SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 23FEB25
But a star is still a star by any other name.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Well, you know they don't like it when you take a stand.
WORDS
Here’s the pencils for the next Mystery Man page, which is actually a two-page spread so I drew it extra big on a piece of 19” x 24” bristol board. I’ve been primarily focused on AEW stuff this past week so I didn’t have the time to commit to a new Human Needs painting or to start inking this, but when you see these new rasslin’ paintings (Mariah May, Julia Hart, Will Ospreay and Mercedes Mone) you’ll appreciate the effort. Maybe. Who knows.
Anyway, if you haven’t been following along I’m redrawing a 6 page comic I made when I was 13, a way of reconnecting and collaborating with my younger self. Pure joy stuff.
Here’s the original two-page spread:
Vengeance!
Not much in the way of a background, right? That’s why I’ve gone over the top with the backgrounds in this new take.
Interesting maybe only to me, but this isn’t the first time I’ve redrawn this. Actually my third!
VENGEANCE!
Here’s the first time I redid it, when I was 14. Still no background, but it looks like I used up a whole Sharpie marker to at least get some contrast. Thirty years later, this legitimately is still emitting those signature fumes.
VENGEANCE!
Here’s the second time I redrew it, another year later when I was 15. Rain with a silver marker! And all of those DOTS. I still vividly remember the night I stippled all of those on there, sitting with a lapboard on my waterbed (yeah baby) and tapping that fine-point Sharpie over and over and over. My mom came in, hearing the sound of it and wondering what the hell was going on.
Other than my lousy lettering and unruled caption boxes, I honestly still like this take. 15 year-old Rob was going for it.
We were in pretty rough financial shape around these years, but Mom did what she could to support my passion for art. Different office supplies from the bank she worked at would ‘accidentally’ fall into her purse from time to time like steno pads, copy paper, Sharpies, pencils, even the plastic sleeves and binders I still have these in. Hell, the electric pencil sharpener that I still use to this day came from there.
So anyway, thanks for kinda-sorta robbing banks to support my art, Mom!
(I haven’t been told which of these is coming out on Thursday. One of the first four, most likely.)
UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS
The Hurt Syndicate
FTR
Thunder Rosa
Samoa Joe
Mariah May
Card subject to change.
Use the promo code ROBFEB25 at checkout on ShopAEW and Pro Wrestling Tees (where you can find this Owen Hart print) to get 25% off any of my existing prints older than one month! Several of these are close to selling out so this is a great time to swoop in and get yours.
Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
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Bluesky
Cara
YouTube
Science is real.
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Reacher season three is off to a solid start. I wasn’t fully in love with the second season but this has more of that feeling of that 70’s and 80’s genre of Action Drifters who go from town to town and right wrongs that I enjoyed in the first season. I do wonder when they’ll have the most realistic episode of the show that’s just Reacher spending 2-4 hours a day at the gym maintaining that physique.
Last weekend I went to see Companion as I’m a fan of a lot of the cast, not realizing it’s also from the folks who made the outstanding Barbarian from a few years back. I kind of wish I’d gone into this blind and not seen the trailer, so that the first big twist reveal would’ve been the ‘holy crap’ moment that it is. Just in case you want to go in blind (and ya kinda should), I won’t say much about the story. I’ll just say that it’s really incredible and there were two couples I saw leaving at the end where I was thinking, “Looks like this one hit a little close to home.”
While working on Thursday I listened to Earthlight by J Michael Stravzynski, a full cast and production audio drama about the militarization of space. If you’re a fellow Babylon 5 fan, you’ll recognize a ton of elements and concepts from the show, almost making this a sort of Year Zero B5 story. It’s a tight action-packed three hour production, full of excitement if a little light on substance. But hell, nowadays that’s just fine.
I also finished reading Traveling to Mars by Mark Russell and Roberto Meli, a graphic novel I was taking my time with. A man with terminal cancer is hired by a plant-based meat company to go to Mars and claim a reported natural gas find for them, and hilarity ensues. He’ll be the first human on Mars, but he’ll die shortly after getting there. It’s a meditation on end of life, it’s a satire of late-stage capitalism, and about holding your creators accountable. Russell’s one of my favorite writers working right now and this could easily be his best work yet.
Yesterday afternoon I went to see the Oscar-nominated short animated films at the Tivoli Theater in the Nelson-Atkins Museum. A movie theater in a museum! How cool!
These were all upwards of 15 minutes each, which when you stop to think about it is a hell of a challenge for the people making these. Not only do you have to develop the visuals, but you only have that period of time to establish the characters, their world, and to tell the story and/or get the idea across.
Each of these were VERY different in look, tone and approach, which made this a really fun experience. Here’s my brief thoughts on each:
Beautiful Men is a stop-motion about three balding men on a trip together to get hair transplants, except there’s accidentally only one opening for the procedure. The animation is spectacular in this, to the point I thought it was CG. Really smooth and realistic yet gorgeously stylized.
In the Shadow of the Cypress is probably the one that will stick with me. A 2D animation styled akin to a lot of modern illustration, it’s about a couple whose relationship appears to be ending and the Herculean obstacle that lies between them to be overcome. There’s no dialogue in this, so everything is told visually and very effectively.
Magic Candies is a fun CG piece about a young lonely boy who gets a bag of, you guessed it, magic candies. Each one lets him communicate with something he can’t speak with, from a couch to his dog to some wonderful surprises. Writing this out I’m emotional all over again about what the final piece of candy does. This is the closest in look and feel to what we’re accustomed to seeing from Pixar or Dreamworks.
Wander to Wonder is another stop motion piece and is maybe the most imaginative and artistic of the bunch. A children’s TV host has passed away and the characters from his show are still trying to live on and survive without him or the audience. I think that’s what was going on, at least. This one’s a fuggin trip, man.
Yuck! is a hilarious and cute 2D piece focused on kids in a small camping community trying to understand why people would kiss each other. The audience was laughing throughout this one, and each laugh was earned.
It was kind of challenging watching all of these back-to-back like this. I had to sort of reset my brain with each one while still trying to process the prior I had just watched. The closest thing I can compare it to is a stack of unrelated comic books that need to be read in one sitting. Except they’re all brand new and self-contained. I guess also similar to an anthology of short stories without any uniting theme.
Still, it was a lovely way to spend an hour and a half.
Important Kima Update
YOU GOOD?
It’s been COLD here in Kansas City this week, only getting above freezing yesterday. It snowed throughout Tuesday, but luckily without any ice preceding it. I shoveled twice that day and when I went out Wednesday morning to shovel again the weather app said it was 7 but felt like -7. And that was correct. Even with gloves on my hands were close to frostbite after I was out there for about 20 minutes.
Our 90 year-old house struggles when it gets this cold. We had the faucets dripping to keep the pipes from freezing, hung a heavy curtain in our entryway to block the draft (doubling as a very fun thing for the cats to race in and around and under), and had lap blankets out. As you can see, Kima claimed all of the blankets for herself.
And today it’s supposed to get up in the 50’s! 60’s tomorrow! Weather in the Midwest is wild, man.
Love you more,
Rob