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The above illustration was drawn for a website called Guttersnipe. The coquettish girl casually nudging Van Gogh off balance was based on an obscure character called "the Cat Girl" who appeared in the Archie Adventure Series "BATS" #2, 1962. I drew another version of the character in my sketchbook.
Sometimes the only way to articulate what you want to say is by quoting other sources. It's an old habit.
Last summer my comic Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt appeared in MOME #19 from Fantagraphics Books. My friend Dustin Weaver was kind enough to plug the story on his live journal. It was based on an old Steve Ditko comic called Driven to Destruction. It's a pretty obscure story so I thought I'd show it in it's entirety here.
ED-H more or less follows the same structure as Ditko's story and there are several direct quotes throughout. Page 16 of ED-H corresponds pretty closely to page 5 of Driven to Destruction. It's the only instance where I consciously tried to emulate Ditko's style. I figured if I was going to do Ditko I'd push it as far as I could.
There are a number of Ditko oddities in Driven to Destruction. For example, Evelyn apparently has super-human strength.
There's all kinds tell tale signs of Ditko's age when he drew this. Even though Henry seems to be in his thirties he comes across like an old man- he plays golf and smokes a pipe. The story was drawn in the 70's but it seems like something from a couple decades prior. It's obviously something he dashed off and quickly forgot about. It has that strange quality that all his work has- like there's something extra lurking beneath the surface. That's part of what inspired me to do this story.
There are numerous other references in Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt, some of them from film. The panel with Henry and Evelyn driving home from the Oregon coast was based an a film still from In A Lonely Place starring Humphrey Bogart. I've been enamored with this still for many years and finally saw the movie four or five years ago. It was good, of course, but all I can remember is this image.
And the last panel in the sequence where Evelyn is kicking Henry is meant to evoke Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
And I should probably mention that all the cars in Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt are Transformers...
Autobot roll call: Cliffjumper! Bumblebee! Trailbreaker! Prowl! Tracks! Transform and roll out!!
