Hello, friends, confidants, and total strangers--anyone, I guess, who's been wondering if I am alive, or dead, or merely asleep at the switch. All I can say in my defense is: a day without blogging is sometimes as good as a year without Trump.
In reality (if such there be in this post-DT's world) I needed a break, and then the break kept getting longer and longer. But now it's been so long, I've grown a beard, outlasted a phase of Parkinson's and, as the big-time applers say, "landed a book deal." Yes, it's true, I am writing (or maybe EDiting) the text for a big picture book dedicated to the amazing and amazingly varied works of illustrator and artist William Stout. (Those with a long memory, or an interest in popular music, may recall that some years ago I wrote the Intro for a book of Bill's called Legends of the Blues.) And now I am rewarded with a longer challenge, a 300-page beauty published by Insight Books, presenting several hundred illustrations retracing Bill's 50-year career as comix artist, film designer, Disney Imagineer, defender of Antarctica, paleo-artist of the museum murals of prehistory, etc., etc., etc.
'Tis a puzzlement why Stout's not a household word. (He is, actually, in certain circles, where he is known as the "dinosaur man.") Anyway, I'm working to change all that... and my minor blog will just have to limp along as we see where Fantastic Worlds: The Art of William Stout takes us.
