Some of you comics-savvy readers may be familiar with Philip Bond, a British comic book artist who has done a lot of awesome stuff both here and across the pond. (He’s worked on such titles as Tank Girl and Kill Your Boyfriend.) Since 2009, Bond has been creating a set of drawings of famous female astronauts, from Valentina Tereshkova to Margaret Seddon, and we think they’re heavenly. On display at Bond’s flickr page, each drawing includes a caption with facts and stats about the spacewoman depicted. Bond says of the series,
Working for months at a time just penciling a comic book, I started these portraits to get a bit of inking and colouring out of my system. I shouldn’t say ‘portraits;’ I’m not going for much of a likeness. Usually I’ll glance at a couple of photographs and then go off and draw a vague impression. Margaret Seddon is blonde, Judith Resnik is a bit barmy looking, that sort of thing.
I started with Valentina Tereshkova in January 2009, thinking if I drew one every week, I’d finish the series around the end of the year. See how well that worked out.
Here’s Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space:
And this is Susan Helms, who holds the record for longest spacewalk– 8 hours and 56 minutes!
To see the entire gallery of stars, moonwalk this way.
[All images via Philip Bond on Flickr, rights reserved. Top photo is Svetlana Savistkaya, the second woman in space and the first woman to perform a spacewalk.]
