Soon I will be invincible.

While on vacation I read a wonderful book called “Soon I Will Be Invincible” by Austin Grossman. If you love comic books and superheroes and super villains, this is such a good book for you to check out.

The first thing you should know is that in the world of “Soon I Will Be Invincible” is that superheroes and super villains and aliens and powers and fantastical beings are common. Every day. Normal. Big fights in major cities are tales to be told in the evening news, heroes have corporate sponsorship, villains get their starts in seedy places. The thing in a person that makes them a bad guy instead of a good buy is a disease, a psychological disorder that they can determine and treat. Some heroes are born that way, some fall victim to massive laboratory accidents, others to radioactivity, some to inter-breeding between aliens and humans, or by stumbling across a magical artifact that imbues powers in its owner.

There are two narrators: Doctor Impossible and Fatale. Doctor Impossible is the world’s most brilliant super villain. He’s getting old though, and at the beginning of the book he is breaking out of prison for the twelfth time. He comments, deadpanned, that once upon a time he was the premier genius, threatening to hurtle asteroids at the earth, fighting head to head with the worlds best super heroes, defying all that oppose him. Now, in prison, his biggest worry is whether or not there will be chocolate milk in the dispenser at lunch. Doctor Impossible is a wonderfully nefarious character.

Fatale is the newest member of the prime hero team The New Champions. She is a cyborg and not fitting in exactly well with the other heroes. There is Blackwolf (Batman like) who has no powers but is a gifted athlete, master tactician and high functioning autistic. Damsal, leader of the New Champions, Mister Mystic, Elphin, Rainbow Triumph, Faral, and so on. They are super heroes with super strength and super speed and invincibility, but also normal problems like being bulimic, or barely human. Fatale has a clock in her cyborg eye that won’t turn off and the people that made her have vanished so she can’t ask someone how to fix it. So the time is constantly blinking in her eyeball.

The story is about Doctor Impossible versus the New Champions, but it is also about the genre, and about the characters, and the stupid screwed up problems they get themselves into. It is clever, and funny as all hell. The writing is perfect. I highly recommend it.

Returned from Vegas, safe and sound. Mostly anyway.

We have returned from Vegas! With lots of great photos and stories too.

I haven’t caught up on my email yet (thanks everyone!) but I will post an update soon. I’ve got some art stuff to post too, so stay tuned.

How has everyone’s week been?

Off to Vegas and beyond!

Hey everyone! I’ve been quiet the past couple of days but that’s because we’ve been quite busy at our house getting ready for our big trip. Tomorrow morning at 9:30 we leave for Vegas. Whoo!

We have two wonderful friends watching over our house and cats while we are gone. Left alone, the cats would destroy the place searching for us. If we don’t come home on time from work they’ve worked themselves into a nervous condition by the front door, so we couldn’t leave them alone. I think they suspect the jig is up because they keep taking turns waiting in our luggage.

We’ll be gone for less than a week but it seems like forever. No work. No troubles. Just a long week of sunbathing, hiking, photo taking, watercoloring and trying new things. I love how you can be guilt free when going to Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, and all. I promise to bring back pictures and art to share with you all.

In the mean time, I just want to thank all of you who visit, who comment, who come by just to say hi. We recently hit 2,000 visitors and I’m totally impressed. You can’t know how grateful I am for meeting some of you and for having you just come by to take a look. Thank you so much.

I’ll see you all in a week!

Cheers-

Sommer

What secret moments inspire you?

This morning when I left for work at 8:30am, I was shocked to discover the whole world was blanketed in fog. I never look out the windows before I leave for work so it is always a surprise when I discover rain or snow or sunshine. But fog is particularly memorable to me because it happens so rarely and yet it is so impressive on my imagination.

Inside my head I am suddenly driving through a portal to somewhere else and when I come through on the clear otherside I will be someone different, someplace new. The world will be upside down, you never know, and Whoa! and oh my god. I like the looming world coming out of the ether. Long tree limbs extending out but it takes moments before you know what they are connected to. Lone headlights. You can’t see the car or its driver and chances are they can’t see you.

It is sometimes very scary, like Silent Hill scary and sometimes it is exhilarating. Many a good day dream and novel and story has come from the emergence from fog. I wonder if those writers got their inspiration here, in the mornings with the trees and the headlights and the dog coming out and disappearing through your narrow field of vision.

Are there moments that inspire you the way this inspires me? Tell me about them all, I’d love to hear them.

IF: “Escape!”

This week’s Illustration Friday (IF) topic is “Heavy.” I was so excited about “Garden Party” last week and those awesome little insects, I decided they needed to make another appearance.

“Escape!” is about every insects worst nightmare- the torrential appearance of water. Whether it is a small drop to us or an avalanche of a garden hose unattended, every water hole is a potential doomsday for the garden folk. Here, the group flies to safety with

the strength of the ladybug, the tenacity of the ants and the inventiveness of the caterpillar. Who knew bugs could be so handy? He’s a modern Inspector Gadget, that one.

My only complaint was that the background scanned in a weird dark gray instead of the light green I painted it. No idea why but attempts to fix it were met with failure. Ah well. Now it sort of looks like the rain showers haven’t passed yet, and danger still looms.So it works!

A dinner for two with pictures

I made dinner on Thursday to celebrate my husband and my first anniversary. It was pretty low key and after dinner and dessert Ryan went back to studying for his big insurance exam tomorrow. But it was

 still nice.

We did get some Super Smash Brothers Brawl in before bed though.

The couple who brawls together, stays together.

I made asparagus and baby portabello mushroom pasta with homemade sauce over cavatapi pasta with a side of organic roasted garlic bread topped with balsamic vinegar and garlic. It was divine. I used a little bit of red pepper flakes to heat it up and combined with all the spices, it was a small taste of Tuscany at our fingertips. Heaven.

The dessert was not made by me. I picked it up at the store. White cake with sugar free raspberry jello and whip cream with strawberries and chocolate syrup (I did that part). The whole thing was made of yum. I wish we could have had wine with it but it wasn’t in the cards.

It was nice, even if it was low key. I’m excited about celebrating hardcore in Vegas next week. I’ve got to tell you, the idea of spending 6 days sans Internet has already given me the shakes. I’d be lying if I tell you I haven’t looked into renting a laptop.

I’m so ashamed of my addictions.

.

The biggest one year of my life.

As of today, my husband and I have been married for one year.

 Holy cow.

 Ironically, we are not spending the evening together. He’ll be out with a friend and I’ll probably be home playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. We’ll be celebrating in Las Vegas in a week, but still. It is a funny thing, being married.

The Bitter End. A short essay.

It’s nearly 60 degrees today- March 13, 2008- a Thursday. For the first time since November, the ice and snow have completely melted from our yard and driveway- leaving behind a soft powdery white stain of water and salt in every pore and crevice of the concrete. Remnants of battle, to be sprayed down and forgotten.

Along the edges, pine needles and leaves, missed from the fall cleanup before the first snow, remain wet, dirty and decomposing. It is the first hints of spring, but instead of flowers, life, birth, love and renewal, there is something else in the air. Exhaustion. Looking around my yard I get a sense of exhaustion. A world strained by extreme temperatures, finally released from a wintery prison and the nerve endings quiver like weakened knees. There’s no more strength left in these boughs to spring forth new growth. All they have left in them is to hang limp and wet and breath a stiff sigh of release. It is over. Maybe we’ll go forth tomorrow.

I feel the same way. Staring out my front window, there is warmth in the air too, but also a chill that hasn’t yet gone away. It doesn’t feel hopeful, it feels malicious. It takes the edge off something that should feel exciting and makes me feel vulnerable instead. Like a villain who reminds you that he knows where you live, even when you think you are safe. Maybe not as dramatic, but I want to remain inside none the less. For a little while longer.

Maybe I’ll go forth tomorrow.

Immanent asteroid collision.

A very dear friend of mine is currently living in Florida working for an Opera doing their costumes. It only lasts until the end of this month and she finally gets to come home (Hooray!) Lately she hasn’t been feeling well with dizziness, sickness and general yuckiness. So she finally went to the doctor yesterday who proclaimed (in medical terms) that she may have broken her brain.

While the medical trouble is very real and serious, the idea that my darling friend broke her brain brings riots of laughter from the pleasure spot in my heart. You’d have to know her and the cracked out year she’s had to find this darkly amusing. Mind you, not amusing like evil genius and immanent asteroid collision amusing, but funny bone tickle amusing.

I do hope she is ok. If you remember the mini-comic I did about the girl getting bit by a spider and potentially losing her foot and getting a peg leg or turning into a giant spider, it’s the same girl. If a toilet seat fell out of the sky, a la Dead Like Me, and hit her in the head, I really wouldn’t be surprised.

Sneak peak of current art project

As promised, here’s a little sneak peak of my current art projects that I’m working on and am planning to sell in my Etsy shop at the beginning of april. This is not finished, just a little snippet of what is to come. I am enjoying this new medium very much but I’m still hesitant on a few things. I plan to keep working and see where it takes me.