Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any advice to offer about how to do what I am doing. First of all, I can’t claim to be successful at it. Also, I am doing it all by instinct, not by study and planning. All I am really doing this for is to show you my favorite pictures.
for The Boy… Forever
I basically draw the pictures before I write the story down in paragraphs. The story exists already in my head, and the pictures help it gel in my mind before it comes out in fiction form.
An illustration for AeroQuest 2; Planet of the White Spider
The Baby Werewolf
I particularly enjoy drawing the characters, giving them actual, physical substance so that they exist not only in my stupid old head, but also on the page or on the screen to allow them to be in front of my eyes.
Snow Babiesfrom Superchicken From Sing Sad Songs
The Book Cover itself
Being able to illustrate can be a way into producing covers for myself that have as much chance at catching the reader’s eye as anything else that I do.
People tell me that my artwork is enchanting and that they like it.
They are, hopefully, not all lying when they say that.
Magical Miss MorganRecipes for Gingerbread ChildrenThe Bicycle-Wheel Genius
This will be used for several things. Most importantly it will become a part of the cover I make for my Work In Progress, The Boy… Forever.
The villain of this story claims to be an undead Chinese wizard. It is a claim that may be totally bogus, but it is a part of the idea of his villainy that needs to be illustrated to help me get to the roots of my theme; “No man lives forever. But if they accidentally do, it helps to be secretly a dragon in human form.”
As a new week begins and a new month begins tomorrow, I admit, I have been under pressure. But now the monsters are temporarily under control, either beaten back, or caged.
As you can see here, I have tightened up the cover design for part two of my novel re-write AeroQuest. The work on that has picked up pace. And the pressure is off because I have already completed and published the novels most essential to my writing life to finish before I die. But there is still the pressure to produce more.
My health has reached a point where immediate worries of death have been pushed back enough that the pressure is off. At least for now. My heart is still pumping properly in spite of the 2017 heart-attack scare. I still can’t afford insulin for diabetes, but careful attention to diet is still reducing the times I have to take to my bed all day due to high blood sugar. I have taken positive steps to secure a position as a substitute teacher in the local district. After next Tuesday I may actually be back in classrooms again, doing what I was born to do. Yes, I mean babysitting middle-school monkey-house denizens. I love it, and I have missed it. You may have noticed (if you’ve looked at any of my novels) that all my books are about school kids. Old teachers never die. They just lose all their class.
Money worries have loosened their grip on my heartbeat as well. Texas legislators were turned more friendly to teachers and retired teachers by the Blue Wave election of 2018. I got a healthy cost-of-living increase paid to me in September. I got a refund of a tax penalty that I paid to the IRS and didn’t actually owe. I was able to buy the new prescription glasses that I have needed since last January and wasn’t able to afford until now. I can actually see again.
And, assuming I can actually teach again, money will be coming in as a substitute. And when I don’t feel well enough to teach, I don’t have to.
The thing is, I will still be preparing for future bad turns of fortune. Good times never last for long. And I am naturally a pessimist. But even though I will always be living under pressure, that is not a bad thing. The fire in the forge tempers the metal as it is hammered. And in that metaphor I find my strength.
What is the use of Kartoon Kops? I mean, why do we possibly need cartoon policemen with rubber whack-bats, squirting ink guns, and face pies? Why, to control cartoon misbehavior, of course.
If I work on the roof of the house because the shingles are weather-damaged, and then I walk off the end of the roof, and I just stand there in the air because I know better than to look down, I am breaking the law of gravity. I deserve a strawberry pie to the face for that crime. (Not blueberry pie, though. I’m allergic to blueberries.)
If I run in place and my legs go faster and faster until they look like blurred leg-colored circles, and then I take off, faster than a speeding bullet, leaving only poofy clouds behind, I am breaking the law of acceleration and inertia. I deserve a blast of black ink in my face for that.
And if I put an extremely hot towel on my face, and Bugs Bunny is my barber, my face will come off in the towel and leave the space on the front of my head blank. I will be breaking the law of… of… well, keeping my face on in public. Rubber whack-bat bruises are in my future for that.
“But, Mickey!” you say to me, “The real world doesn’t work that way!”
“Well, duh! Didn’t I tell you this was about cartoons from the start?”
Good things are happening right along. I got the job as a substitute teacher. The IRS investigation turned in my favor. I got money back from them because they charged me penalties I didn’t actually owe. It was THEIR fault that they didn’t register my previous $400.00 check. I dutifully made demanded payments during the 90-day investigation. Even though it hurt economically. And, miraculously, they admitted the mistake was theirs. I have been able to write more fluidly and well than I have in a long time.
You can see that I have had some success making illustrations for the next AeroQuest re-write book in spite of arthritis in my hands.
But everything has a price. I have had to scramble to do the online testing for qualifying to be a substitute teacher while the internet access in our house has been going in and out of order. I called the provider and scheduled a technician’s visit. But the thing fixed itself mysteriously before the date of the work arrived. I finished my testing even before I called Spectrum to cancel my appointment.
I ended up having to split the refund check with my wife. The bank would not let me put the check entirely in my personal account unless she was there in person to okay it. So, even though the penalty payment came 100% from my account, I had to give her 40% of the money because her bank will let her do what my bank would not. It’s not like that was a major fight between us, or anything. But she had originally agreed to sign the check over to me 100%, and then bank rules fudged up that agreement for me.
And this morning, the Princess had a nosebleed on the way to school. I was picturing a major emergency-room expense wiping out everything. There were, after all gushers of blood enough to soak five paper towels before the bleeding stopped. She made it to school on time in spite of the necessary clean-up-and-stop-bleeding time we had to put in.
So, I am not cursed with only the blackest of bad luck. But I am not blessed with purest white of the good luck either. And for those of you who will remind me, “Mickey, you don’t believe in luck!” I will remind you that, “Yes, I don’t, but you have to explain these bizarre random rewards and punishments somehow.”
Japanese Manga is a complicated and difficult-to-understand thing. Of course, it is also a very beautiful art form when done well. There are many features of Japanese culture that play a prominent part in the comic book genre known as manga.
It is a strange fusion of the art of Meiji culture in Pre-War Japan and the Western influence of the U.S. Occupation forces after WWII. You read the comic from right to left, opposite to American comics, and the dialogue in speech balloons go from top to bottom rather than horizontally.
A manga by Akamatsu
I first discovered Ken Akamatsu’s manga brilliance in 2004 through Half-Price Books copies of his manga series Negima! I was reading the last two Harry Potter novels at that time and the Harry Potter-ness of the main character, Negi Springfield is what attracted me. He is a ten-year-old boy who is secretly a wizard. He is also so accelerated in school that they make him an English teacher in a Middle School where they give him an all-girl class. Of course, Negi is definitely NOT like Harry Potter. I learned that after three books worth of Negi’s magic sneeze that blows girl’s dresses off and all the other accidentally-seeing-middle-school-girls-naked jokes. Gushering nose-bleeds and the most-important girl character, Asuna, constantly ending up standing in front of the older instructor she has a crush on stark naked soon convinced me that Japanese humor and sense of adventure are very different from their American counterparts.
Negi Springfield is the little guy in the middle… Of course he’s the teacher.
The students in this ten-year-old teacher’s class are a diverse group of girls. One is a deadly ninja. Another is a dead-shot gunslinger. A third is an expert swordswoman who fights with a katana in each hand. Several of them wield magic like their teacher.
The adventures in this multi-book story are filled to the brim with magical battles, martial arts, demon summoning, Japanese festivals, and the many ups and downs of young love.
There are lots of instances of girls losing their clothing. Some of it happens in Japanese outdoor baths and spas. Some happens by magic. And some happens completely by accident.
Though, the writer seems to focus on it an awful lot.
Ken Akamatsu has been at the business of creating very similar manga stories for many years. He started in 1994 with A.I. Love You.
He has written three series since.
Love Hina came before Negima!
UQ Holder! is his current manga series.
So, I love the artwork of Ken Akamatsu. And it isn’t necessarily the story that makes it so good. The stories are chaotic and full of things that make very little sense to American sensibilities. And I do like artfully done naked girls. But the real attraction for me is something that I can’t quite name.
I just know it is there. Ken Akamatsu definitely has it. Whatever it is. (Maybe it IS naked girls?)
The city of Kiro, Gaijin was a
heavily populated place. The city was
full of high-rise pagoda towers and Kyoto-style castles. Dominating the skyline was the huge obsidian
sculpture of a Black Cat atop the Temple of the Four Pillars of the Secret
Way. Naylund Smith explained it all to
Ged Aero as they made their way through the ornate city.
Ged and Dr. Smith
were accompanied by the two children and Xavier Tkriashav. Tkriashav’s young nephew, Friashqaztl,
trailed behind the group, timid and shy.
All the newcomers were overwhelmed by what they saw.
“This place is
more beautiful than anything I ever saw in my visions,” said Tkriashav.
“Do I understand
correctly that you are the Master Telepath and Psion?” asked Naylund Smith.
“Yes. I am a powerful telepath, teleport, and
clairvoyant. I am not the most powerful
of my people, however.”
“Perhaps,” said
Dr. Smith, “but you figure prominently in the Prophecy of Shan.”
“If that is a book,
I’d like to see it,” said Tkriashav.
“In time. It is a holy book to these people.”
All around the
small group, silk-robed people had been gathering to watch as if the six people
from the space ship were a circus parade.
Many shouted “White Spider!” as if prayers had been at long last
answered.
“Can you tell me
why I am supposed to be this White Spider?” asked Ged as he took long strides
to hurry past lemon-yellow-skinned admirers.
“It is
destiny.” Naylund smiled and nodded his
head indulgently. “The web of outer
space has brought you to us to pick up the threads woven by the last White Spider. The last spider wove this world and its
society. You have come to link it to
other webs and expand this world’s reach back into the stars.”
“You talk a lot of
poetic nonsense.” Ged looked away at the
sky.
“Poetic nonsense
is also sometimes Truth,” said Dr. Smith.
“I will help you to learn that in time.”
Finally, they
came to a beautiful castle made of white stone and Gaijinese Teak wood, inlaid
with bright blue sapphires. It appeared
to have been their destination all along.
“This,” said Dr.
Smith, “is the Palace of a Thousand Years.
It is your new home.”
“We will live
here?” asked Junior.
Dr. Smith looked
at the blue boy. “It is the palace
belonging to Shen Ming. It is the
traditional home of the White Spider. It
is the place where the last White Spider, Shan Sasaki once lived and worked.”
“Do you expect me
to give up space travel?” asked Ged.
“It’s the only life I’ve ever really known.”
“It will be part
of the life you will lead as the White Spider.
It is the work you are expected to do for us.”
“Hmm.” Ged stared up at the curved roofs of the
Palace of One Thousand Years.
Naylund Smith led
the way into the palace through a large wooden gate. Inside they came into a courtyard that
bustled with activity as if it were a small town all by itself. The courtyard had an ornate Torii arch that
marked the center of the great building.
There were practice yards there where groups of children under the care
of a schoolmaster were learning martial arts, probably karate. There was a large oriental garden for quiet contemplation
inside the palace, as well as the entrance into a riding stable filled with
two-legged llama-like mammals called kians.
Naylund pointed out
the two master towers where the instructors lived. There was a massive central building which
Naylund called the Akito House. It
contained the vast White Spider library, a place that had almost as many bound
volumes of books as books on computer memory crystals. Finally, he pointed out Shen Ming’s Hall,
which, he informed them, was the White Spider’s official residence.
They entered Shen
Ming’s Hall through a double door that proved to lead to a huge indoor bathing pool. Naked yellow men, women, and numerous
children were all bathing there. Junior
Aero would’ve blushed if his skin hadn’t been blue. Ged’s skin turned crimson.
Up a marble
stair, they came into the Administrator’s Hall, and a large, stately office. Behind the desk was Shen Ming himself, looking
spry for a man of nine hundred years. He
was bald as a cue ball except for a single top knot at the apex of his head, and
he looked like a wrinkled Alfred E. Newman.
“Honored
Shen-sensei,” began Dr. Smith. “I bring
before you Ged Aero. He is…”
“I know, Naylund-sama,
I know. He is the new White Spider. I would know him anywhere! He is just as Shan-dono described him in the
Prophecy.”
The silk-clad
ancient moved swiftly out from behind the desk and took Ged’s hand. He placed it on his own hairless head. His ridiculous lop-sided smile made new
wrinkles blossom across his wizened face.
“I pledge to you all that I have, White Spider,” Shen Ming said in tones of awe. “I will serve you all of my remaining days.” Ged couldn’t begin to speak. The place and the situation filled him up. Tears welled up in his eyes
There is a need for fantasy in those critical times when reality is stressing us to the limit. And fantasy can turn our imaginations upward and outward instead of inward when we are in need of new Star Trek and Flash Gordon solutions to Koch-Brothers and Trumpy problems. Think of how the world turned to space fantasy during the depression and World War II. We got Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and Daffy Duck making fun of Buck Rogers. And the civil-rights battles of the 60’s brought us Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura having an interracial kiss on TV, forced by villains though it was.
Yes, space-explorer stories and Star Wars movies help us face the challenges of living on a dying planet that the fossil-fuel industry is gleefully killing with the help of a baby-man king-president right out of a Judge Dread movie.
Young Buster Crabbe
I am not suggesting that some alien being is going to make contact with us and miraculously help us save our planet. They already tried that, and we didn’t listen. I am suggesting that the planet-saving ideas are going to come from today’s crop of Science-Fiction dreamers and people who grew up on ideas from outside the box… in fact, outside the very atmosphere of this planet. The space-fantasy solutions of the near future may well be the only hope we have left.
Time is running out. We need to find the Flash-Gordon-like hero who will step up to the planet Mongo’s evil and save the Universe and get the girl. Except, one that fits into the 21st Century instead of the 1930’s.
Today’s Art-Day Saturday post is about the pictures I have drawn to establish in my mind the characters that make up the fictional world of Norwall, Iowa. Specifically, the kids in my YA novels.
Milt Morgan, wizard of the Norwall Pirates
I do manage character development and detailed descriptions by creating early on a picture of what the character looks like for me.
Sherry Cobble, nudist, twin sister of Shelly, also a nudist
Mike Murphy and his girlfriend, Blueberry BatesEdward-Andrew Campbell
Brent Clarke, first leader of the Norwall Pirates
Dilsey Murphy, everybody’s big sister
Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf
Grandma Gretel Stein, Todd Niland, Sherry Cobble, Sandy WickhamFrancois Martin, the Sad Clown who Sings
Anita Jones, the girlfriend of Superchicken
Valerie Clarke, the most beautiful girl ever born in Norwall
Well, the plumbing leaks a little bit, but it hasn’t exploded and gushed water all over the bathroom in over a week.
The Cardinals are leading their division by three games in the final weeks of the season. True, the Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers are both close on their heels and both having winning streaks that prove they are capable of overtaking the Cards. The division is within reach, but not yet won.
I have been invited to substitute teacher orientation next month, so the possibility of returning to classrooms is also within reach for me. That will solve some money troubles and give me a chance to do something I love once again.
Nothing is ever guaranteed in life. Not working plumbing. Not having a winning team to root for. Not being well enough to earn money for the thing I was born to do.
But bad things are not the only things that happen in life. Sometimes you get a chance to cheer. A chance to celebrate. Sometimes life is good. So, we keep living and hoping, and enjoying what we can when we can… sometimes with a can of Gatorade.
Catch a Falling Star 
Under Pressure
As a new week begins and a new month begins tomorrow, I admit, I have been under pressure. But now the monsters are temporarily under control, either beaten back, or caged.
As you can see here, I have tightened up the cover design for part two of my novel re-write AeroQuest. The work on that has picked up pace. And the pressure is off because I have already completed and published the novels most essential to my writing life to finish before I die. But there is still the pressure to produce more.
My health has reached a point where immediate worries of death have been pushed back enough that the pressure is off. At least for now. My heart is still pumping properly in spite of the 2017 heart-attack scare. I still can’t afford insulin for diabetes, but careful attention to diet is still reducing the times I have to take to my bed all day due to high blood sugar. I have taken positive steps to secure a position as a substitute teacher in the local district. After next Tuesday I may actually be back in classrooms again, doing what I was born to do. Yes, I mean babysitting middle-school monkey-house denizens. I love it, and I have missed it. You may have noticed (if you’ve looked at any of my novels) that all my books are about school kids. Old teachers never die. They just lose all their class.
Money worries have loosened their grip on my heartbeat as well. Texas legislators were turned more friendly to teachers and retired teachers by the Blue Wave election of 2018. I got a healthy cost-of-living increase paid to me in September. I got a refund of a tax penalty that I paid to the IRS and didn’t actually owe. I was able to buy the new prescription glasses that I have needed since last January and wasn’t able to afford until now. I can actually see again.
And, assuming I can actually teach again, money will be coming in as a substitute. And when I don’t feel well enough to teach, I don’t have to.
The thing is, I will still be preparing for future bad turns of fortune. Good times never last for long. And I am naturally a pessimist. But even though I will always be living under pressure, that is not a bad thing. The fire in the forge tempers the metal as it is hammered. And in that metaphor I find my strength.
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