Greetings sports fans!
I thought I would give you a progress report and some hot insider info on “My Tank is Fight.” Before I get into the fun stuff I would like to ask all of you on the mailing list to send the link to the signup page to friends, family, and jerks you know on the Internet if you think they might be interested in a book about the strange inventions of the Second World War. The more people sign up the more leverage the publisher will have to say “see, look at all the people who are interested!” when they go to various brick and mortar stores. Thanks!
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First up I’d like to talk to you about how we are working on this book. It started with me selecting 23 inventions that I felt were the most interesting, coolest, stupidest, or most unknown. As a caveat to that last one, I tried to steer clear of things like the Nazi UFOs that involve much more speculation than actual information. Once I had those inventions picked out and Mike Doscher and Josh Hass had been selected as the artists we began the surprisingly fun process of working on the book itself.
It begins with me researching and writing a six to seven page article about an invention, collecting images relevant to the invention, and packing it all into a zip file. I send this on to Mike Doscher who creates a detailed three-quarters view of the vehicle. Mike is great and probably knows as much about World War II stuff as I do, which means he can add cool logical details not even mentioned in the text or in the often crude original drawings. On projects that consist of more than one component Mike will sometimes do two or three illustrations. Once his art is finalized I repackage it with the text I have written and the source images and send them on to Josh Hass, who turns the technical info and drawings into a fun, exciting, and dramatic color illustration. Not every one of the 23 or more inventions will receive the color treatment, which means I have to pick and choose which are worthy enough to get the royal treatment.
What are we working on right now? I’m glad I pretended you asked! Currently I am researching the sinister and beautiful German Horten Ho-IX, which represents one of the more widely known inventions we are covering in this book. The Horten was a curving bat-shaped flying wing design with two powerful Jumo turbojets and four 30mm cannons. It is also one of the few inventions we’re covering in the book that actually had a fully functional prototype. The Ho-IX was on the verge of entering production when the war ended and I can imagine such a handsome and powerful aircraft would have given the Allies a bit of a scare. Of course it was too little, too late.
Right now Mike is working on his rendering of the Seeteufel, a dopey miniature submarine developed by the Germans. The kicker: it had tank treads. You can check out Mike’s rough draft:
If you have any questions, comments, or criticism you can send them to zackparsons@somethingawful.com
