The Delta Snake: Started as a newsletter/magazine in 1981, eZine in the 90s, one the first Blues Web pages, now a music blog. Founded by Al Handa (aka DJ Boogie Underground). Reviews and Articles are currently run first on X and then archived here.
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Queen Khleow by Al Handa is free on Kindle Unlimited
Wednesday 11/11 until
Friday 11/13
A comical novelette about Queen Khleow, verified Queen of Eqypt and time traveling detective. A fond tribute to the Jay Ward era cartoons.
#cats #fantasy #mystery #humor #iliad #satire
Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
Delta Snake Review: Nov. 3, 2026
Topics: Quitturz graphic novel update, news on upcoming Queen Khleow ebook and webcomic and cover art.
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I changed the plan on the Quitturz; I’m going to do the graphic novel as a hybrid. I was taking the opportunity to revise 1977 events in that book and wasn’t quite satisfied with it because you can only do so much detail in a comic and felt that the ebook should also be revised also. The original Vella version covered the 70s San Francisco along with the 80s Seattle story. In this case, though, book one will be the San Francisco events. In other words, the series is going to be told in chronological order.
So, you’ve got a novelette which is revised from the original with more detail and included will be a complete graphic novel version. Both will cover different details to avoid too much duplication. Taken together it should be a nice reading experience.
One of the reasons I changed the plan was because as I was doing the graphic novel, of which I have two chapters completed, the way the book reads doesn’t lend itself to a cartoon version so I kept the detail level on the faces and scenery at the level of, for example, 60s era Mad magazine (if you’re familiar with that level of artwork). I needed to have more of the story expressed in facial expressions and gestures since not all of it is broad humor.
That created a situation where my desire to do a weekly webcomic based on the Quitturz became a little too difficult due to the detail. So, I moved up another project; a revision of the Queen Khleow novelette originally on Vella. I’ll put the revised ebook out on schedule this month since it’s already written and early next year, debut a webcomic version which is more of a satire. It’s a novelette that will be much easier to draw. I envisioned the book as a text version of a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon with J. Ward style humor type work so the webcomic versions won’t need to have the subtlety required for the quitters.
What is attached to this entry is the tentative cover for the text e-book version. It differs from the comic strip in that it’s a cover illustration and I used all the tech that I would normally use for a promo or a cover.
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The webcomic will be hand drawn as much as possible like the Quitturz. In the case of this cover, this is a composite of three images, a more detailed illustration of the model, Klaudia, a real human being (she also helped out with the Quitturz promos and videos).
I’ll do a fuller preview in another blog entry but if you look at the picture, I think you’ll see some of the comedic elements.
The webcomic cover has already been drawn. I’m going to use the original Kindle Vella cover, which is a hand drawn picture of the Khleow character. That drawing has more of an ancient Egyptian flavor. If you look at this particular e-book cover, it’s somewhat of a, I wouldn’t call a straight satire but it’s a bit of a takeoff on the fantasy-sorcerer image; which makes sense for a fictional queen that also does time traveling. Such a person would be exposed to a lot of different fashions and would not necessarily dress like Cleopatra.
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
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Delta Snake Review: Sept. 29, 2026
Topics: Comic update, Parts 1-3 of 70s Punk Flyer Demo and future features.
I’m approaching this as if the Quitturz book 2 was a graphic magazine or comic with the character being done by a cover artist and another one working on the strip itself. Like with Mad Magazine or even Superman, there was always a difference between the cover art and the panels, which were always simpler if for no other reason then to make sure that the emphasis was on story and to make room for the dialogue text.
The cover art, which always has a promotional function (it’s what you see on the newsstand or shelf) was always going to be more detailed and elaborate; the amount of details in these promo pics probably won’t necessarily be in my panels. There already is a basic look for the main character for the panels, and that probably won’t be debuted until the actual comic.
However, one reason that I’m continuing the line of poster or promo art, as you will, is that one, those who follow my blogs know that I’m always putting out regular promo for projects.
Being a boomer, my comic experience is different than perhaps a GenZ or millennial, etc. For example, I didn’t think in terms of “graphic novels” in the 70s, the publications were known as comics or in the case of Mad Magazine, well, Mad Magazine.
There was a genre that is going still strong, which is the “Heavy Metal” type comic strips, which were quite detailed, and there’s plenty of info about it on the internet so I won’t go into detail on that here, but one of the reasons I’m continuing a darker line of drawings is that the novel itself is more turbulent. That was going to be the mood of a book version too, so a slightly darker “punk” mood that’s more detailed and stylistic is still an option.
I’m probably going to start doing the panels in approximately 6 to 8 weeks. I’m using the time now to basically acquaint myself with the various characters, refining the script, etc., so there’s time to train myself on the characters and graphic approach.
70s Punk Flyer Demo: I’ve put the first three steps (and the text) on a single sheet. That way you don’t have to switch back and forth between the blog and the attached image.
Future Promo Features: Along with updates, I’ll continue the “True Godfathers of Punk” essays but also cover pioneers of post punk, power pop and hardcore as those will be referenced in “The Quitters Book 2: Lost Decade.”
Al Handa
Sept. 29, 2026
#punk #postpunk #graphicnovel #manga #kindle
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
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| Mark McGraw’s goodbye to summer on his J55 #blues #fingerstyle #acousticguitar #j55 #guitardemo |
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
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Delta Snake Review: Sept. 21
70s Punk Poster and Cover Graphics - Part 1
Most late 70s punk posters and covers were essentially collages that looked slapdash but were more creative than it might have looked to the average person. The final work was generally done using a copier but in many cases as a “print ready” layout to a printer.
In other words, these punk posters were created by artists who had the imagination to visualize lo-fi graphic designs (dare I say, “scraped” from ransom notes, collages, pop art, etc) and create print ready layouts for wherever reproduction technology was available (or more specifically, affordable).
I was aware of print ready layouts for the offset printing process because in high school I was the school newspaper editor for two years; which is another way of saying, was like a retail store manager, who was the one willing to stay after school and finish most of the layouts.
There were fictitious punk magazine covers and concert posters in The Quitturz Book 1: Nym’s Cool Night and although designed on digital programs, I was careful to do it pretty much the same way I would’ve done it in the 70s with a cut and paste style combination of hand drawn, offset and copy machine, lettering, and illustrations.
There are two of the illustrations (in addition to a book promo drawing) and will describe the process which would have been done by hand in the punk era.
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The colorful one is probably the least realistic in terms of street art. It’s a magazine cover by a publication that could afford a color cover using offset printing (aka offset lithography) and staff skilled in creating layouts that were “print ready” for the process.
The coloring process would have been more complex; the artist would have used layers like a modern digital application except those would have been tracing paper (or clear film if you were a well off publication) with the entities for each color on its own sheet. In other words, all green shapes in one sheet, red lettering and stuff on another and so on.
That wasn’t hard to do in the 70s because much of the ink work for comic strips and other types of illustrations were done on tracing paper. It was a common skill.
Somebody, or the artist, would create a pencil sketch, and then another person would come in and put in the ink lines on tracing paper and the additional layers for color, etc. The artist would often do all these stages, of course, but in big-time strips, there were often people who did the lettering, inking, etc.
The club concert poster was simpler; I simply reproduced a cutout of a photo of a punk rocker (in this case, me) and digitally pasted that into a white sheet and then added the mainly freehand looking lettering.
I took artistic liberty with the top caption which was done in a spray paint font, which I probably would’ve done in a commercial setting if working on a larger commercial poster size layout with an airbrush.
The first Quitturz book has illustrations that are a small historical survey of 70s punk and rock graphics from magazine covers to a fake satirical county fair poster.
In part 2, I’ll show the pieces of a punk poster being made for the graphic novel which I’m actually going to print out and cut and paste together for authenticity (and for fun). I’ll also talk a bit about why punks used the DIY approach.
Al Handa
Sept. 22, 2026
#punk #graphicnovel #manga #alternative #illustration
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Member of Handa-McGraw International; American Primitive and world music band music available on the Boogie Underground on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody and other sites where fine music is streamed or sold.Also with The Boogie Underground electronic ensemble as DJ Boogie Underground.
