Kolchak:The Night Stalker / Kermit the Frog / Muppet News Flash Mash-Up

If you've never seen the '70s supernatural/sci-fi series Kolchak:The Night Stalker (and you only know Darren McGavin as "the old man" in A Christmas Story) you're missing out on some classic stuff. In Kolchak, McGavin stars as an intrepid reporter who investigates so many strange cases of the paranormal that you'd have to assume he lives in a city full of monsters.

You know what other intrepid reporter lives in a city full of monsters? That's right. Muppet News Flash's own Kermit The Frog. Kolchak and Kermit have been linked in my head for a while, so I thought I'd sketch up the concept for fun.

Here's the rough I sketched out in pencil (with some quick, Photoshop lettering) and then the finished pencils.

 This is the piece after I inked Kermit over my pencils, then the finished inks.

Here are the flat colors done in Photoshop, then some modeling with shadows and highlights. At this point the illustration is done, but I decided to go with the text after all, mimicking the typeface from some old Kolchak images. I also aged the piece a bit with yellow overlays to give it that "been around since the '70s" look (image at top of post).

And if this got any of you interested in Kolchak, good. Halloween's around the corner and there's nothing wrong with a good, old-fashioned scare. Here are some links you might find useful -v

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Wikipedia page

Kolchak: The Night Stalker IMDb page

Kolchak: The Night Stalker opening intro (YouTube)

Kolchak: The Night Stalker box set at Amazon

Darren McGavin IMDb page