Look up
in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the space shuttle!
As comic
book fans countdown to the return of Superman in theaters, NASA is
preparing the shuttle for its second return to flight mission. Now, a NASA engineer
has drawn for the space agency a mission poster that captures the excitement of
the pending launch in the style of a classic comic book cover.
Mild-mannered
Matthew Melis, who by day works as an aerospace engineer with the Structural
Mechanics Group at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, is quick to
admit he doesn't have an alter ego as an artist.
"My
dad is an artist and I'm not. I don't claim to be," told Melis to
collectSPACE.com. "It took me a long, long time to do [the poster]. I
worked on it, on and off, for about six months. A lot of the elements were
hand-drawn but a lot of them were manipulated from photographs."
"The
clouds, for example, were manipulated from actual photographs I took when I was
down in Florida for [the previous mission] STS-114," admits Melis.
"The [launch] tower was somewhat hand-drawn but also manipulated
graphically."
The idea
for the poster, which features shuttle Discovery lifting off the pad, a small silhouette
of the STS-121 crew and the typical design elements of a modern comic book
cover, came not because Melis collected comics as a kid but as a result of his
interest in pop art.
"I've
always been interested--because of my dad's art influences--in different pop
culture art," said Melis. "I was a big fan of Andy Warhol, so comic
book covers, Wheaties boxes, Campbell Soup cans ... all of that stuff."
"I
collected posters of all sorts of shapes and sizes when I was growing up and I
still have a relatively large portfolio of posters that I have saved over the
years," said Melis. "So that's sort of where I got the idea."
"The
poster kind of has this homage to the whole comic book/science fiction genre,
which is, in many ways, the fundamental basis why we go into space, because
it's a part of our spirit," explained Melis. "For those of us who are
at NASA and are big science fiction fans and just big advocates of the space
program, that's who I did this for, because I knew it would grab them."
"With this
poster, I'm trying to reinvigorate the spirit and excitement for the launch,
for my fellow employees, for the public and everyone--all of NASA's
stakeholders."
To get the
details of the comic cover right, Melis turned to the racks.
"Even
though I read a lot of comic books as a kid, I never collected them. So, I went
to Borders [bookstore] last fall and I just sat there all day and looked at all
the different comic books, thumbing through them, and then I bought one in
particular that had a look and feel to it that I liked."
"I
used that as a springboard to jump into designing this one," said Melis.
In addition
to the comic book style, Melis also worked to incorporate elements from popular
science fiction.
"So I
have got the 'Orbital Comics' with the volume and the date in the upper left
hand corner and then the 'Space Shuttle' [title], that kind of looks like the
old Space 1999 logo--that [1970s TV] series where the Moon blew away from
the Earth," described Melis. "And the word 'featuring' on the
starburst is done in the Star Trek font."
In true
sci-fi series format, this poster can be seen as a sequel of sorts to Melis'
first work, a parody of a movie poster that he did for last year's Discovery
mission and that grew very popular with both space workers and the general
public.
"I
never quite understood why the movie poster worked," revealed Melis.
"When I did that, it was never really something I did with the intention
of getting a bunch of copies printed. I did it for my buddy, Charlie [Camarda,
STS-114 mission specialist] and it just sort of took off."
"But
the movie poster was just fantastically successful. There was a blog out about
it and people were trying to get it," recounts Melis.
Melis is
seeing the beginnings of a similar success for his comic book cover STS-121
poster.
"The
crew told me they liked it and I just heard that from them a week ago. In fact,
they've not yet seen the full res versions, so I sent them some high res proofs
that they can look at. I've not had their reaction yet but I know that they
liked it and were excited about it."
"I
know that the guys at Kennedy [Space Center] liked it. Ames [Research Center] picked up a bunch. Langley [Research Center] and Johnson Space Center picked up a couple of thousand [each], too. So, they are going to get circulated,"
said Melis.
"Pretty
soon you build momentum, and then everybody wants one. And that's sort of the
fun thing about it," Melis concluded.
The first
event to feature the posters will be this Saturday at Glenn Research Center. As part of their second annual Space Memorabilia Show, Melis will attend from
11:00 to 1:00 p.m. to sign copies of his comic book cover for both his fellow
employees and the public.
STS-121 is
planned to launch on July 1 on a 13-day flight to the International Space
Station. Its seven person crew will test new techniques for improving shuttle
safety and deliver both supplies and another crewmate to the orbiting outpost.
This is NASA's second 'return to flight' since the loss of space shuttle Columbia in February 2003.
To
download a high-resolution PDF of Melis' STS-121 comic book cover poster, visit
collectSPACE.com.
Copyright 2006 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
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