This was
drawn one afternoon in the 70s.
I ate a slice of apple pie that was left over in the
refrigerator. It had only been there a day or two but you could taste the
aluminum of the pie tin. I was doing a number of these drawings that day,
working on one, then the other.
This was
an incredibly creative period for me. I wrote up, like, 30 of these cartoons, and
began drawing them. I don't think I could do that many at one time today. I
also was in love that weekend, but more on that later.
I went
outside, thinking about the aluminum taste in my mouth and remembering how, as
a child, my sister and I chomped down on tin foil once, and the taste. That metallic taste.
It was a
sunny spring day - mid-day - and most everyone else in the apartment complex was
probably at work. That time of day was always kind of spooky for me. But I worked at home. Alone. I was a cartoonist.
It was like
being in a ghost town for a few hours every day.
One time I imagined the apartment complex, covered
in 80 feet of ice, like an ice age had come. People and their possessions -
sneakers, alarm clocks, toasters, a briefcase with papers coming out -
were floating in the ice, out the windows, entombed forever.
I used
that image/concept in one of the unpublished Mysterymen stories I did for Dark
Horse. The MM were testing a flying wing and dropping bombs on the ice. When
they examined the craters, they saw a whole alien, or ancient civilization down
below, frozen in the ice, and floating.
Kind of like THE THING, the original
one, from the 50s with James Arness.
I had to
get the taste of the aluminum out of my mouth. I could go across the street to
FRIDAYS and have a drink while waiting for "happy hour" or go back
inside and draw. Or maybe take my pad and go over there and draw some monsters.
sometimes there were a few stray housewives or divorcees at the bar there in
the afternoon, left over from a 5 martini lunch with the girls.Yes. that would
be a good idea.
Monsters. Yes.
