The Finest Art of Gift-Giving

Did everyone have a good Christmas? I certainly did, and that was partly because of a wonderful present from a friend who prefers to be known as Magic Trashman. He’s an artist and comic-maker, and since he doesn’t yet have a website I’ll have to settling for linking to his DeviantArt page. For his gift, he seized upon an idle Twitter post I made years ago about bugging him to put canceled video-game characters into classic works of art.


I forgot all about that post, but Mr. Trashman did not. This past Christmas he sent me a framed portrait with this response on the back.


And what’s inside the frame? No, he didn't draw characters from canceled video games. He drew something better.


It’s wonderful. It repopulates one of the dogs-at-poker portraits with things I like. The brownish creature on the left is Quilli, heroic porcupine from Quill Quest. It's a video game I sketched out as a child (before Sonic came around, I swear). His fellow players should be more familiar, as they're from Mystery Science Theater 3000, Monster World IV, Darkstalkers, and my favorite shot of actor Billy Barty. Maybe there's even a Bounty Arms reference someplace. I'll have to look closely.

The table shows that Quilli is betting with power-ups from Quill Quest: a hamburger, a watch, and even a Mondo Magnet. Also on the pile is a Mighty Orbots figure, which mystified me at first. I’ve never been more than a mild fan of the show; it has some of the slickest animation ever seen in a Saturday morning cartoon, but even as a kid I found the robots dopey and irritating compared to Robotech or any Transformer. Upon investigation, I realized its purpose: a line of planned Orbots toys was never released, so it’s possible that someone, likely Crow or Tom Servo, put this ultra-rare prototype up as a gambling chip. How clever of the artist to include it.