I had been working on the drawing that ended up on the cover of issue seven since I saw the Filip Leu poster of a walking, talking machine in Pierre Chapelan’s shop in Montreal.  I loved that poster and tried to draw a version of it for Eikon ads, but because we never had a machine for sale it just wouldn’t work.  Once the Green Monster Kit got closer to being for sale, I started working on the drawing again.  In January of 2006 I dug out a bunch of Robert Crumb stuff and formatted the drawing to be the cover of issue seven.  I also worked on an intricate border based on the borders around Mad Magazine covers from the 50’s.  Ultimately, I felt that putting the border on the cover would make the issue look too different from the previous six issues, so that border got stuck on three ads inside the issue because I really wanted to get it in print somewhere.

There are two important articles in issue seven; one is on calculating wattage, the other is on machine force.  There’s a how-to on needle-making that I thought was important to get into the magazine because more and more tattooers just use pre-made needles and they’ve never ever seen anyone solder their own needles.

There were a lot of really well done entries to the coloring contest from issue six.  In the end I felt kind of bad because some of the entries were really amazing, but somebody actually tattooed it on some guy’s back.  We all looked at the photo critically… it’s either really tattooed into that guy, or they did a good job of making it look real - the tattoo concept was like a trump card - they had to win, but there were better entries and some of them are hung up at Eikon.  For issue seven I wanted the coloring contest to get back to the “Citizen Kane” thing - so I drew the girl right out of the movie.  At first it looked a little weird but in reality I think a lot of tattooers get weird ideas about certain girls - or certain girls get weird ideas about tattooers.

Best line in Issue 7

 “What was once a plain looking machine is now totally awesome!”  (Coil Customizing How-To Article, p.33)