The final installment of BEARDO, by Dan Dougherty, is now available as a print.
BEARDO, the long-running humor comic strip about family life by Dan Dougherty, has reached its end. Dan Dougherty is one of the finest cartoonist/illustrators in the business. He has all the qualities and skills that make him a professional: a strong work ethic, dedication to craft, and steadfast persistence. These darn cartoons don’t get drawn by themselves, folks. It takes a special person to see it through and make it all look so effortless. The above comic strip is a prime example.
The final installment of BEARDO, by Dan Dougherty, is now available as a print. Visit Dan and pick up your print right here. And, while you’re visiting Dan at his site, you’ll discover all the other work he’s been up to including a thrilling comic book series, TOUCHING EVIL, and his band, On the Off Chance.
I just reviewed a work by fellow cartoonist Dan Dougherty. And I feel a separate post is in order to let folks know about Dan’s band, On The Off Chance. I have heard their music and this feisty band out of Chicago is a lot of fun! Check out some samples for yourself at the band’s Kickstarter, going on through March 23rd, right here.
I am listening to “Payday” as I write this and its rockabilly vibe has put me in a very good mood. This is a band definitely on the rise. Later this year, with a little help from their friends, they will be releasing some very cool music videos that include the talents of Joel Murray (Mad Men), Jim O’Heir (Parks and Recreation) and David Pasquesi (Veep)!
On The Off Chance
A note from the band:
And as to the album itself? It’s the best thing we’ve ever made in all of our years as musicians. It’s eleven original songs written by either Dan or Steve, with beautiful harmonies, powerful lyrics, and hooks to spare.
The album is already recorded, mixed and mastered at the band’s own expense. The album art is complete and ready to print. The campaign funds go towards printing and shipping this special vinyl edition. As you will see among the reward options, you can choose whatever fits best your musics needs: CD, digital download, or vinyl, plus some other goodies.
As of today, Dan’s Kickstarter for the debut album of his band, On The Off Chance, has surpassed the $2,000 milestone of its $3,500 goal! This campaign ends on March 23rd. You can support the campaign by visiting right here.
Dan Dougherty is an award-winning author and illustrator. He is known for his humor comic strip, BEARDO, as well as various genre comic books. TOUCHING EVIL is an ongoing supernatural thriller series. It has an otherworldly quality about it that will compel you to keep reading. Dougherty has recently collected the first seven issues into one volume. Here is a taste of what you can expect in the following review. I also got a chance to chat with Dan for a bit at Emerald City Comicon and we did a quick video interview that you can check out at the end.
Panel excerpt from TOUCHING EVIL
Getting back to TOUCHING EVIL, there is much to say. First off, Dougherty has an uncanny way, both with his writing and his drawing, of calibrating a moment. Let me set this up. Our main character, Ada, is a beautiful and vibrant woman in the prime of life. She has a promising career as an attorney. She has a teenage son. And then, one day, she is assigned a task that results in a tragic outcome of supernatural proportions. When this happens, it seems oddly inevitable.
Essentially, Ada has the power of life or death over anyone with dark intentions. She touches them. They die. Meanwhile, her son has taken to wearing these black leather gloves with skeleton fingers. All this leads up to a pivotal moment: in order to secure she doesn’t accidently kill her own troubled son, Ada manages to slip on her son’s gloves before she hugs him. This is one of those masterful Dougherty moments: a sorrowful mother, her skeletal hands resting on the back of her son.
Page excerpt from TOUCHING EVIL
This is some wild story, if I haven’t made that clear yet. It gets under your skin, burrows its way in. Think The Twilight Zone meets Breaking Bad. It’s a certain vibe that hooks you in. Dougherty revels in well-placed details that later on elaborately blow up. A key aspect to the curse that Ada inherits is that anyone who she ends up executing by touch is a new soul who inhabits her mind. The death count mounts, as you may expect, and it gets crowded in Ada’s head. There’s a play within a play going on. Or you can think of it as a horror version of “Being John Malkovich.” Parts horror, cerebral, and offbeat humor, this is a highly engaging graphic novel.
Page excerpt from TOUCHING EVIL
And I get back to how Dougherty draws. His style is clean and crisp. Dougherty can make you believe you’re in a scary penitentiary and you’re walking down to its scariest section, The Ghost Room. He will make you believe in ghosts, demons, and being trapped in hell. And, without a doubt, you’ll get wrapped up in Ada’s plight.
Page excerpt from TOUCHING EVIL
Dan Dougherty is one of those talents in comics who is doing everything right. Well, that’s certainly an understatement. Whatever Dougherty does, it is going to continue to work out well. Maybe he’ll just follow a Jeff Smith model and keep building up what’s he doing on his own. He is an exciting talent and I highly recommend that you seek out this very intriguing work.
TOUCHING EVIL by Dan Dougherty
TOUCHING EVIL VOL. 1: THE CURSE ESCAPES is a full color 240-page graphic novel written and illustrated by Dan Dougherty.
Colors: Kanila Tripp and Wesley Wong
Cover art: Tom Kelly, with interior covers by Stephen Bryant
Additional inks: Monica Ras
This limited edition 240-page hardcover collects issues 1-7, as well as a never-before-seen bonus story, pinup gallery with art from Ryan Browne, Andrew Dimitt, Tom Kelly, and Doug Klauba! Read “season one” of Touching Evil in its most beautiful presentation!
Dan Dougherty is an accomplished cartoonist and illustrator who can handle anything from humor to horror and, believe it or not, a mashup of the two. His latest project takes a decidedly dramatic and intriguing tone, a tale about a woman with a most disturbing version of the Midas Touch, now available at Beardocomics.com.
In his own words, Dan provides the details:
I’m proud to announce an exciting new project: Touching Evil. It’s the first comic book I’ve fully written since Cyclone Bill and the Tall Tales. It’s also the first time that I’ve had my illustrations colored by a professional. Wesley Wong has done color work for years, most notably on the Marvel Masterworks series. He inked and colored Touching Evil, and has really taken my work to a new level that I couldn’t reach on my own.
So what is Touching Evil? The quick pitch is this: “An unsuspecting single mother stumbles upon an ancient curse. As the bearer of the curse, she can kill anyone simply with the touch of her hand – provided that the person is evil.”
If that piques your interest, that’s only the beginning! For not only does she have the dilemma of being a defense attorney, she is also completely unprepared to carry something so powerful. And power has a funny way of attracting those who want it. And those who want it tend to do whatever it takes to get it.
The first story arc of Touching Evil will be five to six issues in length, and – if it is successful – will be the basis for an ongoing series. As you can imagine, this idea is ripe with possibilities.
But before I get too carried away with it, I need to begin at the beginning. And I’m hoping you’ll join me for the ride. Issue one of Touching Evil is now available on my website, http://www.beardocomics.com/store. It’s only $5 plus shipping, and if you order it, I’ll throw in a copy of issue one of Cyclone Bill and the Tall Tales, which is long since out of print.
If you DO order it, follow the prompts on the order form. Once you see the screen that gives you your order number and says, “Your order has been correctly sent and will be processed as soon as possible,” then just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the “Buy Now” button that will take you to Paypal. You don’t need a Paypal account to pay, it will take a credit card.
I’ve attached the cover image (done by Stephen Bryant) for issue one to show you the kind of quality that went into this book.
Sarah Palin? Are you around to help? Tarnation! The whole country has bust a nut in this Zombie Western graphic novel. But, don’t you worry, it’s the latter 1800’s and, nope, dinosaurs weren’t roaming the Earth. It’s the time of, well, think of John Wayne, yeah that time, the time of the Westerns. Maybe your great-great-grandma could help. We shall see. We shall all see in, “ROTTEN VOLUME TWO: REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.”
The U.S. presidential election of 1876 was supposed to be both a celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the United States of America and a time to move forward. Instead, the hotly contested election threw the country into a panic and nearly caused a second American Civil War. Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen to become president in a backroom deal. Samuel Tilden, who won a clear majority of the popular vote, was shut out. Mark Rahner and Robert Horton take that rather acrid period in American history and propose that a sickness took root in the young and struggling country that spawned a series of outbreaks of the living dead. The latest collection of their zombie comic book, “Rotten” lays out in gorey detail just what happens when the zombies come marching home.
“Rotten Volume Two: Revival of the Fittest” draws us closer to these creatures. Apparently, there are a variety of species, with each new discovery seeming to be more fierce than the last. Back then, they were to be known as “revenants.” That’s the best name that Agent J.J. Flynn can come up with, something taken from the Bible. Not to say that he’s anywhere near religious himself. He’s more the pragmatist, much like his partner, William Wade. Funny thing is, that old time religion keeps finding its way into this story. With one “revenant” outbreak after another, there’s always a charlatan ready to exploit the situation in the name of God like a Bill O’Reilly-type character or a Glenn Beck-type character. The first leads a charge against Charles Darwin. The second, the Glenn Beck-like one, gets the spotlight as a dim witted yet conniving con artist leading a town down a road to hell.
Much of the appeal of “Rotten” is how it has managed to construct a perfect backdrop for total mayhem. It doesn’t take itself too seriously either. There’s the political satire but it strikes like a cobra, it doesn’t whine. Then there’s the sheer majesty of zombies let loose on the Wild West. You’ve got the two agents, serving under orders from the President of the United States, Flynn and Wade, and it’s up to them to make sense of what’s going on and take out as many zombies while they’re at it. Flynn, the guy with the cool eye specs, does most of the research. Wade, the guy with the mile wide grimace, does most of the ass kicking.
It’s great to see these two characters develop over the course of this book. Flynn is the intellectual. He is certainly capable of doing battle with zombies but he’s even better at a battle of wits. He spends a good chunk of time in conversation with Charles Darwin and his colleagues debating the possibility of the living dead. He also makes a lady friend, the owner of a rather curious Chicago restaurant that specializes in a most robust and unique sausage. Wade, on the other hand, is a lit fuse ready to blow. He could battle zombies in his sleep. And he’s doing a lot of that in the Pacific Northwest, where new zombie outbreaks have his hands full. But he too, has some time for pleasure. There’s a hint that he may get a chance once more to pursue the beautiful wife of the owner of the notorious Hep (Can you say, Halliburton?) Industries. Oh, but wait, Flynn’s lady friend, Minnie, was an old flame of Wade’s. Hmm, that complicates things.
There are a number of awesome scenes in this book, much to the credit of the book’s artist, Dan Dougherty. They will take your breath away. Let me share the one extended scene that I can come back to over and over and that I want to see in a “Rotten” movie. That’s the scene where Wade has a whole town’s worth of zombie mob crazy after him. These things can really haul ass. And they’re as determined as pit bulls. We see Wade high tail it into the woods, into the fields, down a log chute, into a stream, and those things are still after him! Finally, out of nowhere, a grizzly bear appears roaring his head off and charging after Wade. With one last forceful push, Wade gets a hook into a tree with one of his trusty zombie spikes and climbs his way to safety. The grizzly tears into the zombies. And then the zombies tear into the grizzly bear. Yes, total mayhem ensues as only “Rotten” can provide.
Dan Dougherty is a master illustrator. He creates endless variations of zombies, a multitude of facial expressions, an amazing array of anatomical contortions. This is some of the most inventive stuff going on today in horror and in comics in general. When was the last time you saw a zombie dislocate a horse’s jaw? Right. That’s just one fine reason to pick up this book. You want to read the story that goes along with that zombie dislocating that horse’s jaw.
I’ve been keeping up with “Rotten” from the very beginning and I am confident that we can expect more awesome zombie goodness ahead. The book leaves us with some tantalizing loose ends. For one thing, there’s this strange albino bounty hunter type who is in closely following what the agents are up to. In fact, he is following way too close. And then there’s that restaurant back in Chicago. There’s something really wrong with that meat. It’s no spoiler to tell you this but THAT’S ZOMBIE MEAT! What the consequences are for Flynn, who ate quite of bit of that special sausage, are up for grabs. So, for now, grab yourself a copy of this latest collection. It will definitely satisfy and leave you wanting more, although it may put you off from eating sausage, at least for little while. If you read “Rotten,” then you probably like sausage too much to give up. Anyway, I digress. The book collects all the recent issues of “Rotten,” from number 7 thru 11. The last two issues are new, never before published material. It is 156 pages. Find it at your local comics shop for $15.99 or go check in on Mr. Rahner’s site for more details on where you can get your hands on “Rotten.”
