#21: Daddy Issues

It was the fourth week of September, with the semester well underway, that something miraculous happened: I found myself in the kitchen in the middle of the week having lunch with Trent, Stella, and baby Simon in his high chair. A meal with all three of them almost never happened, given our busy schedules, despite living in the same house. Pammy was absent—she was back in Ann Arbor but was busy lecturing and in the final stages of preparing her manuscript for publication, which was to be released the following spring.

Return to Ann Arbor: Clarissa Sketches and Swipe Gallery!

I've been thinking a lot about the period in the Megaton Man narrative when I moved the characters to Ann Arbor in Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, July 1988). I've blogged elsewhere about how a regrettable "nuclear-option" dispute with my publisher, including the dictate that henceforth all iterations of the Megaton Man series be re-numbered #1 for my perceived lapses and transgressions, eventually soured me on continuing with the character, at least at that fabled arthouse boutique publisher.

While I could never reconstruct, story-wise, every nuance of what I might have had in mind in the late 1980s, there are clearly a lot of untold stories from that era, particularly of the early career of Ms. Megaton Man, who gained her powers in the first Megaton Man one-shot, Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1989), and the early childhood of Simon Phloog, result of the union between Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl. In particular, there are some interesting aspects to the "Civilian" life of Trent Phloog (Megaton Man's non-Megapowered alter ego) that particularly interest me.

Many of the following pencil sketches and studies, for the most part, were drawn recently with that Ann Arbor milieu in mind. Others refer to more recent cultural disturbances, particular a despicable Right-Wing movement among mainstream comics creators. Some of these feature an added layer of referring to various iconic covers from the history of comics or pulp adventure.

Megaton Man™ and the Human Meltdown™ go at it as Ms. Megaton Man stands by. This is an homage to the cover to Philip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown (Playboy Press, 1980) by Jordi Penalva, which features a surrogate Doc Savage and a surrogate Tarzan going at a hightly homoerotic tussle. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

The Human Meltdown™, from Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, December 1984), a character who was featured in Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (1989), but otherwise has remained under-utilized. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa James, before she became Ms. Megaton Man, and Trent Phloog, after he lost his Megaton Man powers, re-enacting a scene from Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, July 1988). This shared look has yet to be sufficiently explored. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Getting to know you: Potential licensors of the Megaton Man property balked when they actually read the comics, particularly sequences like the one immediately below showing Megaton Man's secret identity, Trent Phloog, living with the unwed but pregnant mother-to-be of his child, and a slightly salacious young female roommate, in a communal house in Ann Arbor:

Clarissa and Trent meet, from Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1988).™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa and Trent meet, from Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1988). Panel three is the image I expanded upon in the 2018 pencil sketch above. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa James pencil drawing, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa James pencil drawing, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa James pencil drawing, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Pammy Jointly, dressed as she would be as a housemate of Trent, Stella, and Clarissa in Return of Megaton Man. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Pammy and Stella in Ann Arbor. From The Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1988). ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Ms. Megaton Man, backed by Simon Phloog (son of Megaton Man) and Deirdre face off against a Megacontraptoid and an evil ventriloquist dummy. Clarissa James pencil drawing, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Original pencil sketch of the above. Clarissa James pencil drawing, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Ms. Megaton Man™, Simon, Deirdre, and Kozmik Kat™ welcome Megaton Man. Tight rough with Sharpie pen over a scanned printout of the original pencil drawing (below). ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Original pencil sketch of the above. The composition is actually an homage (or, in the vernacular, a swipe) of C.C. Beck and Nick Cardy's cover to Shazam #1 (DC Comics, 1972). ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Clarissa clobbers a Right-Winger in a pose swiped from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America #1 (Timely Comics, 1940). Rough tightened using a Sharpie fine-line writing pen. ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Original pencil rough of the above (can't get enough beating up White Apartheid Neo-Nazis!). ™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

More on ComicsBait!

Greetings from Warhead Beach: A Swimsuit Postcard Pin-Up!

Back in the roaring 80s, a fanzine called Amazing Heroes published an annual swimsuit issue edited by the late Mr. Kim Thompson, one of the founders, along with Gary Groth, of Fantagraphics Books.

The newly-colorized postcard version!

In 1990, the cast of Megaton Man™, including our very own Ms. Megaton Man, Clarissa James, took their turn for some fun and sun. The original, printed in gritty black and white on newsprint, has been colorized for the 21st century!

A limited-edition 11" x 17" print of this piece will be coming to NEO Con 2018 in Olmsted, Ohio, August 19, and you'll be able to get yours autographed by Don Simpson!

The original: pen, brush and ink with dot screen on Bristol board.

Note: There was also a Border Worlds™ pin-up that will be coming to blog near you soon!


Stella Starlight™, Tad ‘n’ Rover™, Yarn Man™, Clarissa James™, Partyers from Mars™ and other characters Megaton Man™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Stretch Before You Sketch: Ms. MM Warm-Ups!

Update (April 7, 2018): Finally colored these figures in Photoshop:

Originally posted October 30, 2014:

I have been doing a lot of penciling and to warm up, and I have a tendency to sketch Ms. Megaton Man in one form or another. (It's important to stretch before you sketch, particularly when a comic book is in production; otherwise you can pull a muscle!) As a character that straddles the comedic and dramatic, Clarissa has all the energy that I always loved about comics, and she just rolls out of my pencil.

Light Blue Col-Erase and Staedtler Mars Lumograph H pencil on Strathmore Recycled Sketchbook.

Update November 7, 2014: Some of these warm-up sketches seem worthy to develop further, so I scan and print out (often, slightly larger than the original). This frees the drawing from the sketchbook (where they often originate) and also preserve the original pencil drawing. This gives me a sense of freedom when I ink (I know I can't screw it up, since I can always go back to the original and try again), and that relaxation paradoxically is usually enough to ensure a positive outcome on the first try (go figure!).

The ink finals, below:

Hunt #102 Crowquill pen and India ink on Clearprint Design Vellum.

Hunt #102 Crowquill pen and India ink on Clearprint Design Vellum.

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.

Clarissa Leaps Into the Void!

Just colored another pose, this one inked last fall (2014):

Link: Clarissa antagonizes Megaton Man and the Knight Watchmen!

Of Color, In Color: A New Clarissa Pose for Memorial Day Weekend

I can't help but noticing that whenever I post a Ms. Megaton Man sketch (a character whom I love to draw), it always gets significantly less views than even a lame but new piece of Megaton Man art (a character that is fun but whom I am more or less obliged to draw). Hmm. What exactly does this say about American society this Memorial Day weekend?!? I always wonder when I post a drawing, does color (vs. black and white) make a difference? (Does being of color make a difference?!) Discuss amongst yourselves...

At any rate, here is a drawing I made of Clarissa, developed from a toss-off warm-up pose from my sketchbook. Enjoy!

See Clarissa in action with Megaton Man and the Knight Watchman!

Salon des Bandes Dessinées and Aztec Beach Volleyball?!

Here are the exercises Frank Santoro led us through last night at the Pittsburgh Comics Salon, held at Lili's Cafe in Polish Hill. The theme was 3-panel and 4-panel comic strip timing (à la Charles M. Schulz). Naturally, I defaulted to a Ms. Megaton Man sequence, which segued into a beach volleyball game held at an Aztec ballcourt (isn't that a mainstream genre already?). Now I'll have to turn this into a story!

 Update: The 2 x 2 layout I started at Lili's and completed this morning:

To be continued ...

Sketchbook Opening Day!

Some pencil and fineline pen tracing inks:

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!

More Traced Sketches: Don's Convoluted New Inking Method Explained!

More Ms. Megaton Man poses, culled from sketchbooks dating back to 2010, inked on Clearprint 1000HP Design Vellum yesterday (June 18, 2014). At this point, I've probably inked about 80% of the inkable images from my old and current sketchbooks, by which I mean tightly penciled and ready to ink with minimal modification. I didn't ink them at the time because a) they were spontaneous, casual sketches, and I had no immediate purpose in mind for them; b) the drawing paper of the various sketchbooks might by fine for penciling but less suitable to ink; and c) the images often were a bit too small to ink comfortably; and d) inking them in the sketchbook, while leaving the sketchbook intact, would have been a bit cumbersome. Still, when I looked over these images, I would say, "Gee, I ought to do something with these!" Through trial and error, I think I've optimized a method of scanning, blowing up, printing out, and using Clearprint, along with Elmer's repositionable glue stick, to salvage these freely-drawn images from the obscurity of my sketchbooks. Are they just clip art now, or will certain poses make their way into future story panels and pages? Stay tuned.

Clarissa gets zapped by some unknown ray. Unlike most of the characters in the Megaverse, who say "Darn!" or "#$%@!?!," Ms. Megaton Man is one that I feel should explicitly swear. She will say "ass" instead of "butt," etc. In other words, she's got a mouth on her, and I can't seem to do anything about it.

This is a shot of the old drawing board and the original Moleskine sketchbook, with the drawing in Col-Erase Light Blue pencil and graphite pencil, next to the blow up and the ink final on Clearprint (the orange pads below are Clearprint pads of different sizes that I prefer. The original image is about 7" tall, which I blew up to 11". Determining the right size is somewhat arbitrary. Most of sketches I've inked utilizing this method have been fairly close to size, so this is unusually enlarged. This photo also gives a good idea of the translucence of the Clearprint material. Note the Pro-White corrections on the final.

Here is something of an awkward pose for Ms. Megaton Man. I may have been looking at Ross Andru again!!

Here is a rather robust and somewhat lanky version of Clarissa. Usually she is more compact, but here she turned out more expansive than usual.

This was a swipe from a fitness image, modified quite a bit since the original source had the left forearm across the bust line, and was cropped mid-thigh. I think the result counts as original, or at least not actionable! (A special Woo-Prize if you can identify the source!)

For some reason, this pose taps into some obscure John Romita-John Buscema-Jim Mooney-Dick Giordano melange of influences. There are a lot of comic books I read as a youth but never consciously studied to emulate as a cartoonist (particularly true of Ross Andru, who was not a favorite at the time, although I can respect certain aspects of his craft nowadays); still, a these influences seem to be burbling up lately as I become less concerned of hewing to a particular style and simply try to get the job done!

One of the pitfalls of my current method is record keeping. I've tried various kinds of scanning, photocopying, and sizing; consequently I have a lot of print outs tucked away in different folders, envelopes, and boxes. In this case, this led to me inking something that I'd forgotten I'd inked before! The first time was mostly with a brush, while the second was entirely with a crowquill. In the first one the linework is a bit fatter, but otherwise I don't discern much qualitative difference. This speaks to one of the advantages this way of inking has over penciling and inking on the same piece of Bristol board: you can always ink it again if you mess up or don't like the first result!

The main advantage of this method, as I said, is that I can salvage some good work from past sketchbooks, but it also comes in handy for making corrections and possibly inking images for which the original is lost and only a reproduction or poor quality photograph remains. Most of my sketchbooks are filled with doodles and scribbles that would require a great deal of further refinement at the pencil stage before they could be inked; in those cases, it would almost be easier to just begin with a new sheet of paper and start from scratch, eyeballing the original doodle for reference. But I have also adapted this method for new panels, tiers and pages -- it saves having to erase the pencil lines from the original artwork, which can sometimes fade the ink lines.

One last pose, reminiscent of Gil Kane inked by John Romita, some of my favorite comic book artwork of all time. Appropriate for Clarissa!