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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.

Sorry, still none of my regular posts. But in the meantime here’s a small preview of a comic I’ve been working on lately. It’s about the fathers of goth rock Bauhaus and it will be published in the upcoming anthology Guida illustrata al frastuono più atroce #2 by the Italian punk comic group Lamette. I really like the vintage film touch I managed to give to this panels. Basically it’s the “Dog Show technique” adapted to b/w. The text is a variation on the Bauhaus hit Bela Lugosi is Dead. That’s why it all looks like some old horror movie.

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.

With all that Jazz and history in my mind I sometimes forget about the things that really keep going and doing art. Thanks god I have sketchbooks ( and have to scan them in for this blog) to remind me that my path goes in a completely different direction.

Actually there’s a lot I could say about this topic, but the time hasn’t come yet.

This shadow lady just keept haunting my mind for weeks until I decided to get rid of her by drawing her on this piece of paper.

The frequent reader of this blog might recognize that this is a sketch for one of the first illustrations I made for the A Hundred Words Stories project.

A retired general.

The Magpie by Ryan Licata

Market day was the best time to be at it. His victims were fellows with twirling canes and straw hats, beside dames with parasols, strolling about, haggling for rugs, munching from a bag of the Chinaman’s persimmons. He’d bide his time in the narrow streets, to where they were carried beneath him by the push of the crowd. Then, on the hour, as the church bells rang, the inexplicable would occur: a choreographed dance of dandies removing their watches from their pockets. And that’s when he struck, with the quick rip of fabric, the flutter of wings, up, and away.

Notes:

When I first read this story I didn’t know what a Magpie was, but I immediately had to think about a strange looking fellow, dressed in black with big wings on his back. Then I looked the word up in the dictionary, and it all made sense…

Hidden by Ryan Licata

She ran, remembering never to look back. On the other side of the woods she saw the old Mill, just as she had seen it drawn in her story book at home. The door had been forced off its hinges, then propped up precariously, barring the entrance. The door was too heavy for her to move but she was small enough to crawl through the gap. Sunlight broke through the windows where boys had thrown stones. Finding the darkest corner, she crouched down and embraced herself. She could hear them calling out her name but she knew not to answer.

Chopin, Bolero op. 19 di Cubber

La guerra era finita.
Attraverso l’afa tropicale, il generale osservava sorridendo il proprio avversario. Era un ragazzo giovane, estremamente bello, e reso ancor più bello dal terrore, che rendeva esangue la sua pelle scura. Il generale sorrideva, sfiorando l’oro e le carte sudice. Il ragazzo teneva le proprie come l’offerta a un suo dio variopinto. Il generale amava scommettere l’oro contro la vita, amava giochettare con l’oro scommesso, sotto gli occhi degli avversari tremanti.
Come mi aveva ordinato, prima dell’ultima mano gli allungai non visto la carta vincente.
Anche l’afa rendeva più belli il terrore, e la morte, del giocatore.

Notes

The first illustration I made for Hidden was a very interesting one, but completely wrong. For some reason my mind did not record the first sentence, so the output was a woman looking back with terror in her eyes. I liked the mute film look of the illustration, but of course had to ditch it. As most of the time, I like the new illustration a lot more. The “wrong” one can be found here on deviantart.com.

Cubber’s story is about a man (we assume some kind of warlord in some kind of tropical land) playing cards with a young, terrorized man. It’s life for gold, and he’s going to win (by cheating of course). Hence the idea of a different kind of cards, which can be both the card of the winner and of the looser, as you like. Drawing those cards made me want to draw a whole set! I think I’ll do it as soon as I find some time…

Sons of Sorrow by Ryan Licata
They rode into town at sundown, wild boys on black horses. Sorrow galloped a head of them on a white horse with no saddle. She wore her hair like a squaw. It wasn’t enough that they called her a witch, some dared say that her sons were her lovers too, fathered by the devil all. They drank spirits at the bar and sang their songs. The women locked-up their daughters, who couldn’t help feeling hot with the windows shut-up so. And the men stayed in the bar all night long until Sorrow and her sons rode back east at dawn.

Il ragazzo con lo zaino a razzo (di Andrea Campanella), parte 2/2
In lontananza si vedono i primi manifestanti. “Andiamo” dice Simone a Francy. Lei è titubante, lui la guarda interrogativo. “Ho paura” dice Francy, “Non ho mai volato con quei così”. Simone le prende le mani e dice: “tesoro dobbiamo andare per molti motivi. Il primo è che qui tra poco ci sarà l’inferno, lo sai meglio di me. Secondo è che devi imparare a volare ed è meglio che lo fai con me. Il terzo è che a mio padre hanno già spaccato la testa ed io voglio volare lontano da qui, molto lontano e voglio farlo con te”. Francy ha le lacrime agli occhi, abbraccia il suo eroe e schizzano verso il blu.

Notes

Sons of sorrow is a particularly intense story to me, this would make a great start for a full length comic or novel. When working on the illustration for this, I first started with a classic western picture with horses and all. Later I resorted to this one, where you don’t know exactly where they are. They might be just about to enter the saloon, or riding through the desert on the back of a horse. For the second story I took a bit of inspiration from the characters in Tekkonkinkreet, a great movie you should see if you haven’t done so alredy.