The Echo moth.

About a year ago now I sent an e mail to Terry Moore, the artist and writer of the Echo comic. Basically I wanted to let him know what a fan of this series I am, but also the clear black and white art that picked out small details such as roadside scrub, lizards, grasses, rocks and landscape.

In my past I was a very keen Birder, and one of the habits that I have never been able to shake off, and I have probably mentioned this somewhere on the blog before now, is the habitual manner in which I find myself looking for birdlife, butterflies and moths wherever I am.

I can be sitting in someone house chatting and at the same time be distracted by birds seen through the window, or I'll automatically check the corners of the ceiling for resting moths that may have found their way into the house during the Summer months. On a car journey I find myself scanning the tops of lamp posts on motorways looking for Kestrels, and on train journeys my eyes flick quickly along the field furrows and hedge tops in a restless quest to root out signs of life from the patchwork of fields flashing by.

And it doesn't stop there, I do it whilst watching the tv, films and also whilst reading comics, magazines and when my kids were smaller I got great pleasure in scouring the pages of picture books, Percy the Park Keeper and The Little Red Train adventure books were always good value because there was always so much going on in the artwork.

So, back to my e mail to Terry Moore. My request to him was could he maybe put some birds or moths in as added detail to his artwork in Echo. I never heard back from him, and I am not really surprised as he is a very busy and successful comic book creator, in fact Lloyd Levin, producer of Watchmen and From Hell has bought the rights to make a big screen adaptation of the comic in deal clocking in at six figures plus.

Anyway I was a bit giddy and a little bit curious if the appearance of a moth on the cover of issue 18 of Echo could be attributed to my one way correspondence with Mr. Moore last year ( see cover above, bottom right ).




Next up is Greg Rucka's Stumptown comic, illustrated by Matthew Southworth. This is Greg Rucka's loving homage to the Private Investigator television shows of the 70s and 80s, specifically The Rockford Files.

In the first issue the main character of the book, a female PI called Dex gets into deep water with some shady types down by the riverside. This is a great filmic moment, we see a Canada Goose picked out in the panels on pages 1-3 and then highlighted to great effect using a series of boxes in the splash pages 4-5. Dex gets shot, and as the crack of the gun's release ricochets off the underside of the bridge and Dex hits the water the Goose is spooked and takes off briefly before landing further down the bridge. I loved these first few pages.




And finally from the pages of World's Finest no.3, on a window ledge outside the apartment of Linda and Lana Lang in Metropolis, a trio of what looks like Rock Dove/Feral Pigeons are disturbed by an urgent incoming call from Oracle. Almost certainly these birds will fly a few circles above or in front of this building before coming back to the same perch, because that's what they do. Maybe Supergirl is putting out a few bread crumbs for them?




So there you have it, a few birds and moths found in the pages of comics. If you see any or know of anymore be sure to let me know!