April 22, 2009
Meghan Saar and I worked late last night lining out the True West issues for the rest of the year. Going to be very strong.

Meanwhile, The Top Secret Writer sent me a very cool French comic book from 1958, featuring a photo funnies format of The Wonderful Country, the Tom Lea inspired Western I have been raving about for the past couple months:

To sum up, El Paso, Texas artist Tom Lea created a great vaquero story (it's a book) in 1950 called The Wonderful Country about an American cowboy, Martin Brady, who is a gunman in Chihuahua. I caught the subsequent flick starring Robert Mitchum on the Westerns Channel about two months ago and spent one whole night using my stop action remote to sketch scenes I wanted to poach from:

Lo and behold, virtually every scene I wanted is in the comic:

Including this scene (bottom, right):

Yes, this is the same scene I sketched off the TV screen on February 7th (above). Since I had much better reference with the comic, I went home for lunch yesterday and did my six sketches appropriating and expanding this small scene into a Mickey Free sequence were he rides into El Muerte in the middle of a dust storm and discovers some mighty strange goings on:

Reference like this is invaluable. Thankyou Top Secret Writer!

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake."
—Marie Beyon Ray