This page introduces a pair of important locations in the Rent-A-Thug world, Stone Island Penitentiary and the Rooker Building. I put the prison on an island to evoke a bit of Alcatraz (which, come to think of it, is a decent motivation to do something based on the bird-man of Alcatraz). The Rooker Building is the office building that houses the Rent-A-Thug Head Office (and a bunch of other things).

Pure Speculation was last weekend. Fun was had, especially hobnobbing with other artists. Pros Steve Rolston (who won an Eisner for his work on Queen & Country), Steven Sadowski (JSA, Avengers/Invaders), and Ty Templeton (The Simpsons and Star Trek, among other things) were all in attendence. Steve Rolston and Ty Templeton captained Team Metropolis and Team Gotham City, respectively, in the Comic Battle put on by Happy Harbor Comics. Nick Johnson (of Vicious Ambitious and The Holiday Men fame) and I joined Steve on Team Metropolis, with Rudi Gunther and Dan Schneider comprised Team Gotham City along with Ty Templeton. In retrospect, the fact that I yelled “draw him suckling a monkey!” when Steve Rolston starting drawing gigantic, saggy breasts on a caricature of Templeton (in a challenge to caricature each other in the meanest way possible) is likely the only time in history that an Eisner award winner was given that suggestion… and then did it. Sort of. He’d already finished the breasts, so he drew Templeton holding a hobo-style sign that read “will suckle monkeys for bristol”. Team Metropolis was eventually defeated, however, through shenanigans on the judge’s part. Later on I got to talk with Steven Sadowski for about half an hour about various topics related to comickery, which was a lot of fun.

Another cool thing coming out of Pure Spec is that Nick Johnson will be illustrating an upcoming Rent-A-Thug story (I’ll be handling the writing duties). That won’t be for quite a while (I haven’t written it yet and “King of the Streets” has quite a ways to go still), but it should be a fun change of pace.

Thanks for reading, see you Wednesday!

Tags: Johnny Mushface, Rent-A-Thug Boss, Rent-A-Thug Head Office, Rooker Building, Stone Island Penitentiary

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Rent-A-Thug. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.