Artstuff

Every few days I check to see how much traffic my posts are getting. I imagine most website and blog writers do that. I want to see if anyone is actually reading what I’m posting. One thing I’ve noticed is that, while visitors do drop by on a daily basis, very few folks go beyond the front page. I’ve got literally (and I mean literally not figuratively) thousands of images lurking on this site. So I’ll be using this newsletter to call some of that art back into the light.

This week’s gallery is a set of character designs I did back in 2012. This was for a proposed graphic novel. The basic idea was that, rather than atomic weapons, the Allies developed superheroes to win WW2. An original idea? No. But ideas are only seeds. It’s how they’re grown that makes the stories interesting.

This idea didn’t grow a story. The writer got interested in other ideas and we went on to develop those.

Story Seed #30

Alternate History: What if Columbus never made it across the Atlantic?

History is generally written, by Western historians anyway, by focusing on the acchievements of individuals. This fits with our cultural focus on individual success, individual happiness, individual opportunity, individual identity, etc. Admittedly, it’s easier to focus on the stories of individuals. Cultural context may be provided and important figures in their lives may also be described but, overall, the history we get taught in school is a simplification of reality. Often that history has been simplified in order to prop up current cultural myths.

Columbus discovering America is one of those myths. You’ve heard it – in the 1400s Europeans thought the world was flat. If you sailed too far you’d fall off. Brave Columbus convinced Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand of Spain to finance an expedition across the Atlantic. He planned to prove that India could be reached via the ocean and therefore circumvent the idiocincrasies of the Silk Road. Instead of reaching India, he discovered America!

By now you’ve also hopefully heard the debunkings. The Wikipedia article link above gives a more thorough version of Columbus’s story than I remember getting in school. It certainly includes more accounts of butchery, slavery, rape and genocide. Columbus was a horrible man. Unfortunately, horrible men don’t exist in isolation. They are supported by the horrible men who follow them and benefit from associating with them.

If Columbus hadn’t made his voyage, hadn’t “discovered” the New World, another European would have. Europeans explorers and merchants were looking for new sources of treasure and trade goods. In our current history, it was Columbus’s voyages that lead other explorers across the Atlantic. What if he had failed to get financing or if his ships had failed to return?

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places but there’s surprisingly little alternate history fiction inspired by this idea. What little I’ve seen seems more interested in presenting alternative (often magical) versions of the Americas rather than alternate explorers and explorations. How long would it have been before someone else crossed the Atlantic? Would the results have been better or worse for the natives? What if these new explorers landed on the North American continent instead of one of the islands?

If nothing else, without Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci wouldn’t have made his voyages and so the Americas would have different names.

Lifestuff

I draw almost every day. Some days I only manage a half an hour. Most days I try to get in more than that. On days when I’m not delivering mail I usually get in more than two hours. That doesn’t sound like much. I am often surprised by how much I manage to accomplish in those small amounts of time. I used to set a timer to keep myself in place. Until recently, having that device ticking away was a necessary part of getting the work done. I was often so tired from the day job that doing anything other than eating and staring at an episode of some tv show seemed like too much effort. But I’d set the timer and go to work. And I always felt better for having done it.

I rarely need the timer these days. I seem to have built the habit. Art gets done.

The habit I’m currently working on is writing every day. That one is harder than drawing. I can draw in noisy room. It’s really difficult for me to write in one. I can set a timer and design a sketch to be done in the time alotted. I never really know how long it’s going to take me to write something. These newsletters are getting done in the morning before the rest of the house wakes up. The process is clunky. I delete a lot of what I write. But I’m building the habit with the intent of applying that habit to things beyond this space.

Other Newsletters

This week I’m recommending BIG, a newsletter written by Matt Stoller. Stoller is the author of Goliath, the 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. His newsletter focuses on the way monopolies function and how they destroy competion, innovation and the world. I’m being only slightly facetious.

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