Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

 
A little background information on this week's submission to The Line It Is Drawn...

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Twenty-five years ago today, at 8 pm Central and Eastern, 7 pm Pacific and Mountain time, "The Flash" television series debuted in the U.S. television airwaves. Since I was living in Asia at the time, I wasn't able to catch the show until it was released on PAL VHS -- and even then, it was only five episodes (on three tapes: the pilot movie, the two Trickster episodes, and the two Nightshade episodes). When I was in Malaysia, the local television station "Metrovision 8" aired the pilot movie (in two parts), and the "Mask of Rasputin" episode, and then the show was inexplicably banned by the Information Ministry. So I had only seen six episodes, but it was enough to make me a fan of the show. It wasn't until the DVD set came out in the mid-naughties did I watch, and rewatch, the rest of the season.

This piece is to commemorate this wonderful programme, which still stands as one of the best comic-book inspired television shows, in my opinion. Another show on this list is the current "The Flash" programme on the CW, which honors the original show (including casting the original Flash himself, John Wesley Shipp [below], in a recurring role) and surprisingly manages to include aspects of the Silver Age Flash comic books that the previous show could not.

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: More Publications from a Parallel Dimension

From the “Did I Not See This Somewhere Before?” department:  Most followers on this blog and Brian Cronin’s “The Line It Is Drawn” feature know that I am a long-time fan of the DC Comics character Green Lantern, and probably know that I believe the most brilliant media adaption of the concept is the wonderful-yet-no-longer-produced “Green Lantern: The Animated Series”(GLTAS) that aired on Cartoon Network from November of 2011 to March of 2013.

A little over a year ago, and with a little help, I have compiled a number of GLTAS fanart pieces to create a mock DVD cover of a speculated Season Two, Part One, which I had arranged to have delivered to a few cast and crew members who attended the WonderCon 2014 as a “thank you” gift for making such an outstanding programme. One of the few positive comments I had received asked if I planned to create a sequel to finish up the speculated second season…  The answer was yes, and I had managed to complete it a few months ago. Attached is a fairly decent picture for those interested (click to enlarge).

On a related note, one can find a mock "TV Guide" article on the "final episode" of this collection that I created as filler for a “The Line It Is Drawn” entry here. I suppose this as about as close (or is it far?) to fan fiction as I ever plan to get.

Enjoy. And please note that just because there is a picture, it did not necessarily happen…  yet.

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number eight in what is now a very irregular series.

A tease of a little side project I have been working on for a while...

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: Cartoon Crisis

On this week's The Line It Is Drawn, I had the pleasure of revisiting a topic I had done five months ago, this time spotlighting 16 DC Comics cartoons (spanning six decades) that are no longer being produced. Can you name them all?

See the full wraparound cover version (as well as the fantastic pieces my compatriots have created) here. 


(Based on the cover of  "Crisis on Infinite Earths #1" by George Pérez. Done with respect to him and all of the talent behind these fantastic programmes.)

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: Con Artist with a Cause

I used to attend the Comic-Con International held in San Diego quite regularly — seven years out of the decade of the naughties, in fact. This was just before the event had exploded into the massive pop-culture phenomenon that now offers extremely slim odds of my being able to attend.

Very interesting that it was only now that I made my first submission into the event’s Souvenir Book. I would admit that my then lack of confidence in my rendering of human figures made me apprehensive to participate a decade before. Perhaps my 100-plus weeks on The Line It Is Drawn had finally emboldened me...

The subtext of this piece was obvious. While Bob Kane may had triggered the initial imaginative spark, it had become more and more apparent that his collaborator Bill Finger provided much of the tinder to the creative fire that forged the enduring concept, and legend, of the Batman. It was very likely that the red-garbed, Flash Gordon-esque mystery man I had depicted above, which was based on Bob Kane’s original Bat-Man concept, may had been what Kane would have pitched to National Comics (now DC Comics) if he had not first consulted Finger.

Much of this had been brought to the public light recently thanks to the exhaustive efforts of author and historian Marc Tyler Nobleman and his book, Bill The Boy Wonder (a great read for all ages). While Kane profited by the Batman creation, Finger lived and eventually died, in the words of Nobleman, “poor and unheralded.” Nobleman had been leading a… dare I say, noble crusade to demand DC Comics and Warner Brothers to grant Bill Finger the co-creator credit Nobleman felt Finger deserved.

And it was not just Nobleman who believed this. Decades before Nobleman had written his book, though it was years after Bill Finger’s death, Bob Kane himself had publicly stated that Finger deserved co-creator credit for his invaluable contributions to Batman (two examples I had encountered in the 1980s were in Kane’s biography, Batman and Me, and a one-page essay Kane wrote for the History of the DC Universe 1988 special edition hardcover; there may had been others). It was my understanding that DC Comics had been contractually bound to credit only Bob Kane as the sole creator of Batman, and yet said contract was arranged by Kane himself. So I was forced to wonder why Kane, who (albeit sporadically) eventually acknowledged Finger’s right to co-creator credit, never renegotiated his contract with DC to award it.  

I started to sketch out this Souvenir Book submission idea back in the beginning of this year, and almost didn’t follow through after seeing a brilliant piece by Ty Templeton (the illustrator of the Bill the Boy Wonder book) that truly emphasized the importance of Finger to the Batman mythos. However, my wife reminded me that my idea did focus on one key Finger contribution upon which Templeton’s piece did not explicitly touch. Therefore, I pressed forward to create this piece that may also serve to add one more voice to further the Nobleman cause.

Art by Xum Yukinori. Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger (see, that was not that difficult). Batman and all related characters copyright DC Comics.

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: Publications from a Parallel Dimension

As a fan of the wonderful-yet-no-longer-produced “Green Lantern: The Animated Series”(GLTAS), I immensely enjoy the opportunity to draw characters from that programme in a number of submissions to “The Line It Is Drawn” (responding to Twitter suggestions from whom must be other fans of the series). This led to a number of GLTAS-related art commission requests from other fans of the programme (some of which have been featured in my “Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]” series on this blog).

This piece pictured is a compilation of some of those works (with a little additional art for the front cover). Ever since parts of this piece was posted by Josh Keaton on his blog a few weeks ago, I have received a number of questions (and some hate mail) about it. The intent was to create a facsimile of the next DVD release if the series had continued for another season, but not as a hoax to make people believe the show was being renewed (and my sincerest apologies to those who were inadvertently deceived). It was essentially a “thank you” gift for certain GLTAS cast and crew members that were scheduled to attend the recent WonderCon event in Anaheim, California -- with the message being along the lines of “hopefully one day you’ll be able to share the stories you currently do not have the chance to tell.”

Right now this is the closest I can show of the complete piece, as I do not have the actual label art file at this time. While I did create all of the artwork and indicia here in Japan, the label layout was put together and printed by a friend of mine in the States (who also delivered the gifts and provided the above photo). 

Enjoy. And please note that these labels are not real and these cases are empty -- for now.

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: Spotlight on… the Background

My submission to this week’s The Line It Is Drawn sketch challenge was both a comic book cover homage (to John Byrne and Terry Austin’s classic Uncanny X-Men #141) and a love letter to the numerous no-longer-produced comic-book related cartoons I have enjoyed over the years, from the Superfriends to Green Lantern and Young Justice.

Many of these shows were represented in a “wanted poster” in the background, with taped “updates” containing an overgeneralized reason why these shows are no longer being produced (and for the sake of accuracy, there is really no single factor that ends the production of an animated television show, so these simplified explanations are not to be taken as hard fact).

The 16 characters on the poster were obscured either by these taped updates or the figures of the animated Hal Jordan (from Green Lantern) and Artemis (from Young Justice) in the foreground. So as a “DVD extra” (and to demonstrate that I can be irrationally obsessive with detail), I am showing the full poster unblocked. Enjoy.

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number seven in a series.

[Scene from "Father Figure", the seventeenth episode of the non-existent second season of the wonderful "Green Lantern: The Animated Series"]

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number six in a series.

(It started with this, and then exploded into...)

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number five in a series.

[A retooled birthday gift commission; with the permission of the recipient, I have replaced the "birthday boy" with myself.

Based on the legendary cover of "The Flash" volume 1, number 123 by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.]

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number four in a series.

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number three in a series.

(Inspired by Giancarlo Volpe's "Green Lantern the Animated Series: The Musical," A.K.A. "Drop-kicking You in the Feels.")

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number two in a series.

Unapologetic Zaree [戯絵]

Number one in a new series.

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: Dual Duels of Duality

I had recently reached my 50th birthday the other week, and I have to admit that initially, the day wasn’t all that special. It probably didn’t help that my celebration of this half-century milestone was more of a halfway measure as I was currently halfway around the world from my wife and family. So while my birthday dinner comprised of what I believe to be the best sashimi the Roppongi district has to offer, it was less enjoyable when partaken at a table-for-one. I also splurged on dessert, a lovely honey-lavender pudding that one of my dear aunties managed to bring to me from Hokkaido. However, the evocative taste triggered thoughts of an exquisite delight that I had shared with my absent wife that I am to this day still debating whether the indulgence was more pleasant or painful.

I do suppose one consolation of my then-current solitude was that it had provided an excellent opportunity for deep self-reflection on the past five decades of my life – a chance to see how far I had come into this world, and how far I have yet to go.

But the only “midlife crisis” I wanted to deal with belonged to my cartooning “altered-ego,” the unabashedly conceited "Professor Xum," who couldn't help but commemorate the half-life occasion in a recent “mock comic book cover” submission to "The Line It Is Drawn" (a feature of the “Comics Should Be Good” blog on ComicBookResources.com [hereinafter referred to as “The Line”]). The week's theme revolved around a breakout cartoon programme called “Adventure Time,” of which I could sum up all of my personal knowledge at the time in this “sketch cover variant.”

The summation of my knowledge of "Adventure Time."

But a little thing like lack of show knowledge wouldn’t stop the narcissistic Professor – especially since he recently discovered that he is about the same age as another “Professor Zoom,” who was a recurring villain in one of his favorite childhood comic books. The idea of having two fifty-year-old “Professors” squaring off on the comic book cover was too much to resist, even if it had nothing to do with “Adventure Time.” Fortunately, a Twitter suggestion happened to request a team-up between a couple of the show’s characters and Zoom’s four-color arch-nemesis. So all the wily Professor needed was a few quick Google searches on “Adventure Time” to figure out the creative shoehorn he needed. The egocentric result can be viewed here.

The Epic Confrontation No One Demanded

Little did the vainglorious Professor know that this would only be the first “doppelganger duel” on the week of his birth. His long-distant wife and a few Stateside friends have conspired with the ever-wonderful ShannonFarnon to provide a special birthday surprise to a longtime SuperFriends fan: a follow-up audio scenario for the one episode that never truly had an ending. And the villain of the audio piece goes to super-extreme measures in an attempt to eliminate me (as if my head wasn’t swelled enough). Fortunately Wonder Woman arrives to save me… and the day… in a very unique manner. Of course I can’t keep this wonderful birthday gift to myself. You can check out this fantastic audio treasure here.

(By the way, it’s possible to hire Shannon Farnon yourself to create a Wonder Woman recording for your loved one’s birthday, or any special occasion. Just visit the “Voice Mails for Sale” tab on her website to find out how.)

Fortunately, my family had finally arrived at Narita Airport yesterday for the summer. As soon as they get used to the time shift, we'll plan a more proper, albeit belated, family celebration to kick off the next 50 years.

Parting Shot

Hong Kong, 1989.

The man stepped out of the warm night air and into the air-conditioned micro-climate of the Chat Jai convenience store. He paused for a moment before the propped-open doors to scan the shelves along the front counter before him. The store was very similar to the 7-Elevens he had remembered visiting as a boy when he had lived in the United States in the early-1970s, except here the Western snack items were intermingled with some locally produced treats. As the English and Cantonese labels vied for his attention, the man felt as if he had stepped into a strange alternate world that was familiar yet different. He chuckled silently to himself as he realized that, in some regards, he had.

The smooth-skinned Chinese woman behind the counter, whose rough expression hinted her true age, looked up from her tabloid magazine and eyed the man intently. Her brow furrowed; she didn't seem to approve of him blocking the doorway — even though there was nobody else in the store.

The man walked forward and smiled warmly before his mouth fumbled across a sentence in Cantonese. He had only been in Hong Kong for a few months, and was still learning the language (his employer and co-workers spoke English so there was no language barrier at work). The man did know enough at least to awkwardly ask for directions, order food, enquire about a price (as well as count his change), and, thankfully, to request a cup of coffee.

The woman behind the counter didn't return the smile. She conveyed a Cantonese reply in a low flat tone, pointing to a self-serve coffee station near the back of the store. She sounded annoyed, but the man didn't take it personally. It seemed to him that everyone in Hong Kong sounded annoyed, if not mildly angry, when speaking in Cantonese. If fact, the man discovered that acting annoyed actually helped him perfect the diction of the few rudimentary phrases he knew.

The man nodded his thanks to the woman, who turned her eyes back to her magazine in obvious dismissal. He pushed his loose glasses back to the top of his nose before heading past the short shopping aisles toward his objective. As he grudgingly pulled a Styrofoam cup from the tall stack next to the simmering coffee pot, the man recalled when a co-worker brought Chat Jai coffee to the workplace and how everyone else seemed to consider it an exotic delight. The man, however, found it to be horribly acrid. He preferred the rich and smooth brew from the hole-in-the-wall local coffee shop across the street. Unfortunately, that place did not stay open past 11, and the man needed the caffeine now. He had two more comic book pages of backgrounds to fill before he could "call it a day."

The man had recently finished college in London and was working in an entry-level international marketing (re: sales) position for a Singaporean insurance firm when a friend there managed to hook him up with a job opportunity as a background artist in a modest manhua studio in Hong Kong. Within two months, he had relocated and now spent most of his waking hours transforming the head artist's few rough sketch lines in the otherwise blank spaces of comic book pages into elaborate architecture, or lavish forests, or battered asteroids — whatever the story called for. The man did very good work, but it was hard work. And it was long work. (The head artist would say it was "slow work," but the man's speed was improving. The man didn't mind putting in longer hours to make sure he stayed on production schedule; the last thing he wanted to be was a spanner in the works.) In addition to the long hours, the job didn't provide much pay. Just enough to cover the basics (since the studio provided quarters in the form of a small room with a bed and a portable stove), plus a little extra to set aside for emergencies. But the man had dreamed of drawing comic books since he had first picked up a copy of Justice League of America #111 from the spinner rack of, interestingly enough, a Texas 7-Eleven in 1973 — his ten-year-old eyes recognizing characters from the SuperFriends programme he had seen on Saturday-morning television. Now he was part of a team that was drawing Hong Kong action comics, and he enjoyed it. So the job was, to the man, worth it... at least at the time.

The man was just about to pour his cup of coffee when he heard a young male voice shouting in Cantonese behind him. This voice was definitely annoyed. The man turned and saw the back of a short male figure in a grey hooded sweat jacket and jeans pointing a small revolver at the cashier, who was nervously moving what little money was available in the cash register into a small plastic store bag on the counter.

The hooded robber kept his gun poised toward the woman as he grabbed one handle of the bag with his free hand. He looked quickly at the contents inside and yelled something else to the cashier in Cantonese — sounding quite angry this time.

The man's heart raced when he heard the cashier's undecipherable pleas abruptly silenced by the sharp click of the revolver's hammer, and saw the gun rise to the level of the woman's terrified face.

"Hey!"

The robber quickly looked over his shoulder toward the man's shout. He was wearing sunglasses to obscure some of his face, but the agape mouth denoted the gunman's surprise to discover someone else was in the store.

The man's eyes narrowed with outrage as the robber, and the robber's weapon, whirled toward him. Unfazed, the man's muscles bunched as his fight-or-flight response was unexpectedly readying his body for the former. The reason was perhaps not as much due to his 10-plus years of martial arts training as the youthful motivation behind it. As a boy, the man dreamed of being Bruce Lee, "beating up bad guys" alongside the Green Hornet. And now, over a decade later, a "bad guy" was standing before him, and he definitely deserved a beating.

Fortunately, the training had taught the man long ago how to exercise discipline... and restraint.

"You have what you want," the man rumbled, pointing toward the exit. "Now go!"

The gunman seemed to scoff at the man. Whether he understood English or not, the terse demand was quite clear. The robber muttered something in Cantonese as he lowered his gun and left the store with his light plunder.

The man then noticed that the cashier had dropped to the floor while he was facing the gunman. He quickly moved behind the counter in order to help her to her feet, unaware that the robber hadn't moved far beyond the doorway.

The man barely heard the gunshot when something very small — yet felt very large — tore into his back. His breath, forced out of his body from the initial impact, refused to reenter as intense pain flared through his entire being, overwhelming all of his senses. He barely felt his glasses slip off his face as he tipped back and plunged into unconsciousness.

Caught in the grip of gravity, the lenses of the man's tumbling eyepiece gleamed under the fluorescent lights for a brief instant, then shattered on the sticky tile floor.

　

To be continued.

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: This Is a Job for... the Voiceman!

The latest theme of "The Line It Is Drawn" (a feature of the "Comics Should Be Good" blog on the ComicBookResources.com website) was in honor of the 50-year anniversary of James Bond films, so comic book fans were asked to submit Twitter suggestions for pairing or "mashing up" comic book characters with James Bond characters.

One suggestion in particular caught my eye: "James Bond tries to seduce Wonder Woman." It would answer the age-old question of what happens when the irresistible force meets the unseducable object. However, it was another suggestion, "James Bond infiltrates the Hall of Doom to steal a microchip," that inspired me to use the SuperFriends version of Wonder Woman for the piece. So the scenario was fairly obvious: an Alex Toth SuperFriends-style James Bond would make a pass at Wonder Woman while they were searching for a microchip on the Hall of Doom. As I started to sketch another one of my usual mock covers, based on the SuperFriends "TV Comic" from the 1970s and 1980s, I reasoned that it would be more fitting to make this submission a mock animation cel that would look as if it had been from the SuperFriends programme itself.

So the dialogue that I had intended for the comic cover idea would not go to waste, I also decided to mock up a fake SuperFriends episode script to add to the drawing.

I had just finished the final Photoshop adjustments to the piece when I felt Namiko's hand on my shoulder.

"That looks really good," she said, regarding the image on my Wacom tablet screen. "I can see your style in it."

I mulled my wife's words for a brief moment. It wasn't my style but Alex Toth's that I was aiming for, but her compliment was sincere. "Thanks," I replied.

"But you know who should really look at it?"

"Indeed I do." I clicked open my Internet browser window, where a draft e-mail to Shannon Farnon was awaiting an attachment.

Some of you may realize that I have had the privilege of interviewing Shannon Farnon, the original voice of Wonder Woman on the SuperFriends programme, for the ToonZone website a few years back. When I started conducting interviews with animation voice actors for the old Comics2Film website in the early naughties, I eventually considered Shannon Farnon to be the "holy grail" of voice-actor interviews. This was probably due to the fifth issue of Back Issue, a comic-book-related interview magazine, which featured a spotlight on Wonder Woman on television. The magazine included a series of interviews from almost all of the actresses that had portrayed the Amazing Amazon up until that time. One of the few actresses not featured was Shannon, which was a surprise to me. Shannon was in my mind the quintessential Wonder Woman. She was the first actress to play the role in a regular series, and I always heard her voice in my head when I read Wonder Woman dialogue in comic books. The only plausible explanation I could think of for her omission in Back Issue #5 was that she was extremely difficult to find. Unfortunately, life and work had displaced the free time I had devoted to the Comics2Film interviews, so it would be a number of years before I would start to even think about tracking Shannon down.

Thanks to the website Toonzone, I had managed to make connections with some inside people from both Warner Brothers Studios and the Cartoon Network. So when time freed up for me get back to animation interviews, Shannon was at the top of my list. As seasons of the SuperFriends programme were starting to be released on DVD by Warner Home Video at the time, I e-mailed my contact at Warners and asked what my chances were in locating Shannon Farnon for an interview. He responded with a phone number to a Hollywood talent agency and a simple message to "ask for Samantha; she'll hook you up."

I had done so, and 20 minutes later Shannon herself had called me on my mobile to schedule a time. It was the easiest interview I had ever arranged. And I am honored to say that Shannon and I have stayed in regular contact since.

Elated upon receiving an e-mail from Shannon regarding how much she liked the piece, I felt surprisingly bold enough to suggest we create a dialogue sound clip to add to this week's submission, whereby Shannon would reprise her Wonder Woman role and rebuff Bond's advances. She agreed, to my delight.

My face lit up as I made Namiko the third to know. She had one question.

"So who is going to do Bond?"

Now I was by no means a master vocal impressionist, but I had been told that my mimicry of the Sean Connery James Bond, inspired by my first viewing of a Bond film (which, interestingly enough, was a re-showing of the first Bond film, "Dr. No," at a London cinema in December 1979), was dead on. I remembered making my best friend Dan shoot Sarsi out of her nose one time at a London eatery when I used my "Connery voice" to re-enact an old Sesame Street routine with Simon the Soundman ordering a "buck buck buck ba-caw sandwich."

Namiko cocked her head to one side at my response. "Come again?"

"I am going to play Bond," I repeated. "You heard my impression of Sean Connery."

"I heard your impression of Sean Connery playing the Swedish Chef," she said with an amused smirk."And that was a few years ago. I never heard you do Sean Connery as Bond."

"Really?"

"Really." There was a playful flicker in her dark chocolate eyes. "C'mon. Let's hear it. Use your line to 'seduce' me."

I brushed Namiko's mock sarcasm aside as I stepped behind her. Encircling my arms around her slim waist, I pressed my lips softly against her right ear, tightened my thyroarytenoid muscles, and purred in my best British-Scottish accent:

"I don't suppose, Wonder Woman, that I could interest you to be a SuperFriend with... benefits?"

Namiko tried to suppress a giggle, which escaped as an audible snort from her nose. Then she nearly doubled over with laughter.

"What? The line's not that funny."

She took a few moments to regain some semblance of composure. "I'm sorry," she gasped, "who are you supposed to be again?"

I shifted my voice once more. "Bond... James Bond."

She shook her head. "English... Johnny English." I could see the seriousness behind her smile.

Another thing I love about Namiko: I can always count on her to cash my reality checks. Even spending much of the next day listening and repeating various Bond YouTube video clips hardly improved the situation.

"So what are you going to do?" Namiko eventually asked. "Shannon is, of course, the big deal with the audio extra, but you can't use it for a Bond tribute without Bond."

As always, Namiko was right. I deliberated for a moment. "I think I know someone who can help."

My Warner contact had on a number of occasions told me about Will Rodgers, a long-time SuperFriends fan who had compiled the most extensive and complete SuperFriends episode guide I had ever seen on the interwebs. In fact, his guide had served as key research for my Shannon Farnon interview (and, sadly, was no longer online). The Warner contact had also told me that Will was a radio personality nicknamed "The Voiceman" due to his talent for impersonating various voices -- including several cast members of the SuperFriends programme, as well as suave-sounding actors like Larry Hagman and Adam West. So I reasoned that James Bond shouldn't be too much of a stretch for him.

I had managed to first connect with Will myself via a SuperFriends-themed fan message board a few years ago, and a simple Facebook message connected us again. Will was more than happy to help out, though he admitted he had never portrayed Sean Connery before. And while the recordings he quickly turned around were not dead-on Connery, his voice did carry the Bond smugness perfectly. As an added bonus, Will's take had a little hint of Michael Rye (voice actor for the SuperFriends Green Lantern and Apache Chief roles) which added more realism to my fake clip; if James Bond ever did appear on the SuperFriends, one of the regular cast members such as Rye would have provided the voice.

You can check out the the finished version of the mock SuperFriends animation cel, and the fake audio clip, by scrolling down on this “Line” web page. I cannot thank Shannon and Will enough for bringing life to my 41st submission to "The Line It Is Drawn" — especially on such short notice. And thank you for your interest in this fun little lark that, along with the blog, allows me to exercise the right side of my brain on a regular basis.

And if the "Line" ever decides to do a Johnny English tribute, I am so there!

[NOTE: In the recent Comic Book Resources website update, the audio file on the "line" web page has been lost. You can now listen to the audio clip here.]

Wish I Was There, Episode 2: Feeling "EPIC!"

The man had been waiting a while now. No, not that man, but a good friend of "the man" from previous entries, though I do understand the confusion. So perhaps I shouldn't refer to him as "the man" here. Therefore, I will highlight a key attribute of the protagonist and hereby refer to this person as "the ginger-haired man." (Catchy name, no?)

Now then...

The ginger-haired man had been waiting a while now, as have the other comic convention attendees standing in the long queue with him. The crowd had started to get a little restless at the realization that the object of their wait would be arriving "fashionably late." But several people had managed to entertain themselves by discussing possible scenarios to explain the person's delayed arrival. They ranged from the realistic (press junket at the entrance, phoning in voice-over ADR from his hotel room) to the far-fetched (stepped out to quickly quell a disturbance on Melva IV). The ginger-haired man had his smartphone and a list of unattended e-mails to occupy his wait time, so he only half-listened, smiling with amusement at the creativity surrounding him. Finally, the queue began to move, signalling that the awaited guest had finally arrived.

The line snaked steadily through the maze of retractable belt barricades. It would be about 15 minutes before the ginger-haired man would be able to first catch a glimpse of the person he had came to see. A bald, septuagenarian British gentleman was seated at an autograph table, talking briefly to fans at the head of the line, signing his name on photographs, action figures, and other memorabilia that bared his likeness -- or at least had an association to his most recognized role in both television and cinema as a stalwart starship captain.

As the ginger-haired man approached closer, his mind struggled to contain a rising excitement, and apprehension. His previous experiences with meeting famous people had been... awkward, to say the least. He did not want this rare opportunity to be spoiled by inconversable nervousness, or worse, by "geeking out" over the gentleman's science fiction show. So while waiting in line he had been going over in his head everything he wanted to say when he finally met the gentleman. He wanted to talk about how he greatly admired his acting, and not just for his most famous television role, but also his lesser-known yet amazing work that he had seen on stage and had heard on British radio -- in particular, the recent Money Supermarket "Epic" adverts in which the gentleman's atypical delivery made them all the more brilliant. All of these thoughts were mentally articulated and rehearsed and memorized and arranged neatly in his brain, ready for recitation. Just like in college when he would force his mind to absorb and file a hefty chunk of information in preparation for an exam. However, when he handed his autograph ticket to the show volunteer and was ushered to the autograph table, the ginger-haired man was suddenly awed by the sheer presence of the gentleman seated before him -- as long as it took him to find his voice.

"Uh... Hi," the ginger-haired man managed to say.

"How are you?" The gentleman's accented voice was warm and even, yet bold and powerful enough to send the ginger-haired man's neat mental stack of talking points tumbling around in his brain.

Just like cramming for an exam, except to the ginger-haired man, the exam was now over, and everything he had memorized was suddenly forgotten.

Fortunately, he could focus on the piece he had brought for the gentleman to sign: the main reason he had purchased an autograph ticket and stood in line for the past 45 minutes instead of milling with the rest of the crowd about the convention floor. The ginger-haired man presented a color print of a "mock comic book cover" illustration that featured the actor, politely asking the gentleman to make an autograph out to the man who created it.

“He’s a big fan,” the ginger-haired man explained.

The gentleman peered down at the artwork at his fingertips, noting a depiction of himself in his most popular role, literally doing the impossible.

“Oh, I see…” he smiled. The tip of the gentleman’s silver-ink Sharpee glided across the glossy coating of the photo paper, forming a dedication to the artist followed by his own signature.

The ginger-haired man graciously thanked the gentleman. "When he gets this, he is going to feel ‘epic’ -- that's for sure."

The gentleman's eyes flickered with recognition of the reference to his Money Supermarket voice-over work. His face and voice beamed. “That’s great,” he said sincerely. He looked once more at the illustration. “How I wish I could do that in real life,” he mused.

The ginger-haired man returned the gentleman’s smile. “Maybe someday, you will,” he replied, thinking of the potential roles the gentleman has yet to play, and the power of modern movie magic. It would be a short while later, after he made his departure from the signature station, that the ginger-haired man would bite his lip upon the realization that he didn’t verbally express that last part.

But right now, the ginger-haired man thanked the gentleman again and held out his right hand as he said his goodbye. The gentleman didn’t return the handshake as expected, surprisingly using his left hand to gently squeeze the ginger-haired man’s, smiling warmly. “Take care, now.”

"Thank you. You too."

(The ginger-haired man would later discover from a convention volunteer that the gentleman was suffering from severe arthritis that day and thus shouldn't be shaking hands. The ginger-haired man never suspected it at the time [a virtuoso display of the gentleman's craft], and was deeply honored that the gentleman had accepted his hand anyway.)


******

The illustration that the ginger-haired man held also depicted the gentleman's primary nemesis in his signature television series, and the American actor that portrayed this one-letter-named character was seated behind a table next to that of the gentleman, also signing autographs. So he Q-ed... er, queued up to meet him as well.

The ginger-haired man again felt that familiar pang of nervous apprehension as he approached the American actor. Admittedly, he wasn't familiar with the American actor's body of work outside of the role depicted in the illustration, some audio books, and a few animation voice-over parts. While in the queue he had tried to come up with what he would hope to be a unique question to ask the actor. Having seemingly failed in that task (more likely due to an abundance of self-criticism than lack of creativity), he decided to simply engage in "small talk" and let the artwork serve as the unique aspect of the brief conversation.

The actor regarded the drawing for a moment before he lifted his black pen.

"How about here?" he began, pointing to one of the few lighter-colored areas of the illustration, which was actually the face of his character's "partner" in the comic book cover fantasy scenario. "Is that good?"

"Yeah, that's fine," the ginger-haired man said. He actually wanted to say "appropriate." Having the actor's signature obscure the other illustrated adversary's face, and thus leave his character's visage unblemished, hinted a sly deviousness that befitted his most famous role.

The ginger-haired man thanked the actor before making way for the next fan. He paused for a moment to look back at the still-massive autograph queue behind him -- the slow rat race he patiently endured -- and smiled with satisfaction before disappearing into the convention crowd.

[The previous dramatization, and hopefully accurate depiction, of events is in recognition and appreciation for the great lengths the ginger-haired man had gone through at the 2012 Wizard World Ohio Con in order to present me with this wonderful gift. Words cannot possibly express the extent of my gratitude, so I will simply say thank you to the Ginger-Haired Man, Sir Patrick Stewart and Mr. John De Lancie -- thank you for making me feel "epic."]

Secrets of a Super-Hero Sketch Artist: A Portrait of the Artist as a Flung Man

It suppose that it was inevitable. One day my vanity would get the better of me.

I’ve slipped a self-portrait into this week’s “The Line It Is Drawn” submission. Two, if fact, but one of them isn’t really anything to speak of. Though I will admit that I may have drawn the head a little too big (or perhaps not big enough)…

Ah, but there is a heavy price for my narcissistic sin, as you can see in this preview. And look at that fine color-halftone craftsmanship. A sign of yet another comic book cover spoof, one would gather…

But enough speculation. You can view the full picture when Week #92 goes online, starting May 31, here:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/the-line-it-is-drawn/

I heard the piece garnered a 9.8 rating on a 10-point scale, which isn’t too bad since I produced the rating myself.

Is there no end to my conceit? Perhaps I should consult my altered ego…