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Détective Noir et Crimespassionnels by Ryan Licata

Her heavy goons in the alleyway had left him without a single slug, while she’d be packing that piece, neat and compact, under her skirt. Backstage, her name was emblazoned on a door under a paling gold star. Inside, she sat at her dressing table, looking at him through her mirror, mascara streaking to the corners of her mouth. She stood up, turned and slowly hoisted up her skirt, showing what she had every intention of using against him. “Shows over sweetheart,” he said, but as she entwined her feather bower around his neck, he found it all beginning again.

Notes:

usually I am really rational about my artistic decisions. This time I just followed an impulse. This is the result of it. Somehow it looks like it could have been taken out from a 70s comic mag, which I find somehow fitting… or don’t you?

(Senza titolo) by Cubber

O per esempio il tac tac del bastone di un cieco sul selciato. Tac
tac tac… non vedo il cieco perché è dietro di me, ma il tac tac
corre sul selciato, sale per un buco sotto le mie scarpe, tac tac tac,
come una febbre delle ossa, tac tac tac, un valzer di marionette; mi
sale lungo la nuca come per darmi la morte, tra i capelli come un filo
o un insetto urticante; mi ustiona mentre scende lungo la faccia, tac
tac tac, entra in bocca e apre nei denti una crepa che si fa sempre
più grande.

Notes

I never really worked on this story, though I had it laying around for some time, because I didn’t know how to draw it. The story is told from the inside out, it’s about things you feel, not things you see. So how to visualize this? In the end I decided to try to illustrate the events in the story how they might appear in the protagonist’s mind.

Détective Noir by Ryan Licata

From his ninth storey window the city lights, on and off, created a mosaic against the night. He swigged neat whiskey from a tumbler, staring in at all those well-lit apartments. In rooms and kitchens, against curtains drawn, he could see the cut-out silhouettes of people having their parties. Women, their necks thrown back, mouths agape, laughing their heads off; and men, hanging up their dinner jackets, loosening their neckties, smoking short-cropped cigars. He smoked one himself, raised his drink. Let them have their fun with the lights on, for later, in the dark, he knew it would be murder.

Notes

This is the first Detective Noir story by Ryan Licata, the first one he wrote, (I had published the second one, Detective Noir et la Chatte, already some time ago here). It was his idea that the detective should looks somehow like me. I will do the whole bunch in the next weeks, they make up a nice little series inside his hundred word stories.

A bonsai story by Aitan

Dissi che ero stanco, esausto. Basta, dissi, non andrò a vivere mai né con te né con lei. Basta, dissi, ora seguirò un cammino che è soltanto mio. Adesso, adesso stesso, salirò in terrazza, sceglierò l’albero più nodoso e attaccherò il cappio al ramo più alto. Ma basta ora, ora basta, dissi, e gettai via la cornetta ridendo come un forsennato. Immediatamente, presi la corda dalla stanza delle scope e l’attaccai al ramo più alto dell’albero più nodoso. Mi fermai a guardare e continuai a ridere a crepapelle. Che ne sapeva la poverina che sul mio terrazzo c’erano solo bonsai?

Notes

Lately I have some problems drawing. Something inside of me struggeles against it… I think I need a break.

The Black Hole by Hannes Pasqualini

In the beginnig it was just a medium sized black hole in the ground, some kind of well, they thought. Farmer Rossert and his younger son Eldebun had been looking at it for most of the afternoon trying to get a clue on its origins. At one point it started to become more two-dimensional, like a flat black disk sitting on the grass and spinning nervously on itself. Farmer Rossert picked up a small stone and threw it into the hole. He never should have done that.

notes

It’s been some time since I last posted one of my own stories, actually I only did it once inepisode #1. Well, today I wasn’t in the mood to work on anybody else’s stories, so you’ll get this one.

Nocciola by Alessandro Bonino

I coniugi Mario e Laura Piovano, di Serravalle Scrivia, in provincia di Alessandria, avevano cercato per molto tempo di avere un bambino senza, purtroppo, ottenere alcun risultato. Su consiglio del Dottor Alberto Miniati, primario della clinica San Michele Arcangelo di Cadelbosco di Sopra, provincia di Reggio Emilia, grande luminare che aveva seguito tutti i loro infruttuosi tentativi, decisero di intraprendere l’estenuante percorso dell’adozione. Dopo dieci lunghi mesi, ricevettero finalmente la comunicazione che un bambino era stato loro assegnato. Grande fu la loro sorpresa quando scoprirono che non si trattava affatto di un bambino, ma di una strega di nome Nocciola.

Notes

I’m finally back with some hundred word stories! I was really starting to miss them. The author of this first story of 2010, is yet another new entry in the project (I get quite some requests lately, and that’s great!). I’ve been drawing people in suites for so much time now (Gietz has something to do with is, in case you wondered), that it becomes quite automatic for me to draw a tie on a male character…

This is perfect timing: today is Thursday, and tomorrow is Christmas… so I couldn’t resist to the tentation of publishing a properly Christmas-themed story. I hope that this little tale, written especially for this occasion by Ryan Licata, may help you evade, if only for a second, from the claws of Christmas madness…
And of course… Merry Christmas to all of you people and thanks very much for having devoted a bit of your time to read this blog, in the past year.

Nobody Writes to the Fat Man by Ryan Licata

Albtraum stood outside the fat man’s room with a pair of darned socks and a hot water bottle. The elf nudged open the door and peeked inside. By candle light he saw his old friend over by the window, the four glass panes frosted over, sitting in nothing but his y-fronts. “Leave everything over on the bed, Albtraum.” He placed the things down with deliberate slowness, then, light of foot, stepped just outside the door to watch as Santa began to trace upon each of the frosted panes the names of all the children whom no longer sent him letters.

Detective Noir et La Chatte by Ryan Licata

He had dimmed the lamps, lowered the Venetian blinds, closed for business, but she’d come up the fire escape and in through the window; the way his cat did. Seeing her there, standing over him, wearing a slender, black dress, a white patch, an orchard pinned, upon her breast, he saw that she was like his cat in other ways too. He tried to stand up from his swivel chair, but she pushed him down. The chair held them both, pawing and purring, as she curled up on his lap. Yes, curiously, she was like his cat in many ways.

Notes

There’s a couple of interesting stories around this illustration. The first one is about the story. At one point Ryan told me he had this image in his mind of a noir detective and that noir detective had my face. So I tried to draw myself as that character. I see this as a first try, probably other versions will follow. The other thing is, that when I started drawing this, the ink cartridge of my Pentel Pocket Brush ran dry and the strokes became rough and dirty. Usually I would have stopped and replaced the cartridge, but I liked the effect so I just kept on drawing. And somehow the image turned to to be someting really unusual for me, but also something I really like. I will have to work on this style some more…

And since I really liked the original drawing here it is, unplugged and unphotoshopped.

Cipro. Pigmalione. Alcune migliaia di anni fa. by Aitan

Maledetta Afrodite! Maledetto il giorno che ascoltasti il mio pianto e facesti di lei una donna vera. Maledetto il movimento lento della sua gamba destra sul busto eburneo ancora immobile di statuaria bellezza; e maledetto ancor di più il momento in cui la sua bocca mi parlò d’amore. Maledetta e maledetto me che cerco ancora di farle assumere la stessa statica posizione dell’avorio che plasmai.

La statua che mi innamorò ora non sta ferma per più di due minuti. Afrodite, la mia vita non vale quei due minuti. Maledetta! perché non senti ora che piango e piango ancor di più?

Notes

It’s very difficult to illustrate Aitan’s stories, they are very rich in detail, so there is not much one can add with the drawings. Still this is a great challenge for me and I love it this way! In this case I tried to represent the imperfection deriving from motion which Pygmalion complains about in this story. In fact the story is about how the sculptor misses the times when his statue (which was brought to life by Artemis) would still be standing still and not be walking around all the time.

Rodney by Daniel J. Latta

Rodney spent had many months in a funk. His wife had left him, his daughter barely spoke to him, and he’d impregnated his 20 year old secretary. He woke up to thoughts of suicide and went to sleep drunk. It was on a drizzly Tuesday morning, however, that a sudden wake-up call finally shook him out of the fog he’d been living in. Unfortunately, his change in perspective came at the hands of renowned psychic Rowan Darkmoon. The two met on the freeway. Rowan was driving her Prius at 90MPH, throwing flaming tarot cards and live grenades out her window.

Notes

Daniel, aka slug-life, is a great writer. His stories have great sense of humour and an interesting style. I found him, thanks to somebody’s tip, on deviantart.com, where he sometimes posts new stories following the 100 themes challenge (each story revolves around a theme, picked out in sequence from a predefined list). If you liked this story, go and read some more by him on these links:

Indifferent Mechanics
Slug-life on deviantart.com

For those who don’t know about Tarot cards, the grim reaper usually stands for change and not for death.