Friday, September 18, 2009

Mrs. Tulip




You've met Velma...

You've caught a glimpse of Owen and Lizzie and their garden...

There's one more main character to introduce you to, the matron of the Tulip family, distracted seamstress, rambling storyteller, more than slightly off center Edwina, Owen and Lizzie's mother.

Over the course of drawing The Wonder City, these characters are becoming disturbingly real to me. Owen tugs my heartstrings, Lizzie is looking more and more like my sister did at age 5, and Velma...basically I want to get whiskeys with her. For some reason Edwina pushes my buttons. I have walked away from the drafting table annoyed with her on more than one occassion.
She is simultaneously overbearing and absent, but she also reveals the most information about the Tulip family, their Dutch heritage, the father away to war, and their struggle to survive in New York. Basically, she'll drive you nuts, but you can't help but sympathize with her circumstances.

Her constant rambling also provides the motivations that for better or for worse set her children on their Coney Island adventrue and change the Tulip family's lives forever.

So love her or hate her, meet the dandy seamstress.

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