Tim and Jeremy are both waiters at a restaurant in downtown New York City. During slow times at work, to stave off boredom when it is slow, the two young men draw pictures. These pictures are made using ink and what is called the "Triple Dupe Pad," a book of paper used to place orders in the kitchen. The drawings usually take about a week to make, all the while also being used by fellow employees to take orders; this sometimes leads to other collaborators or in a couple cases, to the loss of the work. The drawings are then scanned and colored in Photoshop where they come to life in stunning technicolor! The subject matter varies from piece to piece, as they are made over a long course of time and under various moods and states of mind. They all retain a playfulness that serves as a coping mechanism after spending a night catering to the endless needs of hungry patrons.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

#60 "The Last Days on Krypton" In Color!!! May 22, 2013

(Click on the Image to make it appear larger)

I like Superman just as much as the next guy.
When I was a kid, Superman starring Christopher Reeves was one of those rainy, summer day movies. My cousins and siblings would all gather in the lower deck of the Lighthouse Inn and watch it on this huge television that my grandfather had found somewhere. The television itself was quite a contraption; a large screen with three lights, red, green, and blue, projecting onto a mirror and then  onto the screen to create the image. As kids, we would walk in front of the lights and look at them dancing around the screen, while also blocking the view from our friends. The VCR was equally amazing, a top loader that seemed to be as big as a stereo. We would all gather around that television on rainy days and watch either Superman, The Never Ending Story, or Mary Poppins. Those were the most popular, although there were probably a lot more that I can't remember or didn't make such an impact on me. Superman was a crazy movie. In the first scene, Lois Lane almost dies when her helicopter falls off a skyscraper, but is saved at the last second by Superman. It's a pretty intense movie from then on. Superman almost dies in a pool but is saved by Lex Luthor's kind hearted friend. Then, at the end, Lois does die, but Superman reverses time and she comes back to life, and they are able to make Superman 2, 3 and 4. I never even saw Superman 3 or 4. I stopped at 2, but I hardly remember that one at all. The only reason Superman sticks with me is because I saw it so many times in the lower deck when I was very young. I don't think about it that much, in fact, Superman isn't even my favorite. I eventually started liking Batman, and read the comic a lot when I was a kid. Then all those movies came out in the 90's, so I felt more akin to growing up with Batman than with Superman. Don't get me wrong, if I was going to be either one of those dudes, I think Superman would be way cooler, even though you would then have to be a lonely alien. However, Batman movies were super popular when I was just becoming a teenager, so they were the perfect vehicle to drive me to the mall without parental supervision. Revisiting these movies is interesting, just because they haven't really aged well. I watched Batman with Michael Keaton recently, and it's pretty bad. I think it's because I don't believe Keaton plays Batman very well. Sure, Keaton was on the top of his game when that movie came out, but it's just not that believable to me. Not after we've seen Christian Bale in all of Christopher Nolan's Batman series. Jack Nicholson's performance is still pretty iconic, but the 90's Batman franchise went south pretty fast. I haven't re-watched Superman in a very long time, so I wonder if I would feel the same way about the movie not withstanding the test of time.
Anyway, I thought that the two-headed couple on the left side of this drawing looked like Kryptonians even when I drew them. They kind of look like Superman's mom and dad, more-so the dad. So, with them as the main subjects, then the rest of the narrative can play out; it does look like the last days of Krypton. Obviously, no one could have witnessed the final days of Krypton since the lone survivor of the planet's demise is Superman himself, and he was just a baby when Krypton exploded. So things on that planet just might have looked like this. They even had an English language sign at their disposal. Strange, but anything is possible in an infinite universe. This one is a bit more abstract than a lot of T&J drawings. Sure, there are a lot of faces, but most of them are disjointed from any bodies. That could also bring up the whole "brain in a jar" theory, like the one posed on the movie, The Matrix. But no, let's stay in one universe for now, we shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves.

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