Friday, August 6, 2010

The Texas Observer: Deportation Madness

Hey all!
Meant to put this up a while ago.
Been busy working on Sept comics for Marty's Diner at USARiseUp.
Anyway, this was one of the wildest gigs I've gotten.
Texas Observer wanted me to illustrate an article on a recent court ruling that allowed illegal immigrants to stay in the US if they get drug possession charges. The editors wanted to riff on old b-movie posters like that of Reefer Madness



















At first, the editors liked my original idea of zombies jumping the border fence and smoking weed. And they let me 
go all the way to a finished illustration:


The wonderful art director Kate Iltis loved it and the editors did too. But.....once the editor took a deep look at the finished concept, he had second thoughts. I guess he thought it was a little too over-the-top and maybe a little racially insensitive, losing the subtler nuances in the article. So I ended up making a new version closer to the Reefer Madness idea:















All in all, it was a fun (paid!) assignment, and I got to make a cool poster.
If anybody wants prints of either illustration to hang in their rooms,
Later!

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