Showing posts with label Lee Elias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Elias. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

NUELOW Games has just released another royalty-free art pack

If you're a small publisher looking for royalty-free art to round out your book, or a lover of black-and-white line art with a pulp-fiction flavor, the latest art pack from NUELOW Games might be just what you're looking for.

Cover for NUELOW Stock Art Collection #18. Illo by Lee Elias
This set contains more nudity and graphic violence than previous collections (as the title might hit at), so it has been put behind the "adult content" wall in accordance with NUELOW Games's distributor's policy. I'm posting a few samples of the 42 included drawings here. You can preview the entire set at the listing page either at DriveThruRPG. The very liberal usage license included with purchase can also be read in full there. (Basically, the illustrations can be used in just about any fashion you can think of, except for inclusion in other clip art packages.)

By Rais

By Xavier Villamonte

By Rod Ruth

For more previews, or to get your copy of NUELOW Stock Art Collection #18: Sex and Violence, click here.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Lights, Camera, and plenty of Black Cat Action!

"Film Fun Comics Vol. 2: The Black Cat vs. Him" is now available for purchase and download at DriveThruComics,com, DriveThruFiction.com, DriveThruRPG.com, and RPGNow.com,  It's a 48 page  book that presents four stories illustrated by the, great Joe Kubert--some of his earliest professional work--and three stories illustrated by the artist most closely associated with the Golden Age Black Cat, Lee Elias.

As a little preview, here's the splash-page from one of the Kubert stories (click on the image for a larger version):


Also, as a special treat, here's a short Linda Turner story NOT included in the book. My partner in NUELOW Games efforts L.L. Hundal felt that three non-superhero Lee Elias two-page stories were plenty, so this one got held for one of our planned follow-up "Film Fun Comics" editions--or just for posting here... time will tell!. Click on the images for larger versions.



If you've enjoyed this blog over the years, I encourage you to get a copy of "The Black Cat vs. HIM!". I edited the book and wrote "Excerpts from the Diary of Linda Turner," which is a fiction piece that adds a little more flesh to the "revised background" for Black Cat that's been implied in previous NUELOW Games products featuring the character. Supporting that book is supporting me and my love for places where "everything is in black and white" and my ability to have the time to put this blog together. (And other books like the "Film Fun Comics" series.)

Your support will be greatly appreciated. If you DO get a copy, please let me know what you think of "Film Fun Comics Vol. 2: The Black Cat vs. HIM!", either here, or in the comments section on the download page!

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Black Cat Error Bonus!

I posted a post to the wrong blog, so to overwrite it, here are a couple more Black Cat illos do change it.







Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Picture Perfect Wednesday:
The Return of the Black Cat!

This Friday, NUELOW Games is releasing "Film Fun Comics Vol. 2: The Black Cat vs. HIM". To celebrate (and to offer a preview), here are some classic Black Cat drawings from Lee Elias.




There are also Black Cat stories by Elias in "Film Fun Comics Vol. 1: Stuntman by Simon & Kirby" and in "His Honor and.... The Demon"! Click on the links to see previews or get your own copies of these very cool classic comics!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

'Eclipso' make you wonder why

Showcase Presents: Eclipso (DC Comics, 2009)
Writer: Bob Haney
Artists: Jack Sparling, Alex Toth, Lee Elias, and Bernard Baily
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

There are some comic book ideas that should never be made into ongoing series. Eclipso is one those. Although the basic premise--brilliant scientist Bruce Gordon transforms into an evil being bent on destruction when there's an eclipse--has plenty of potential, the limitation of it should also have been evident to editors if not to creator Bob Haney.

The fundamental problem with "Eclipso" is that eclipses aren't exactly an every day occurrence, they're easily predictable, and a brilliant scientist like Bruce Gordon should easily be able to limit the menace of his alter-ego by locking himself away during those rare occurrences. Of course, being a genius, Bruce does try to lock himself away for a couple of the stories, but the attempts in each case because Someone Does Something Stupid.

And that's where the other problems with "Eclipso" some in, problems that amplified when one reads several of the stories back-to-back in this collected volume.

With eclipses being easily predictable, not exactly every day occurrences, writer Bob Haney has to go through some rather goofy gyrations to bring the title character of the strip into many of the stories. The most rediculous of these are the "artificial eclipse" that happens when a boulder rolls by the mouth of a gave Bruce Gordon finds himself in. If this was the only time such silly plot contrivance had to be deployed, it could be forgiven, but it is only one of many.

Another problem with the set-up is the fact that the Eclipso identity is a costumed character that also needs a magical black gem in order to function. Each time Elcipso appears, he needs to retrieve his outfit and his gem, something else that leads to some ridiculous moments in a couple of the early stories. The fix that Haney comes up--splitting Eclipso and Gordon into two separate beings--gets rid of the Jekyll and Hyde aspect of the set-up and allows Gordon to actively take part in attempts to eliminate this evil alter-ego. Initially, it's a good approach, even if it doesn't fix the central problem with the fact that eclipses shouldn't as hard to deal with as they appear to be in the World of Bruce Gordon.

For all my complaints, "Eclipso" is fun in the same sort of way that cheesy sci-fi movies from the 1950s are fun: The level of free-wheeling nonsense present in each tale is an attraction in-and-of-itself and perhaps in the small doses it was originally presented in that might be enough to carry the series. Certainly, the publisher and editors at National Periodicals/DC Comics must have thought so, even if the fact there was enough material published in "House of Secrets" to fill this book makes me wonder "why"?

The first two "Eclipso" stories feel fresh and engaging, with their sci-fi take on the Jekyll and Hyde myth; for the modern reader they even demonstrate how long the pipe-dream of practical solar energy has fired imaginations as the first target of Eclipso's evil is a grand city that runs entirely on solar power. But once those are behind us, the limitations of the concept become evident and Haney's struggles to deal with them fall somewhere between the Labors of Hercules and the Punishment of Sisyphus. While I can easily picture editors being blinded to the flaws in the scripts for the half-dozen stories featuring the exciting line work of Alex Toth, the inconsistent art of Jack Sparling--who drew the bulk of the stories and who often couldn't make a character appear the same from panel to panel, let alone from page to page--should have made even the most content-hungry editor consider better options. (Of course, it's possible that readers loved Eclipso and that's why the series stuck around. There is, after all, no accounting for taste.)