Rockeats Alcoreza - An Artomatic Interview

by Mike Rhode

Rockeats Alcoreza's exhibit at Artomatic is heavily-influenced by graffiti and popular culture, especially animation. We reached out to him to ask our usual questions, some of which are less relevant to a painter than a cartoonist.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I do a mixture of urban street art and realism.

How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

Acrylic paint, sometimes oil.

When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

I'm from DC.

Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in? 

I live in Arlington, VA's Green Valley.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

No training or education, but I feel if I take classes my talent will develop greatly.

Who are your influences?

Hip hop, anime, people

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I would've took art more serious back in middle school. I had a conflict with my art teacher at the time. I didn't continue with art. I completely dropped it. I recently picked it up again.  I know for a fact if I continued doing since middle school to high school, my art would be amazing beyond amazing because I would've learned so many techniques and been guided to produce better art.

What work are you best-known for?

My backgrounds (the patterns you see in majority of my art is called THE 88's).



What work are you most proud of?

Nothing really I feel like I could do a lot better when I look back at my work.

What would you like to do or work on in the future? 

Make comic strips, funny crude humor or create a book for kids. That would be the dream.



What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

I hate when that happens; listening to music sometimes helps.



What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, Awesome Con, Intervention, or others? Any comments about attending them?

Awesome con, but I would like to attend more. I'm not that informed about when these events happen.

What's your favorite thing about DC?

Our go-go music. Our sense of style, the way we talk, and also the fact we are at the nation's capitol.

Least favorite?

Traffic

What monument or museum do you like to take visitors to?

Corinto gallery

How about a favorite local restaurant?

El Pollo Rico -  it's in Arlington - it's crack.



Do you have a website or blog?

Websites would be https://www.facebook.com/24mobrockeats
https://www.instagram.com/24mobrockeats/
Later I will create my own website.

Cartoons at Walter Reed hospital

Here's a couple of pictures with cartoon themes that have shown up in the process of doing a photo book on Walter Reed Army Medical Center:



Early 1970s ward in Walter Reed Army Medical Center hospital where soldiers wounded in Vietnam were treated. Note the Uncle Scrooge poster on the wall. From the WRAMC DPW collection.



Garry Trudeau visits wounded soldier at Walter Reed Army Medical Center hospital. Courtesy of the Stripe newspaper.

Baltimore Comic-Con photos

Here's a few - more of same (literally) on my Flickr site set. These are all from Saturday.


The hour-long line to get in.


Richard Thompson examining his free can of Monster drink during the hour-long wait to get in.


Star Wars costumes.


Andy Runton signing Owly. Photo by Claire.


Kids and comics - a natural.


Jeff Kinney signing Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Photo by Claire.


Danielle Corsetto.


Nathan Fox.


Steve Conley getting a book signed by Richard Thompson.


Don Rosa drawing Uncle Scrooge.

Read This Comic: The Return

Many years ago, one of the Internet mailing lists I joined was Comix@ - supposedly devoted to alternative comics, but actually anything was fair game. I made a lot of good friends on the list, and was sorry to see it eventually die - done in by message boards and websites. One of the conceits of the list was "Read this Comic" in which one recommended an obscure or odd title. Here's some that I wrote up years ago. Perhaps I'll start doing this again - but meanwhile anyone can play! Mail them to me and I'll post them.

And now, Read this Comic, circa 2000 - a bit dated (Lynda Barry and Ted Rall have both lost plenty of newspapers unfortunately), but still perhaps of interest:

--Xeric-winner Ellen Forney's collection of strips from Seattle newspapers "I was Seven in '75" (ISBN 0-9660258-8-1) recalls the horrors of the Seventies in ways that retro-fashion trends can only hint at. From her brother's swept back Farrah Fawcett hair, to her mother's nudist tennis game, to Forney's favorite rainbow-stiched pants, it's all here. Her autobiographical style is a pleasant stroll compared to much of the genre. Hopefully, she'll be able to break into to a larger syndicated market and compete with Lynda Barry and Ted Rall's mean streaks.

--The strangest comic that I've read by far this year is Life with Archie #129 (January 1973). Al Hartley wrote and drew the issue around the time he began producing Christian comics . Hartley's style is instantly recognizable for his amazing overuse of facial expressions and floating objects around heads like hearts, stars, sweatbeads, speed lines, etc. In many ways, it's a very appealing style. Archie and the gang are magically transported back to the 1890s in "Nostalgia Gets Ya!" There's no attempt at an explanation; when Archie asks for one, Betty says "Nothing's impossible, Arch! If you believe in miracles, they come true!"

The gang walks four miles to school (oddly enough, I thought sprawl was a post-WWII problem) and Archie discovers that "Mr. Weatherbee seems bigger to me!" Jughead notes, "He seems to have more confidence!" as Betty remarks, "Everyone seems to know what they're doing!" presumably including the janitor Swensen, shown in the background.

Later that evening Archie calls on Veronica for a date. Mr. Lodge spends the entire time with them and as Archie is leaving, Veronica apologizes. Archie responds, "I'll bet some girls wish their fathers would pay attention to them! You father's a busy man! I'm flattered that he took the time to keep me out of trouble!"

The weirdness continues and Dilton, (the brain of the group, for those who didn't grow up on Archie) is able to draw some conclusions. "No one calls a policeman a pig! And women are treated as more than equals! People take pride in their neighborhood!" Archie agrees, "There is something different about these people." Veronica sums it up, "Everybody's going in the same direction! They have unity! But where do you look for it?" And Betty provides the capper, "That's easy! You look up!" I must confess that, as a historian of sorts, I did find his longing for a mythical golden age in the 1890s rather tiresome. After all, this is the time period when Jacob Riis was producing his photographs of child labor, published in How the Other Half Lives. Hartley didn't work for Archie much longer after this comic came out, but while he was there he created some .... memorable work. Good luck finding this.

--Another 1 para RTC: Don Rosa's Life of Scrooge McDuck series (Uncle Scrooge 285-296) is a tour-de-force. Originally done for European publisher Egmont in 1991-1993, these were published in America by Gladstone in 1994-1995. In 12 stories, the self-admittedly-obsessed Rosa pulled a multitude of facts about Scrooge from Carl Bark's original classic stories and wove them into an entertaining story. He covered Scrooge's life from 1867-1947 including the Alaskan gold rush. Rosa frequently refers to his work as overly-detailed, but he's obviously lovingly studied Elder's early Mad art. Rosa's stories work on several levels so this can be enjoyed by children and their parents. The story was recently collected by Gladstone.

Baltimore City Paper reviews GEM's Scrooged exhibit UPDATED

Read "One Quack Mind: Good Duck Artist Carl Barks' Best Work Sadly Lost to The Dustbin," by Christopher Skokna, and then go see the exhibit and make up your own mind.

UPDATE: Andy H of GEM wrote in to note, "The two Carl Barks non-Disney series we have representations from are:

Famous Figures of History as They Might Have Looked Had Their Genes Gotten Mixed with Waterfowl

Kings and Queens of Myth and Legend."

While I agree with the Baltimore City Paper review that these aren't great works of art for all time, I do think for the student of comics or Carl Barks, they're very interesting and rarely seen. So there.

Carl Barks exhibit at Geppi's Entertainment Museum

The Scoop newsletter's article Carl Barks in the Spotlight at GEM: "Scrooged!" has more detail on the new exhibit in Baltimore.

Geppi's Entertainment Museum photos from 'Scrooged' exhibit and more

I, along with some friends, got a tour of the new exhibit at Geppi's Entertainment Museum which opens at the end of January. Curator Arnold and Registrar Andy kindly took us through the whole museum. I'll post more thoughts later, but here's the pictures. As I've said before, it's a cool museum, and there's a lot of Barks originals here that none of us would see any place else. And for fun, a Happy Hooligan toy where the cops beat on him as it rolls and an ad by Winsor McCay in a section not open to the public. The Museum's closed on Monday's during the winter, so watch out for that, but it's well worth seeing. Steve Geppi's got a collection to envy.

Larger versions of the pictures can be seen and downloaded on my flickr site.

A couple of duck oil paintings.

Part of the complete North to the Yukon story that's on display.

The atypical section with non-Disney Duck watercolors, and some other oddities including a landscape.

A Faberge egg offered by Another Rainbow.

Pirate's Gold oil painting.

Duck family statue from Another Rainbow. That's an oil of Donald lying next to it.

Ah, McCay... This was opposite an original Krazy Kat, but this is all I had eyes for.

Happy Hooligan gets bopped by the cops when you roll this toy.

Look at that lovely Winsor McCay ad.