#146: Megatron Man #1

“Chase Bradford’s comic book has been published? By a real publisher? That’s wonderful,” I said. I had seen much of the original artwork while he was working on it, but being busy with grad school myself, hadn’t been in touch with the aspiring cartoonist in quite a while. “How do you know, Nancy? Have you seen it?”

#60: Spotting a Roof-Runner

I was downtown doing some Christmas shopping—window shopping, really—for Mama and Avie, and wasn’t having much luck. I never knew what to get Daddy—Avie and I usually teamed up to get him a power tool from the hardware store at the last minute, so I was putting off any consideration of that gift entirely. My senior thesis was turned in, and except for a final exam tomorrow, my semester was in the bag. The following spring semester would be my last as a college undergrad. But instead of a sense of relief and anticipation, there was a knot in the pit of my stomach. I found myself worried about Dana, about what I may have done to screw things up and turn her into a megavillain. I dreaded when we’d meet again, when I would inevitably have to kick her ass.

#36: Sex and the Single Megahero

It was strange for me to realize, but considering the variety and sheer number of sexual experiences I’d had in the two years since I'd lost my virginity to Yarn Man, my relationship with Nancy—that is to say, Agatha—was the closest thing to a normal, dating relationship I’d ever had. This was due, in part, to her being a civilian—as opposed to being a megahero or former megahero. But it was more because most of the sex I’d had up to that point in my life had been impromptu hook-ups: I shagged Yarn Man the moment I’d laid eyes on him, and later we shacked up in the basement rec room my Daddy built and seldom went out thereafter. That summer, when I became Ms. Megaton Man, I spent a couple of weeks binge-partying with every college athlete on the Arbor State University campus—male or female—just before the fall semester of my repeat junior year began. At the very end of the school year, I finally did it with Trent, whom I had gotten to know from living in the same house as him over the previous two and a half years; we certainly had never gone out on a date.

#30: Miscegenation Man

The breeze coming off the East River over the old Navy Yards was crisp and cold as we packed up the Pacer on the rooftop of the Youthful Permutations headquarters. We were about to say our goodbyes to the Y+Thems when the Q-Mobile descended on the Navy Yard warehouse roof, and Yarn Man when Kozmik Kat hopped out. Koz announced he would be staying in Megatropolis.
     “My place is at his side,” said Koz. “Especially if he’s going to be tending bar at the Tudor City Club—someone’s got to keep an eye on him.”

#20: Campy, Coverless Comics

I went back to the van and put on my civvies, then the four of us—Samson, Preston, Koz, and I—met at an outdoor table in front of the bookstore to compare notes.
     Preston reported that at that very moment agents from ICHHL were investigating Mervyn Goldfarb’s apartment. Sure enough, he was formerly employed by Dr. Joe Levitch’s lab years before when it was still located in Ann Arbor, and recently had taken to cooking up batches of homemade Mega-Soldier Syrup in his bathtub and selling it to unwary college students at a huge profit. Notes located already seemed to indicate it was an obsolete formula and the Mervyn hadn’t been too particular about following the recipe precisely.

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!

The Clarissa Project: The Secret Origin of Ms. Megaton Man!

Reposted from the Megaton Man blog!

Starting out as Stella's Ann Arbor roommate sidekick in Megaton Man #4 (June 1985), Clarissa James has evolved into one of the most prominent characters in the Megaton Man narrative.
A sophomore infatuated with Yarn Man in Return of Megaton Man #1 (July 1988) and subsequently present at the birth of Megaton Man and Stella's son Simon in Return of Megaton Man #3 (September 1988), Clarissa realizes she has Megapowers and dons the primary-colored costume to become Ms. Megaton Man in Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (April 1989). Initially attributed to a sexually-transmitted Megavirus, Clarissa learns that the true reason for her Megapowers derives from the fact that she is the "love-child" of Silver-Age Megaton Man Clyde Phloog and an African-American hippie mother in Bizarre Heroes #13 (September 1995), making her the second cousin once removed (or something) of Trent Phloog, the Baxter-Age Megaton Man. In the current work in progress (release date TBD), we will see Clarissa emerge as one of the most powerful Doom Defiers, the Megatropolis team that emerges after terrorist attacks deplete the city's Megahero population.

Clarissa James in her very first appearance, registering for her sophomore year in Ann Arbor with Stella Starlight (Megaton Man #2, Kitchen Sink Press, February 1985). Original coloring by Ray Fehrenbach.

Originally, Clarissa was just a sidekick whose sole purpose was to show former See-Thru Girl Stella the ropes on campus as she adjust to post-Megahero life (from MM #2; recolored in 2015).

Clarissa was also a highly studious student and something of a Megahero skeptic, or at least someone who thought of Megaheroics as a distant distraction. In any event, the notion of giving her Megapowers was the furthest thing from my mind, and in fact, she doesn't appear again in the first ten issues of Megaton Man. Nonetheless, the collegiate iconography of Ann Arbor already seems to subconsciously foreshadow her Megaheroic future (from MM #2).

Once Clarissa realizes who Stella is, she is somewhat starstruck by her celebrity status (from MM #2).

With Trent Phloog, as a de-Megapowered Megaton Man, Clarissa has joined the communal Ann Arbor household by the time of Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, July 1988).

By this time, Clarissa has become the roommate of Megatropolis exiles Stella (now far along with her pregnancy) and Pamela Jointly, as Trent struggles with his returning Megapowers (from Return #1).

Infatuated with Yarn Man, Clarissa cannot restrain herself when Megaton Man's pal appears at the doorstep (Return #1).

Fun with Clarissa and Yarn Man from Return of Megaton Man #3 (September 1988).

Protecting civilian Trent from a toppling stack of firewood, Clarissa strikes a Jack Kirby "Big Barda" pose, and realizes that she now, somehow, possesses Megapowers. Subsequently, Stella sews her a primary-colored costume patterned after Megaton Man's.  From Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, April 1989), originally in black and white, colorized in 2015.

Clarissa assumed that her Megapowers were somehow sexually transmitted from Yarn Man, but learns from her African-America mom that she is in fact the "love child" of Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man. From Bizarre Heroes #13 (Fiasco Comics Inc., September 1995), originally black and white, colorized in 2015.

Clarissa in Megatropolis Central Park with Megaton Man, Rubber Brother, Phantom Jungle Girl, and Yarn Man, as a bronze monument of the allegorical figure Columbia, a pre-Liberty national symbol for America from the 19th century, comes to life. From "Megaton Man and the Liberty Alliance: Columbia Rising," in Liberty Annual 2010 (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund/Image Comics, October 2010). Coloring by Paul and Mary Fricke.

Clarissa gets tested by Preston Percy, Yarn Man, and Rex Rigid in the headquarters of the Megatropolis Quartet (unpublished).

What I like about drawing Clarissa is that she is a much more dramatic superhero character, and a nice foil to the irreducibly comedic Megaton Man! -- Don Simpson.

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

All coloring by Don Simpson except where noted. All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.