Where do I start?
I’m pretty sure this is the most effort ever put into painting some kind of psychological portrait of a Gil Thorp character. Usually these demented cubist weirdoes just do bizarre stuff like cut off their legs or hit themselves in the back of the head with a stick without any obvious motivation, but for some reason we’re getting the full backstory on what makes the A-Train tick. Sure, it’s nothing ground-breaking — oh my God, a star high school athlete is kind of competitive! — but I have to admit to really liking the final flashback panel, where Andrew savagely crumples up his own paper when he discovers that his girlfriend is smarter than he is. His twisted, angry face makes it look like this is the moment when Lex Luthor decided to become a genius supervillain. “I’ll show her who knows more about American history … when I rule America! MOO ha ha!”
I can do this. I can do this and better. I think the formula is somewhere between dada and pop art. Give me some ideas here.
I was going to say I can't do high school sports because I hate sports, but then I thought, "Hey, wouldn't that mean sports are about the most anti thing I can do, thus making it rather dada?" But then I figured that I can't directly rip off Gil Thorp like that. There are always high school art fegs? Or maybe like Charlotte Simmons-inspired high school cheerleaders. That would be very anti for me, too.
