Three-Minute Godzilla

General admission to Wynwood Walls included the opportunity to fire away with the spray cans for three minutes, just enough time for me to spray Godzilla onto the wall.

 

 

Dinosaur Stories with a terra green cover!

And we have a second printing of Dinosaur Stories!

This time, the cover is printed on terra green paper. It definitely looks cooler with this colorful cover to contrast with the black and white interior.

Dinosaur Stories contains three graphic narratives featuring dinosaurs and other Mesozoic wildlife, authored by me and originally published in the Mesozine #1-3 (2020-2024), a publication edited by Denis St. John. The book also contains pin-up illustrations of prehistoric reptiles and short essays about the science behind the dinosaur comics. Whether you’re a neophyte or a seasoned dinophile, you’ll find something to thrill to in these pages. For sale on my Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/.../1785.../dinosaur-stories-comic-book

Alone against the mangroves

 

Although solo travel isn’t my favorite kind, it is worth doing on occasion because one is forced to pay attention to every detail—especially on a wilderness trip.  In the 22 hours between when I departed by kayak from the Hell’s Bay Trailhead on March 7th and when I returned, I saw no other humans.  The only other mammal was an otter who eyed me quizzically in between rounds of swimming and rolling around on shore.   On the Pearl Bay Chickee, with Orion and Canis Major overhead, I reflected that if a count were taken, the score would be six million human souls in the Greater Miami Metropolitan area and one plus the gods know what else on this wooden platform in the estuary, surrounded by mangroves and their nutritive souls.  Crickets sang all night, and I periodically heard flapping and splashing from birds landing on the water.  When I got up for the outhouse at 3:00 AM, Scorpius had replaced Orion.

Bigfoot still lurks deep in the woods of our collective unconscious (and conscious)

 

On New Year’s Day, I started this drawing of Bigfoot in my sketchbook.  The mysterious ape has made sporadic appearances in my artwork over the years, which now has the effect of making me nostalgic for the great woods of the Pacific Northwest.  For this Sasquatch design, I combined physical features of orangutans and gorillas, plus longer legs and humanoid feet.  Gigantopithecus is a primate related to orangutans that lived in China during the Early to Middle Pleistocene.  Cryptozoologists hypothesize that this ape still lives today as the elusive Sasquatch and Yeti.  I don’t know if Bigfoot is a real animal, but it’s certainly real as an enduring folklore character.  I recall how Alan Moore said, “The one place in which gods and demons inarguably exist is in the human mind, where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity.”

Stephen Bissette and I have plans to create a short comic featuring Bigfoot, his script, my artwork.  And it has got to happen because he prepaid me for some pages!

Best of my 2024 in pictures

My family sends out a traditional Christmas letter every year. Here are the pictures we selected to illustrate my part of the letter this year.  (I'm one of four family members featured in the letter, hence the captions in third person.)  Happy Holidays, everyone! And good luck in 2025… we’re going to need it!

Ranger Ross on the gator nest survey in the Everglades.

An adult Florida redbelly turtle does “turtle yoga” in the Sun.

Mangroves with their distinctive prop roots line the Black River at Collier Seminole State Park.

Ross wins gold at the fall “Swordfish Challenge.”

 

The armored Ankylosaurus makes a cameo appearance in Ross’s Dinosaur Stories.

Ross gets water from the pool after Hurricane Helene.

Photo Credits: 1. NPS / Mark Parry 2. NPS / Ross Wood Studlar 3.  © Ross Wood Studlar 4. © Michael Vasquez 5. © Ross Wood Studlar 6. © Susan Moyle Studlar

Make If I Must Die by Refaat Alareer a bestseller

LET'S MAKE A THUNDERCLAP by putting Refaat Alareer's posthumous book If I Must Die at the top of the New York Times bestseller list by Saturday, December 14th! Ka Burbank explains it best: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDLTXVBPJ8u/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

For it to count in the rankings, one must buy it from either bookshop.org or Amazon.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/refaats-book-if-i-must-die-has-surged

 

 

Hope on an ominous day

The wrecking crew returns to Washington, D.C., this January, more organized and prepared than they were before.

I recall Bob Marley’s words, “The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off.  Why should I?”  Keep fighting for a better world, my friends, no matter what happens.