The Enchanted Dagger

This teaser page for “Takes of the Irreal #4” was the last of my golden age experiments before I jumped into the Enchanted Dagger.  I had a pretty good handle on Illustrator…most of the inking is done with vectors, as opposed to illustrator’s unwieldy calligraphic brushes.

I cringe a bit at the writing here, especially that first paragraph.  It could have used another revision.  Subjectively, some Golden Age purists might take issue with my depicting Fearless Flint as a racist.  The Flint Man is one of my favorite Golden Age characters.  You can see the roots of the Incredible Hulk in Flint’s powerful reaction to metal and anger.  The…uh…Harry Peter creation also benefited from some cool art work.  If Flint ends up as a White Supremacist icon ( I once noticed that another favorite Ranxerox had shown up in some neo-Nazi propaganda) then all I have to say is “Fuck Off!!!”

I don’t think there is anything in the Flint stories that is truly, virulently racist. But there are some depictions that probably wouldn’t make it past a present day comic book publishers desk.  Adding this element to Flint’s character was an attempt to reflect on our contemporary culture by highlighting an aspect of race commonplace in the original funny books.  Playing into stereotypes would become a major theme in The Enchanted Dagger and I think it was yet another example of me being 15 minutes ahead of the times.  Even more than in September 2014 when I made this Flint comic, we have come to associate with each other in with generalizations and predjudices.   If ya ask me, people on both sides of the argument need to stop bitching and moaning about political correctness and start classing up the joint with some good old fashioned manners!  You know who was big into hating political correctness?  The Unabomber.  That should go to show.

Finally, this marked my first depiction of Blind Willie McTell.  There were a couple of great Blind Willie bluesmen.  “McTell” felt like a good name for a blind seer… he was a character in “The Enchanted Dagger” before the enchanted dagger was even on my radar!  McTell had a haunting tenor voice…unique among blues greats.