The finished bespoke globes of the fictional planets Mongo (Flash Gordon) and Krypton (Superman). It's time for me to pack these up and send them to my clients.
Generally, I'm not sentimental over my own artwork. A lot of it has been archived digitally so I can revisit it at any time. However, there's only one Mongo and one Krypton.
I'm wistful about sending them away.
They are flawed, since they are prototypes. I learned a fair bit about globe-making, though. And while for a few days I catalogued my errors and self-made promises to do better next time, I ended up simply staring at these worlds and wondering at the adventures a brave pioneer would experience soaring their many-coloured skies, swimming the depths of their cobalt oceans, or setting foot on their alien soils.
The volcanoes of Kira smoulder. The forests of Lurvan beckon. The pull of the Magnetic Mountain is real! (No, it isn't. I decided against putting a magnet in Magnetic Mountain. But it does look like that, so incredibly corny, but that's what I get for using a comic book as an atlas, alas.)
Strange to me, the feeling that these pieces are not just the result of my artistic intent and skill, but that these planets really do echo the supersonic exploits of those great Golden Age superhero comics. What great fun it was to manufacture these token worlds! At night, I look up into the galaxy and gaze in giddy wonderment. Which blazing stars possess these worlds for real?
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