Spoilers: The Mystery of Doctor Doom on Battleworld

The Mystery of Doctor Doom on Battleworld

When the Fantastic Four, well, in this case, Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm, since Sue Richards nee Storm is pregnant at the time this story takes place and is left back on earth, first get to Battleworld it is revealed that they have witnessed Doctor Doom’s death and they don’t quite know what to make of his presence on Battleworld. One theory is that Doom is only a simulacra created from by the Beyond from the memories of Reed Richards, et al.

Within the books contained in the Battleworld Box Set, we do not learn of Doom’s fate until near the end of Secrete Wars II in Fantastic Four #288 entitled Full Circle.

Doctor Doom was in combat with a herald of Galactus called Terrax the Tamer. Terrax fuses Doom’s armor, rendering him immobile and then Terrax fights Galactus’ first herald, the Silver Surfer. That battle ends with both titans falling back to earth as a giant fireball that atomizes both Doom’s and Terrax’s bodies.

But Doom had already transferred his consciousness into that of innocent bystander, Norm McArthur. In issue 288, Doom has captured the Fantastic Four, which at this point consists of Reed, Sue, Johnny and the She-Hulk, who became a member of the FF when Ben Grimm stayed behind on Battleworld.

Doom is performing a magic ritual in order to call back his body which has been rendered into stardust but he finds he lacks sufficient power so he reaches out with his mind to find an even greater power to use when he summons the Beyonder. The Beyonder wants to kill Doom for Doom’s impertinence, this being very near the end of Secret Wars II and the Beyonder is pissed off. Reed talks him out if it pointing out that this is the point in time where the Beyonder plucked Doom from in order to set the events of Battleworld and that killing Doom now could have very negative consequences that the Beyonder may not even be able to survive being that he has made himself a part of the timeline.

The Beyonder concurs, recreates Doom’s body for him, and then hurtles him back in time so the events of the first Secret War can transpire.

Afterward, the Beyonder leaves and Reed rushes everyone out of the Latverin embassy surmising that post-Secret Wars Doom may make an appearance at any moment.

This leads into the final issue of Secret Wars II.

Rare Lucid Dream

20160802 Dream

Conditions: Last night was a Leo new moon

After about an hour of sleep, my reflux woke me up a little after 11:30PM.

I was up for about another 30 minutes watching YouTube as some of my sleepiness had dispersed.

Finally I fell asleep.

I dream I am looking at flowers from a distance. It is like someone else is there with me and I am talking to them, or perhaps only talking to myself, when suddenly I become aware that I am dreaming.

I say something like, “OMG! I'm having a lucid dream! Okay, don't blow it, just relax, find your hands,” and I look down and see the back of a hand, it might have been my dream companion or it might have been my own hand, only much older, 20-30 years older.

Then I look forward again and the flowers are still there and then I look back at my hands but when I look up again, half the dreamscape is gone, sort of crystallized. I either see myself or another dream companion half-crystallized and I realize I am losing the dream so I say to myself, “Okay, I'm losing the dream, I'm going to come out of it.” And I woke up rather easily, no fear, but a great feeling of energy. I decided to leave the dream because I thought it might lead to sleep paralysis if I didn't come all the way out of the dream and then I would be afraid.

Prior to sleeping, I did notice some activity in my root and sacral chakras and I did my best to let the energy flow without spasming, but I did spasm somewhat.

I also think the reason I was seeing flowers, and I seemed to be seeing them from some sort of covered bridge, an old fashioned wooden bridge, because we had watched a show on Monet on Netflix on Raiders of the Lost Art. This also put in mind to want to see the mini-series about the impressionists from 2006 and when I was reviewing the dream in my mind prior to writing this, I came to the supposition that I may have been soul traveling to Monet's garden that had been restored and open to the public in the 1980s.

Spider-man Silver on Black

Okay, not that almost everything isn't a first for me at this point but this is a first on several levels.

Last week when I visited the art store and was going through their clearance paint, I came across a tube of silver and suddenly mind mind was awash in visions of silver on black paintings.

I think the first vision I had was for Daredevil sort of three images with Daredevil facing in three different directions.

Also Spider-Man was another idea.

After I painted the painting paper black, I got stuck in what to do.  Other than the superhero idea, I thought maybe just having a partial skyline like that I observed in Chicago.  So I painted it black on Tuesday night and then let it sit to dry but then I got stuck on what to attempt.

Luckily, I was reading a comic book series at the time called Secret War from my Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars Battleworld Box Set and this particular series had different heroes set against a mostly black background.  I pretty much had decided on either Daredevil or Spider-Man and in the end, the Spider-Man seemed like the best one to go with.

So this is also the first action scene I have drawn or painted.  In some ways, I'm happy with this painting.  I guess for my skill level, it is recognizable and the silver paint ended up being harder to work with than I anticipated.  It was a bit thicker than the other colors I had worked with, but since I was going with a simple design, I could paint over lines or too thick of lines with the black.

Here's the cover art that was the basis for this painting:

Ego is Skeleton #2

Ego Is Skeleton 2

Well, my second paiting is almost done.  Who knows, maybe it is done.  I don't quite feel it yet. Maybe I want to do something with that tree?  Maybe I do want to add something that resembles cobble stones on the red path?  Maybe I just want to touch up the parts where the canvas still comes through.

Oddly enough, I like it much better when I see it in the smaller size.  It is much closer to the vision I have in my head.

In this version, I like the road side much better and I like the arch much better.  I also like the figure much better. I felt I got the effect of a wraith-like being while giving it some substance and a little more character.

I am going to post my pictures from my last blogpost just so that people who want to see all of the pictures together will have a one-stop.

Ego is Skeleton 1

Original source photograph

Original Self-Portrait #11

My First Painting!

Ego Is Skeleton #1

The seed has been growing in me for a while.

My Self-Portrait 11 had been placed on a wall where I saw it more and my eye kept getting drawn to it.

An inner voice urged me to try something with the same image.  And then I went to see the Van Gogh's Bedrooms exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute last Wednesday and Thursday (March 9th & 10th 2016). And finally the breakthrough to try paints overcame me.

Yesterday, March 12, I stopped in the local Hobby Lobby while running the weekly errands and bought an acrylic paint set and some paper for painting.

I took the kit apart. Examined the paints. Watched a little bit of an introductory video and then just jumped in. I decided not to sketch out the design and as a result, it is lacking the otherworldly distortion I would have liked to capture more of.  I also would have liked to create more texture on either side of the path.  Other parts I am quite happy with.  Even though this is originally based on a photo and then on a drawing, I think it evokes something in my imagination that created a feedback loop.

Here are the original photo and drawing:

Basis for original drawing from March 2015

Self-Portrait 11 from March 2015

Figure It Out! A Great Drawing Book for the Fledgling Artist

Well, it's been several months since I have updated.  It has been a very hard few months as I had a protracted cold and work has been very hard in throwing up those petty little annoyances that make getting any meaningful work done.  I only did one or two drawings in the meantime, usually based on videos from a very good YouTube site called My Drawing Tutorial which has a variety of tutorials.

I also received a human figure manikin and a hand manikin for Christmas and I spent quite a few pages just drawing the figures in different poses just to let my mind build new neural pathways.  But I was not finding satisfaction in my progress.

It finally occurred to me to see what kind of drawing books our local Hobby Lobby has (I don't know why it takes so long to think of these things) and I found a great variety of books including one called Figure It Out! The Beginner's Guide to Drawing People  which is the opening photo for this essay.

One of the reasons I decided to get this book and another one called Draw 50 Famous Cartoons: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Your Favorite Classic Cartoon Characters is so that when I felt like drawing but didn't have a major project of my own to satisfy my urge, I could have some ready suggestions at hand.

So, starting Sunday, which was March 6, 2016, I drew my first drawing from Figure It Out! which was a male human face:

And I thought it turned out pretty well.  Yesterday, Monday, I had a full day off of work and no other chores to do so  I was able to devote several hours to drawing and drew these:

One of the main lessons I am learning from this experience of teaching myself to draw is the expectation of perfectionism.  Now intellectually, I know I shouldn't be able to draw perfectly right out of the bat, to kill a metaphor, but emotionally it is much harder because as an American who went through the public school system, we are psychologically damaged so that we are constantly measuring ourselves against our classmates and this causes us to devalue both ourselves and the work we can produce.  I think this kills our imagination and puts us into a low-self-esteem mode that makes us more manageable to government bureaucracies that enjoy managing our lives.  And we've been taught through experience that we aren't very valuable anyway, so why not let some controlling sociopath control our lives for us?

The other thing I've learned is that drawing can be very hard on the beginner, even though I spent probably 5 hours at the drawing table yesterday, most of the time is spent on the initial step of getting the oval shape of the head right.  But I have decided this is okay as you see, I drew the same image twice, once where I couldn't get the shape of the head right, or at least, to my satisfaction, but I decided I would draw it once to completion and then draw it again and I was very pleased with how the second attempt turned out.

This morning I was having the same problem trying to draw a head facing to the left and in that case I left my misshapen oval and decided to do a blog post.

So there's the update!