August 19, 2006
Jerry Joslyn sent me a very cool Wally Wood comic strip tutorial: “22 panels that always work.” I met Wally on July 4th, 1980 at the New York Comic Con at the Statler Hilton, across from Penn Central Station. Comic book distributor Phil Sueling flew me to the Big Apple (my first ever trip there) to meet all the comic book greats, and Wally Wood was one of them. Here’s the address if you want to learn a thing or two about comic book greatness:

http://joeljohnson.com/images2/wallywood22panel1600.jpg

Both Wally and Phil are gone. Good guys. Thanks Jerry!

The Top Secret Project
Working on heatwave effects. I remember when I was a kid and we used to drive back to Arizona from Iowa and as my dad barreled westbound on old Route 66 as we got closer to Holbrook, Winslow and the Petrified Forest we would meet cars, way off in the distance, and they would be floating in thin air. As the two-lane blacktop shimmered in the summer heat, especially against a clear blue sky, the road seemed to disappear and oncoming cars would hover and wiggle in the sky with a perfect lake-like reflection beneath them. It seemed more predominate in those days (cheaper asphalt? paid more attention?), but I have always remembered that desert heatwave phenom. Today I am applying it to a rider, in this case Tap Duncan, riding across Red Lake on his way home to the Diamond Bar. Of course Red Lake is a big, dry prehistoric lake in northern Mohave County. And I knew none of that when I started. I need a T-shirt that says, “Drawings Talk to Me.” Ha.

“What is the use of running when we are not on the right road?”
—Old Vaquero Saying