Moira & Steve (the Robotman)

     A deep-space mission to the edge of known human space winds up going sideways, leaving two of the crew in very unusual circumstances.  

     The story has, once past the first 5 issues, gone off in a direction I did not expect -- so welcome to the ride!

                                                                                                                               BIBLIOFANCY

Extras:

Steve (the Robotman) is actually a toy soldier I bought at Target, an action figure from the Halo series -- from which I removed some details and added others along with a new paint job.

The publisher, K-129 books takes its name from the designation of a Soviet ballistic missile submarine that sank in the Pacific Ocean in 1968.  As the USSR searched in vain, the CIA got with Howard Hughes and together built the enormous Glomar Explorer, a massive ship that was, the world was told, going to be used to search for minerals on the ocean floor.  In reality, it was built to find and recover K-129, and so deliver Soviet secrets to the US.

The background of issue No 1 is a scene in Pittsburgh's Strip District.  There really is, or was at the time I snapped the photo, a Pittsburgh Popcorn Co.  I haven't been back there in some time to see if it's still around.  "But First Coffee Co" was just a nod to my favorite phrase.

Issues No 2 and 3 both feature photos taken at the Carrie Furnace, the last old-line blast furnace in the Pittsburgh area.  More from that trip can be seen on Jake Rambles n'at.

No 5 had me stuck for literally months: the idea of a "back-story" issue was in mind, but just how to convey something happening eluded me.  I had brainstormed some ideas of what happened to the crew, but not the picture -- until those lighted-cable-things came into my hands.  Parts from an expensive lighting design-modeling, um, contraption (long story), they are fibre optic bundles that were meant to represent theatrical lighting instruments.  To me they just sparked -- finally! -- a way forward.  Another part of that fibre optic contraption became the large vessel in the sky on the cover of Issue No 6.

Issue No 9 features a view over St. Louis from the top of the Gateway Arch!

In the background of Issue 10 is an "action shot" -- one of many -- I snapped of a parking garage being demolished in 2016.  Large hydraulic jaws at the end of an excavator's arm were used to chew up the structure until parts of the architecture just fell to the ground.  With a zoom! lens, I was able to focus on the jaws as they bit in, as the reinforced concrete fractured and shot out pieces large and small, with the resultant still images catching some of those splinters mid-air -- as seen here.