I love decals. I even love the word decals. I especially love the fact that the word is derived from decalcomania. What a fab word that is too! ‘Transfers’ just isn’t in the same league, sorry.
I especially love vinyl-cut-decals, that’s the peel and stick sort, but I have a problem and it’s this. I like them so much that I can’t peel and stick them, or rub over the dry transfer sort with my biro. I also loved Letraset you see (dry-transfer lettering – other makes are available, probably. Heck I don’t even know if you can still get Letraset!), I just hated to use them. I loved the unsullied, unused sheet. I just like to stare at them! I did it when I was a kid with a sheet of fabulous different trees – just couldn’t stick them down.
You see, while the decals are still there on that sheet the possibilities are endless! So many eventualities to be explored and imagined, scenarios to be worked out – and while that’s the case then Schrödinger’s cat is both still alive and dead! The waveform hasn’t collapsed, hurrah!
The same is true with my stories and plots. I carry a lot of ideas around in my head and I explore the different possibilities, varying different scenes and thinking about other eventualities.
Press or stick them down and the cat’s dead or alive. Of course, you have to do that with stories in the end, which is almost kind of sad, but that’s what a story is.
You don’t have to do it with decals!
And this is why I have I still have a reasonably ‘mint’ Worlds Collide Number 1 July 1994 DC/Milestone Comics in printed plastic bag with decals – that have never been used. I could have adorned my cover with my own punch-ups but couldn’t have unpeeled the superheroes to save my life.
While they are there the possibilities are still endless.
Nicely Strongoak 