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09-06-2013
CHILLICOTHE, Ill.--The creator of Zorro was honored on Saturday June 8- 2013
JUNE
8 - 2013
CHILLICOTHE,
Ill.--The creator of Zorro was honored on Saturday by the Chillicothe
Historical Society.
Johnston
McCulley who graduated from Chillicothe high school in 1901, was the creator of
Zorro.
Saturday
was the grand opening of an exhibit dedicated to everything this hometown hero
accomplished.
Many
of the items and memorabilia are duplicates of Zorro specialist and artist,
Peter Poplaski's personal collection.
Poplaski
says McCulley created the 'original super hero. He said, "All the kids
that went to Zorro in the 20's... In the 30's they were creating their comic
book characters. So they invented Superman based on Zorro and Douglas
Fairbanks. Batman was an upgrade of Zorro from California in the old days to
modern day New York to now Gotham City and it continues to this day."
Poplaski
says he was happy to share his memorabilia with the historical society because
the Zorro exhibit is a great hook for Chillicothe.
Working with Dean Mullaney at the Library of American Comics on 1960 s Superman. Once à Superman fan always a Superman fan! Super Pete age 9. Super Pete in Italy 2003.
The brothers POPLASKI Peter et William Poplaski, les années 70, dessins.
Salle Delmas, Médiathèque de Ganges, LHérault en France. Mai 6 till Mai 26 2011
TARZAN Original sunday page created for the exhibition TARZAN at Musée Quai Branly Paris in 2009 Museum of Le Mans, France untill april 17 2011 Represented by Bernard Mahé at Galerie 9è Art, Pigalle, PARIS
MOCA NYC
Cover designs for Will Eisner comics by Peter Poplaski
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, New York City 2011
ZORRO the Myth The Fear and the Image FIRN,Festival International du roman noir Exhibition, film and lecture 24 25 and 26 june 2011 at Frontignan near Sète FRANCE
SAO PAULO center of the Arts BRAZIL.
Will Eisner SPIRIT sculpture by Peter Poplaski represented by Denis kitchen.
ZORRO fighting U Giancu for the Rapallo's comicsfestival 2011 ????!
ZORRO
IN RAPALLO, ITALY, OCTOBER, 2010.
Rika and I have just returned from Rapallo,
Italy where we were given the red carpet treatment by Fausto Oneto and his charming wife, Adriana, at their San Massimo ristorante
UGiancu(ou-Jian-koo). The following photos show the ristorante U Giancu, a small part of
Fausto Onetos world-class original comic art collection, the Rapallo Antico
Castello Sul Mare located in old harbor, exterior and interior gallery spaces,
Peter Poplaski as Zorro, Fausto Oneto dueling with Zorro (recreating the classic Errol Flynn-Basil Rathbone 1935 Captain Blood
sword fight), Zorro crossing blades with Carlo Chendi, and the fortress at
night.
GREAT
MUSIC COMING YOUR WAY JULY 8TH from SAUVE !!!
Its an incredible combination of
SOUND and ART that only can happen in the beautiful south of FRANCE when the
planets are in alignment!
Only
Rob Fuke could produce this CD from the cream of the crop of some of the
best music played in Sauve, France!
Eighteen Musiciansare
Especially Drawn by Peter Poplaski for the cover art and the Disc itself is the
Famous Aperitif à Sauve painting now in a private collection in Hamburg,
Germany!
THIS
FABULOUS DISCis
being pressed AS YOU READ THIS in Scotland for its big release during the festival MAD
in SAUVE, July 9th and 10th, 2010. (MAD=MUSIC, ART, and DANCE)!
The
basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore
it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument
but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that
is not you and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. Its not something
committees can do. Its not a task achieved by groups, or by movements. Its done
by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history
and an experience of the world.
The SKETCHBOOK ADVENTURES of PETER POPLASKI. Introduction by R.Crumb. Published by Denis Kitchen Publishing Co., LLC www.deniskitchenpublishing.com
THE R.CRUMB HANDBOOK By R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski MQ Publications Ltd, London and New York. Book promotion tour : London, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA.
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2005
Expo X Three paintings (tryptique). Galerie du Bout du Monde, St. Hippolyte du Fort, France
Exhibition of the original drawings of "The Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski". St.Norbert College, Baer Gallery. De Pere, WI, USA.
Exhibition of the original drawings of "The Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski". Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, Minnesota, USA.
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2006
Yankee Realist / Flemish Expressionist Peter Poplaski and Rika Deryckere. March 29 April 22 2006, Allen Priebe Gallery University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh Oshkosh, Wisconsin. USA.
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2007
EXPRESSIVE ANATOMY Book by Will Eisner with PeterPoplaski published by Norton, USA.
ZORRO le Mythe et l'Image, une étude sur l'image archétype du héro masqué. septembre 6 29, La galerie de La Médiathèque Lucile Aubrac Ganges, FRANCE.
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2008
June till September, (du 6 juin au 21 septembre 2008). Deux artistes peintres exposent leurs regards, Salle d'exposition de l'Office de Tourisme de Saint Hippolyte du Fort, France.
DVD PROJECTS ZORRO le MYTHE et lIMAGE, FROM PRAHA TO PILSEN MY LIFE BETWEEN CAPPUCCINOS
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2009
THE ARTIST AS HERO Festival de Cinéma et de la BD de Clermont l'Hérault January 2009. Exhibition et la projection DVD slideshow, lecture and performence with french comic artist CASA. Clermont L'Hérault, FRANCE.
February/March IN THE DETAILS : Ylvisaker Drawing Invitational Bethany Luthern College, Mankato, Minnesota, USA.
Mai THE HISTORY OF UNDERGROUND COMICS, 1960 - 1990 The University of Wisconsin, Madison.USA.
Mai/June Métamorphose Salle Regain Mairy de Sorgues en Vauclude Sorgues, FRANCE.
TARZAN! ou Rousseau chez les Waziri Musée du Quai Branly, 15 juin - 27 septembre 2009. Paris, France.
Planches originales de BD Américaines Galerie 9e Art, septembre 24 octobre 8 Pigalle, Paris.
Dédicase / booksigning at BD Spirit, Paris 18e The sketchbool adventures, 13 december 2009
EXHIBITIONS / BOOKS / PROJECTS 2010
NEVILLE Museum of Green Bay Wisconsin january-march
PRINTS, Peter Poplaski, Robert, Aline and Sophie Crumb, Rika Deryckere, Mathieu Lewin and the artists of the galerie Vidourle Prix, SAUVE FRANCE, may 1 - october 2
LA TOUR DE MÔLE, paintings, engravings and drawings. SAUVE FRANCE, June 4-July 4
"ROOD ROUGE ROT RED" De Scharbielie, De Panne, Belgium september-november
AVAILABLE ARTWORK AT: BD Spirit, Montmartre, Paris Galerie 9e Art, Pigalle, Paris
Artist Peter Poplaski finished a cartoon that is ten feet long for his
exhibition at Bernard Mahes Galerie 9e art located in Pigalle in Paris, France,
which ran from September 24th to October 8th, 2009. This
show is like a retrospective with examples of cartoon art from all periods of
Poplaskis diverse career: 1970s underground, 1980s Marvel, covers for Death Rattle, The NewAdventures of The Spirit,
Superman: The Sunday Classics, Batman: the Sunday Classics newspaper
comic-strip collections for DC Comics, Tom
Strong pages, but a 10
foot cartoon of Marvel monsters from 1961, whats that
about?
This
10 foot
panorama of Marvel monster characters evolved out of a dream I had in November,
1992, in
which I saw all these comic books I had read and loved as a kid, suddenly
turned into a television series in which the weekly show was divided up into
three stories done in three different styles: the Jack Kirby monsters were done
in stop-motion animation (like the original King Kong), the Don Heck story was
about monsters created with make-up (Rick Baker), and the third was a Steve
Ditko story animated like The Simpsons.
The Marvel monster comics, written and edited by Stan Lee: Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and Journey Into Mystery of the early 1960s
imitated and mixed together the Godzilla type monster movies, and the old
Universal Frankenstein monster movies, with UFO paranoia and the Twilight Zone TV show sensibility of how
weird reality really is. What made these comic books oddly compelling was the
idea that the monsters were essentially just stand-ins for grownups, adults who
were destroying the world, or at the very least the American Dream, with the
Cold War, Communism, and the Atomic Bomb. It was the period of the bomb
shelter. Later, in 1962 and 1963, when this monster fad was fading, Marvel,
which was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, had the inspired creativity to turn the
monsters into super-heroes with problems, thus was born the Fantastic-Four, Ant-Man, theincredible Hulk, the Amazing Spider-Man,
Iron-Man, Thor, and all the rest of what people now think of as summer
movie blockbuster events, rather than old 10 cent comic book characters. I was
working free-lance at Kitchen Sink Press in Princeton, Wisconsin
at this time, and the Cadillacs and
Dinosaurs comic book KSP published was in development for a Saturday
morning cartoon series. I have been asked on occasion to create something new
that can be developed and marketed, but my focus has always been working on
something that caught my imagination as a child. Such things may be clichés,
but they can sometimes become iconographic to our evolving sensibilities.So, how do you provoke interest in or sell a
TV series idea if you dont have an option on the rights, or havent written a
script. I started with the merchandise. I thought if I drew a 15 or 20 foot panorama of the
monster toys that would be possible, (because toy merchandise is more
profitable than comic books) some big-shot at Marvel might jump on it. So I
began drawing a Jack Kirby monster or two everyday around my other work for fun
and got as far 10 feet,
well, 10 feet,
two inches, to be exact, on this larger than life idea before putting it aside,
because, after all, you cant copyright an idea, and who wants to give
corporations free ideas for no money anyway?
Peter Poplaski is painting and drawing
in Wisconsin and the south of France. Right
now he is participating in the exhibition TARZAN! Ou Rousseau chez les Waziri, from June 16 to September 27, 2009 at the
musée du quai Branly in Paris.
He is currently developing Im Drawing As Fast As I Can, his second collection of sketchbook drawings and Zorro: the Myth
and the Image, a book about media and the
heroic archetype in western civilization.
Peter Poplaski is an artist who has dabbed in
the American comic industry, beginning in 1970 with the Underground Comix
scene, and then mostly as freelancer for Kitchen Sink Press, Marvel, and DC
Comics, while also following a career as a painter, participating in many
exhibitions. He has edited and designed numerous awardwinning newspaper strip
reprint collections including Superman, Batman, Flash Gordon, Alley Oop, Li'l
Abner and SteveCanyon. The covers he drew for the
Batman and Superman Dailies and Sunday series are regarded by many as
definitive. He has worked closely wth such creators as Will Eisner, Milton
Caniff, Harvey Kurtzman, Gil Kane, Alan Moore, and R.Crumb.
His ongoing challenge and obsession is
finishing ZORRO: The Myth and the Image, a definitive study of the masked
heroic archetype.
Peter
Poplaski, originaire de Green bay dans le Wisconsin USA diplômée en art (1991),
expose peintures et dessins créés en Europe et en USA. Il vie également dans le
sud de la France depuis 1994. Son objective est de travailler tout genres: le
paysage, la nature morte et le modèle.
Recent Book:
The SKETCHBOOK ADVENTURES of
PETERPOPLASKI.
Introduction
by R.Crumb. Published by Denis Kitchen Publishing Co., LLC
