Sam Kieth, My Seven Worst Jobs, #3: “Mr. Monster short story. This was an experiment I used to try, drawing very tiny then blowing up the art in photocopies. It worked when I tried it later in Maxx. It didn't work here. Apologies to Mr. Monster creator Michael T. Gilbert who just scratched his head when he saw it.”

Sam kieth said in an interview, or on his blog, that he did indeed draw this small then photocopied it and blew it up. He said the creator of Mr. Monster, Michael T. Gilbert, was confused by it.

In the editorial section of this issue, Gilbert explains that Kieth went for an intentionally minimalist style with his story by drawing the pages small and then enlarging/reducing the art until that muddy style became more apparent. Whether it was doctored or not after the fact isn't noted but the weird, pixelated style seems to have been Kieth's intent for this story.

The only letter I ever had printed in a comic was The Maxx # 6 (the one with Mako on the cover) where I surmised that the Maxx was a giant rabbit, and Sam's response was something like "Maybe you're on to something...".

Sam Keith always has some interesting experimentation on his comics. I remember he had a blogpost about an early Dr. Strange parody comic he did with a hyper detailed moon in it but instead of doing all that tedium of drawing it out he blew up a picture of something like a sponge with a scanner to get these really gnarly textures (though it might've been in the post an orange or some sandwich bread idk)

Would LOVE a Michael T. Gilbert shoot interview! Also… Bill Morrison and Bongo comics!

I love Sam Kieth art and still follow his blog! This will be a great episode 👏

My first guess was something scanned at 72 DPI and blown up to print size. I used to deal with that mistake when I worked in print production a lot.

This also reminds me of when you screw up digital colouring and move the colour layer above the linework.

Great episode guys. Cool to see that Max the Hare strip since that issue of Primer is prohibitively expensive. A suggestion for an episode if you want to look at much more early Kieth stuff is the two issue Fantagraphics series “I Before E”, which collects tons of his early stuff. And that other Fanta comic Jim mentioned is Wandering Stars. That’s a beautiful comic and one I wish had made it past the one single issue.

I’m not an artist, so I actually thought this was really cool art to me

@peanuthowe

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it is cool art

@thecerebralcreationsstatio9507

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I think it looks great!

The comic feels like it's trying to emulate a vibe similar to an old, beat up, low budget sci fi film.

When I first started experimenting with digital art in the late 90s, I was obsessed with the idea of working inverse (filling out white spaces on black.) I'd kinda get the same effect as this has. Just big, blobby, chunky shapes, and random spots of crisp texture work when I could be bothered giving something a second pass. It's a really tedious way of drawing.

I'm about 50/50 on whether I think the "fax machine look" is a mistake or an intentional experiment. I'd be curious to know. Nowadays the photo-copied aesthestic is a whole thing, artists trying to make their work look more like punk rock zines (see the Young Animal books design stuff and the backmatter/promo pages). I see it a lot in tabletop RPGs too.

It reminds me of poorly reproduced golden age comics. I found a collection of classic mystery comics and the ink lines were all heavy and sloppy. Like the guys drew it small and blew it up.

cool episode. I love Sam Keith my favorite image he drew is of batman and commissioner gordon looking out a window by a gargoyle and gordon is smoking. its in secret origins Gotham villains its a penguin story. such a neat image of Gordon

@dem0n0maniac

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Kieth does a fantastic Gordon

writer Paul Jenkins was an editor at Tundra and has fascinating stories. You guys should do an interview with him. Particularly since he has a first hand account of Big Numbers.

I wonder if this is just a zine style story that they bought and then tried to upscale and fill in the layouts to standard comic size. Like if you only had access to the printed zine, no Keith to fill it in for you and you are making due by spamming the aliens over and over and that old school photoshop scaling effects that look like a fax machine.

Sam Kieth's art will always fascinating to me.

Yessss!

IKR

Photocopier

Off the topic but I noticed the the pre order for hip hop family tree jumped up in price. From $50. To $67. Just saying if you are still thinking it you might just want to pull the trigger on it and get it now.

Lol, reading Wolverine Blood Hungry!

I feel like Sam is just trying some shit out... it's not exactly working, but you can sort of see the intent.

Reminds me of Jeff Bonivert.

It looks like a badly digital copy off a old computer screen

drawn small then enlarged

Yeahhh... no. I mean, it's fine to experiment, of course, but to publish this? Yeesh.