Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. When there's lightning, you know it always brings me down.

Study of a Zapotec Figural Urn

Watercolor on 9” x 12” watercolor paper

I went into this study just for the fun of it, to see where I could take it. The pigments on the figure I painted were long gone, so I researched to see how they were often colored, as well as looking at the little bits of pigment that were still there. So it’s both a study and an imagining, I guess. About halfway through the process I splattered some masking fluid on it, to create a bit of texture. I think all of these elements came together successfully and this turned out pretty dang nice.

Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new AEW All In 2025 Wrestling Landscape painting. It’s a biggun! Tikka’s next to it for scale. I put about a month of effort into this piece, trying to capture the scale of the event.

100 prints of this will be released on Thursday at 12PM CST. They’ll be 14” x 11”, signed by Hangman Adam Page, Timeless Toni Storm and Kazuchika Okada and priced at $150. Even though there’s twice as many of these than normal, they’ll be eligible for the ShopAEW Black Friday discount so I recommend not waiting to get yours.

It’s a special painting and a cool print. I hope you can get one. I put some extra effort in for you.

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

I’m about halfway through A Man on the Inside season two and am loving it. It’s campy and jokey but full of heart and warmth which is nice. Ted Danson’s character is a retiree who has started working undercover with a private investigator. In the first season he went into a retirement home, and this season sees him working as a guest lecturer at a college trying to deduce who’s blackmailing the school’s president. There’s also the lovely introduction of a fellow professor and love interest played by Mary Steenburgen.

I finished up the awesome audiobook for Batman: Revolution by John Jackson Miller yesterday. It’s set between the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie and its sequel Batman Returns, so it has a lot of the characters from both like Max Schreck and Selina Kyle, but also introduces The Riddler, Killer Moth and some other surprises. It’s the second in this series by Miller, who is probably my favorite media tie-in author (his Star Trek books are exceptional) because he perfectly matches the voice and tone of the original worlds he’s playing in. Like, this FEELS like how it felt to originally watch those movies. It also works hand-in-hand with the Batman ‘89 comic series, which is set after Batman Returns. There’s nice references to each other that compliment but don’t overwhelm.

But Rob, what’s the book about? It has probably the best version of The Riddler I’ve encountered, seeing him in an almost Falling Down storyline of getting overwhelmed by how society has failed him, becoming The Riddler and joining a revolutionary militia lead by a mysterious woman. The militia brings in secrets from the Wayne family’s past, reveals lies about Max Schreck’s past, and puts Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon at odds in a way I haven’t seen before.

This morning I finished reading The Spectre omnibus volume one by John Ostrander, Tom Mandrake and friends, a book I’ve been looking forward to for years. I read the first dozen or so issues of this when I was a kid (ironically enough for what this book is about, I stole them at a comic convention, got busted for stealing some others but held onto these. Worth it! Sorry mom!) but for no good reason other than being a broke kid I never read more of them. Mandrake’s art is my favorite of his career in this, looking like he incorporated some Totleben/ Bissette Swamp Thing approach to his own dark and moody line work and friend, it sings. It fits right into Ostrander’s huge story positioning The Spectre as the Wrath of God and how that very simple idea becomes way too complicated upon practice in a modern world. It also starts growing beyond just the Judeo-Christian God and starts looking at a unified vision of the Creator Myth and myths of the afterlife.

Not bad for a story about a guy in a green speedo and little green booties.

AND! The goddam cover glows in the dark! That’s rad.

This short film Last to Leave by Mary Elizabeth Ellis is worth watching. It’s only about 8 minutes long, so come on, you’ve got time. It’s a quirky horror piece about the unexpected danger of being the last folks to leave a bar at closing time.

PSA: Don’t forget to cook your stuffing in a waffle iron. Everything is the crispy corner piece! You’re welcome.

I’ve started the process to volunteer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art here in Kansas City. Since I’m not used at events or on the road anymore, my life has become very isolated and lonely. Kind of the nature of a career in the arts, but also my nature based on all of the crap I work on in therapy. So! I took action and found something that looks like it’ll be a good fit and allow me to interact with human beings in a way that’s comfortable for me.

In the next month or so I’ll start putting in a few hours every other week working the coat and bag check desk. It’ll be nice to just be around people. There’s also an aspect to it like when Andy Kaufman would take shifts washing dishes during the heights of his career to stay in touch with regular folk. There’s a grounding aspect to all of this that I need.

There’s a lot of other side benefits like continued education and staff/ volunteer events that I’m excited about, which will also get me out of the house.

So if you need to check a bag or a coat or retrieve something from lost and found, maybe I’ll see you there!

Love you more,
Rob