The Four R’s…
For everyone that read the strips last week, I hoped you enjoyed being introduced to my OTHER webcomic, “CMX Suite” the publishes every Wednesday on the home page of Community MX. Over the last two years, I’ve had many requests to show some of my color work and this was a way to kill two birds with one stone…
I could give you guys an introduction to “CMX Suite” AND show off some of my color work I’ve done in the past. Thanks so much for reading them last week.
I’m a hooligan…
If you’ve been following my Facebook and/or my Twitter feed (capesnbabes), you know I am now a branded hooligan and a deviant to society as I took the plunge and made one more permanent alteration to my body. Back in January, it was a vasectomy. This month, it was a tattoo. Maybe 2010 will come to be known as the year of permanent change. That’s not really meant to sound as political as it does – I’m simply speaking for myself here.
The decision to get a tattoo (and it’s a very specific tattoo) is something that did not come easy but it also wasn’t a spur of the moment decision either. The tattoo is something I designed myself (sort of) and it’s something I had flirted with for many years but never did.
Back in ninth grade, I was introduced to the Marvel super-villain, Taskmaster. For whatever reason, he imprinted on me something fierce and I never lost interest in him. If anything, I had somewhat of a small or semi-secretive obsession with him. I don’t have every book he has appeared in because some of his depictions have been awful – both in writing and art – but I do have every issue he has been drawn awesomely. I also have the gorgeous Bowen mini-bust as well as his TRADITIONAL Hero Clix figure. You see, I’m an OLD SKOOL Taskmaster fan and, even though I do own the Udon styled Taskmaster mini-series, Taskmaster will ALWAYS belong in the more traditional George Perez designed costume. That’s the Taskmaster I love and that’s the only Taskmaster for me.
That being said, every artist always loves to put his or her own take or spin on a particular character. For me, as much as I absolutely love and adore George Perez’s art, Taskmaster’s shield always seemed too whimpy for me. In my mind, the T and his shield was just too darn boring and didn’t have enough “kick-ass” factor to it – maybe that’s because there was so much other stuff going on with his costume… I don’t know. But it just always seemed to me that this character – despite how he’s always been written – is a flashy, braggart kind of guy yet he has a shield with one of the whimpiest looking T’s I have ever seen. This became even more evident to me once I started studying graphic design and learning more about typography and symbolism.
In fact, in a typography class I once had, we had to design our own font and then write the alphabet in our newly designed font. I think this is really where I started to become obsessed with Taskmaster’s shield. The font I designed was called “Taskmaster” and where I eventually came up with the redesigned T that is now a part of my body.
At the time, I remembered Thor’s new mastehead had just appeared so maybe I was partly inspired by that but I wanted Taskmaster’s T to look more rounded and have a more “blade” kind of look than Thor’s new logo had. I had also started to learn more about vector art and Macromedia Freehand – so I started experimenting with hand-drawn versions of my “Taskmaster” T font and cleaning it up in Freehand. From there, I experimented with doing some funky stuff with the “shield” in Photoshop until I got a pretty cool fisheye effect that rendered my logo more “3-Dish”, if you will.
That was way back in 1991 and as soon as I completed it, I put it on my baseball bats and anything else that looked round like a shield. I also knew if I ever decided to get a tattoo, that would be it. The only other comic book character I felt similar about was Matt Wagner’s “Mage: A Hero Discovered” but the reverse thunderbolt would have been way too confusing with people who might have thought it was some reference to Shazam and I didn’t want that.
No, the Taskmaster shield design was perfect (in my mind, anyway). And so the years went by as I toyed with the idea but never did it. But now I have.
So, if you’re going to be at Pittsburgh Comicon, Heroes Comic Con, Baltimore Comic Con or Intervention Con this year and you see me at my table, come on up and ask me about my Taskmaster tattoo. It’ll be easy to show you as it’s on my left shoulder (so it can face opposing pitchers when I step into a batter’s box).
🙂
-Chris
