Bum Art!

On Halloween Saturday two weeks ago you would have found, amongst the assembled throng of Klingons, zombies, and fans of the superly-abled at the first annual Victoria Comic Book Convention, a respectably-sized dealer's room filled with comic book ephemera... and little ole' me... drooling.

Thanks to a free ticket from a friend (mucho apprecianado, Bri!) that came with an invitation to act as a tour guide (I've done the comic convention thing a number of times in the past and speak fluent geek) I checked out my home town's most recent venture at starting a lasting Con. Hopefully it'll make it to "Second Annual", and from the looks on the ghostly white faces, not to mention the hordes of costumed undead, folks seemed to be having a good time. But the highlight for me was getting to see, in glorious two-dimensions and beautiful black and white, the piece of original art pictured at the top of this post.

On display courtesy of Gareth Gaudin, of the best darned comic book store in all of Canada (offically!) Legends Comics, this pen & ink illustration is from the cover to one of my favourite 7" records of the 1990s. A split four song EP by two of Victoria's music legends...the cheekily-monikered Bum, and multiskilled producer/musician Scott Henderson.

Bum's awesomely-awesome brand of rockin'-pop-with-a-punk-twist was partially responsible for inspiring my own 1990s punk/rock/pop band (so much so that I recruited their first drummer), and we recorded with Scott a number of times for our 7"s and compilation releases, so you would think that would be enough to make me interested in this piece of local music history. But this is one of a number of Bum releases with artwork provided by the amazingly talented Pat McEown, one of the most skilled illustrators I've ever been lucky enough to know. Former Victoria resident Pat, who has worked in the big leagues of the comic, advertising, and animation industry should be a household name. He's very highly underrated.

Despite seeing Richard Hatch, Margot Kidder, and a gaggle of Star Trek actors at the Con... getting a good gander at this gem was the highlight of my nerdy day.

Thanks to Gareth for permission to share this wonderful work, and of course, all artwork © 1992 Pat McEown. And my apologies to all those confused souls visiting this blog under the assumption that this post's title refers to anything other than it does.