The talented Manuel Perales has completed Part Two of his graphic novelization of Pierre Clostermann’s legendary book, The Big Show. To learn more about Manuel and Pierre, check out my earlier posting about part one. IF you’ve already read it, then you know that Manuel’s work is second to none, and I encourage you to reward his efforts (and reward yourself) by grabbing a copy of this rare gem while they last. You can check it out in all it’s eye-popping glory here.

One of the best written first-person accounts of air combat during World War Two is The Big Show by Pierre Clostermann. Pierre was a highly decorated pilot who flew Spitfires and Tempests for the RAF during WW2. Pierre passed away a couple years ago, but his memory lives on in hearts and minds of his friends, most notably the talented Spanish artist Manuel Perales, whose close personal association with Pierre resulted in the beautifully illustrated graphic novelization of The Big Show. Until recently, this wonderful book was not available in English, but Manuel has recently begun to offer English translations of his work in e-book format. The first part of his lovely book is available now from lulu.com. I highly recommend it.

You may also enjoy Manuel’s illustrated e-book history of the French volunteer “Normandie-Niemen” squadron that fought alongside the Russians during World War Two. Both these rare gems are being offered for sale by the artist himself, and are not available in print (in English) at the present time. so throw a little love Manuel’s way, and tell him Fritz The Fox sent you.

OK, anyone who has followed this site for any length of time knows I am not a big fan of Lockheed. And I try very hard to keep most of my postings here on the lighter side. But the proposed cancellation of the F-22 Raptor program by Defense Secretary Robert Gates really has my furry ears steaming. (Seriously. I can smell burning hair.)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m the first to agree that we tend to plan for the last war, and that the time may have come to rethink just how important our expensive air force is to the overall strategic picture. Personally, I think the new high ground is in space, and we should be building space-based weapon systems, but that is not a sentiment politicians are likely to embrace. Likewise, drones and other robotic weapon systems are changing the face of warfare in ways that can only be guessed at right now. But some combat roles tend to remain, even in the face of 21st technology. One of them is the foot soldier. Another is the armored warrior, whose latest manifestation is the main battle tank. Yet another is the long-range indirect fire weapon, whose humble origins as a catapult have led to the terrifyingly modern ICBM.

And then there is the bird of prey. Those who do not wish to travel only by night (and these days, even the cloak of night is little defense) must find a way to deny control of the sky to the enemy, lest he swoop in from above sowing death and discord. That is the job of the air superiority fighter. And no one has ever won air superiority with second rate equipment.

You can trim the fat from the USAF in a lot of places, but the F-22 is the wrong place to look.

The argument among Raptor critics is that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (isn’t doesn’t have a catchy name yet) will be a more cost-effective replacement. Given the track record of previous multi-service, committee-designed fighters (cough F-111 cough cough), color me skeptical. The F-35 is a glorified bomb truck designed to fill in for the aging lawn darts (F-16’s) in our arsenal. It was never designed to seize control of the skies from a hostile air force.

Air superiority fighters are not an option for the air force. They are what make all other air missions possible. Hitler forgot this during World War II and it cost him the air war. A cursory look at the combat performance of our own planes in the Gulf War will make it quickly apparent that the F-15 was the tip of the sword when it came to our air superiority in that conflict. The mud movers could not have done their job nearly as effectively if the Eagles had not swept the sky beforehand. How long do you think an A-10 would last without air cover? I’m guessing a Stuka pilot would know.

You can build all the drones or strike fighters you want, but they will be swatted down like so many flies unless you have control of the air. The F-15 can no longer keep doing this, because their cold war era airframes have been worn out in all our recent military adventures. The F-22 WILL do it, and the R&D is already paid for. They only get cheaper from here on in.

If you want to save money by ridding the air force of cold war relics, I suggest abandoning the strategic bomber, long since rendered obsolete by ICBM’s and cruise missiles, which has been enjoying a prolonged death scene that would makes Rasputin’s demise look sudden. Heck, the air force just voluntarily axed half their B-52’s in an effort to prevent cancellation of the F-22. I doubt they’d miss the other half.

You could probably safely scrap a few ICBM’s, too. We only need to blow up the entire planet once.

There are many weapons that a peace-loving country can do without. One of the most obvious lessons of past wars is that a strong economy is your best defense. Our economy won both World Wars, wars we entered with a decidedly second-rate air force. Our economy won the Cold War, by outspending and ultimately bankrupting Russia.

I suppose that Gates is thinking along the same lines. Why build it now when you don’t need it? Why not save the money and build it later if you do?

But it is no longer possible to produce weapons systems like the Raptor on demand when needed. The days of pencil pushing designers hatching a Mustang after a month at the drawing board are over. It takes ten years or better to design and test a modern fighter. We cannot afford to wait until someone identifies a clear threat requiring their existence. By then, it would be too late. We have to build them now, and hope they will never be needed. Yes, it is expensive, but it is far cheaper than the alternative.

War is expensive. If you don’t want to build Raptors, then build a world with enough food and fuel for everyone. But until there is enough to go around, there will be war.

The winner will be the one holding the high ground.

Hopefully in a Raptor.

It has come to my attention that Spacebat was not the first bat to be incinerated by the U.S. government. In a surreal bit of history that sounds more like a fiendish plot by the Joker than an actual defense project, the Mexican Free-tailed Bat was being considered as a means of delivering firebombs to Japanese cities during WWII. You can learn all about it at wikipedia.

Some of my cartoons have been compiled into a book, along with the work of many other aviation cartoonists, and is now available for sale from Martin Lewis Publications. Sales have been encouraging and a second volume is planned.

Many of the cartoons in the book will be on display at a forthcoming exhibition at the Dutch Military Aviation Museum.

Send a couple of F-4’s after it. At least, that’s one one Akron researcher is suggesting.

No real explanation about why it has to be F-4’s. I guess ‘cause they’re the Chuck Norris of airplanes. Or maybe because everything else is grounded pending some sort of inspection. Anyway, maybe now people will quit complaining about airplane noise…

This is an original digital painting depicting Chuck Yeager ejecting from a spinning NF-104, an aircraft designed to fly to the edge of space. It took me at least a couple hundred hours to create, largely due to the formidable amount of research involved in assuring every aspect of the picture was historically accurate.

And I can never sell it.

Why? Because during the course of researching the aircraft, I contacted Chuck Yeager in order to verify the authenticity of the art. I was not able to contact him directly, but his controversial wife, Victoria, relayed his approval for me, suggesting a minor change and, oh yes, mentioned that any prints I happened to sell of the work would entitle the Yeager’s to 10 percent of my proceeds. Whaaat?

Yes, despite the painting being an accurate portrayal of an historic event, and the absence of Chuck’s visage anywhere on the art, his wife still felt like I owed a piece of my income to their foundation. However, when negotiations over the details of any sales arrangements broke down, I simply shelved the art in disgust. Everything I’d learned about the Yeager’s and their dealings with others since embarking on the project had disillusioned me of Yeager’s public hero status. I no longer felt like immortalizing Chuck’s dubious accomplishment of discovering his limitations as an astronaut.

Every once in a while, I drag the picture out of the mothballs and wonder what else I can do with it. Sadly, even if I ignored Yeager’s ridiculous claim on my work, I would still have to face the even more formidable legal guns over at Lockheed, especially if I were unwise enough to actually name the picture something descriptive like “Lockheed Starfighter” and then attempt to sell the image in a calendar or on a t-shirt. It seems Lockheed has recently taken the position that any likeness of their aircraft is their sole property and may only be sold under license. Whaaat?

Yes, as various, now bankrupt, model companies have learned the hard way, Lockheed expects to get a piece of the pie from anyone who wants to recreate the likenesses of “their” aircraft. Never mind that that “their” aircraft are actually a collection of parts manufactured by a dozen other corporations under contract to the U.S. Government, who assigned the plane its designation and financed it with public money. They have hired an entire corporation of trademark lawyers to manage and license their property, (And, by their property, I mean our property, since we paid for it) and they have been doing so with a zeal that is as frightening as it is indiscriminate.

I know this personally, as Cafepress just recently asked me to remove an image of an F-16 because Lockheed’s lawyers claimed it infringed on their Intellectual Property (and by “asked”, I mean that I was simply informed that the image had already been removed…thankyou, DMCA). A quick search of the USPTO’s database assured me that Lockheed had, indeed, been granted trademarks on almost every conceivable variation of the names and designations of their products in almost every applicable category of trademark. There are over 40 categories, because it is not likely that someone would confuse F-16, the airplane with F-16, the soda pop, so it is possible for manufacturers of different products using the same name to coexist peacefully. Unless, of course, a very rich corporation decides to buy up all the trademarks in every available category.

Anyone trying to depict an F-16 on any saleable product can live in fear of the wrath of one of the largest defense contractors in the world. Their licensing FAQ graciously grants painters and photographers a “free license” to portray their work on canvas or film (but not in any medium they might want to reproduce it in, like a book or poster), provided it meets minimum professional standards and portrays their plane in a positive light. So I guess a badly drawn Falcon suffering a flame out would get you twenty lashes. They haven’t explicitly trademarked the Starfighter in any category but scale models yet, but then, what’s another 300 dollar trademark application fee to Lockheed? To me, it’s a car payment, but to them, it’s just another arrow in the quiver. I can pay or live in fear of an arrow in the back.

So where do I go from here? Is there any way I can somehow justify the hundreds of man hours I spend creating images of airplanes? More importantly, what is the point in investing a lot of time and energy creating aviation-related artwork so that some corporate lawyer can come along later and stick a flag in it?

Grumman aircraft has also taken Lockheed’s aggressive I.P. approach, and I have to wonder just how long it will be before every aircraft manufacturer starts smelling blood in the water? It is difficult to make money as an illustrator now, as the digital revolution has made the ready availability of all images ubiquitous…one of the few promising revenue streams for illustrators left is merchandising, but for an aviation illustrator, this obviously means reproducing the likenesses of aircraft. If companies like Lockheed can threaten that revenue stream by asserting control over the mere likenesses of their products, then I might as well take up house painting.

So my question to you is: Why bother? Does a legal battle await every aviation artist who attempts to put his art on a t-shirt? Can Lockheed (or any other aircraft manufacturer) assert these same controls over the mere likeness of their planes everywhere? Will I eventually need to defensively trademark every aircraft I illustrate to be safe from corporate IP lawyers? So far, one or two companies, typically overseas, have resisted the urge to trademark every word in the company catalog, but I wonder how long it will be before it becomes a free for all?

  After years of enthusiastically devoting my time and talent to aviation in many capacities, I am seriously contemplating walking away from it all. I’ve no desire to spend my autumn years building a castle made of sand if it looks like the tide is coming in. I am completely sickened by the growing number of corporations intent on using their legal firepower to assert control over freedom of expression by taking ownership of every conceivable outlet for it. This country has been running from the ugly specter of communism so fast that it has stumbled unwittingly into the arms of corporatism. Either way, we own nothing.

In recognition of this uncomfortable revelation, I am making this image, at high resolution, available to anyone who wants it. You can download the high-rez version and do whatever you want with it. I don’t care. If I can’t claim ownership to my own work, then it really doesn’t matter to me what happens to it. My only hope now is that it can serve as some sort of beacon to warn others of the perils of surrendering too much control of their lives to powerful corporate entitites that don’t give a hoot about anything other than money.

And Stockheed is welcome to a mouthfull of fox fanny fur.

I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on Fritz the Fox’s new book, and I could use YOUR help in finishing it. The book is a guide to WW2 airplanes, and is full of great photos and illustrations, but there are a few pictures I haven’t been able to get my paws on yet. If you happen to have taken a great photo of a Mitsubish A6M Zero or an IL-2 Sturmovik, be it at a museum or at an air show or wherever, and would be willing to grant me permission to publish it in Fritz’s book, please give me a shout.