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.

May pg1

May pg2

May pg3

May pg4

May pg5

May pg6

May pg7

May pg8

May pg9

May pg10

May pg11

May pg12

May pg13

May pg14

May pg15

May pg16

Sunny Afternoon

"Sunny Afternoon"; pen and ink; 22" x 28" Bristol board; 1980/1981.

Back in 1980, when I was 16, I went and bought a pair of jeans -- probably the first time I ever went and bought an article of clothing for myself.  They were dark navy blue, which I didn't like, but there weren't a lot of choices where I came from, not at that time.  The next morning, when no one else was around, I decided to throw them in the washing machine and fade them.  I'd never used the washing machine before, either, but I reckoned I could handle it.  I threw in the jeans -- no water -- poured Javex bleach directly on the jeans, made a few calculations, then started up the machine.  Well, what I had was a pair of jeans, only slightly faded, with a big splash of white down the side of the left leg, looking something like the Milky Way.  Not wanting to waste a new pair of jeans, I wore them anyway.  I felt like an idiot, at first, but then I grew to liking them.  They were unique!

It was around this time that I started working on this picture.  A giant battle scene, with humans, aliens and monsters.  Visually, it's confusing.  The detailed line work was influenced by Philippe Druillet and Enki Bilal, and all those figures are hard to untangle -- but not impossible.

I did it a little bit here and there, when I had time, since I was also working on other projects.  It took me half a year to complete.  Unfortunately, I spilled ink on the left side of the drawing about halfway through.  It was devastating.  I painted over the black blot with white watercolour, I think, then had to redraw the damaged part -- except I couldn't remember what I had originally drawn.  But I managed, drawing something and matching up the lines.  The correction is most visible.

But there was still more devastation.  I was wearing my unique, white-flecked jeans on that occasion, and the ink splashed all over the left leg.  Now I had a mix of black and white splashes on the same leg.  But I got over the initial disappointment the next day, when I realised no one else in the world had a pair of jeans like mine!

I named the drawing after the Kinks song.