There Might be Giants of the Industry
I found out from Tom Sito last Wednesday at the ASIFA Board of Directors meeting that we had both been granted Giants of the Industry status over at: o-meon . Nice of you to say Chuck. Always good for a laugh if nothing else, but when Ray Harryhausen and Bill Plymton are in the same hall I have to hold off on accepting delivery on my Giant of the Industry T-shirt. And Tom says much the same thing.
Tell you where the real giants were hiding at Comic Con, over in Artist Alley with Dick Ayers and Mike Ploog and a lot of other great artist that were being ignored by the fan boys and girls. The only people looking them up were other artists and die hard art lovers. People that know good comic book storytelling and know how to read the creator`s names in the credits. Which makes us a very small sub-set of Comic Con.
Speaking of my old teacher, Dick Ayers, I have been reading his life story in comic book form part 1, 1924 to 1951 and am reminded of the whole story of Mi Lei Fo which he did not put in his autobiography.
Dick painted nose art for the 586th Bomb Squadron during WWII. One day he came in to teach us Kubert students and he was very bummed out.
He had been cleaning his studio over the weekend and had found the good luck charm of one of the bomber units, a laughing Buddha sculpture or as it is called Mi Lei Fo.
Dick had painted the nose art for Mi Lei Fo mock 1 back in the States before his unit shipped out to Europe. When the guys of Mi Lei Fo got a new plane just before the end of the war the pilot wanted Dick to paint the Laughing Buddha on the nose of this new plane.
Sure, but I will need your good luck charm to do some sketches from. Here you go. I`ll pick it up after this mission. The reason Dick still has that Laughing Buddha is because they never came back from that one mission they flew without their good luck charm.
I tried to talk Dick into doing a war comic of the story for D.C. (That would have been 1976 or 77) but he told me he could never draw that story. It was just too painful. Well, have somebody else draw it. And he did. He got one of the other teachers, Ric Estrada, who drew up the story from Dick`s script and it was every bit as powerful and poignant as the true story behind the story.
Ric spent years over at Hana-Barbara and still has one foot in comics and one foot in animation. Dick has spent some time working in animation with J.J. Sedelmaier in Whiteplains. But comic books are his first love.
If you ask Dick about giants he would talk about Burne Hogarth and Alex Raymond. He wouldn`t order his Giant of the Industry T-shirt either.
Tell you where the real giants were hiding at Comic Con, over in Artist Alley with Dick Ayers and Mike Ploog and a lot of other great artist that were being ignored by the fan boys and girls. The only people looking them up were other artists and die hard art lovers. People that know good comic book storytelling and know how to read the creator`s names in the credits. Which makes us a very small sub-set of Comic Con.
Speaking of my old teacher, Dick Ayers, I have been reading his life story in comic book form part 1, 1924 to 1951 and am reminded of the whole story of Mi Lei Fo which he did not put in his autobiography.
Dick painted nose art for the 586th Bomb Squadron during WWII. One day he came in to teach us Kubert students and he was very bummed out.
He had been cleaning his studio over the weekend and had found the good luck charm of one of the bomber units, a laughing Buddha sculpture or as it is called Mi Lei Fo.
Dick had painted the nose art for Mi Lei Fo mock 1 back in the States before his unit shipped out to Europe. When the guys of Mi Lei Fo got a new plane just before the end of the war the pilot wanted Dick to paint the Laughing Buddha on the nose of this new plane.
Sure, but I will need your good luck charm to do some sketches from. Here you go. I`ll pick it up after this mission. The reason Dick still has that Laughing Buddha is because they never came back from that one mission they flew without their good luck charm.
I tried to talk Dick into doing a war comic of the story for D.C. (That would have been 1976 or 77) but he told me he could never draw that story. It was just too painful. Well, have somebody else draw it. And he did. He got one of the other teachers, Ric Estrada, who drew up the story from Dick`s script and it was every bit as powerful and poignant as the true story behind the story.
Ric spent years over at Hana-Barbara and still has one foot in comics and one foot in animation. Dick has spent some time working in animation with J.J. Sedelmaier in Whiteplains. But comic books are his first love.
If you ask Dick about giants he would talk about Burne Hogarth and Alex Raymond. He wouldn`t order his Giant of the Industry T-shirt either.
posted by Larry Loc @ 6:30 AM
1 Comments:
At November 10, 2007 2:32 PM ,
Belinda Del Pesco said...
Thanks for posting this. My great-uncle Guerino Del Pesco was on the Mi Lei Fo (B-26 Marauder). Dick and I have corresponded about it. He's a great man, and a real connection to a family member we never had the pleasure of knowing. The fuselage of the plane is on display in Belgium at the Remember Museum. You can see it in their photo album, with pictures of the 9 lost crew members above the frame.
http://www.remembermuseum.com/en/
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