Zapology

For the last few days, Anselm has been working on pages of a book, which turns out to be all about Zap, his alter ego from the planet Electric Storm. Tonight he and I annotated it together, but I captured it in its pristine condition.

My favorites are the three successive zooms in, from the planet-level view of an enormous hurricane surrounded by ships, to the storm itself, emitting particles which the ships use for power, to Zap inside his ship. Zap appears to reach his ship using a space elevator! Cool! Anselm also pointed out to me that Zap's planet has very little water (the shapes on the planet are the oceans, not the other way around, as on Earth) . Water there comes from a volcano. Sometimes lava comes out instead.

The two cigar shapes are a deadly configuration of storm, known, maybe not coincidentally, as "The twin towers".

He's been drawing a lot recently since I bought him four Sharpie markers in green, black, red and blue-- all the colors a boy needs. I am amused by the absolute economy of detail: this is not art, it's science.