contact for correspondence and custom art jobs, etc: nat.rain@gmail.com

 

I've been watchin' a lot of baseball this spring, and have been noticing MLB's City Connect alternate uniforms..

City Connect logo that embodies an '80s perception of a dystopian future.. This Reds' C looks like it came from the packaging of a Cyberdyne Terminator..

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(Still have some anthologies left, if you're interested in ordering one, email me. Thanks)

New (print) issue of Flip City (#23) released last week. It includes a parody of the recent Joker sequel..

And there are a couple Nat Rrain pages in it, including a guide to the sorry state of modern TV advertising. And the fact that Shaq seems to basically be endorsing every product now.. Good for Shaq, but aren't there any other celebrities capable of endorsement work?

panel from 'Flip City's Guide to TV Commercials'

To order Flip City magazine: https://flip-city-magazine.myshopify.com/

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This is a little different subject matter for this blog, but..

With the transformation of college football from amateur intentions to a professional game, I thought I'd give brief mention to a piece of history to this conflict. In its earliest days, pro football was actually viewed as a less desirable product than the college game.. largely because people instinctively felt that pay cheapened the competitive spirit. In 1922, Fielding Yost (football coach at University of Michigan) said that paying football players "robs the great American game of many of its greatest character building qualities. The ideals of generous service, loyalty, sacrifice, and whole-hearted devotion to a cause, are all taken away. The game is robbed of the exhilarating inspiration of achievement merely for achievement's sake."

I understand the factors why college football has become a professional (or semi-professional) game now. Universities were experiencing profit windfalls from football.. and superfans & alumni also welcomed more and more money in to the sport, if it could benefit their team. But I still think Yost's assertions hold true. College football was designed as a character builder for students. And was a unique, beneficial situation from pro football. But superfans & circling sports agents don't care about that character-building process.

There was a miscalculation when college football players were strictly forbidden from making any kind of money as college athletes. Other college students are allowed to work jobs & make $ while they study, football players should've reserved that same opportunity. This opened a resentful floodgate.. where now almost everything in playing high level college football is about mercenary profit. College football will likely start to adjust with some kind of salary cap, and forming a separate league containing the highest level programs, apart from smaller schools. Guess we'll see.

Benny Friedman, vintage Michigan football star.

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It is the 39th anniversary of the Challenger explosion (Jan. 28th), so thought I'd share this March 1981 issue, where National Geographic previewed the Space Shuttle program for America. This was the imminent Columbia (not Challenger), but I think it's still relevant and interesting. These aren't images pulled from an image search, they're direct scans (for better or worse) from my hard copy of the magazine. (the article was titled: When the Space Shuttle Finally Flies)

The primary focus of this blog has been art, so I'm mostly posting the illustrations & conceptual art that was used to explain & introduce the Shuttle program..

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This is an interesting Johnny Carson biography that was released recently. It gives a good overview of both Carson's personal and professional life. And the book itself has an interesting backstory. It was started by one author through the early 2000s, who passed away, then completed by a protege. My only (minor) complaint, is that it has a lot of episode minutiae that I wasn't interested in.. verbatim documenting of specific interviews and bits from over the years.

All that said, there was a great Carson insight in this bio.. Carson was definitely a talented man, but he recognized that talent & hard work are still not guarantees for professional and artistic success. On page 82, Carson's quoted: "I don't believe the old showbiz cliche' that your talent will be discovered if you only keep at it. I don't think there's much truth to that at all, because you see too many people grinding away year after year."

Bringing me to a broader point, about the state of underground comics. I've seen firsthand (talented and talentless) artists grinding in this genre for many years. And part of the demand is that small press & underground artists have to double as both creators and salesmen/hype men. And it's a multitask that usually doesn't come naturally. These are fields that usually have differing personality types. In high level sports, you typically have a talented athlete, paired with talented agents who market & solicit on behalf of the athlete.. same concept with acting, and a lot of other entertainment fields. But in the world of underground art & music.. the creators are typically having to do both, and it usually does not end (financially or logistically) well. 

Here's Carson, an authoritative source on creative success stating a blunt truth.. you can work hard in entertainment, for years, and never make it anywhere financially. And I think this is difficult for some people outside of creative endeavors to understand.. because they only view artistic value & success by financial results. Y'know, the old cliche' where people are asking, "when are you gonna give up the band, and get a real job?"

Carson did have a practical plan to that attitude, he told himself if he couldn't progress within a year's time, he would head back to Nebraska. But who knows if that's true. His love of entertaining may have keep him aspiring around LA for years. And Carson did appreciate & understand the opportunities he received. The book documents them, and I think that realization is implied in Carson's quote I referenced.

Another trend I see in the small press game.. is there is a heavy criticism of DC & Marvel. Not just for their business practices (which I don't really have an opinion on..), but on their content and ideology. And I'm with these critics, when they say it is dumb to have ten different Spidermen. But there are a lot of small press creators who hate DC & Marvel now, but then release their own (almost) identical content of superheroes, vampires, vigilantes, etc.. but just of lower quality. And that's no insult against 'em, they don't have the benefit of an assembly line of inkers, writers, etc. I'm rooting for the independent comic books. But if you're going to go it alone, why replicate art that you believe sucks?

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the death of Van Gogh.

I recently finished reading a collection of Van Gogh's letters to his friends & family (mostly to his generous brother & patron Theo). My main purpose was to see if there were any obvious suicidal thoughts toward the end of his life and correspondence. And I really didn't see it. He made a reference to conditional suicide in an April 1889 letter.. saying if he lost his friendship with Theo, it could drive him to suicide. But it feels to me, more like a melodramatic what if.. What I found much more in his letters, was in spite of his mental health suffering, he was an optimistic creator.

On the day of his 1890 shooting, he had taken his art supplies out with him to paint.. which seems like an act inconsistent with a suicide mission? He came back from his painting field trip with a shot in his lower chest/stomach (also strange for a suicide I assume).. there were no powder burns reported on his hands, and no gun found at the time. But it is clear that Van Gogh claims he did shoot himself.. which established the narrative of his so-called suicide.

Why the Hell would someone take credit for a suicide, that was actually a murder or manslaughter? A pair of authors (Naifeh & Smith) have a well-thought-out explanation in their book Van Gogh:The Life. They report on a group of young (gun toting) kids who liked playing cowboys, and bothering Van Gogh. They lay out a scenario where the kids may have been messing with Van Gogh, and accidentally shot him. Van Gogh didn't want the kids punished, so claimed it was a suicide attempt.. either assuming he'd survive the shot, or not caring if he survived at that point. The scenario is at the very end of their book, & makes sense, but I'm not sure I endorse the authors' act of naming the (long gone) kid by name, since he never had the benefit of a courtroom defense, etc.

I saw in 2020 a forensic pathologist wrote an article calling for an autopsy on Van Gogh.. I guess for some clarification on his death. Not sure how much it matters now, but personally I don't think Van Gogh was attempting suicide that day. Even in his final letter, days before the shooting, he was still planning and talking about his painting. Who knows..

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A tribute illustration to an old Turbografx-16 title..

A preview for interested parties, one of the Nat Rrain pages from Flip City magazine (issue #20). Have more pages coming in upcoming issues. If you enjoy cultural satire, subscribe, or pick up individual issues..

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com

 

Got around to creating some profiles for Greyskull & his band mates.. based on a old sketch..

^ this is the original sketch, with Greyskull, and his then nameless crew. They've been on a nostalgic tour, permanently & blissfully frozen in the late '90s.

If you get a chance, check out Flip City Magazine, I just had a couple pages in issue #20..

Flip City (About Us)

contact- nat.rain@gmail.com

 

For interested parties, Flip City (issue #20) published some Nat Rrain art recently. They sell both digital and print subscriptions (link enclosed). It's a publication stylistically similar to MAD.. but focused more on uncensored political satire than celebrity satire (tho most of my comics are apolitical).

https://flip-city-magazine.myshopify.com/collections/flip-city-subscriptions/subscription

contact- nat.rain@gmail.com

 

This is a cool hardcover collection of James Dean photos, taken by photographer Dennis Stock, shortly before Dean became famous. And their collaboration has an interesting backstory. Dean and Stock met at a party in LA, and after conversing some, Dean invited Stock to an upcoming test screening of East of Eden. 

Stock liked the movie and Dean's performance, and instinctively realized Dean was going to be a star. So he asked if he could spend a couple days with Dean, photographing his life (and essentially origin story), before Dean broke big.

Stock ended up traveling with Dean back to his Indiana hometown, & around to some of Dean's spots in New York, and constructed a photo album of Dean's life just at the end of its anonymity. There's a good movie that documents the time Stock & Dean spent together getting the photo spread titled Life (not the Eddie Murphy joint, this Life was released 15 years later, but..)

Some of the individual photos are iconic now, and probably recognizable from posters you see in Hollywood Blvd tourist traps, etc. But there are also some great deep cuts in the book. Random photos of Dean walking thru his small home town, and working on his childhood farm. Even setting Dean aside, it's a cultural document of 1950s Middle/rural America.

 

(both images are within the book)

contact- nat.rain@gmail.com

 

Some new & old Nat Rrain releases of signs and roadside attractions:

Early 90s Lynnhaven Mall (parking lot) sign, when they were still rockin' a brown tile look.

The day when they mounted the Great American Outlet Mall sign in Virginia Beach, circa mid 8os.

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 Just a quick upload.. A cool, detailed sketch my daughter finished recently, thought I'd share.

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com

 

In the mid 80s, there was a TV pilot for a never-realized series Condor. Set in the near future of 1999, it was based around a human agent (typical '8os cop meme, a maverick who plays by his own obnoxious rules) and his good-looking android partner. The old school agent predictably resents being paired with the new soul-less technology. But over the course of 80 delicious minutes, he learns to respect it..

Condor had a pretty good cast, including Fresh Prince's Uncle Phil, and Wendy Kilbourne as the beautiful robot..

An interesting element is 1985 conjecture on how the world would look in the near future.. oversized drones and urban three-wheelers were part of that speculation.. They did a pretty good job balancing potential progress with factors of daily life that don't change much. And this to me, is the most disappointing aspect of Condor not making it.. missing out on more of the futuristic aesthetic, because they seemed to put effort in to this part of the pilot. There are couple places now to stream Condor, and it is a cool cultural artifact of how some foresaw the start of the 21st century..

Part Maxwell Smart, part Dean Ween.. Christopher Proctor (a TV icon that could've been).

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It's common to hear about negative encounters with celebrities.. so for the sake of balance I wanna share a positive (throwback) celebrity experience I had..

Summer of '99 I was working at a sunglass retailer in Ocean City, Maryland. We were right on the boards, so there was a lot of foot traffic at night. And one night, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl dipped in.. It didn't surprise me, because I was aware he was from the northern Virginia area.. and the DC suburbs produce a lot of Ocean City's tourists. It was an unusually slow night, so I was working solo, and Grohl was the only customer in the shop then. He said he was looking for nighttime shades (I assume to cloak his identity). In the late 9os, as a Nirvana alum and current Foo Fighter, he was easily recognizable.

I didn't mention that I recognized him, and just talked him up like any other anonymous customer. I asked him about this forearm ink.. we talked a little bit about the store's bright yellow paint job. He noted that yellow was perceived as a uniquely unfriendly color for marketing. It was a cool conversation. And after he picked a pair of glasses, and paid.. he gave me a $20 tip, (that he wouldn't let me refuse). Which in that era was probably equal to 4 hours of work. So I was flattered and grateful..

Guess I was just feeling nostalgic, and wanted to show some love for the civilized celebrities. I had mixed encounters with different famous folks after moving to LA. Grohl stands out as decent.

Years ago, I briefly alluded to this chance encounter with Grohl in Natrrain #13.

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com

I was once pretty immersed in hardcore/punk.

I made an effort to see & support a lot of bands in small to medium venues. In the 90s and early 2000s, I went out to watch a lot of friends and co-workers perform. Bought tickets for shows in Virginia and Maryland.. Los Angeles, and went down to Orange County and San Diego a couple times. I've written reviews for DIY shows and albums. Contributed art to other zines, and bands over the years. I have no musical talent, but like to think my punk bona fides are established enough for (semi)constructive criticism. And as preface, no disrespect is meant to some of the great music produced.

Something that drew me to punk, and the hardcore scene, beyond just its sound, was its claim to be a refuge for free expression. Part of the punk ethos was that it was rejecting the closed-mindedness of mainstream society. A big component of 80s punk was its rejection of Reagan & the Religious Right's (perceived) bigoted conservatism.. fair enough. But I noticed over time, punk became equally rigid in its own ideology. Punk really wasn't a counter genre, of open-mindedness. It was just an opposing form of closed-mindedness. It wasn't truly rejecting cliquishness; just offered a different clique. You had to share and advance punk's left-wing viewpoints and punk's atheism.. or you could be ostracized. I experienced this a couple different ways while doing Natrrain.

This hypocrisy was apparent to me back in my club-going days, but is even clearer to me in hindsight. Also notice in retrospect, that a lot of the political positions of punk never materialized in to concrete political action on their part. A lot of aging punks remained in the role of social critics (nothing wrong with that). But when some are still railing about the Religious Right and/or the W. Bush years, they reveal a windmill-tilting, arrested development. And they're basically severed from political reality. A reality where conservatives have largely been purged from, or abdicated, a lot of cultural institutions like mainstream media & universities, etc.

Strange to me, when punks still imagine their dyed hair & ink to be counter-cultural. Aesthetics is a front where punk definitely gained ground and mainstreamed. It's common to see purple hair and neck tattoos at any PTA meeting or gathering of 21st century soccer moms. There's something tragic and grating to me, how punk became very much like a cliquish, inflexible way of thinking. It's a mindset they originally set out to destroy. Guess this is typical in a lot of cultural revolution though..

still ready to battle jocks & Reagan voters?

contact- nat.rain@gmail.com

 

Paintings have basically become our most valuable visual resource in remembering the Battle of Hampton Roads. Even though this one is dated 1886, a full generation after the 1862 battle; it's close to how I envision it, the darker greenish water, smoke pouring out from point-blank body blows..

A famous Kurz and Allison 1889 depiction of the battle. One of my favorites.. but in this version, the water looks so damn light it looks like they're fighting in the Caribbean. And maybe the water was less polluted back then, but..

Wonder if these two paintings shared the same primary source description, or earlier sketch, as their model. They look so fundamentally similar(?)

Mort Kunstler did a great painting of the battle in the '8os. It has a unique feeling, where both the Monitor and the Merrimac (turned CSS Virginia) kinda look more like organic sea monsters.

USS Monitor vs CSS Virginia (Kunstler)

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This early '8os TV movie is an interesting cultural artifact.. It's basically a dated cautionary tale on Dungeons & Dragons. A young Tom Hanks plays a college kid whose fragile emotional/mental health leads him to an escapist obsession with his D&D character. In a melodramatic scene, Hanks flees in to NYC and damn near leaps off the roof of the Twin Towers.

In 2023, it seems funny to look back on this institutional mistrust of D&D, especially on the heels of a major studio movie that basically now glorifies the D&D universe. But I remember some of the concerns & hysteria about D&D's potential to warp the minds of nerds.

The understandable parental anxiety of the late '7os & early '8os was that the line between reality and role-playing fiction could become blurred. And because D&D had demons & violence, the game play may carry over in to every day life and create killer elves & wizards. And there was an element of truth in these concerns. But I think every hobby has potential risk, and many hobbies and pastimes have been subjected to hysterical skepticism at some point. Video games, rap & heavy metal, etc. are things that have been cited for creating killers & psychos. And at times, those accusations aren't incorrect. But over time, the public is able to weigh an artform and/or hobby's net negative impact on its purveyors and fans. And even tho there have been isolated cases where D&D was believed to have a violent influence (the Shawn Novak case is one I remember well), I feel like D&D is now viewed as a harmless pastime. 

The movie wasn't great, but not terrible either. I did kind of get a sense tho it may have had a demoralizing effect on D&D players at the time(?) RPGs already had a reputation as a dorky, marginalized hobby, and D&D was being additionally demonized, when depicted as a gateway to psychotic breaks.

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I was reminded of an old (original) Twilight Zone episode recently.. The season one episode Mr. Bevis. Basically the story of a nice guy, down on his luck. Mr. Bevis is a single guy, with a beat-up ride, tenuous employment, with harmless (but childlike) hobbies. He is a good-hearted man, who paints a sympathetic character as he loses his job, and his hooptie is totaled in a freak accident.

So Mr. Bevis understandably heads to the bottom of the bottle, until he makes the unexpected acquaintance of a sort of guardian angel (played by Henry Jones, who later was in the underrated, short-lived series: Mrs Columbo)

'Mr. Bevis' with actor Henry Jones..

Mr Bevis is basically given a new life, but it doesn't fit what he truly wants. So his genie (without a bottle) gifts him back his original, modest (but fulfilling) existence. Including his outdated car.

So after downing a series of double shots, Mr. Bevis exits the bar and finds his ol' trusty ride waiting for him.. courtesy of his mystical benefactor. The guardian angel even relocates the vehicle, so a nearby cop can't ticket him for illegal parking. And the contented Mr. Bevis simply DUIs off in to the sunset..

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Was thinking about an ol' pen pal recently, and unfortunately learned she passed away in 2021. I hadn't corresponded with her since the early 2ooos, but I always appreciated the work she put in supporting and creating music around Hampton Roads.

When I knew Holly, her last name was Womack, but I remember she used stage names when playing in bands. And in her online obit, it looked like she had a married name. One of her zines was Fresh Rag, and then Cranked Up (and looking at this cover ^, maybe also Cranked Up Really High?)

(Cover model: Ms. April May)

I had already moved to LA when Holly was publishing her 'zines, but I was still in touch with several zine publishers covering Hampton Roads' rock. And appreciated the reports on Norfolk..

(from Fresh Rag, prophetic about what was happening in Norfolk real estate too)

I think Holly was also interviewed for the documentary Hardcore Norfolk, which did a good job covering the history of Hampton Roads rock, and how it was unfortunately fading. But truth is, organic local rock scenes are dwindling in most areas. It's not like the stretch between the mid 70s thru mid 90s, where a number of live, local music scenes (LA hardcore, NYC punk, Seattle/Washington State grunge etc) were being locally grown, honed and fostered by local 'zines and record labels. It's a different time, with different technologies, appetites, local media etc. But Holly did good, reporting and uplifting her local music community.

(I had also done some art for her website..)

                                                         contact- nat.rain@gmail.com