#34: You’re Not the Boss of Me

The apartment I found was affordable—that was perhaps its first and only attribute, aside from being next to the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, a free-thinking quasi-Christian sect housed in a rusticated Gothic church. Located on West Forest Avenue a couple blocks west of Woodward at Cass, my apartment was on the third floor of a once-modest townhouse turned into sawed-off rental units run by a white-trash couple from down south. You think I’m being mean, but if you saw them, you’d agree. The woman was a mean old bitty who dyed her hair red and the man wore a toupee that looked like a bird’s nest…but that’s neither here nor there.
     I had the picturesque garret apartment in what was once part of the attic, basically one room, a kitchen, and a bath, with all kinds of ceilings angling every which way, and windows pointing to the front and side of the building. There were other apartments on the top floor, and a long hallway that ran to the back of the house to the external back stairs—these egresses would come in useful if I needed to be Ms. Megaton Man in a pinch. At least it was a place to hold my stuff, although I’m not sure I’d call it secure. But at least it was within easy walking distance of the Arbor State extension, Warren Woodward, and the Union Stripe restaurant, where I landed a waitressing gig.

Clarissa James, Social Justice Warrior!

Update: April 11, 2020:

Here's the inking and coloring of a drawing that began as a sketch in 2018, and conceptually as something of a rueful inside joke to myself. We Ms. Megaton Man kicking the shit out of a robot. What we don't see is her tackling everything bothering me at the time, including bogus "closed-curtain" non-profits and their night-flight "Not My Presidents," white-male-supremacist Comics-Gay-Haters, and genuinely indifferent privileged assholes or all stripes, investing this image with some really positive energy. On the level of a nice drawing and colorful megahero illustration, I hope you enjoy!

Clarissa James, robot shit-kicker!

Original Post: November 16, 2018:

Let's hear it for the Social Justice Warriors - Rod Serling, Stirling Silliphant, Gene Roddenberry, Norman Lear, Larry Gelbart, Stan Lee - without whom we wouldn't have many of the historic mid-century entertainment and enduring media franchises we know and love today. (Why, if The Mighty Thor were being launched today, Dr. Don Blake would be a legal abortion provider in an under-served region of the U.S., fighting regressive politicians with reason and religious hypocrites with Norse Neo-Paganism!)

It's times like these I wish I had an inker to pass off these pencils to ...

In that spirit, Clarissa James is also a progressive activist fighting for social change - okay, she's just kicking robot ass in this pencil sketch - but she was ahead of her time in the 1980s, and is still committed to making the world a more inviting, inclusive, tolerant and loving place. If that's token suburban armchair liberalism, I find it preferable to the looks-like-me Occupy Utopia - or sterile, low-hanging fruit crass propagandistic scrawling that passes for political cartooning these days - or the phony-populist Redneck separatist extremes on tap today. We've got to first imagine a better world before we can realize one, and that should be art and entertainment's laudable if humble goal.

(And I'm keeping a Blacklist of anyone associated with Comicsgash - they will never work on Ms. Megaton Man, Social Justice Warrior or any of the Megaton Man or Bizarre Heroes universe titles!)

Read the YA prose Ms. Megaton Man™ Maxi-Series! New chapter every Friday!

All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures are ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved.

Sketchy Swipebook: Clarissa Studies!

Some recent sketches of Clarissa James, a.k.a Ms. Megaton Man, apropos of nothing at all (except the first one, which was inspired by a selfie by Paul Fricke who was holding up his well-read copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, to mark the passing of comics legend Steve Ditko) ...

Update October 6, 2018: Photoshop coloring over the original pencil sketch.

Clarissa hauls Preston Percy over the skyline!

Clarissa in pencil and Sharpie (non-permanent) Pen.

Clarissa in pencil - blue and graphite.

Felicia in a warm-up drawing.