My wife and I treated ourselves to an amazing three day weekend along Route 66, starting in Kingman, ending in the Petrified Forest, and taking us down through Snowflake, Show Low, and Globe/Miami/Superior back to Phoenix. I've often heard it explained that artists need to replenish their real world experiences to keep telling stories, and I've spent too much time at the drawing table recently, so
doing something was inspirational. Plenty more stories to come, from the open roads of the Grand Canyon State!
Coming Soon: Amazing Arizona Comics Quarterly #1
It's still coming . . . as is the next issue of Amazing Arizona Comics proper, the mini series that started it all. In Amazing Arizona Comics #10/America's Super Secret Service #1 (working title), Speed Cameron's adventures outside of Arizona finally hit close to home. Suddenly, everything makes sense! Preview art available next week!
While living in Phoenix is research enough for my superhero-driven political satire Amazing Arizona Comics, I often take pictures or collect memorabilia in, about, or outside of the city to keep the inspiration coming. Here's some signage from the Arizona Water Company building in Miami, Arizona. Don't surprised if that droplet dude makes an appearance in a future issue!
I get to see a lot of cool cosplay at the cons I attend, and rather than post endless slideshows of fat Batmen, I like to feature one great costume at a time, ideally revealing the wearer's creativity, originality, and most importantly to me practicality. The Shadow is perhaps one of the most practical, as his outfit is basically just a classy suit and a cape. Add a Raven-esque galpal, and you have a gruesome twosome in the best way possible. I saw this dynamic duo at the Tucson Comic Con back in 2010. Why I haven't posted the pic until now, only the Shadow knows . . .! (C'mon, I had to say it.)
Much of this week's intake was experiential, thanks to our Route 66 road trip, and I'll be reaping the fruits of those inspirations for months to come, from the abandoned Americana that litters Arizona's northern highways, or the kooky karaoke characters my wife and I encountered in Williams.
As far as media goes, this week I caught an interesting episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, starring a young Robert Redford as a burglar that fights (and, spoiler, fails) to change his thieving ways, despite the toil it takes on his new wife. It doesn't help that their friend Karl, played by Barry Morse, gives Redford fresh leads, secretly hoping Redford will get caught so Karl can have the hot young wife all to himself.
I know Morse best as Lt. Philip Gerard from TV's The Fugitive, which I watch every Sunday night on MeTV. When you watch old television, primary from the '50s and early '60s, you realize that there weren't a lot of actors back then, and you see a lot of the same faces in multiple roles. Interestingly, as Karl in this Hitchcock episode, Morse says a line about the law that comes right out of Gerard's rule book. The connection was palpable.
I also read an issue of Kirby's Captain America run this week, in which a terrorist group deforms SHIELD agents into monsters to work a labor camp. The theme of "forced labor" in Kirby's work suddenly struck me with that issue, from these SHIELD slaves to Darkseid's minions on Apokolips . . . The theme is clear. The ultimate evil is making people work. Thusly, conversely, Kirby tells us that to fight such evil, being a superhero, is simply to do what you love.
Sign me up!
