God Knows When, But He’s Doing It Again
Ahh, it has been a bit of time since I have posted here. Good intentions and all. Anyway, on to the post.
Each week Comics Should Be Good at Comic Book Resources posts a column entitled “The Line It is Drawn.” The content is a several illustrations with the same theme. Readers suggest descriptions of pictures in that theme and “The Line It Is Drawn” artists illustrate the top choices for the following week. The suggested theme last week was, “Insert a superhero character into a famous music video.” I love music and love comics so my mind went off racing.
The hard part was not knowing many music videos. I didn’t have cable to watch until I went off to college. MTV and VH1′s content mostly alluded me until I was 18. As I circled my head with the videos I could remember. They fell on Bob Dylan’s video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The cryptic lyrics that sound random on first listen made my think of one superhero, the eighth and current Starman, Thom Kallor.
Thom comes from the 31st Century where he was originally known as Star Boy in the Legion of Super-Heroes. He has the ability to temporarily increase the mass and density of any object or person, and travel (or send others) between alternate universes. His uniform is also a map of the multiverse. He is sent back into the past (present day) to save the future. His trip is a rocky one, where he is shot off route into a parallel universe to his own. When he reaches the present he is diagnosed borderline schizophrenic and speaks in cryptic and on first listen random phrases. However, much like Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” his words have meaning. In his stories he is portrayed as an Oracle like character who predicts the future in cryptic phrases and because of his suit is aware of his fictional reality, often breaking the third wall.
The cryptic/random words of both Dylan and Kallor brought me to the idea of inserting Starman into the video. I replaced Dylan’s poster-sized cards with word balloons to give a wink to the camera that Kallor really knows what the deal is. I also had him bring subtle bursts of four color into Dylan’s monotone video.
If you haven’t check out the great Starman series by James Robinson and Tony Harris, which tells the story of Thom’s predecessor. Also, if you have never heard the album “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is off of do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
