Captain Eddie's Space Camp

In reality, Ed Bateman is a mild-mannered University of Utah instructor, photo retoucher, and an artist with a virtual photo studio. (Watch the video here.)

In virtual reality, he is Captain Eddie.

(We interviewed Bateman recently for a story about the Deseret alphabet. He has a minor fetish for the old alternative alphabet. Read below.)

Bateman's retro sci-fi alter-ego evolved out of a job making logos for the Utah State Office of Education and out of his Space Age upbringing.

"I consider myself to be a child of the Space Age," he said. "I thought we'd all be eating food sticks and Tang and having Boy Scout troops on the moon.
That's the world I thought we'd be living in."

Bateman adoped a discarded logo for Captain Eddie's camp.

On Bateman's website you'll find Captain Eddie in a bright red marshmallow space suit planting a camp flag on the moon. There's Captain Eddie's hanging with a four-handed Van Gogh alien artist. And the Captain Eddie's Space Camp Songs album cover. Bateman occasionally makes Captain Eddie compilation CD's.

And for more than 25 years, Bateman has mailed out his, now eagerly anticipated, Captain Eddie Christmas cards.

"Captain Eddie's Space Camp became kind of semi-real to me."

I’m not the man they think I am at home.
Oh no, no, no, I’m a rocket man

Ed Bateman never took a Boy Scout trip to the moon. But Captain Eddie has many times.