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!)

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

Sketching After Squirrel Hill

I probably know the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill and the surrounding East End (Shadyside, Oakland, Point Breeze, Polish Hill, Friendship, Wilkinsburg, et al) better than any place I've never actually resided. For many years, I taught cartooning workshops at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, bought art supplies at Artists and Craftsmen and other places, footwear at Little's Shoes, and on and on.

I must have walked by and certainly driven by the Tree of Life Congregation countless times between the main drag on Murray and Forbes and PCA - although I didn't know what it was called. I almost walked out there last Friday, before the awful events of last Saturday.

Clarissa James (Ms. Megaton Man) with Deirdre Denton, flanked by Simon Phloog, Preston Percy, and Kozmik Kat. Stella Starlight and Trent Phloog (Megaton Man) are in the background. Rough sketch; I'll pencil something tighter soon.

I keep thinking about how close it is to Halloween, and how awful it must be especially for kids in that surrounding neighborhood. I drew this with that in mind - a quickie before class. I seldom get much time to draw during the school year, as I teach college for two schools. But the thought came to me of my characters walking their children through the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, past the Tree of Life.

This is a very rough sketch and on every level a completely inadequate response, but what I have in mind is a time in America that now seems quaintly nostalgic in so many ways - when Rob and Laura Petrie had Jewish neighbors - Millie and Jerry Helper - and I grew up with at least four Jewish families on my block - the Freemans, the Tolchins, the Bornsteins, and the Sandubraes.

That ecumenical mid-century America seems almost a lost utopia now, but it doesn't have to be. Every time I pick up my pencil, I want to make it real again.