Pop Mhan is an evil, evil man. Sick. Just downright dastardly. Now I've known Pop for a number of years and we've gotten to be casual acquaintances -- not to the point of hanging out for lunch, but to the point of talking about hanging out for lunch and never getting around to doing so (we're both in the Northern Virginia area). So when I asked Pop to do something in my "Least Expected" sketchbook at the 2008
Baltimore Comic-Con, he got a malicious glint in his eye and said, "Oh, I'll do something NOBODY would have expected." And then he got that far-off look on his face like he was trying to figure out how to put it all together. Either that, or it was one of those fits people like Pop sometimes suffer. Or constipation. Either way, after some time starting and erasing a bunch of times, I asked Pop what was up and he said he was trying to remember what Captain Caveman looked like. Captain Caveman! I was thrilled! As soon as he said the words, the warbled war-cry rang through my head, and I immediately had my Blackberry out and logged into Google Images looking for photo reference, which I quickly found. This, of course, gave Pop the material he needed to desecrate my (already desecrated numerous times by other artists [cough...Matt Wagner...cough]) sketchbook. As his picture started taking shape, I thought it was funny that Captain Caveman was going to spank someone. And then that someone became a man. And then that man became an old man. I asked if it was Mr. Weathersby from Archie (which, actually, would have been pretty hilarious), but Pop said it was this guy from a video he had seen, Captain M. Man, and the M stood for masochism. I don't even want to
know why Pop knew about this, much less had seen it. So, contrary to the written message on the sketch, besides supplying the theme and the photo reference for Captain Caveman (that's right, boys and girls, ol' Pop didn't
need photo reference for Captain M. Man!), this concept and all of its subtle nuances are the whole-cloth creation of the mind of Pop Mhan. I haven't gotten around to reading Blank yet...now I'm a little scared to do so!! Thanks Pop!!!
