There Goes The Neighborhood!

A couple of weeks ago we got socked with a big winter storm in these parts, complete with two inches of ice and eight inches of snow on top of that.

But that was two weeks ago. As of yesterday, here's what my yard looked like, in all its dead, brown glory. As you can see, all traces of the several inches of ice and snow have completely disappeared.

In fact the ice and snow has vanished from all the neighboring yards as well. Nope, there's not a trace of snow left in the entire neighborhood.

Eh, well almost. Here's the house that sits directly across the street from me. What. The. Hell? Look at that! The entire yard is completely covered in snow. The roof too. How the hell is that even possible? I swear this is not Photoshop trickery, it's an un-retouched photo.

It's like the property is covered by some kind of invisible Stephen King-type dome, or I guess in this case, cube. It's like I'm looking at a giant snow globe.

I honestly don't understand what's happening here. Yes, the yard and roof are facing away from the sun and its melting rays, but so are all the adjoining houses, and their yards aren't isolated winter wonderlands. Look at how closely the snow follows the boundaries of their yard. Not one single flake of snow extends past their property line. It's downright eerie!

Is time frozen on this particular piece of property? Am I looking at a small slice of two weeks ago? If I go stand in their front yard will it still be December 6th?

I'm guessing a witch lives here. Whenever you see a street with only one house covered in snow, a witch did it. Yep, that's the only rational explanation.

Atomic Age Witch

The year: 1952. The place: Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The subject: one Grimelda Spellington, a potion-making, broomstick-riding, cauldron-owning old school witch. Miss Spellington decides she's tired of being persecuted by the community and having everyone in the neighborhood refer to her home as "that haunted house on the end of the block that's dragging all the property values down."

So she did what everyone did in the Fifties-- she conformed. She ditched the pointed hat and black robes, bought a new wardrobe, got her hair permed and started wearing pearls around the house. 

Did it work? Let's just say the neighborhood Bridge Club was never the same after that year.

Here's the first sketch I did of Grimelda.

And here's the tighter final sketch. Note that at first I drew her wearing a neck scarf, bobby socks, Oxford shoes and a poodle skirt (except the skirt had a black cat on it instead of a dog. Com-O-Dee!) because that was an outfit in the 1950s.But then I realized that that's what teens wore, not adults. So I had to look up ladies' outfits from the 1950s until I found something suitably June Cleaver-ish.

For a while I toyed with the idea of having her hold a 1950s vacuum cleaner instead of a broom, but I just couldn't get it to work. Plus, since she was wearing fairly normal clothing I thought she needed to be holding onto some traditionally witchy items.

When I first drew the "atomic magic" on the end of her wand, it was an electric blue. It looked really jarring when I stepped back and looked at it, as there was no other blue anywhere in the drawing. So I changed it to a more color-coordinated yellow. Thanks, Photoshop!

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet. 

Wikky Comic (#4 April 1971)

When I was a kid I really loved Harvey Comics (Casper, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, etc), so this is my homage to them.

The figures were drawn in pencil, inked with a pen and then scanned and colored in Photoshop. The text and various graphic elements were created in my ancient copy of Freehand (which I have since put out to pasture and replaced with Illustrator) and imported into Photoshop where everything was assembled.

Then after I got everything looking just so, I had fun messing it all up by adding dirt, tears and aging effects to make it look like a 30 year old comic that someone found in their attic.

I loved the way old comic covers told a little story of their own. That seems to be a lost art these days.

Here's the original penciled and inked drawing for the cover. Once I scanned this drawing into Photoshop, I decided I didn't like the boy's right hand, and redrew it onscreen.


Here's a color test I did for Wikky, to try and figure out the best color scheme. I ended up picking the one in the upper right.

According to comic book theory, green and purple signify evil. Check out any comic from the 60s and 70s and you'll see that good guys always wear primary colors (think Superman and his red, yellow and blue) while bad guys always wear secondary colors (orange, purple and green, as in the Hulk or Green Goblin).