Gird your loins!

A number of years ago I did a mini comic about the worst popes in history. I had to set the bar high to get it to a manageable project. "Girding" came up at some point and I realized, like with many a parlance, I had been using the term without a real understanding of the definition.

Now thats settled, a little about the previous post. Much as Taylor’s role as a performer was initiated from a chance encounter, his entrance into his first race resulted from his boss Mr. Hay spotting him as a spectator in the crowd at a local event. It’s a little disheartening that he was entered as a laugh for a crowd.

Years ago I read an interview with the late Frank Frazetta in which he commented on the importance of what happens in the periphery of his paintings. Maybe it was Boris Vallejo, but I hope it was Frazetta…Running compositions off and beyond the focal point and the canvas create a richer experience; a sense of the world at large and your subject’s place in it. I’ve carried that forward in my work since reading it at 17 or 18. I have never applied it more liberally than in the pages of Major Taylor. The little asides that the eye passes over can provide so much more storytelling and details than narrative exposition or dialogue can.

This next page is one of my favorites in the book.