1989 to 2015: Early Ms. Megaton Man Sketch Finally Finished!

Here's a newly inked and colored pin-up of Clarissa James, Ms. Megaton Man, and Stella Starlight, the See-Thru Girl, developed from a 1989 sketch. I scanned the original, fleshed out in pencil and Sharpie pen, then further refined on canary yellow tracing paper, and finally inked on Clearprint Design Vellum.

1989 is significant because this would have been one of the earliest Ms. Megaton Man sketches. The fact that I can still make something of the pose shows how significant the character was for my development. Ms. Megaton Man allowed me to get closer to something like a realistically-proportioned superhero style and away from the humorous style that I never found satisfying for the secondary characters surrounding Megaton Man.

The final colored in Photoshop

The rough sketch blown up next to the pencil elaboration

The final ink on Clearprint next to the refined rough on canary yellow tracing paper

The original 1989 sketch. Something about this gesture seemed worth developing further!

Final linework on Clearprint Design Vellum

The sketch elaborated with blue and graphite pencil, and tightened with Sharpie fine line pen .03 mm

The drawing refined on canary yellow tracing paper

Old and New: Seismic Century Shift!

Here is the final (I hope) banner design for the Melaga exhibit opening tomorrow in Brownsville, a collaboration with museum director Patrick Daugherty. It features Megaton Man and Ms. Megaton Man, representing the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, respectively, and symbolic of the pasts and futures for the trajectory of my Megaverse storyline, such as it is unfolding at a snail's pace in my work-in-progress graphic novel. The old white straight male and the young metrosexual woman of color -- will this token political correctness impress anyone as much as it delights me? Only time will tell...

Clarissa vs. the Big Two! Plus: Yarn Man!

Updated June 6, 2014.

This colored greyline with linework on an acetate overlay would have been the cover to a one-shot issue of Ms. Megaton Man. Announced in Yarn Man #1 (1989) as “Coming in April” of that year, the cover was used in a full-page house ad with a Kitchen Sink Press logo. After severing ties with that imprint, I embarked on Don Simpson’s Bizarre Heroes through my own imprint, Fiasco Comics, which ran for 17 issues in 1994-1995. It was at that time that I colored this piece of art, and was contemplating an entire issue devoted to Clarissa James at that time.

Cover to Ms. Megaton Man #1, Cel-Vinyl paints on greyline with acetate linework overlay (unpublished), c. 1995.

The basic composition for the cover had originally been worked out as a Supergirl sample for DC Comics. I have a photocopy of the original layout somewhere in my files, but I can’t recall whether I ever finished the artwork for it or not; if I did, I may have sold it off at a convention. In any case, I always liked the composition, which is why I reworked it as a Ms. Megaton Man piece. It also further underscores the fact Ms. Megaton Man, although originally a female variation on the more decidedly humorous Megaton Man, always had a more dramatic side, and to my mind could conceivably work as a plausibly dramatic megahero.

Although the issue never appeared, and frankly I can't recall having much of a plotline in mind beyond the futuristic War of the Worlds image, I am currently devising a storyline that will involve Ms. Megaton Man traveling to the future and battling the Big Two. What is remarkable about the image, even today, and about Ms. Megaton Man in general, is that she heralded a more realistic superhero style for me that was way ahead of its time in the late 1980s. Drawing the Megaton Man supporting cast always presented a problem for me (should they be drawn in a humorous or more realistic fashion?), and Ms. Megaton Man showed me that I could blend a satirical style with a more straight approach (and by utilizing the Megaton Man costume, no less). 

House ad for Ms. Megaton Man #1, a projected one-shot that was never published, from Yarn Man  #1 (1989), a one-shot that was.

Speaking of Yarn Man, below is the original acrylic painting for Yarn Man #1, the only cover I ever fully painted. I have worked with oils, acrylics, gouache, watercolor, Cel-Vinyl, and digital coloring for a variety of pieces, ranging from personal studies to professional work, but I have found acrylics to be the most difficult medium with which to paint. In fact, unless one specifically wanted to create some wall-sized abstract sofa art (which I’ve done for my own gratification), I’m not sure why anyone would find acrylics useful. But that’s just me.

Cover of Yarn Man #1, original acrylic painting on illustration board, 12.5" x 18".

 

Cover of Yarn Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, 1989) as published.

Sandball Goddess: Some Art Historical Swiping

Just to show that I'm not always swiping from my old sketchbooks, here I am swiping from art history. In fact, when I taught a class in art history last fall at Carlow University, I realized that the work I was swiping (a sculpture from a niche at CMU) was actually a swipe of a specific figure from a famous temple in India:

Erotic figures, Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India, c. 1000 CE. Chandella dynasty.

Scribe figure, Fine Arts Building, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (my photograph).

Clarissa in beach volleyball attire, sketchbook drawing, c. 2010.

What is interesting is that the first figure appears to be grinding makeup, while the CMU adaptation has the same figure doing something more scholarly, presumably writing on a notepad or book of some sort. I'm not sure what Clarissa is doing; perhaps jotting down a play for competition. I'd like to do a complete comic book someday that is nothing but swipes from various art historical sources, and let readers guess where each is from.

Did Somebody Mention My Name?! Not Likely...

Here is a new panel I penciled on bond layout and inked on Clearprint vellum today (April 21, 2014) featuring Ms. Megaton Man, with Megaton Man horning in on the scene. It's some of the new material I'll be finishing up for publication sometime before the present decade expires! (For more see also my Megaton Man blog!)

The Ms. Megaton Man Story: Told in Pictures and Panels

This blog is under construction, but for the time being, here are some pictures to look at: