Stuff From my Studio: #1

This is a new occasional feature here on Tom’s Mad Blog, where I post a picture of something on the walls or shelves of my studio and tell a little story about it. That might sound boring but actually almost everything in my studio has some kind of significance for me… it was either obtained in some interesting way, or is a remembrance of some trip or event from my life, or was given to me from someone special or for some special reason, or is just incredibly freaking cool. I’ve got very little “just picked this up at Target” sort of stuff.

By the way this feature was inspired by my wife, The Lovely Anna‘s, Facebook series she’s done this month posting pics of a different Christmas ornament every day and the story behind it. She’s very inspirational.

So, to inaugurate the “Stuff from my Studio” feature, I thought I’d share my most recent addition:

I am a huge Batman nerd, and I’ve got a lot of Batman stuff in the studio. The addition of this piece turned the Batman Geek Level in the studio up to 11. I got this as a Christmas present to myself as a reward for all the hours and days of workshops I’ve been doing this past year and will be doing in 2018. It’s a polystone statue of Batman in his anti-Superman armor from the film “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice”. LED spotlights and eyes, creepily realistic Ben Affleck features, real cloth/canvas cape and webbing… the works. It’s huge, standing at 44 inches tall including the base. I loved the design of this costume from the film, it is almost spot on from Frank Miller‘s “The Dark Knight Returns”. Anyway Bats looms over me at the drawing board, so if I am flagging when on deadline I can just look over and get motivated to keep on inking… or take a sledgehammer to a tractor tire.