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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Sorry boys, the bus is plumb full.

The first time I saw Mina Shirakawa was in a video of her debut with Ring of Honor, and from the moment of her entrance I knew she’s a perfect fit for my paintings. With this piece, I tried to capture the energy of her very kinetic entrance. Her robe is flowing around, the brightly-colored paint is flying about, all of it in an attempt to portray her specific vibe.

Card subject to change.

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
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Bluesky
Cara
YouTube
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City

One of my favorite artists, dating back to when I started developing my own taste for art, is Tim Truman. He has such a unique style and voice that I can’t get enough of. His influences appear to come from outside of the mainstream comic book world, owing more to ZAP! Comics and DC war and western comics by the likes of Joe Kubert, Russ Heath and John Severin than superhero stuff by John Buscema or Neal Adams. There’s an alt-comics vibe mixed with a grounded reality that endlessly fascinates me.

I think I first saw his work with the utterly badass Hawkworld, his rad revamp of the Hawkman mythos that saw the character as an authoritarian who develops empathy and a conscience, causing him to be at odds with his fascist homeworld. Truman, inked by the legendary Enrique Alcatena with painted colors by Sam Parsons, delivered one of the high points of the post-Crisis DC Comics era. I hope DC does a nice set of omnibuses collecting this and the later Hawkworld series by Truman, John Ostrander and Graham Nolan.

The creative team also did a bonkers reinvention of the largely-forgotten pulp character The Spider that’s worth your time to seek out in the back issue bins. I remember seeing a lot of Nazis getting mowed down by the titular character, which is fun. The whole-new look for the character is also great, taking a huge left turn from the original look of essentially ‘The Shadow with a domino mask.’ I mean, LOOK at that cover! I think I got these when I was 13 or 14 and it was exactly the right age to feed my insatiable appetite for things that are rad.

I also love his Jonah Hex work for DC/ Vertigo, allowing him to dig in on his passions for the Old West and the Indigenous Peoples of America as well as some creepy stuff. Speaking of, if you’re in the mood for a hunt through the back issue bins at a comic shop, look up the Turok run he wrote, drawn mostly by Rags Morales and Paul Gulacy. It’s way better than what it should have been and is one of the best things that Valiant ever published in my opinion.

I think what I like most about Truman’s art is the grittiness of it. It’s not photorealistic or overly rendered, but there’s that grit that makes it all feel, like, lived in. It FEELS real, like the reality of a home versus what you see on TV, if that makes sense.

Today is Katy and I’s FIFTEENTH wedding anniversary! Not bad!

I started putting my ‘I Voted’ stickers on my art supply cases a while back. I think I’ve only missed voting once in the past ten years, a special election a couple months ago. It’ll haunt me!

For the past couple of weeks I was an on-call Federal juror but didn’t end up getting used (probably due to the shutdown) and I’m kinda bummed because I’ve never had the honor of jury duty. Maybe next time!

But I still got to contribute to my community by voting on Tuesday. In my area, it was just a single ballot issue but I’m of the mind that every election is an important one. So I showed up and I’ll continue to show up.

Our voices and our votes matter, because we matter.

Love you more,
Rob