The Ink Stained Wretch #188 6/4/25

Tomb Raiders, Zombies, and More MAD Animation!

It's time for yet another of the absurd, abysmal, annoying bits of apathy that are these newsletters! This week we mail it in with a classic sketch of a new quinquagenarian, share a really dead freelance story, and share another MAD animated short...on with the 'Wretch!

Sketch o'the Week: Angelina Jolie!

Well, it finally happened. After 187 episodes of "The Ink Stained Wretch" I am finally so far behind on so many jobs all seemingly due within days of each other this week I have no time to do a new "Sketch o'the Week". Thus I am resorting to posting a (very) old classic sketch of birthday girl Angelia Jolie, who turns 50 today. I originally did this sketch in 2006 when she was a sprite 31, and I made the following observations about her:

Angelina is far too thin, with sinewy, bony arms and weirdly bulging joints. She seems to have these huge, flappy, Gollum hands that are all knots and veins that hang at the ends of her arms. Her hands appear so big and heavy that they weigh down her ultra-thin arms as if she can’t lift them.

That all pretty much still applies, except she now has 23 children.

Ms. Jolie also starred in the first ever movie parody Desmond Devlin and I teamed up on for MAD. That was the cringe-inducing titled ""Lotta Crotch: Bazoom Raider" in MAD #410, Oct 2001. Here's the splash page for that one:

I've tried very hard to make sure I deliver something new and (hopefully) some interesting stories and thoughts each week with the 'Wretch, so I am disappointed in myself this week. I promise next week I'll have a new "Monty Python" sketch... if these freelance jobs don't kill me that is.

Zombie Comics

Back in 2018 I did the pencils/inks on this 48 page comic for Sitcomics called “Z-People”, a humorous zombie story written and published by television comedy writer Darin Henry. Originally I was going to do pencils, inks and color on everything but the comic ended up being 48 pages of story and in the interest of getting it done and out on time, colorist K Michael Russell came on board to do the color work. I colored the cover and the first page below, and did pencils and inks for the rest of the comic:

Darin loves comics and wanted to publish a series of titles he called "Binge Books", which were 64 page supersized complete stories he marketed as "TV You Read". These were complete with "commercials" AKA short gag ads that would break up the main story. Darin thought he could do an end-around on the comic book publishing system by self-distributing his comics direct to retailers.

That did not go as planned, so he ended up signing up with comic book distributor Diamond, which was the only distributor left standing at that time with Marvel and DC both doing their own distribution. He's still producing some titles, but of course since Diamond went bankrupt he's back to self distribution.

I only ever did this one comic for him. It was fun but unsustainable as an ongoing project. Here are a few more pages. If you are wondering what the green splotches are, it’s a prototype cure for the zombie virus that ended up working as camouflage, making those covered in it of no interest to the infected :

MAD About Animation

Here's another of the shorts I worked on for the animated MAD show on Cartoon Network... a straight up spoof of the TV show "Glee":

Coincidentally I did the art on the MAD parody of the show as well, with an even more cringe-inducing title:

Regular Subscriber? That's it for another lame issue of the 'Wretch! Thank you for subscribing! 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, or leave a comment on Substack! And always remember... it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!