Chris Louden
Sunday, February 8. 2009
Chris Louden
1966 - 2009
See some of Chris' work here
Last year, I got to talk to Neal Adams about his Batmobile. Since then, I had started work on my 1/25 version of the car, based primarily on a '67 Corvette. I got it as far as a "proof stage" to bring with me, in the hope that he could critique the work so far.
He seemed very pleased with what I had done so far, and offered a couple of places where I could modify the car to better match his intended design. One of the things he stressed was that the Batmobile needed to be a powerful car capable of racing car-level performance, so he was particularly happy when I popped the hood and showed him the supercharged 427 with ram-air induction:
Later on, I was able to meet Scott Kurtz, creator of PvP. PvP was the subject of my first ever webcomic-based project, so it was great for me to meet the man behind the strip. He was a really nice, friendly guy - as much a "fan" as the people who were there to see him.
He remembered the custom Dexter Jettster I did, and pulled out his phone to take a picture of it right there. We also talked about Brent's Mini for a few minutes, and I was able to get the final few details I needed to start working on a model of it. Last (but certainly not least), he was able to sign my Dexter card:
As I mentioned above, there were also a couple of items there that really grabbed my attention as well. First, Mattel had a Batmobile from the current Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon on display. It wasn't quite 1/24 scale, but with a little work I think it could be pretty close:
Finally, DC Direct had a ton of Watchmen merchandise on display, mostly figures and statues. But on the bottom shelf of one cabinet was this beauty:
I won't know what the scale is without doing some more digging (maybe not until the movie comes out), but the rails provided some possible insight. If they were supposed to represent a standard railroad, they looked to be pretty close to "G" gauge, putting the overall replica well within my preferred scale territory. I'll post more on this once I find out more details.
