Month: February 2026

I pressed on with my designs for the Henson dinosaur movie.

More to come…

Picking up where I left off…

With the Jim Henson Natural History Project a “go”, I began by designing the characters as well as drawing and painting three key scenes from my script.

During this time, I got a call from a producer friend of mine.

“Bill! They’re ripping you off. I just saw a copy of The Little Blue Brontosaurus on the desk of the producer of The Land Before Time.“

Byron Preiss wanted to sue –– sue three of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a lawsuit that would have ended my film career.

It’s funny how, in my life, I have kept running into members of the Carradine family. John Carradine, the patriarch of the family, was a regular at a bar my oldest brother John hung out at.

David was my first choice for the lead in the film I wrote for Roger Corman, The Warrior and the Sorceress. Happily, he got cast in the role. We ran into each other off and on over the years. Once, we shared a ride from Dragon Con to the Atlanta airport. He asked me to write a sequel to The Warrior and the Sorceress at Comic Con International one year.

I worked with David’s brother Chris when I was a full-time consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering. I considered Chris the best actor of the bunch.

I met Keith at a convention (or on a film lot or at a concert — I don’t recall): nice, and like his brothers, incredibly talented.

And now, Robert. What a great, kind, down-to-earth guy. He and I exhibited next to each other at a convention and hit it off immediately. I miss him already. A fine, gentle soul; he has left us too soon.

My wife and I watched a terrific movie the other night: Song Sung Blue. It stars Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman, who together put on a show they call The Neil Diamond Experience. It’s a true story, based on a documentary about this Milwaukee couple.The script is great, the direction is great and the performances of the two leads are great. Don’t miss this fantastic, heartfelt motion picture!

It hit me especially hard. My mom was a huge Neil Diamond fan. For her 80th birthday, my three brothers and I planned a big Neil Diamond surprise for her. Read all about this fiasco here:

https://www.williamstout.com/news/journal/2011/01/11/a-neil-diamond-new-years-eve/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fleskpublications/william-stouts-comics-volume-1

Woo Hoo! Go to the above link and be amazed! Watch the video, too!

Here comes the Flesk Publications Kickstarter for Volume One of William Stout’s Comics & Stories!

Here are the five chapters within Volume One:

CHAPTER ONE: Early Daze: Discovering Comics and Superheroes

CHAPTER TWO: The Art School Dance Lives on Forever: The Chouinard Art Institute

CHAPTER THREE: Kreegah! Russ Manning, Tarzan of the Apes and Edgar Rice Burroughs

CHAPTER FOUR: Vroom!Dennis Ellefson’s Car and Motorcycle Comics

CHAPTER FIVE: Sports Snorts

Besides identifying the pictures, the text in the book is mostly autobiographical. I have had the good fortune to work with many of the greats in the world of comic books. One of the goals I had in writing this book was a desire to preserve the memories of what it was like to work with these great guys (most of whom have now passed away), to write about what they were like as people, and what it was like to have them as friends.

I know that many comics fans consider me a kind of comics outlier, with comparatively little output in that creative arena. That’s why I think you will be really surprised by what will ultimately be a catalogue raisonné of my work in comics. A lot has been accumulated over the past fifty years — enough to completely fill three HUGE volumes!

I confess — I am one of the hardest artists to collect; my work is all over the place: Comic books, film design, movie posters, record album covers, advertising, toy box art, theme park designs, and much, much more (fortunately, in my youth, I only required five hours of sleep per night). These three volumes will be the easiest and best way to collect all of my comics-related art and stories. Plus, if you own any books published by Flesk Publications, you know that each of these new books will be absolutely gorgeous. The reproductions in this book will be the best this art has ever seen. Fortunately for you (but not for my poor wife), I am quite the pack rat. I have saved nearly everything I’ve had published and had it professionally shot. Hence, most of the art in the book has been shot from the original art.

What can I say, my friends…You are in for a treat!