KYLE’S B&B: Latest News & Random Thoughts

Watching the final Monday Night Football broadcast on ABC last Monday, and seeing a lot of the nostalgic clips, brought home a lot of my memories of Joe Montana & the fabulous San Francisco 49ers, my all-time favorite football team. It’s true, at the moment my current favorites are the New England Patriots…not just because they’re on a winning streak the past few years, (and have the hottest quarterback playing today, Tom Brady), but mainly because my good friends Pete & Glenn have somehow railroaded me into becoming a Patriots fan with their unbridled enthusiasm for the team, (they are season ticket holders for years now, and make that drive up to Patriot’s stadium in Foxboro, MA for all the home games). Also, they throw the hands-down best Superbowl party every year, which has cemented my love for the Patriots, as they’ve won a lot the past few years, (in case ya’ hadn’t noticed!), making the party a massive celebration.

But, anyway, back to Joe & the 49ers…this was my team back in the day, and it was really thrilling to watch these guys pretty much dominate football throughout the 1980s and first half of the 90s. As you might know, before I was doing Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast, when I was drawing comic books for a living, I drew sports comic books for about a year & a half, (mainly baseball comics, which is how I started playing around with the idea of a gay baseball player comic strip, which led to Brad, which led to…well, you know the rest). But I also did some covers for several football comic books too….including Joe Namath…and then there was that “NFL Quarterback Club” book I did for Marvel Comics, in which I got to draw Steve Young of the 49ers. But probably my favorite football comic book I got to do was the cover of the Joe Montana biography, (pictured below). (And, in case you’re looking to purchase it on E-bay or something…keep in mind, I only did the cover art for that particular book…not the interior art).

I still wear my red #16 49ers jersey around every once in a while, and I recently got a 49ers baseball cap to make the ensemble complete. No, the team is nowhere near the glory days they once had, but you never know when they will rise again! In the meantime, enjoy some more pics of Joe Montana in his glory days, (and by the way, he looks just as sexy to me these days, too!).

Gee, that sounds like a scandalous headline, doesn’t it? Actually, just wanted to mention that I went to my figure drawing group this morning….a group that I have attended pretty regularly over the past year, although I’ve been too busy to get to for the past month or so. It was really nice to get back and get drawing like I used to in college, (without the teachers, tuition, or grading!). Something about drawing from a live figure is incomparable; I think it makes us illustrators work important muscles we don’t normally work sitting in the comfort of our home studios. (Of course, if & when I eventually have my dream home studio in the mountains of Vermont, I hope to do some live figure drawing there “at home”, as I don’t think figure drawing groups like the one I attend here in NY will be as easily accessible). In any case, I’ve pasted a sample of my figure drawing work below, (this one’s from June; wasn’t able to scan today’s drawings into the computer yet. I apologize that the image may not be the best quality scan…I’m still learning about scanning pencil images). And yes, I chose one that is purposely “modest”, (i.e., not showing frontal nudity), as I’m not sure what the guidelines for showing male nudity are on this blogsite. I DO know that frontal male nudity isn’t allowed on my AOL website, which may be a problem when I do finally get a gallery of my male nudes up & posted on the web, (and I do plan on doing that….soon, I hope!). There has been interest from many “Kyle’s B&B” readers on purchasing some of my male nude figure drawing work; it’s a tricky situation, as I’m not sure that I’m ready to part with the pieces I’ve done over the past year. But I suppose I will be persuaded if the price is right, (I REALLY hate negotiating prices for artwork….and determining what I am willing to let go, based on the dollar figure I can get for it, seems awfully mercenary, but….welcome to the world, Greg). Anyway, just wanted to let y’all know I am actively doing my figure drawing work, in addition to the B&B episodes, and let me know if you’d like to see some more here, and I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I hope you are surviving the holiday season without too much craziness….and look for the newest episode of “Kyle’s B&B” on this coming Tuesday, Dec. 20th!

I’ve received a number of e-mails concerning the most recent episode of “Kyle’s B&B”, ( # 167), asking in one form or another, “Who is this guy Steve that Kyle’s talking with here?”. Long-time readers may recall that Steve has appeared in the strip twice before…(no, I don’t have the episode #s in front of me, but they were both December “Holiday episodes”….I believe in 2002 & 2003). And…is he an angel? Well…the fact that he is the star of another comic strip of mine, “An Angel’s Story“, may confirm that this is so! Or, at least, he’s an angel-in-training….or something like that, (you’d have to read the strip to understand). The comic strip ran in Creations magazine, an east coast new age publication, for about 9 years, from the mid 90s up until a couple of years ago, at which point I needed to put the strip on hiatus as Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast was becoming my main focus and requiring more time than would allow me to produce both comic strips at the quality level I prefer. Will An Angel’s Story ever return? I hope so. I’m just not sure when. Kyle’s B&B has become more than a full-time occupation for me, and I’m not sure at this point when I’ll have the time to produce new Angel Story episodes. But hey….at least Steve seems to pop up here in the B&B episodes every once in a while. And you can still see several of the classic episodes of An Angel’s Story at the website.
In the meantime, below is a pic of Steve in the latter days of the comic strip, with his short-haired look, (it appears he has now returned to his long-haired look, which he sported for the first 5 years or so of the strip, which I’m sure should make happy all those who wrote me angry e-mails when he cut his hair short!).