AD.


comic of My First Armed Robbery – art by Blue7, words by Smith

Blue7 is turning my true short story My First Armed Robbery into a comic. In fact, he wants to turn my entire unpublished memoir (Criminal – a true story of armed robbery, stolen cars, alternative art, mainstream poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle, and leaving the country by Smith & Lady) into a comic book — the seven most significant events in it anyway — using multiple artists.

This is the first page so far, and I love it. I love the heck out of being a comic book character.

I got hooked on being a comic book character when Lady started doing comics of our conversations in France in 2007.

We met Blue7 in Krakow in 2006. He was the leader of the garage cabaret rock band Urban-Jellen Test, and he had Lady and I help open a couple of his concerts reciting our poetry. Some of our fellow openers were a Gypsy violinist, an avant-garde cellist, and a folk singer.

Getting up on stage in a thousand year old stone dungeon-like basement of a club in the old Jewish Quarter of Krakow before a rock audience and reciting my poetry is one of my highlights in life.

Blue had worked on dozens of movies in Hollywood (see list and links below) before getting discouraged by America after 9/11, and he sold his house and took off for a couple years to live in the mountains of Thailand to paint before deciding to go to Poland to start his first rock band, which is where he met his wife Magda.

A year later they stayed with us for a few days in the walled-city of Essaouira, Morocco, before they headed on down to explore South Africa.

The third place we saw them was last year at the annual Rainbow Tribe Gathering in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Lady and I were walking along and there was Magda making jewelry and Blue painting a sign.

You can’t make up this kind of synchronicity.

Blue and Magda are currently back in Los Angeles and he’s working on movies again trying to get enough bread together to go on another adventure.

Blue7’s comic site is web.me.com/blue7is/John_Mann_Film_Work/COMIX/COMIX.html

Lady K’s four comic strips are at agentofchaos.com/comix.php
I love Lady’s comix, as does everyone we’ve met. I and they wish she’d do more of them.

Here’s a short summary of Blue’s IMDB.com listing (InternetMovieDataBase) of the movies he’s worked on.

Art Department:
1. Cowboys & Aliens (2011) (filming) (concepts/boards)
2. The Smurfs (2011) (filming) (storyboard artist)
3. Iron Man 2 (2010) (storyboard artist)
4. Superman Returns (2006) (concept artist)
5. The Missing (2003/I) (storyboard artist)
6. xXx (2002) (storyboard artist)
7. Men in Black II (2002) (storyboard artist)
8. Clockstoppers (2002) (storyboard artist)
9. We Were Soldiers (2002) (storyboard artist)
10. The Fast and the Furious (2001) (storyboard artist)
11. Bedazzled (2000) (storyboard artist)
12. Stuart Little (1999) (storyboard artist)
13. Random Hearts (1999) (concept artist) (uncredited)
14. Message in a Bottle (1999) (storyboard artist)
15. Godzilla (1998) (storyboard artist)
16. Mimic (1997) (designer/storyboards)
17. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) (storyboard artist)
18. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) (storyboard artist) (uncredited)
19. Species (1995) (effects designer)
20. The Specialist (1994) (effects designer)
21. The Getaway (1993) (storyboard artist)
22. Cliffhanger (1993) (storyboard artist)

Visual Effects:
1. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) (visual effects artist)
2. Species (1995) (visual effects designer: Boss Film)

Animation Department:
1. Species (1995) (animation director)

Production Designer:
1. The Basement (2005/I)

Director, Writer, Producer and Editor
1. The Girl with a Tail (2001)

For a much fuller film resume, check out
imdb.com/name/nm0542820/resume

And you can sample his Urban-Jellen Test music at
myspace.com/ujtest
and
myspace.com/namedblue7



Blue7 and Magda at Rainbow 2009 – fotos by Smith

6 Responses

  1. I really love this whole idea… and I agree with John.. the first installment is kick ass. Really excellent.!!

    Maybe this is the way to market your story? As a comic book or change up the written format to include portions with comic book pages. It would certainly be unique.
    Or perhaps when he finishes the comic book you can use that to pitch your book/story to a publisher. Would be a unique way to pitch your story..

  2. all true. and if i don’t get some publishing feedback within the next 6 months, we’ll publish it through lulu.com and hope you and our friends can spread it by word of mouth, it really is quite a unique and special story. i’d read it if it weren’t my life just like i read hunter s thompson, jack kerouac and william s burroughs (in whose company i feel this belongs).

  3. My both computeres have been fucked the last couple of weeks and I finally got the little one working. I ran back through your blogs and would have comments on many of them, but it’s all in the past and I’m trying to stay in the now.
    Good stuff on the first comics page, hope you can keep up the intensity, looks like a winner. I like

  4. i think there’s some possibilities here.

    plus yesterday a friend of a friend of harvey pekar’s who says her friend was helping harvey said she wants to connect the two of us so maybe some of the “splendor” may continue. plus blue has ideas for selling the comic. for first time in a long long time i actually have a ray of artistic hope. but as you well know, it could be something, it could be nothing. been too many maybes in my past to get excited.

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