Nothing Burps Better Than Bacon

On Thanksgiving I have a little tradition of watching both Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Dutch.  If I don’t we just had a really big dinner.  Thanksgiving must not have happened.  This custom card is a homage to that latter of the two movies, Dutch.

Dutch was released in 1991 and like most movies around this time I most likely first saw it on HBO.  I loved it the first time I saw it and every time since.  For me it’s a perfect holiday movie.

Because of Married… With Children I was a big Ed O’Neill fan.  The Dutch Dooley character, to me, is only a slightly more refined version of Al Bundy.  As the years have gone by I’ve found myself relating somewhere in between the two characters being somewhat of a working stiff from midwest that has had a number of bumps in the road, both self-inflicted and not.

Since Dutch was released in 1991 I thought it would be funny to drop Dutch and Dobsy Dale Doyle into a 1991 Impel Marvel Universe Series II ‘Arch-Enemies’ subset inspired design.

Spida

This card comes with some good timing with the start of the new NBA season right around the corner.  Donovan Mitchell’s nickname “Spida” is one of the coolest nicknames in the league (also, shout out the OG “Spider”, John Salley).

I thought putting the Spida man on a 1991 Impel Marvel Universe inspired card would be pretty damn cool.  Back in 1991 I LOVED these cards.  When these cards first came out, for a time, shifted my whole collecting focus to comic cards and really got me, primarily a sports card kid, into the whole comic book universe.  I could have had one million of these cards and I would have still bought more packs.

This card I thought really hinged on finding the right superhero-esque action shot, and I found exactly what I was hoping for.  I think even Stan Lee would give it the thumbs up.  It actually looks like Donovan is in mid web-swing on his way to the hoop. I added a little more drama to the card by having Spida’s left foot break the card frame.

Donovan Mitchell is one of the players I’m most excited to see for the 2018-19 season.  He had that breakout rookie year and I think he’s going to be even better this year now that’s it’s more than established that he’s the guy in Utah, and he’ll now be expected to do big things for that team to compete at the level that they did last season.

Bone Saw McGraw

I've been wanting to do a Randy Savage card of some sort for awhile now but just couldn't figure out what type of card. Someone out in cyberspace already beat me to a Randy Poffo minor league baseball card so that was not an option.

The Macho Man was my favorite wrestler growing up. I don't watch wrestling anymore because for me it's just not the same. You no longer have gimmicks, just a bunch of scripted guys going out there using their first and last names. If it's not a real fight it should have more fantasy involved. It's showbiz, it should be fantastical. The character gimmick, in my opinion, were great, and the best ones were the ones that made you believe that that's who that guy really was. Come to find out that the Macho Man character was only a slightly magnified version of who Randy Savage was in real life. The guy was intense and he lived his gimmick as he treated it like an art form. It was tough losing a larger-than-life personality like that; can't believe it's been seven years already.

In 1990 I missed series one of Impel's Marvel Universe cards, but I more than made up for that in with the second and third series the next two years. I loved those cards! Even though I wasn't much of a comic book collector (none of the store's around me really had them) I collected the crap out of these cards. What kid doesn't love super heroes? Despite not having the books I knew a lot about different characters stories and origins thanks to these cards. But, for me it wasn't about the backstories it was about the artwork. As a kid my best skill was my drawing ability and there wasn't anything cooler to me than drawing comic book characters. Later, when I was able to find comic books, that fire was stoked even more by the brilliant work Image comics was doing at the time.

The 1991 Marvel cards had a subset called Arch-Enemies which filled you in on the super heroes biggest nemesis' were. I got the idea to do one one these cards for the epic battle between Spider-Man and Bone Saw McGraw in 2002's Spider-Man.