Deadlines have kept me from all my fiction writing this past week as we work to close the April issue of the magazine that pays my bills until someone discovers how much they need to give me a multiple-book publishing deal. However, in between work I haven’t been entirely idle.
As you’ve likely noticed if you’ve either been with me since the start of this superheroic blog venture…or have come later to the party and diligently read all the older stuff here…I’ve started adding images to my posts. In fact, I will be working to add them in retroactively to all of my stories posted thus far (in fact, I’ve already started the process with the first 10 chapters of “The Gathering Storm”).
I’ll keep you posted on that front, but the thing is that, clearly, I’ve been going through the many, many images I have on my hard drive (most of which I don’t even know where they came from anymore) and fiddling with them in Photoshop to make them more appropriate to my various characters.
I’ve run into some problems, of course, that can only be solved by finding some student artists who need to fill their portfolios by working for free (or for pizza and beer) for me…or finding a really generous professional artist or two or three who will take pity on me. I mean, let’s face it: I’m never gonna find anything online for Crazy Jane. A woman whose face is entirely tattooed with a combination of friendly and horrid imagery and still looks attractive? Hah! I can’t even find an image of a hideous woman online with that kind of ink. Likewise, aside from the headshot I have for Mad Dash in costume, I will never find an image that even suggests (much less does justice to) his outrageous attire. There are some other characters, too, who pose similar problems, but you don’t need a litany.
Anyway, there is a character who’s been mentioned in passing a couple times in “The Gathering Storm” named Good War. I’ve actually found some semi-promising images in my collection, but would like to enlist your aid in assessing them and picking one for him. Or two. I mean, several of my characters have multiple costume styles, because who wants to be in the same outfit all the time while fighting crime? Not to mention the fact that what works in cold-weather months might lead to heat exhaustion in the summer.
Good War is a character somewhat in the mold of Captain America, at least insofar as he is patriotically themed and has a World War II connection (however tenuous). His look has been described in the first chapter where he was mentioned as a WWII infantry soldier uniform with red, white and blue coloration (or something along those lines). Here are my candidates so far. Please chime in via the comments section for this post to let me know your thoughts.
This one is actually based on a photo of an action figure. Captain America, in fact, envisioned in some early garb during his World War II days. I posterized it and did some cutting and pasting to hide the articulation as much as possible so it wouldn't look like an action figure.
I think this guy is some character related to Marvel Comics' Captain America mythos. Much like with the previous image, I cropped out the shield because Good War doesn't carry one, and I replaced the star on his chest with a stylized U.S. flag.
This one is interesting. Based on the original file name, I think it was supposed to depict a Chinese soldier, but the slightly abstract nature made it a pretty much "every soldier" look. With three utility packs on his torso, I had the perfect venue for the red, white and blue, and the bandana over his eyes gave me a another place to put the U.S. colors.
There you have it, folks. Opinions?