirhead and others. There are also cameos/small roles by Tom Sizemore, June Lockhart, Clint Howard and Adam West! The film was full of familiar faces.

I'm not sure how Ray ended up getting in touch with me but he had me do a lot of different things for the film. I did these giant prop "oil paintings" of Michael Rooker's character, who was a very rich judge by day and the super villain "Dark Winged Vesper" by night. These paintings were hanging in the judge's chamber depicting him doing adventurous things but in a gag sort of way. Here's the two I did:

I also did art for a short sort-of animated segment in the film that was a flashback sequence, and for the movie title credits. In fact I storyboarded the credit sequence, and did art for the various elements needed. Here are the storyboards:

And here's how the credits looked in the film:

But the fun didn't stop there. I also ended up designing a small toy statuette for a giveaway, and a 13 page comic book that was a sort of sequel to the movie that was another promotional giveaway at Wondercon in 2009. That's where I sat at the movie's promotional book and signed the comic next to various stars of the film including Adam West... but that's a story for another day.

You never know where the next freelance job is coming from, what you are going to do, or who you are going to meet.

More Emo Art

Speaking of strange freelance jobs, I just did the art for another "Emo Nite" promo... this one a "swamp" theme:

If you go to the party, tell them Tom sent you… but don’t expect to not have to pay.

Thank you for being a subscriber! As always, if you liked what you saw please share it with others. Remember I'm always looking for feedback, questions for the mailbag, and suggestions for future Sketch o'the Week subjects. Just reply to this email with any of the above! And always remember... it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!