"MOOMBA IS HERE !" (Patreon)

This was a piece I did for fun a few years ago, to try to rekindle an interest in drawing, which I wasn't all that interested in at the time. I was pretty happy with it, and started another old Atlas creature piece ("Monstrom!"), hoping to do a small series of them over time. The second piece went off the rails (too much detailing/texture, muddying the entire thing) and I reworked it and pulled up the correction ink with a razor and reworked it and applied the razor blade over and over, increasingly unhappy and stressed, growing so sick of the thing I tore it up after "finishing" it. I think the fact that the piece was so "shiny" from correction ink and looked so awful as an object -- to me, at least -- made me hate it more than the actual inking and how the piece scanned (both of which I was unhappy with). Of course, now that I look at it again after a few years, I feel pretty dumb for destroying it.   

I needed the drawing to be "perfect", which is impossible, even if I was more talented, and also unnecessary. So, I tore it up, after spending many hours on it. I could have sold it, and helped my family out, or given it away. But I felt embarrassed by it, and over-reacted. 

You can see how I tried to fix it in the fifth image above, almost pouring Pentel correction ink on the sections I over-rendered, so I could once again overwork the areas. I must have repeated the process ten or twelve times. I was not enjoying the process, I was fighting the page, and myself. It was not a fun project, and what's the point of drawing for fun if you're miserable? I work, all too often, as if someone is watching me, shaking their head in disapproval

I grew up with a very unreal and damaging idea of how things work in art and publishing, not to mention life. I thought finished comic book art was near-perfect, that it looked as it did on the printed page. Mistakes were for amateurs. Or worse, embarrassing, no-talent idiot amateurs. I grew up in a household where if I couldn't accomplish something quickly, I was pushed aside by my mother so she could get it done in her impatience and anger. This was not done in silence, there was always an outburst of words, always nasty and demeaning. Between this and other experiences that made me feel stupid and useless, I developed an idea in life that people who "did" things did them perfectly, no matter what it was, and that if you couldn't do something that way, you weren't supposed to do it at all. I also found failing so embarrassing, I developed a problem with being able to learn many things. If I don't take to something right away (which, like, never happens), I shy away from it. It's a reason I am lousy with most technology, fear showing people my work in process while it's actually "in process", and why I don't really "know" how to draw.  

There's more to it, of course, a person's negative self-image is a miserable, gray tower made up of many ugly parts. But I made the very grave mistake as a kid of thinking people who were successful, or could do things, were different than others in great and impossible ways. They were more than gifted, they were better than me, above me.

This attitude is still with me, less so than before, but it's still internalized, affecting many of my choices and actions. It's something I find hard to fight, something I'll hopefully be working on in therapy soon. 

Anyway, this was supposed to be about a different kind of monster!

Like all good nerd people, I have a soft spot for the Kirby-Lee-Ditko Atlas monster comics. They kind of stink as actual reading experiences, but the monsters themselves are a lot of fun, the art can be effective, and a few of the concepts are wonky enough to entertain here and there (all tiki statues are little aliens waiting for a signal to awaken them? Uh, okay.). Reading dopey comics can be fun and I'm a giant monster and Kirby fiend, but I can't sit through a batch of these in a row without getting dizzy. Everyone loves the monsters with the funny names who announce themselves really loudly, I don't know who can actually read several issues of this stuff in a row and stay awake. Old comics were made to sell to a group of kids for a period of time, then rinse and repeat the material for when those kids bail and their younger siblings are spending their dimes. No one expected these things to be ever collected in all their repetitious glory -- reading Robert Kanigher's Metal Men or Weird War Tales is an eye-opening tutorial in taking three or four concepts and rolling them out over, and over, and over again every few months, sometimes with little changed in the retelling, right down to dialogue. 

The Moomba drawing made it into print, which was pretty neat. I was asked by Twomorrows if they could run it with the essay I wrote as a contributor to the Kirby 100 celebration. I sweated that essay, too, in case anyone was wondering. I always sweat writing essays, or anything where I'm supposed to come off like I know what the hell I'm talking about. The imposter syndrome hits hard with those sorts of things. I wrote an EC Archives introduction this year and it took me forever, draft after draft after draft. At least I didn't tear it up. Maybe I'll post it here at some point.

So, yeah, I shouldn't have torn that old muddy Monstrom up. I regret that. Maybe I'll start drawing these goofs again. Maybe I'll re-do Monstrom. These characters are fun visuals and monsters shouting their names out loud in the third-person wherever they go never gets old, even if the stories do.