| In the everything old is new again
department, check out the Daily Bugle headline in the larger
image of this portfolio plate from 1981...
1/27/06
While Steve continues to blast away at
paintings for our next collection (see below), Rich will pack
up the F&L original art portfolios next month and head out
to San Francisco for Wondercon
2006. WC has been brought to you for a few years
now by the same folks who somehow manage to safely land the city-sized
zeppelin that San Diego Comic-Con has become, so a good
time should be had by all. If they can find a place to park.
If Rich remembers correctly from his days
as a vastly overpaid storyboard guy at Colossal Pictures, the
Bay Area doesn't exactly roll out the red carpet for purveyors
of female objectification, so we may switch out some of the babe
stuff for older material (e.g, Judge Dredd covers; an album cover
rough or two). Some of it. There'll still be plenty of
impetus for the odd derisive snort or harangue. And this might
be the time to mention that Rich is comfortable not only with
verbal abuse, but equal-opportunity exploitation as well. So
if you're coming, and scantily-clad fantasy chicks make you feel
icky, why not stop by his table in Artist Alley for a spicy sketch
of, say, Warlord, or Magnus Robot Fighter?
Speaking of album covers, we just touched
base with Intruder, who tell us that their debut Metal
Blade classic, A Higher Form of Killing, has just been
reissued. We did the cover art for that disk, as well as Escape
From Pain and Psycho-Savant--and you can see all three
images on the band's website.
(Below is the Escape From Pain image in T-shirt form.)
And speaking of escaping from pain (and
shifting gears so abruptly your molars may fly out the back of
your skull) work continues apace on the Sweet Cheeks
project...
...a collection of brand new paintings,
the subject matter of which you'll have to divine for yourself
from these sneak preview vignettes
and those in our last update, below. Yes,
your girlfriend will be offended.
We're also gearing up for a second release
this year, in which we'll be returning--for the first time in
years--to the always-popular Haunted House of Lingerie
format. This collection, however, will feature a few less monsters
and a little more...restraint. If we're not all tied
up with other stuff (that college copywriting class is really
coming in handy now) F&L's Bed & Bondage, with
all-new drawings, paintings, and a story or two, will
be slouching your way this summer. And, yes, your gf will be
really offended.
10.23.05
As Criswell might say, "Important
future F&L things will be happening...in the future!"
Or to narrow it down: if our
heads don't explode and our publishers don't retire to the Caymans
like they've been threatening to do for the last five years,
we could be looking at two new F&L books out in 2006.
Book one:
Perhaps you've found yourself
saying (under your breath, of course, so as not to offend our
sensitive natures), "Why don't those maroons put out a collection
of brand new full page paintings? Of just smokin' fantasy babes--no
super-heroes or Hobbits (unless they're babes)...and with a suggested
retail price of $2.99?"
As it so happens, we're knee
deep in that very project right now.
The cover price is out of our
hands, but we're currently a little better than a quarter of
the way through a series of 40+ new marker and airbrush paintings
for Fastner & Larson's Sweet Cheeks, Vol. I, a piquant,
pin-up-y compendium slated for release next summer.
We've heard the attendance at
San Diego Comic-Con this year was something over 100,000. If
just half of you were to swing by the SQP booth in 2006
for your hot-off-the-presses autographed copy of F&L's Sweet
Cheeks, it would make the bus ride back to Minneapolis that much
more enjoyable.
The SQP boys like to keep their
friends close, their enemies closer, and their in-the-works projects
under their hats, but they've agreed to let us sneak these Sweet
Cheeks vignettes to, as they put it, "get the anticipatory
juices flowing".
As unhygienic as that sounds,
we'll have more for you as things get further along.
Book two:
This project is on the back burner
until we've gotten a little deeper into Sweet Cheeks (so to speak).
The book is in its formative stages, and will go in one of two
directions, either of which will be a little different in theme
and/or medium than what has come before in the F&L oeuvre.
We should have a few less vague things to say about it around
December.
8.23.05
Little Black Book 3
is out, and we initially thought we'd celebrate by offering a
limited, signed bookplate of an unpublished F&L image with
each copy bought directly from us.
But a brief, heated confab with
our marketing vermin convinced us that variety is the
key to separating you from your discretionary income.
So if you haven't gotten your
LBB 3 yet, and you've ever said to yourself, "Yes, I
believe I"d enjoy owning an F&L
print, but there's not a chance in hell I'm forking over
$10 for one," see if this
might be to your liking.
6.15.05
We know: it's been six months.
Don't yell at us.
We've been away for a while (not
in rehab, as our enemies might suggest), doing what needed to
be done, and probably taking way too long to do it. Here's what
we've been up to:
F&L's Little Black Book Vol. 3! Twenty-two new paintings produced exclusively
for this collection! Untold months in the making!
The First Contact with a Jaw-Droppingly Clueless
Visitor from Another World Project. A graphic novel written
by Bob Keenan, drawn by Rich, and with an F&L cover. A sneak
peek should be on the publisher's
site in the not-too-distant future. But they have a vast
amount of product to pound into shape, so be patient.
We're crossing our fingers that
both of these must-have items will debut at Comic-Con in San
Diego. And speaking of cons...
Here's the F&L convention
schedule for the rest of 2005:
July 1-3 -- Convergence,
Minneapolis. The only other con this year where you'll find
both inmates of the F&L asylum wandering around without their
keepers. Attendees of Minicon 40 will confirm that the whole
is more entertaining than the sum of the parts, provided we slip
them a dollar. We'll have art in the Art Show, and prints in
the Print Shop. Please find us--day or night--and proffer a frosty
malt beverage.
July 14-17 -- Comic-Con
International,San Diego. Figure out how much money
you'll need, and bring three times that amount. Smoke will be
pouring out of the ATMs by Thursday night. Stop by and say hi
to Rich at the SQP booth.
August 5-7 -- Wizard
World Chicago. Rich should be in Artist's Alley; we'll
let you know for sure as soon as we do. (Meanwhile, unless you
enjoy $15 French Toast, you may want to book a hotel a few miles
away from the Rosemont Convention Center.)
September 2-5 -- Dragon*Con,
Atlanta. More costumes in the hotel lobby at 2 in the morning
than attendees at most other conventions. F&L is planning
to be in the Art Show with many originals and prints. Look for
Rich in the Artist Show or Artists Alley.
November 3-6 -- World
Fantasy Convention, Madison, WI. If you want to hob-nob
with fantasy writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, and one
of F&L's true aesthetic antipodes, the great Kinuko Craft,
this is the con for you. Rich will have a table in the Dealer's
Room.
Rich will be sketching, and selling
originals, books and prints at all cons. As always, free signatures
on anything and everything, so bring along those old Many
Ghosts of Dr. Graves.
Steve will be sequestered in
Minneapolis, catching up on a backlog of painting assignments.
Said backlog having occurred in part because...
Earlier this year, we moved our
studios across town.
One of the great things about
leaving a building that's a) housed a lot of art types for a
long time, and 2) about to be gutted and turned into lofts, is
the generosity knob gets turned up to 10. Lots of usable stuff
gets left behind, and if you can haul it, it's yours.
"Usable" doesn't necessarily
mean "good". We abandoned a massive, industrial strength
Art-O-Graph (Google it, you youngsters) because we only used
it a few times, and because trying to move it would likely have
put at least one of us in the hospital.
Heavy industry once abounded
in our former digs, and there was a lot of 40s and 50s tech just
lying around. Intercoms, desks, file cabinets, shelving, a stat
camera (again:Google)--all riveted together from nuclear-attack-grade
sheet metal. Our landlord gave us a light table building-like
enough to live under (an eventuality we artists always have to
keep in mind).
One of Steve's longstanding holy
grails is more storage for our originals. Specifically, flat
files. Good ones are hard to find and expensive. Our upstairs
neighbor and longtime friend, an always generous illustrator
who now works exclusively in digital, let us have two. We trussed
up and horsed those babies out of there.
We'd also accumulated 20 years
worth of our own stuff, a lot of it equally unwieldy. Moving
was a month's worth of Twilight Zone-like ineffectuality on our
part, which was about 26 days more than our initial worst-case
scenario.
But now F&L World HQ is safely
ensconced on the eastern bluffs of the Mississippi, just off
the main campus of the University of Minnesota.
(Where you'll likely find us
volunteering for experimental research programs during our down
time.)
1.8.05
Check out twelve new gallery
images here.
12.17.04
It's virtually impossible to
catch Steve and Rich together at the same convention.
While the latter is careening around the
circuit, hawking product and living the high life in various
Motel 6's and Comfort Inns, the former is almost always tucked
away at F&L World Headquarters in Minneapolis, working on
a painting. He's the JD Salinger of the airbrush (sans the hefty
royalty checks. Or any royalty checks).
If you've got Easter Weekend (Mar 25-27)
2005 free, however, and you feel like spending it in glorious
Minnesota (and at this point we realize we've lost 99.5% of you)--Fastner
& Larson are scheduled to be Artist Guests at Minicon
40.
Everything you've heard about this fabled
sf convention is true. Yes, during the glory years, it was a
miracle no one was killed. And yes, lately, it's been the perfect
convention to bring your parents to.
But with someone who (we know from personal
experience) really knows what he's doing as the new con chair,
and Terry Pratchett
as Guest of Honor, that should change next year.
As a bonus, Minicon 40 moves from the fairly
irritating downtown Hilton back to its original location, the
then-Radisson South-now Sheraton Minneapolis, a hotel far better
suited to enjoying Fandom's Rich Pageant.
We'll show a substantial number of large
originals (including interesting non-babe material) in the Art
Show, participate inarticulately in panel discussions, have a
table in the Dealer's room at which you can at long last get
Steve's signature on as many items as you can haul in, and probably
fail to behave as we ought at late night room parties.
If you were thinking about possibly attending
anyway, we hope this pushes you over the edge. One way or the
other.
F&L's Little Black Book Vol. 2 is
a "Bud's Best" pick ("Out of all the new and coming
items in this catalog, these impressed Bud the most...")
in Bud Plant's latest (Winter 2004-05) Incorrigible Catalog.
If you're ordering other naughty stuff from this disreputable
publication, you can also pick up LBB 1 and 2, and Haunted
House of Lingerie 2 and 3.
F&l provided the cover for Nick Pollotta
and James Clay's new Victorian fantasy/adventure, That
Darn Squid God, published earlier this year by Wildside
Press.
The Squid God painting took "Best
Alien" in this year's
Dragon*Con Art Show.
Four new Wildside
editions of novels in Pollotta's Bureau 13Doomsday Exam, Judgment Night, and Full Moonster,
also sport F&L covers. series, including
If you're into RPG's and/or biker babes
from Hell (and doesn't that just about cover the male demographic?),
we've just created this
image for Blue Devil Games.
Rich has an ink-and-computer drawing in
Andre Duza's extremely disturbing new Deadite Press horror novel,
Dead Bitch
Army. You may want to pick this one up before
the new Attorney General is sworn in.
11.07.04
Embarrassingly, we started putting
this website together on April 4th.
But then, we have trouble building tacos.
If you remember the hominid and the obelisk in 2001, flailing
around with a thighbone--that's us and computers.
People have been asking about an F&L
page for a few years now, to which our standard reply has been,
"We're waiting to see if this whole 'internet' thing works
out."
Since the web doesn't seem to be going
away, and since the window of opportunity for making hugely stupid
money on it has pretty much closed (standard F&L criteria
for any undertaking since day one), here we are--with substantial
assistance from SQP co-publisher and web doge Bob Keenan. The
check is in the mail, Bob.
Convention season is almost over (for us,
anyway--we have a lot of work to do between now and May or so,
and between the snow, cold and dark here in the frozen tundra,
we're going to be too depressed for anything else), but eventually
this page will list the half dozen or so shows we'll do in 2005.
As far as upcoming publications and products
are concerned, we're usually among the last to know (it's always
a thrill to walk into Barnes & Noble and find a painting
we did several years ago staring back at us from a new book cover).
If we find out about them, we'll let you know here, also.
We're among the eight people in the world
who don't have cell phones (see above). Nevertheless, a selection
of F&L images have been made available as screensavers for
these unholy devices, and you can check them out here.
In the 80's, we worked on a series of Marvel
superhero portfolios, including the Hulk. X-Men and Spider-Man.
We also finished paintings for the Fantastic Four (you can see
one of them in Little Black Book Vol. 2, and a sketch
for another on the Gallery page here), and a grayscale marker
study for the Avengers.
Those last two portfolios were never published,
but the Avengers image turns up on the cover of the November
issue of Roy Thomas' Alter
Ego.
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