SpongeBob Worthy

I drew a short story in SPONGEBOB COMICS #10, on sale tomorrow, 7/11. It's a wacky and weird tale of Plankton, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, and was written by James Kochalka. Swim on over to your local comic book store and grab a copy!

Under the Cover

Woo hoo! I drew the cover for SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR #15 — on sale June 27th. It features Radioactive Man and Plasmo, and depicts a story drawn by artist Frank Brunner. You can read about the issue on the Bongo Comics website, here.

Get Wild

UPDATE: There will be an online auction of all the The Bats for Cats artwork. It will be run by the good folks at the Wildcat Sanctuary, and it will probably be held in a month or so. When I have the info I will post details of where and when.


A lot of the Bats for Cats art will be raffled off today and tonight at the benefit for the Wildcat Sanctuary,  being held at the Northdown Cafe and Taproom, 3244 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL. I originally thought there would be an art auction, but now I'm not so sure. Here's the Facebook page for the event. It is sponsored and co-hosted by 3 Floyds, Surly, & Mikkeller breweries, and they will be tapping lots of special beers. This is a benefit for the Wildcat Sanctuary, a non-profit, no-kill facility providing sanctuary to wild cats in need & actively involved in ending the private ownership of exotic animals. The goal is to raise at least $5000, which would feed two tigers for a year.

Just the Bats, Ma'am.

This Wednesday at 8:00pm I'll be at BATS FOR CATS, a Drink & Draw at the Northdown Cafe and Taproom, 3244 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. Some of the city's most talented artists (and I) will be doing Batman themed sketches, with all proceeds going to benefit The Wildcat Sanctuary. Come on by and have a drink and watch us draw like trained monkeys. Poster by the talented Tom Kelly.

Texas Toasted

TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN (Joseph H. Lewis, 1958)

Well, it was another great night at the Portage Theater in Chicago, with a beautiful mint 35 mm print of a terrific film. With its storyline of a community crumbling from fear and intimidation, in danger of falling prey to divide-and-conquer tactics, the script by blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo makes an obvious reference to the McCarthy hearings. But the plot is shared by many westerns. What's unusual is the slow build and heavy sense of dread, set up in part by the pre-credits flash-forward to the climactic showdown (which I'll return to later).

TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN has a quiet intensity, with a minimalist score and repeated, rhythmic theme, and the stark, underpopulated feel that permeates many low budget films. But the intensity goes further, extending to Hayden's performance as the Swedish whaler, George Hansen. The actor fills the screen with his lumbering physicality, at times seething with repressed emotion. By far the most interesting character is Crayle, the brooding, black-clad gunman played by Nedrick Young. The personification of the pall that hangs over the entire film, Crale carries death and doom in his tired gait and equally black worldview. His perverse relationship with his companion Molly (Carol Kelly) recalls other such sexually twisted and charged couples in director Lewis's GUN CRAZY and THE BIG COMBO.



The pre-credits flash-forward I referred to earlier is effective, but is also a bit odd in a feature. It is likely it was inspired by the technique to hook viewers used in television shows at the time. But its novelty made me wonder if it was planned in pre-production by Lewis, or added later in the editing by the producer.

Reaching the Summit City

This Saturday I'll be at Summit City Comic Con, a comic book show in beautiful downtown Fort Wayne Indiana. Please stop by and say hello and I'll draw you a sketch. I'm arriving Friday night to catch a game of Fort Wayne's minor league baseball team, the TinCaps.

Free Willy-Nilly

This year's Cinco de Mayo is also FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!!  I'll be signing comics and doing sketches at Vigilante Press, a comic book store in Chicago. Other artists attending are Jim Terry, Andrew Kudelka, Don Wood, and John Ashton Golden. The store opens at noon, but please check with them for the exact hours of the event. I'll be there getting there sometime between 1 and 2 PM. Weather permitting they'll be showing movies in the backyard starting at 8PM.

Vigilante Press
1931 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago IL
(between Damen Ave & Winchester Ave)

(312) 423-6774

Pros and Con

This coming weekend, April 13-15, 2012, I'll be at C2E2, which is located on the lakefront in beautiful downtown Chicago, in the North building of McCormick Place. Stop by and say hi.

I'll be sitting at table L21 in Artist Alley, right next to pals Tony Moore and Rick Remender, so I won't have a moment's peace. I'm sharing my table with fellow Chicago artist Juan Arévalo. My comics art will be on display and for sale, and I'll be doing sketches. I'll also be signing comics, both at my table as well as the Chicago Comics booth 250, on Saturday night, from 6 to 7 pm. Several pieces of my art will be in a charity auction being held Saturday night. See my previous post on C2E2 for details.

Jean Giraud, R.I.P.

Jean Giraud, 8 May 1938 -- 10 March 2012

Along with many others I was asked to answer two questions about Jean Giraud for a Spanish comics website, Zona Negativa. It is well worth reading these heartfelt tributes and reminiscences from a wide-ranging list of international comics artists. And my comments were also translated into Spanish.

What are your first recollections related to Moebius work?

I first discovered Jean Giraud in the 1970s, as Gir. His Lt Blueberry was a brilliant addition to the grand tradition of European comics illustration, as well as the greatest "spaghetti western" in the medium. But then came his work as Moebius, which seemed to spring from some new, uncharted place.

How did Moebius work influence your own style, or even your understanding of the medium?

As a young artist I tried to draw like Moebius, and I especially loved the intensely rich colors he used on Arzach. But what has stayed with me the most is the clarity of his visual storytelling. He always chose the perfect angle to view each panel. Sometimes dramatically shifting perspective, sometimes jumping forward in the narrative, yet the reader was never lost, was always grounded.

To my mind, Moebius was the first artist since Jack Kirby to create an entirely new world in comics. Both strange and familiar, it is a place both futuristic and specific, not schematic: it feels worn and lived in, cluttered with background and details that suggest a thousand stores which could head in almost any direction. A true genius. A visionary.

Hilary Barta

Ghost Artists in the Sky

Here's a Ghost Rider piece that I penciled and Jim Terry inked while I was having a beer at a Drink 'n' Draw. Jim is a terrific artist, and added a nice grittiness to the inks. He's Old School, and used a dip brush in real india ink--something you rarely see these days, especially at a bar! I'm looking forward to doing more stuff together. Be sure to look for Jim's comics, The Underneath and Lie Down Low: Bricks and Mortar. His website is woundedbutdangerous.com.

The original art for this piece, brush and ink on Strathmore bristol board, will be auctioned to benefit St. Jude Children's Hospital at C2E2 in Chicago, Saturday, April 14, 7:15PM - 9:15PM. Room S401d.

You can view all the art in the auction on the C2E2 site, here.

Oh say can you C2E2

© 2012 Hilary Barta

I'll be attending the C2E2 comic book convention April 13 -15. The show is held on the lakefront in beautiful downtown Chicago. You'll find all the details at their website, here. I needed a new color piece for the table display, and Jason Millet was kind enough to paint the moody color for this piece. Click to enlarge that sucker.

You Can't Beat Bongo

                © 2011 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. The Simpsons TM & © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Here's a page from a 3-page Bart Simpson story called "Bart's Short Cut". This is the 8 1/2 X 11" pencil "rough" on typing paper, which was then blue-lined onto a Strathmore board for inking. I still prefer to attack a story in pencil directly on the boards, but this process has made it easier to weather the changes requested from editors and art directors on licensed characters. And it's easier to correct my own mistakes and make adjustments. On this page I had to move the background building in the last panel, and was able to manipulate it on the computer instead of erasing and redrawing. Also, as I've mentioned before, it makes inking a heck of a lot easier with no pencils to erase.

Due here any day is the script for my next Bongo project, a story for this fall's Treehouse of Horror, written by Doug Moench.  This will be my first time working with Doug, and I can't wait to see what he's come up with. In other Barta-Bongo Comics news, my story "The Big Finish" was just published in Simpsons Comics #185. available in comic stores now!

Monster Mag

© 2012 Hilary Barta

This is a cover I drew for Cartoon Loonacy. CL is an "APA-zine", a membership only quarterly zine self-published by and for cartoonists. This was the cover for the "Monster Issue".

Christmas at 45 RPM

Image © 2011 Barta

Line art for good pal Gordon Flagg's annual X-Mas novelty song cd. This year's tracks were culled from his collection of vintage vinyl. Merry Christmas to all from the Surly Hack!

Fuzzy, Wuz he?

This was drawn as a cover for the mini comic Slam-Bang. Big Bill Wray influence in the space dude, along with the usual Wally Wood 50s Chevy stylings.

EC for HB, See?

Image © 2011 Barta

Here's an old, possibly unpublished piece from somewhere or other.  Might have appeared in Sketch magazine.  Happy Halloween!

The Wrath of Con

So I went to Wizard's Chicago Comicon after taking a year off. I wasn't going to go, but my pal Mark Nelson flew in from Houston to attend the show, and Steve Shamus was nice enough to comp me a table, so I relented. Missing Thursaday night, I sat in Artist Alley for three long days. And...and I had a great time. It was a very loong weekend, what with the commute back to the city each evening for Noir City Chicago at the Music Box, but I was glad that I made the effort. I met Ian Boothby and Kyle Hotz and a lot of other talented folks, and Artist Alley seemed to be hopping this year. So I'll be back next year. See you there!

The Yellowed Kid

Here's a page I haven't seen in a looong time. It's the last page from the second issue of my Plastic Man mini-series that someone was selling online. The inks are by John Nyberg. Willie Schubert niftily lettered the script by Phil Foglio, from a plot by Phil, Doug Rice and yours surly. That's The Barker leading the way. Like Plas and his sidekick Woozy Winks, he's another character created in the 1940s by the great Jack Cole. As always, click on the image to enlarge.

Come to Chicago and See Rosemont

Four days of fun and frivolity with an endless array of actors and actresses, professional wrestlers, and me, a lonely comic book artist. Come by artist alley and rescue me!

The Usual Simpsons

© 2011 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. The Simpsons TM & © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

These are 8 1/2" X 11" pencil roughs for my latest Simpsons story, "The Big Finish". It stars Grampa Simpson, and it's a riff on a certain cult crime movie that you just might have seen. And it's connected to the issue's cover by Sergio Aragones, who also appears in the story as a 'Simpsonized' character! The story is scheduled to appear in The Simpsons Comics #185, solicited next month, out in December.


© 2011 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. The Simpsons TM & © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.