Clarissa's Cameo: Ms. Megaton Man's King Kong Easter Egg!

Clarissa's Covered-Up Cameo! Plus: Ann's Problematic Panties!

Clarissa James (or a look-alike) made a cameo appearance in the 1991 adaptation of King Kong, specifically in the fifth issue (Monster Comics/Fantagraphics Books, November 1991) of the six-issue series. In that unfairly forgotten graphic novel, I wrote and drew the story as it originally appeared in the novelization of the screenplay, which included scenes routinely cut out by both movie theaters and TV stations. Among these is the short scene of Kong's rampage through the native village in which the giant ape stomps and chews on stock extras, and a native girl is stampeded by a dinosaur.

The original art of Kong's native village rampage, from a file photocopy.

My Clarissa look-alike (showing my limited range of ethnic types) was drafted to play the role of the native girl. What is interesting is that, whereas I initially depicted her partially nude, as per the setting and milieu of the story, the Fantagraphics editors, nervous of the licensee, insisted that I give her a more modest top. I ultimately complied; although I drew the line at showing the triceratops ramming her through her abdomen with his horn (which may or may not have been in the original story).

Dot screens are never enough: the bare torso of the original figure.

(I may have considered this last narrative wrinkle on my own, although I clearly could not bring myself to doing such violence to such a beautiful figure).

The nervous editors made me put a strip of clothe over her chest, but I drew the line at actually depicting her gruesome death by being impaled on a triceratops horn.

The changes in the published comic book, compared to file photocopies I recently unearthed, seem utterly trivial in retrospect, particularly for a black and white comic book the publisher failed to promote, and by the fifth issue, few readers were following (the strategy of serializing King Kong over a year or more, when everyone already knew how the story ended, was an abysmally poor marketing choice).

Here is the original art next to the censored, published version.

Even more meddlesome were the changes deemed necessary to Ann Darrow's panties in three panels of the same issue, after she loses the last shreds of her dress on Monster Isle (in issue #4, she was stripped of her garments by Kong, and subsequently survived a high-dive into water from a steep cliff; how she was even breathing at this point stretched credulity).

Ann, a dead ringer for my character Stella Starlight (the limitations of my stock characters showing once again) was known for "turning herself naked with but a thought" as the See-Thru Girl (she was not yet known as the more chaste and upright Earth Mother).

In comparison to file photocopies, it would seem I added less than an inch of fabric to Ann's backside, obscuring her crack somewhat, but otherwise accomplishing little either aesthetically or in improving the narrative.  

Adding an inch of fabric and smoothing out the soaking-wet wrinkles made Ann Darrow's derriere suitable for 1990s comic book audiences.

Kong is nothing if not a profoundly erotic work of escapism, and these trivial changes show Fantagraphics to be a bunch of nervous ninnies as bad or worse as the big, corporate comics publishers when it comes to well-known trademarks. (Ironically, the same company that was publishing King Kong under its Monster Comics imprint were publishing my graphically explicit Anton Drek comics - which it proudly marketed as "the filthiest, most controversial sex comics of the twentieth century" - under their Eros Comix imprint.

A giant ape charges the crew of the intrepid steamer. It's in situations like this a girl wants to be modestly attired.

The difference between Puritanism and prurience in comics is razor-thin (in my case, depending only on which name I sign to a piece of figurative cartooning), but the discretions and indiscretions of early 1990s comics seemed just as bizarrely anachronistic at the time as the certainly do now. Why a native girl in the south seas, or a white goddess stripped of her garments by a giant ape, would be anything other than completely nude in such a primeval adventure of the id seems implausible.

Ann says goodbye to Monster Isle; back in New York, she'll have to wear an evening gown again!

King Kong may be the most meddled-with story in the annals of American pop imagery, no doubt because of its deep-seated (and regressive) views of sexuality, gender roles, and race. Like the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip Jose Farmer, Kong will always occupy an iconic space somewhere between escapist daydream and erotic yearning, causing artists, filmmakers, and others attempting to interpret this story no end of silly revisions, redactions, rewrites, and bowdlerizations.

The 1991 graphic adaptation of King Kong was based solely upon the original 1932 book by Edgar Wallace, Merian C. Cooper, and Delos W. Lovelace and is in no way related to or derived from any motion-picture version of the same. The artwork is © 1991 Don Simpson and Richard Merian Cooper, all rights reserved. Used with permission.

Visit the All-New Don Simpson's King Kong Blog!

Body Image: Missing Winnie Wertz!

Clarissa ponders shape and size while waxing nostalgic for the days of yore when Gargantuella was a Doom Defier! Inked on Clearprint Design Velum, from the work-in-progress Megaton Man: Return to Megatropolis graphic novel. More previews on Megaton Man's blog!

CJ rummages through the closets of the Doom Defiers beach as as Preston Percy looks on.

Clarissa stumbles upon some useless electronics and some even more useless old comic books!

The woeful tale of Winnie Wertz is told.

Clarissa takes consolation in the art of sequential narrative!

Preston is unmoved by the story or the display.

To glimpse some of the original pencil roughs, go here!

To see an early conception of Winnie Wertz, go here!

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.

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

Sketchbook Spring Training!

First inking of the spring (a bit rusty)...!

The top sketch is mostly Hunt #102 crowquill; the bottom three are Sharpie Pen (non-permanent).

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!

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.

UPATED: Sky People of the Near Future!

Here's another splash page developed from a sketchbook drawing. Like several pieces on this blog and my other blogs, a particular doodle suggests a scene that I have wanted to develop further, sometimes years later. In this case, a group of megaheroes in the near future assemble on a rooftop. It was one of those images I would return to and say, "I ought to do something with this," at least more than just leave it undeveloped and unused in a sketchbook. Recently, I thought of adding Ms. Megaton Man to the scene, who is visiting the future for the first time. I am currently devising a storyline around this scenario that ties up some loose ends from Megaton Man #3, believe it or not.

Here is the original sketch page from fall 2011. At this point the characters are somewhat amorphous, although the guy in the beetle-wing costume seems distinctive (and suggestive).

Here I've scanned the page, blown it up to 11" x 17", and added a strip of drawing paper along the left edge to accommodate an expanded image. I have also penciled in dialogue for the scene and given the characters provisional names. The female character on the rooftop is now a slightly older version of Paleo Girl. I will need to reconcile the names and correct the lettering, since here I have dubbed her Feral Girl; I will also have to change Susie to Jeanie, to make it consistent with Megaton Man #3. I've also indicated names for the two flying characters:Subspace and Lepidoptera.

This is the final ink version on Clearprint Design Vellum. Inking was completed on June 13, 2014, and lettering corrections were implemented a day later.