Indie Squid Kid

I hereby decree that September is Cephalopod Month!

Every month graphic artist Able Parris creates original desktop wallpaper, and his September calendar really caught my attention…for obvious reasons.

Three sizes are available this month:

1440×900

1280×1024

iPhone

Able’s work has been featured on Indie Squid Kid once before, with his kick-ass Nautilus collage.

Every Labor Day weekend, Atlanta, GA is overtaken by Dragon*Con, a massive media convention that covers a wide variety of genres: Sci-Fi and Fantasy, science and technology, TV and movies, literature and comic books. And of course, people dressed as Stormtroopers and superheroes.

Deep in the bowels of one of the three downtown hotels that host the convention, is an area known as “Artist’s Alley.” It is here that the booths and tables of all the attending comic book artists are set up, and it is here where I first discovered the works of Andy Lee.

Andy practices a form of Chinese brush painting known as Cha’han Buddhist splash stlye, and for $20*, he will produce a custom painting of pretty much anything you want–a dragon, Batman, a zombie breakdancer, or, perhaps, some sort of cephalopod.

*At least that has been his rate all three times (over the past 5-7 years) I’ve paid him for a commission.

Andy is one of the nicest people you will every meet, and here’s why. A few years ago (I can’t actually remember. Let’s say…three.), I asked Andy to paint an octopus. He painted one in a rather crazy style (posted above), but was worried that I wouldn’t like it. (He shouldn’t have been, it is awesome!) So, he painted another in a more realistic (but every bit as awesome) style (below), but only charged me for one!

Find out more about Andy Lee at, coincidentally, FindAndy.com.

gumball cephalopods, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

Here are two of the littlest cephalopods in the collection–a six-armed squid (another one!) and a very surprised looking octopus.

If memory serves, these came from one of those toy capsule “gumball” machines at Toys R’ Us…you know the kind that usually have shoddy Pokemon knock-offs, Hannah Montana stickers, or, if you’re lucky, Homies.

This would have been in the late 1990s, around the time my cephalopod collecting mania was really picking up steam. I don’t know how many quarters I fed into the machine just to get these two little guys, but I’m sure that somewhere I have an entire shoal of tiny rubber sea creatures with similar wide-eyed expressions.

Incidentally, I used a dime for scale because President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a well known amateur malacologist.

And yes, that was lie.

Nemo sticker, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

More mystery comic swag!

I got this at Heroes Con 2006 (Charlotte, NC), and, again, I have no idea if it is trying to promote anything specific. Anyone out there recognize it?

It is also one of the many awesome stickers that remained affixed to my MacBook when I finally had to return it following my layoff. A damn shame, really, I was just getting started…

Frogmen Vs. Radioactive Octopus, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

The elusive octopus finally makes an appearance (the first of many, to be sure) here at Indie Squid Kid, but this is no shy sea creature…

Behold the awesomeness that is Frogmen Vs. Radioactive Octopus!

Let’s get the formalities out of the way first. This fine product is brought to us by Accoutrements, the renowned purveyor of such delightful items as bacon bandages and the Crazy Cat Lady action figure. I purchased it a few years ago from my long-time former place of employment, The Bull’s Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill, NC, but you should look for it where ever tchotchke crap is sold.

The octopus figure itself is a pretty standard sculpt that is frequently used for toy octopi. However, this time it glows in the dark, prompting the following question…

We are left to puzzle this out for ourselves, but my money is on science.

The frogmen in question are, as you might expect,

They are armed with a variety of deadly weapons such as spear guns and pruning shears–but will it be enough to defeat this atomic monstrosity?

In this blogger’s opinion, not even close.