A couple of early sketches for E is for Embalm. Lenny’s hair has been on quite a journey. The lower scene wasn’t part of the original plan. I was reluctant to draw the finished corpse for a long time, but once I fleshed out in my mind who she was, everything fell into place. I should also note that it was a lot harder to find reference photos of a funeral home prep room back in the nineties, when these were drawn. I was going off written descriptions and my own imagination.
![Coming Soon! The as-yet-untitled ABC Book by S. Baumann & M. Wells. G is for [REDACTED], O is for [REDACTED], S is for [REDACTED], and A is, of course, for Ambroseburg; home town to all sorts of weirdness.](https://i0.wp.com/www.fridge-mag.com/ambroseburg/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/IMG_1807-scaled.jpeg?resize=500%2C375&ssl=1)
A couple of images to share: first, a flyer promoting a forthcoming “As-yet-untitled ABC book” which I handed out at the very first Small Press and Alternative Press Expo (SPACE) in the year 2000. Next, a SPACE Prize I received at the most recent SPACE this past May. Note that the ABC book now has a title and it is engraved on the plaque.
Nothing brings out the ol’ impostor syndrome like getting a “lifetime achievement award” for something that’s barely 20% finished! Then again, this project has been with me and Mike for a significant part of our lives, so maybe it’s not so strange.
It’s nice to be acknowledged by a comic convention I consistently enjoy. So even if — and I’m not saying it was — this plaque was simply a customer loyalty reward for tabling at SPACE so many times, I’ll take it. Many of the other cons I attended decades ago are either long gone, or they’ve morphed and bloated into something less hospitable to small, deliberate creators like myself. But SPACE is always a good time and I’m happy to be part of it.
Also at SPACE last May, I had the pleasure of tabling near longtime comics pals Jeff Lilly and Pam Bliss; and getting details about the making of The Extras, their current webcomic series with Katie Hodges. They post a new page every Friday, so if I don’t update enough for you, follow the link and enjoy something while you’re waiting. Last month I was delighted to discover a background character named after me in there!
E is not for evidence — not in this book, anyway — but I did want to offer up some proof that I’m working on the next page (coming soon, I swear). Here’s a tiny detail that might be missed in the context of the larger page . Right now the kid on the left is my favorite character. His grandmother’s in heaven, probably. And with that, you know just as much about him as I do.
I had such a love-hate relationship with this page. I re-drew it several times until I came up with something I was happy with. Here’s an early sketch and 2 drawings that could have been the final, had I not went straight back to square one with a whole new composition. Through it all, Elias has always remained in his underpants, ladle in one hand and cane in the other.
For those of you wondering why ‘E’ isn’t up yet, all I can say is I’m working on it. Every so often I step back from it and ask myself “why isn’t this done yet?” and work on it a little more. It’s coming.
Long, long ago, as the twentieth century was drawing to a close, my friend Mike approached me with an idea. “You know those children’s ABC books,” he wrote (in a typewritten letter delivered via postal service, as was the custom), “I want to do a pastiche of one of those, but with a macabre, grotesque spin to it, and all centered around a small town…” This started a great exchange of drafts, sketches and ideas regarding what is now A is for Ambroseburg (later on, there was a 2-decade period where all this correspondence sat untouched in a box in my closet, but let’s not dwell on that).
Here, to amuse you while I work on letter E, are some of my earliest pencil sketches of A, B, and C. “D is for Dance” was a later addition, so the sketchbook containing these drawings doesn’t include Elias Himmelsbach’s Midnight Festival. The original idea for D was later moved to a letter further down the alphabet, and sharing those drawings now would only spoil the surprise.
