Monday, January 24, 2011

Morty The Friendly Corpse #16, March 1971

Morty was of course Morton Comics' most popular character, and his book was their flagship title for many years. Some of their other well known characters include Filthy Richie, Wikky The Wicked Little Wiccan, and Big Bloata.

Wow, it's been a long time since I did one of these comic covers. 2007, to be exact! In fact it was so long ago that the last time I did one I drew it in pencil and ink and scanned it into Photoshop to color it-- I wasn't even drawing digitally back then. I have all kinds of ideas for more, but as usual there's just never enough time to do them.

I always loved Harvey Comics as a kid. You know, Casper, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich and the rest. Now that I'm older I see that the majority of their characters had some sort of deep-seated psychological problem. Casper the Friendly Ghost had a pathological need to be liked. Richie Rich secretly despised his wealth and longed to be a normal child. Little Dot had an unhealthy obsession with dots. Little Lotta was a morbidly obese over-eater. Makes me wonder about the mental health of the Harvey brothers.

By the way, in compliance with our nation's insane politically correct movement, Harvey Comics' official company line is that Casper is not the spirit of a dead child. The concept of death might upset some soccer mom's delicate little snowflake, don'tcha know. As far as they're concerned, Casper is simply a supernatural creature like a goblin or troll. I wish I was making that up. 

Morty was drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet. I went way overboard with the fake aging on some of the past covers, so I tried to restrain myself here. I'm still not entirely happy with my aging (you can say that again!), and I'm trying to find a better way to do it.

I usually post my preliminary sketches here on my blog. There was a digital sketch for Morty, but trust me, it was very, very rough and wasn't anything to look at.

You can see more Morton Comics covers here:
Filthy Richie #2
Filthy Richie #10
Filthy Richie #15
Wikky #4

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