It's Fantastic!

It's the first collaboration between Jeff Tuffenstuff and Chew! It's Flex Fantastic ... a hero's journey through murky, nebulous and watery folds to find his sidekick, Klepto the flying-wonder-dog! This is the one that started it all. Buy it and finally read what everyone is hardly talking about ... Oh Vey!

The Daddy of all Sequels ...

The epic collaboration between Chew and Jeff that reached a climax so chilling, so powerful ... well, okay. Maybe it's not that chilling. In fact, our hero Flex Fantastic isn't even in half of the book. But a city gets destroyed, a goddess is reborn and we introduce S.M.A.C.K.: the sorriest and worst bunch of super powered men ever assembled. Oh, plus there's a special cameo from an old friend. And our fan-favorite ... Klepto the dog. Ruff' said.

Flying to the vet ...

The very first panel of the glorious and infamous Flex Fantastic Comic: Doggone Troubles Part One in full color. We ended up using this image as a poster for our table at Fluke. Book Two is in progress and Chew just finished a very disturbing close-up of a villain named ... The Snoz. It puts his rendition of Princess Bertha (please see the earlier "How ah Met Your Mother" posts) to shame. I imagine we will post something new from the second issue of Flex on this blog soon. I'm thinking perhaps an entire sequence instead of just one panel. What scene? Just wait and see ...

- Jeff Tuffenstuff

Shanks a lot

Well, I just finished watching Zombie Holocaust along with my meal of a personal microwave pizza and a Celebrator (that's an expensive beer with a high alcohol content! i just need one...then i'm done). What a crappy movie. It is a total ripoff of Fulci's Zombie as well as Slave of the Cannibal God. Much sillier (and tamer) than C.Ferox. Besides...pizza? I'm sooo glad I own this movie!
Well, I felt that Jeff's breakthrough panel in Flex 2 has been the watering scene. That's the one where Klepto urinates on his master's other leg. The formalistic panels have been utilized and now it's time to have fun! I feel the same way about this panel. This was the first one of mine that truly made me laugh. I like a couple of the other ones that I did...but this is the first that i really ENJOYED.
Wow, that's some high alcohol content. It was a simple matter of having fun with this one. I think that the panel that Jeff did after mine, then my response to his...is proof that we are probably going to get in trouble for something because it's starting to get really, really crazy. And I do'nt mean like you have just fallen into a pit of pit vipers crazy, but you've stumbled into a dark alley at 3 in the morning and the figures skulking around you are not gangbangers but clowns-kinda crazy. What's gonna happen now? Is that really a shoe??? Oh somebody stop me!!!

- Chew

A simple misunderstanding ...

About 13 or 14 years ago in college, I submitted a class project (a still life or a self portrait - I can't remember which) to a state fair art show. If the piece was selected, the artist would receive free tickets to the fair, could attend a small banquet and get his/her biography and artist's statement printed in a publication which would be distributed to all fair attendees. At the time, there wasn't a huge outlet for young, hopeful and aspiring wanna-be fine artists to showcase their work in our area. So when my piece was selected, I was ecstatic. When the publication arrived in the mail, I, of course, brought it to class to show all of my classmates ... and my professor. When I wrote the artist's statement, I wanted to be honest. I wanted to explain why I was compelled to make art. "Love to draw, huh?"asked my professor as he finished reading the statement out loud ... and proceeded to make fun of it and chastise me in front of everyone.

It stung.

Looking back on that moment, I should have done what every other artist did and still does... make up an explanation that uses big, smart sounding words that say nothing at all - a justification for creation - to appease the critics and the masses.

It took me a few days to write this post. I see this blog as an opportunity to share my process. The ideas that go into each panel. And I try really hard to sound smart. But I have to do this. Against my better judgement. I've decided to try honesty again ...

I wanted to draw Klepto peeing on Flex's leg.

- Jeff Tuffenstuff

Bad Dog!

Here it is! The first panel for Flex Fantastic 2. I want to apologize for the week long hiatus. Chewt's computer is experiencing problems so it will be a while before he can post anything. No worries. We'll find a way around it.

For anyone who read the first issue of Flex Fantastic, we left several dangling plot lines which we will try to resolve in this issue. I really didn't want to spend an entire issue of Flex trying to find Klepto. We did that in the first one. I thought it would be interesting to play on the "gap" between the two issues and have Flex catch up with Klepto in this panel. Now we can move the story along and concentrate on getting Flex and Klepto back home. I can't wait to deal with Shecky the clown. For those of you who haven't had a chance to read the first issue, Matt and I will offer the comic for sale on this blog very soon.

- Jeff Tuffenstuff