#151: Around the World

Volume VI: Starship Summer

A small group of kids assembled on the sidewalk to watch something they had never seen before. The tallest of the kids, a boy around ten or eleven, stood straddling a black, rugged-looking his old bike that looked like it might have been new in the 1950s. He was about ten or eleven, with greased-back longish hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses, corduroys that were too short, and a light blue cotton button down shirt—definitely out of style for 1985. His nose was too big for his longish face, and his mouth had too many teeth, out of which he tended to breathe as he watched through lenses that were too thick. His complexion made him look older than his age, as if it were already preparing for the pockmarks of severe acne to come.

#148: Tête-à-Tête in Troy

“We’re gathered together around the Y+Table,” said Soren “Sabersnag” Sneed (with a slight speech impediment since he was a saber-toothed tiger), “at this, the headquarters of the Troy+Thems, to consider the charges leveled against Clarissa James, the sometime-megahero known as Ms. Megaton Man …”
        “Charges?” I cried.

#104: Postcards from the Edge of Forever

Tuesday was too grey and rainy to think of flying up to Royal Oak in my newly-dry-cleaned Ms. Megaton Man uniform—aside from my general aversion to use my Megapowers for merely everyday tasks. I had just read an article about acid rain and feared it might be the one thing that could undo the indestructible Quarantinium-Quelluminum fabric and my Grandma Seedy’s costuming handiwork.

#88: The Quantum Tower

Since my visit to the Forbidden Future, I swore off any form of transportation that was faster-than-light let alone temporal or dimensional, and decided to fly myself to New York as Ms. Megaton Man. So, one morning I suited up, with the class ring my father had bought me for graduation snugly under my yellow glove. Kozmik Kat, who could probably fly but was too chicken to try, had to settle for being uncomfortably crammed into my backpack. The digital readouts on my visor kept me out of the air lanes—it even provided me a good public domain book to read, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White—and we made it in a couple of hours, although Koz clawed me once or twice when I wasn’t paying attention and we hit turbulence.

#81: Views from Olympus

“What up doe, Banky?” I said as I entered the Troy+Thems hall.
     Few people get my sense of humor to begin with, and my white colleagues weren’t sure they had permission to laugh at a black woman doing her impression of a racial stereotype. But Rubber Brother loved it.
     “Ha! Buckwheat from The Little Rascals,” he chortled. “Clarissa, that breaks me up every time you do it!”

#76: Who’ll Have You?

A week later, Secret Agent Preston Percy called to summon Avie and I to an urgent meeting of the Y+Thems at their Troy, Michigan headquarters. “Be here this afternoon,” he ordered.
     “Impossible,” I replied. “I’m scheduled at the Union Stripe Café, and I have a buttload of homework…”
     “Call off,” said Preston simply, and hung up.
     I got Nancy, who was back in the employ of the restaurant after quitting abruptly the summer before, to cover for me at the last minute. Avie and I drove up to Troy in her Pacer that evening, our megahero uniforms under our civvies.

#71: The Troy+Thems

It was the first of February, the day before my birthday, and I was walking home from my afternoon class at Old Main when I noticed a white van in the parking lot of the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City. This wasn’t just the usual white van belonging to the residents, my friends the Y+Thems, which was always there, but a second van parked alongside it. On the side of this van were the words Inter-faith Church Healing for Hopeless Liabilities, and there was a dumpster unceremoniously plopped down next to it that ICHHL workers were quickly filling with debris.
     “Oh, no,” I said to myself. “What now?”

#52: Big, Blue, Bulky Guy!

The behemoth robot seemed momentarily confused; its four pairs of red camera lenses whirled around inside its bubble-like glass helmet, taking in the situation.
     “The Hybrid Man seems conflicted,” said the Phantom Jungle Girl, leveling her stone-tipped jungle javelin at the Bot, just in case. “The mad scientist here has given him a direct order contradicting the moral code Wilton and Audrey programmed into him.”
     “Kill the costumed intruders,” Grady barked again, waving the remote in his hand. “And kill these two civilians, while you’re at it.”

#51: B-50, the Hybrid Man

I ran down the hall where I’d seen my cape disappear and burst through some swinging doors into a large laboratory, darkened except for some blinking lights on equipment I couldn’t make out. With the infra-red vision of my visor, I immediately spotted my cape and buttons; they lay lifeless on the floor just a few feet into the lab. For a moment, I feared my cape was dead.
     I picked them up and shook the dust off. I slung my cape around my shoulders and snapped buttons back onto my uniform at the clavicles. The buttons responded by flashing magenta lights, and my cape fluttered.
     “Good; you weren’t killed,” I said. “But something shut you down as soon as you entered this place. What…?”

#50: Telling Tall Tales Along the Ann Arbor Trail

After locking up her office, the Phantom Jungle Girl and I raced downstairs to the waiting Y+Thems van. Rubber Brother was in the passenger seat; with an elongated arm, he opened the sliding side door for us to hop in back. Domina was behind the wheel; she was the only Youthful Permutation. The others—Soren, Kiddo, and Tempy—were never part of our plan, Jasper wanting to keep the operation light and mobile.
     But much to my surprise, my sister Avie and Kozmik Kat were waiting for us in the back seat.

#49: Enter: The Phantom Jungle Girl!

Despite the invitation from Donna Blank herself, not to mention the urging of Rubber Brother, I still procrastinated about visiting Royal Oak. After all, what was I going to tell a licensed social worker? That there was a laboratory deep under the Arbor State where not only Megasoldier Syrup was produced, but also the dead returned to life, and possibly some kind of scientific project was underway that was fusing together incompatible dimensions of reality? And that this may have been connected to my own missing biological father and the return of my long-lost Grandma?

#39: North Cass Ditty in the City

“So, you played ‘Deep Throat’ to Pammy Jointly’s Woodward and Bernstein, then you deep-throated Trent Phloog to alleviate your guilt,” said my half-sister.

Points from the Paint: Clarissa vs. Fanny!

Here is a couple of unpublished pages from c. 1993 featuring Clarissa James (Ms. Megaton Man) and Donna Blank, the Phantom Jungle Girl, shooting some hoops on some suburban driveway. This sequence was intended to be a part of Bizarre Heroes, and I don't know why I was too lazy to ink the sparse backgrounds and finish them up (including the last panel with Jasper Johnson, Rubber Brother). This scene offers some important backstory to the Phantom Jungle Girl and her historical origins and I still may use it as a flashback scene in some future project.

What is unusual about these pages is that they are largely inked with a Hunt #102 crowquill pen and some brush on plate finish Bristol, which inks a lot smoother than the usual medium surface Bristol I used with brush. It is also significant that my female characters tended toward more realistic proportions much earlier than my male characters. Prior to this, I tended to make everyone cartoony so as to match the unwieldy proportions of Megaton Man, a tension that I struggled with for far too long. One of the reasons I always found some release in drawing Ms. Megaton Man was precisely this release from the feeling that everything in the Megaton Man narrative had to appear exaggerated and humorous. By this time I was growing comfortable with the idea that things could be light and humorous (and character-driven instead of parody-driven), and drawn in a less forced way.

Which Way to the Beach? Ms. Megaton Man Post-Labor Day Volleyball Tests, 2014

Yes, it's after Labor Day, but there is still plenty of warm summer weather, and the Phantom Jungle Girl and Ms. Megaton Man are still up for some Jungle Rules Sandball (along with the Earth Mother). Here are a couple of ink tests made on Clearprint Design Vellum, completed in September 2014, based on sketches from 2012. The storyline relates to material I am working on for The New Megaton Man #3 and #4 (see the Megaton Man blog for more previews!).

Original sketchbook pages from July 2012. Light blue Col-Erase and graphite pencil.

Ink, summer 2014 (completed September 4, 2014).

Ink, September 4, 2014.

Original sketchbook page, 2012.

Penciled tier from the as-yet unpublished graphic novel Megaton Man: Return to Megatropolis, c. 2015.

Preliminary flat-coloring of the finished line art.

Final coloring of the last panel.

Update March 11, 2019: Read Clarissa's account of how she met Stella Starlight, Trent Phloog, Bing Gloom, and the whole universe of Megaheroes in the prose serial Ms. Megaton Man Maxi-Series, the new YA novel by Don Simpson!

Ladies of the Megaverse Revealed!

No, not the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, or the Playboy collegiate special ... just some more sketchbook poses extracted from several sketchbooks stretching over the past few years, all inked last night (Sunday, June 16, 2014). Although they do start out kind of threadbare, then are "clothed" as I ink them!

Here is the development of a Ms. Megaton Man pose, probably from about 2010, running. Left: light blue Col-Erase and graphite pencil; Middle: a tighter version on Pilot pen and Vis-a-Vis Wet Erase Fine Point on canary yellow tracing paper; Right: ink on Bienfang Graphics paper. The last choice was an accident; I usually ink on Clearprint vellum!

Ms. Megaton Man especially is fun to draw, and I have filled many pages of my recent sketches of her to let off steam during grad school and a subsequent year of college teaching, when I did not want to initiate any large-scale cartooning projects that I couldn't complete in a timely manner.

Here is a more overtly Jack Kirby-ish pose for Clarissa, inked on Clearprint 1000HP Design Vellum. Often as warm ups I doodle geometric shapes; this establishes a sense of volume that carries over when I sketch the human figure.

There is always something added and something taken away in the inking process, but that's the nature of cartooning for print. Of course, in the digital environment, there is not real need to ink any more, but I enjoy the craft and am used to thinking and developing the drawing to its fullest in terms of pen or brush lines.

Again, before and after. Somehow Ms. MM tends to resemble Julianna Margulies a bit here!

This selection especially shows how my conception of Ms. Megaton Man's body type and personality has changed over time, or at least it reveals some interesting contrasts. There are also sketches of the Phantom Jungle Girl and See-Thru Girl Android below.

Here I tightened up the pencil sketch in Pilot pen. Six years later, I inked it! Clarissa is a bit to lithe, if not skinny, here.

This is one of my favorite Clarissa poses of all. I've had a jpeg of the pencil as my background on my laptop through the last year or two of grad school. Often, it would show up in classes before I projected my lecture Powerpoint. Odd to finally ink it just yesterday!

Same deal, with the Phantom Jungle Girl. I began inking this quite some time ago, then set aside, finishing it up only last night. It seemed a bit awkward putting a top on her. Perhaps she's at a clothing-optional beach...

These are a couple of rather Gil Kane-ish poses of an indeterminate figure. It didn't feel like I was drawing Ms. Megaton Man, nor did it feel like the Earth Mother (Stella Starlight).

I scanned the above sketches and printed them out to 8.5" x 11". I decided to make them into the See-Thru Girl Android, a mute and immobile version of Stella Starlight's younger persona, and who has been dormant so far in the current Atomic Aftermath continuity. That will change soon as she becomes reactivated and an ongoing character with a mind of her own. What will the real, older Stella do when she is confronted with her younger self? To say nothing of Megaton Man...

The other pose, tightened then inked. This may have been more of a Ms. Megaton Man pose after all, with her stockier, solid frame.

Giganti-Girl: Preview of a Upcoming Plot Development!

Here is a page that I just finished inking (June 12, 2014), based on a sketchbook page from November 2012. It features two themes that have become quite prominent in my work as I enter middle age: physically fit young female bodies, and beach volleyball. I have been plotting out a storyline involving both recently, and some of my old sketchbook studies have come into play!

Here is the original 9" x 12" sketch page from November 2012: a figural group study. The ghost image from the previous page indicates that I was playing with a beach volleyball theme, although I did not have a clear storyline in mind. Also, the Phantom Jungle Girl appears twice. I probably had in mind the Negative Woman from Bizarre Heroes for the towering figure. Columbia, a Liberty-like icon of Americana, is the central figure with the star above her tiara; she was seen in the CBLDF 2010 Annual story I did with Megaton Man and company.

Here I've scanned and blown up the original sketch to an 11" x 17" page (10" x 15" image area), tightened the figures, changed the Phantom Jungle Girl on the left into the Earth Mother, and added Ms. Megaton Man and Genevieve, the daughter of the Human Meltdown. I've also turned the towering figure into a new character, Dr. Winnie Wertz, who has had a host of names relating to size including Giganti-Girl and Gargantuella. I've also made the figure on the lower right, who was probably intended to be Ms. Megaton in the original sketch, into Connie Carlyle, Megaton Man's new sidekick, and a semi-pro beach volleyball player.

The final art, inked on Clearprint 1000HP Design Vellum. Dr. Wertz, or a virtual representation of her, stands as the threshold guardian to a time portal she has left behind that the group once known as the Devengers have located.