Pardon the squeals you may have just heard coming from the New Times office in downtown Phoenix. We just spotted what Phoenix designers Daniel and Dawna Davis (aka Steam Crow) have been working on for Phoenix Comicon.
Daniel says the Steam Crow team creates a limited-edition print for each of the comic shows and convention they attend. And this year, after they decided to cancel their first, superhero-themed print for Comicon, they returned to their favorite subject: Monsters.
The Davis duo illustrate and publish Monster Commute, a web comic they describe as a "1984 meets the Wizard of OZ, on a steampunk highway. It's a bit fantasy, a bit 1930′s dieselpunk, and it's inspired by our real life commute in Phoenix, Arizona."
And for this year's Phoenix Comicon print, they're returning to what they know best.
"At first we tried to do parodies of local landmarks with our Monster Commute characters present... that worked great, but I was finding that I was spending a lot of time just tracing old signs - rather than drawing monsters," says Davis.
"While I was beating my head into the ground trying to figure out what to do for the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, I stumbled on this idea to "get back to basics" and made a print featuring a famous monster of the region - the Sasquatch. Then it occurred to us that we could do this "Wicked Monsters" as a series since most States have local legends and creatures associated with them ... The Jackalope just seemed like a great place to start, right here in Arizona-land."
Daniel says he has big plans do all 50 states, but his focus for now is on the jackalope and Phoenix Comicon and that they've been working on all sorts of oddities and prints and resin cast toys for the show.
"We're totally/super/crazy (pick 2) excited," he says. "It's evolved into the most important show of the year for us ... I don't know if all the local folks realize that this is one of the finest shows in the country."
You can snatch up Wicked Arizona: The Jackalope, a limited-edition, signed, 12-by-18-inch jackalope poster, by Daniel and Dawna for $25 at the Steam Crow Booth (720 and 722) at Phoenix Comicon, May 24 through 27. They both swear that once all 150 sell out, it'll be gone -- forever.
Friends, the race is on.
