May the Hyperborean (1994)

 

Cover of PLOGG #1 (1994)

 May the Hyperborean, a little barbarian girl from the north, was originally featured in a prose story, "Nightmare in Metal", in 1990.  In December of 1991 I decided to start my own small press, Plogg Press, and designed a logo inspired by Jim Steranko's cover for THE INCREDIBLE HULK SPECIAL #1 (1968), which always thrilled me.  (Hulk's face was redrawn by Marie Severin, who was the Hulk's regular artist, and who also drew that issue.)

THE INCREDIBLE HULK SPECIAL #1 (1968), cover by Jim Steranko (and Marie Severin)

The next month, January 1992, I started working on a May the Hyperborean comic.  For some reason I made her a teenager.  I think I had in mind Robert E. Howard's Conan, whose original stories in WEIRD TALES in the 1930s followed no chronological order, jumping around from the Cimmerian's teens to his 40s.  I've since kept May at about age 9, just as Little Orphan Annie never aged.  As long as Archie comics are around, there will always be enough teen comics in the world.

Unused rough pencils for first page

I hadn't drawn a full comic since 1984, so I was rusty -- very rusty.  To make matters worse, I was working longer hours than a Victorian child in a cotton mill, six days a week.  I just didn't have time.  I drew the first three pages in 1992, and the rest in 1994, all in pen and ink.  (As you can see, I used dirt cheap 3-hole sheets of paper.)  I didn't finish the 16-page comic till the summer of 1994, two and a half years later.  I painted a cover for it and "published" the first issue of PLOGG early in August of 1994 in an edition of 40 copies.  I'm guessing you don't own one of these babies.

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Animation

 

Originally, the young girl featured in this 40-page comic was to be May the Hyperborean, whose only previous appearance was in 1990, in a piece of pulse-pounding prose titled "The Story of May", slightly revised in 1999 as "Nightmare in Metal".  May's dog, Digger, was perched on top of the armchair.  I'd hardly begun when, for some reason, I changed the character from May to that of "Betty Copper", simply by adding proper clothing over May's jungle girl-type bikini, and the whole story became a dream-like allusion to characters from Archie comics.

Betty Copper is, of course, Betty Cooper.  Both girls being blonde, I didn't have to change a single hair on May's head.  The gorilla is Big Moose, whose last name is Mason, hence the jar he was looking for.  Gilda Golde is none other than Veronica Lodge, Betty's wealthy best friend (and worst rival).  Gilda's subservient robot is Archie Andrews.  Dolton is the boy genius, Dilton Doiley.  Jawbone is seen stuffing his face with a sandwich, a favourite pastime for his counterpart, Jughead Jones.  Jawbone makes a passing reference to "Dismantle", who sabotaged the robot, just as Reggie Mantle always does his best to upset Archie's plans, or otherwise ruin his day.

When the forty pages are in a file on a computer and clicked through, they seem to move like an animated cartoon.  The story ends where it began, with Betty being bored.  The only difference between the first and last page is the bottle of pop: Betty sips it throughout the story, leaving it empty on the last page.

May the Hyperborean did finally make her comic book debut in PLOGG #1 (August 1994).

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