Geof Darrow is an artist with a dense trippy style that no one can duplicate – his best known works include comics classics like Hardboiled. He’s also known as a concept artist for all four Matrix movies and the great cult masterpiece of our times, Speed Racer (lots of little Darrow touches in the background of that one if you know where to look.)
Presumably due to his movie work and whatever he’s been away from comics for a bit but in a couple of tweets today he announced some new work.
“I have finished my next comic book series. It will be announced soon. A 7 issue series beginning in April,” he tweeted. “My end is finished. It is up to Dark Horse now. Shaolin C in “Cruel to be Kin.” 205 pages of not world changing stuff.”
Shaolin C is Shaolin Cowboy, a series of minis about a monk who wanders a post-apocalyptic landscape having extremely violent adventures. The book was originally published by Burlyman, a comics publishing company owned and run by the Wachowskis. But since Burlyman closed down, Dark Horse has been printing the series. You can get the earliest Burlyman comics in the Shaolin Cowboy: Start Trek compilation.
While this is good news, Darrow’s other announcement today was met with dismay from many: he’s getting into NFTs. He wrote:.
It has been a while since i tweeted. It could be a blessing . Was convinced i should tip my toe in the NFT market. Fortunately a friend is doing it for me!
The art will be minted on the OpenSeas platform, which is known for selling a lot of pirated art and not doing much to combat it.
Darrow’s mentions were full of polite pleas not to get into NFTs, citing the unrest and energy crisis in Kazakhstan as a real world example of the dangers of the energy suck used to mint them.
New Year, new journey. Presenting the first NFT by Geof Darrow. https://t.co/7UeesJfzB4
— Geof Darrow Comics (@ComicsByGeof) January 10, 2022
The art itself is a cute little drawing of a pig-turtle eating some fish. Sad to think that such a nice thing is helping to create the post-apocalyptic world that we’re living in this very moment.
Twitter had a lot to say about older artists being fooled by the NFT con, but as long as there’s easy money to be made, artists will be toe dipping, and at this point it’s nearly useless to expect any different.
But to circle back to the good news: 205 pages of new Shaolin Cowboy coming this year!
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I met Mr Darrow at ECCC a few years ago and he picked my brain for a while about webcomics, Patreon, and how to make money in that space. He seemed pretty mystified by it all, so not the most tech savvy guy around. I do love his art, but always wished he’d hook up with a great writer to ween him off the juvenile premises he’s so fond of illustrating.
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