Getting back to drawing comics after a long, sad break. The armoured car is inspired by the Ansaldo Lancia 1ZM, but I wasn’t so happy with the design after all. This one looks completely different from this one. I just removed those weird rails because they were in the way – artistic license!
Apparently the Futurist guru Marinetti drove a Lancia 1ZM in a state of delirante amore towards the end of the First World War. I should read L’alcova d’acciaio.
“This one looks completely different from this one.”
It seems there were several different models (including at least one without the weird rails), as seen in
http://s252.photobucket.com/user/NUBINA/media/acrrr.jpg.html
(none of which, by the way, seems to perfectly match either version you link to.)
It must have been a quite deadly weapon, though. I imagine how many opposing troops died of acute laughter at just seeing this “geringonça”.
Geringonça, what a wonderful word! Thank you for the comment, much appreciated. Perhaps I could justify the removal of the rails (apparently for cutting wires) that they wouldn’t be necessary in riot control. But I kind of regret not drawing any windows…!! Oh well, that can be fixed before printing…
“Geringonça” is Portuguese for a disconjoined machine, something that works badly or that looks like it will work badly. Yes, quite a nice word, and one for which I could not find an English similar.
This machine is evidently too tall for its quite narrow witdth. It was even worse because it originally had a second turret on top of the first one, which was later suppressed, resulting in the vehicle you placed at the service of Gabrielle d’An… er, the Dux. But you are right, this thing is best suited for riot control than for war.