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Last week's post made reference to the daytime soap All My Children, which I have watched since I was in high school. (And no, I'm not going to tell you how long ago that was!) Of all the hot guys I have encountered on All My Children (for want of encountering them in reality), by far the hottest is my favorite character, Aidan Devane, played by Aiden Turner. Though I'm less than happy with the way Aiden has been shaving his chest hair for the last couple of years (if you could have seen him with the dusting of hair across his pecs that he originally had...YUM!), and I'm not crazy about the way the show has lately made him an embittered conspirator in a child-snatching, Aiden/Aidan remains at the number-one spot on my list of hotties in Pine Valley, PA. Aidan, in his proper form, is brave, resourceful, strong, and heroic. He rescues and protects women and sticks up for his friends. And...he's British. BRITISH, if you please! Since he's the nearest thing to a super-hero on daytime TV, I decided a while back that I would make him one. Enter and behold...IRON BRIT!
I actually sent the original artwork for this piece to Aiden Turner himself at ABC Studios in New York. Alas, he never wrote back. In the past, I have written to various daytime TV hunks and gotten signed pictures back, but I'm afraid I've not had the pleasure with Aiden. I don't even know if he's seen this. A shame, really. Still my appraisal of him has not changed. I hope the show will soon make him once again the hero he was meant to be. I hope they will give him a true love that will not break his heart so badly that he starts to behave like a villain. (I'm looking at you, Rebecca Budig as Greenlee Smythe!) And I still hope that someday he will grow back his bloody chest hair! In the meantime, here he is above in costume.
For the holiday season, a little post of my Christmas Card from last year (above), along with a little story I'd like to tell.
A couple of years ago, the daytime soap All My Children closed its holiday episode with a song called "Christmas in the Heart" by a recording artist named Hugh Pool. I thought this was a very sweet and endearing little number, a sort of modern-day "Jingle Bell Rock" that deserves to become a classic passed down for generations just like that song. And I wanted to have a copy of it for myself. At the time, I didn't have a fully functional computer and was doing all of my surfing on library and cafe computers, and couldn't collect it from iTunes. This year I finally upgraded my computer to the MacBook I'm using now, and was ready to buy "Christmas in the Heart" from iTunes for the holidays--except for some reason iTunes had removed the thing and I couldn't find it anywhere else! After several futile attempts to find the song, I at last E-mailed Hugh Pool personally for help. After several weeks I assumed he was too busy to reply to me, or that he just didn't do favors of that kind for listeners. Imagine my surprise a few mornings ago when I checked my E-mail and found a note from Hugh with an MP3 of the song attached!
I would share the song with you here, but that would mean posting the MP3 for download with no way for Hugh to receive a cent from it, and after the exceptionally generous turn he did for me, I just didn't feel right about doing that. But I wanted to pass on this story just by way of saying that sometimes the pleasure of the holiday season is not in the big-ticket items we buy for ourselves and our loved ones, but in the decent little things we do for each other. So, one little picture from last year (the first time I've ever repeated a Christmas Card), one little story for the season, and one great big "Merry Christmas" to one and all.
Here's a drawing that I did a while back. You should recognize these characters if you're a fan of comics and know your "stuff". One of them is a denizen of a "new" universe; the other belongs to what bills itself as "the original universe". Regardless, they're two of the hottest heroes ever to scorch a comic book page!
Hi again:
We took last week off from posting for the Thanksgiving holiday, but now we’re back with something special. Every year I do a super-hero Christmas Card featuring my own characters. On occasion I bring in a character or characters from well-known comics to appear with my heroes. This is one of those years. What we have for the 2009 Holidays is a mock cover for an imaginary issue of Wild Jon (the super-hero version of my eBay creation, Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild). My Prince Jon is a hero who leaps and swings his way through the “concrete canyons” of Manhattan. We see him here with a character with whom you may be acquainted, who’s famous for doing the same thing!
As an extra-special treat, I’ve included this Card in three versions. Along with the final Card, you see here the Card in its initial penciled staged and in its initial color stage before the final paste-up and background coloring. All the colors here are digital, by the way--direct from Photoshop!
As Christmas approaches, I hope everyone surfing this Blog is warm, safe, and happy, and will continue to be so into 2009. And yes, we’ll have more goodies here between now and Christmas, so keep coming back!
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