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the flaMinG C
Conan
Conan O’Brien has reached out to me twice to
build statues of him. One was a simple promotion
for the debut of his new show Conan on TBS. For
that I didn’t even meet with Conan; I worked off a
still photo.
He reached out again after he had developed
a character called The Flaming C with Warner
Bros. animator Bruce Timm. Now, Bruce is just
about as big a name as you will find in comic-
book art, having been responsible for some of
the best interpretations of Batman, Superman,
Justice League, and the Green Lantern. But
Conan’s brief to Bruce was very . . . well, very
Conan.
When all else fails, there’s always delusion.
—Conan O’Brien
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“I want a belt that has this thing for my
BlackBerry on it . . . a stylized C, maybe with
flames coming off it . . . and a Star of David
behind it. Oven mitts, with some steam coming
off the mitts . . . and maybe a jai alai glove on
the other one. You know, I would like to be
the first guy wearing shoes, like loafers, and
socks. Like an old man’s socks with garters.
And fishnets.”
Conan’s Flaming C quickly gathered a life of its
own and generated a whole lot of fan art. So
Conan decided to exhibit the best of this fan
art in a gallery during the 2011 Comic-Con in
San Diego. They asked me to build a life-size
sculpture of Bruce and Conan’s creation out of
LEGO bricks for the window of the gallery.
I got it finished and went down to San Diego
for the opening, and Conan’s there with his TV
crew, walking through the gallery filming, and
he comes up to me and says, “So I hear you
did this.”
Me: “Yeah, yeah, that’s me.”
Conan: “So how long did it take you?”
Me: “Ten days nonstop. I worked soooo hard on
this . . . ”
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