The inside joke that turned into a poster...

This has been the year when my friend Mark was a presence here at my blog. It's hard for him not to be since there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him or have something remind me of him. It's been almost a year since he passed away (or as I like to think more and more, since he became one with The Force), which is still amazing to realize.

I'd end up talking to people about some of the things he used to say or do. One of the stories that wouldn't go away was when Mark brought the idea of Muppet Watchmen to the table. It was around the time the Watchmen movie was coming out and I guess somewhere in his incredibly creative and funny mind he started seeing the previews with the Muppets cast as the various characters. The idea became our personal inside joke for a long time and it's something that still comes up when all of his friends get together.

How ironic that I ended up being asked to create a print of what the Muppets might look like if they were really cast in Watchmen as a Christmas present. I jumped at the chance to work on it just so I could creatively turn back time to when Mark would sit with all of the guys at Applebees and kick around ideas on how the Muppets would sound reciting the lines from the graphic novel. Back in those days I never felt I was good enough with my talent to capture anything the way that might give justice to his ideas. This time around, I pushed passed that notion.

It took me a few months to work this print up into what it became. Between trying to make a composition that could capture some of the main characters to hoping my Wacom tablet and my talent were up to the challenge, it was a bit of an uphill battle some days. Still, I'm actually quite proud of the result. One of my favorites in the piece is actually Fozziemandias. He was one of the hardest to create. I'm not at all displeased with how Silk Sow manages to look, either.

Because I know how most of my friends have been feeling this year since Mark's passing, I decided to give anyone who knew him this print as a Christmas/Holiday present of sorts. Though I do hope to work on something that shows how talented Mark was with creating story ideas like he did with his co-writer Randy or even the ones he helped me mold, too, at a time of the year when you look around and remember who's important to you in your life, there's something fitting about seeing the Watchmuppets print and remembering just how much laughter that one person could bring into another's life.

My only regret is that I couldn't hear the laughter he would have had if I gave him a print, too.