E is not for evidence — not in this book, anyway — but I did want to offer up some proof that I’m working on the next page (coming soon, I swear). Here’s a tiny detail that might be missed in the context of the larger page . Right now the kid on the left is my favorite character. His grandmother’s in heaven, probably. And with that, you know just as much about him as I do.
I had such a love-hate relationship with this page. I re-drew it several times until I came up with something I was happy with. Here’s an early sketch and 2 drawings that could have been the final, had I not went straight back to square one with a whole new composition. Through it all, Elias has always remained in his underpants, ladle in one hand and cane in the other.
For those of you wondering why ‘E’ isn’t up yet, all I can say is I’m working on it. Every so often I step back from it and ask myself “why isn’t this done yet?” and work on it a little more. It’s coming.
Long, long ago, as the twentieth century was drawing to a close, my friend Mike approached me with an idea. “You know those children’s ABC books,” he wrote (in a typewritten letter delivered via postal service, as was the custom), “I want to do a pastiche of one of those, but with a macabre, grotesque spin to it, and all centered around a small town…” This started a great exchange of drafts, sketches and ideas regarding what is now A is for Ambroseburg (later on, there was a 2-decade period where all this correspondence sat untouched in a box in my closet, but let’s not dwell on that).
Here, to amuse you while I work on letter E, are some of my earliest pencil sketches of A, B, and C. “D is for Dance” was a later addition, so the sketchbook containing these drawings doesn’t include Elias Himmelsbach’s Midnight Festival. The original idea for D was later moved to a letter further down the alphabet, and sharing those drawings now would only spoil the surprise.
