Craig Gleason, founder of the Bad Guys Club, is an artist out of Arizona with over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. With a large selection of rad shirts and prints available for purchase, you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t check out the wares of this silly monster obsessed illustrator.
Gleason’s work is dominated with monster love, populated with gads of unique, silly creations. There’s a feeling that these guys are the dorks and less evil inclined of the monster world. Take the monster he posted on June 2 for instance. A green haired beast bodied monster with long arms and legs stares off to the side with their polygonal head. Body of a man killer with the head of a dork. It’s wearing brown pants up high like a nerd with cuffs ending above their shin. What a nerd. Or there’s the guy from May 27. He looks like a gleeful psychopath with his bald head, eye patch and grey skin with bleeding scars. And yet, he’s holding a dainty yellow hat in his black gloved hands and a red trench coat with yellow-red plaid pants. The kind of psychopath who is always going to be a D-list villain, a guy you can laugh at. Because that’s what’s central to Gleason’s style. The humor. And that sense of lightness, the silly monster-loving is most purely expressed by the cactus lady also from May 27. Just a classic cartoon cactus, anthropomorphized, doing a jig in red cowboy boots. Wearing undies and a little vest with an organic bra. She’s got flowers for eyes, she’s dancing, she’s happy to be alive. And Craig Gleason’s work can make you feel that way to. Happy to be alive. Alive in a world where people are thinking of and drawing this kind of stuff. It’s a beautiful world.