POPS GUSTAV: June 2019

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Kalligrafonts stickers!

Hey! Are you on Instagram? What's that? You ARE? Well, then you should be following both of my accounts, Pops Gustav (there are a lot of posts of my stuff) and Kalligrafonts (not my first choice of name, but I had to take what was available and worked), highlighting my hand-lettering work. AND SPEAKING OF, here's a spankin' new set of Kalligrafonts stickers (featuring quotations from movies and TV shows I happen to love), which can be YOURS for the low, low price of five for $5 (mix and match), postage included! Paypal to karl@popsgustav.com, Venmo, checks, money order, cash, barter, whatever.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Chameleon Schedules 1994

1994 at Lancaster's Chameleon Club saw live music, festivals, DJ nights, the explosion of LIVE, and in July, a new, updated version of the logo (by me) that, I'm happy to say, is still being used to this day (even if nobody at the club in 2019 has any idea who the hell I am!... I wonder if I'm still on the "permanent guest list" taped inside the box office)...

The February schedule was a reaction to a few complaints that Chameleon owner Rich Ruoff had gotten about the frequent usage of pin-up style imagery in these things. My admittedly retro sensibility struck some as sexist, which was never the context as far as Rich and I were concerned.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Illustrating Batman at the Society of Illustrators

New York City's Society of Illustrators is currently hosting ILLUSTRATING BATMAN: Eighty Years of Comics and Pop Culture, a show loaded with iconic original art from the entire history of Batman's publication. I went to the opening with a couple of kindred pals, annoyed Chip Kidd (eep), met the legendary Joe Giella, and basically just geeked out for an hour and a half. If you love comics and / or Batman, and you're in New York any time between now and October 12, 2019, you owe it to yourself to go see this show. Here are just a FEW highlights, there is so much more (including works by Alex Ross, Frank Miller, and Jim Lee, among many more). I'm kind of kicking myself for not taking MORE photos, but it was so overwhelming I thought I captured enough. I didn't. I'll be going back.

Peter Poplaski's cover to BATMAN: THE SUNDAY CLASSICS

Joe Giella pencils for the 1960s Batman newspaper strip

Lew Sayre Schwarts' splash page from DETECTIVE COMICS #168, the semi-origin of The Joker

I found a mistake! This Neal Adams piece is dated 1970, but it's definitely a recreation of the Batman piece he did for the 1976 Super DC Calendar. I pointed this out to the curators. They seemed nonplussed.