Today’s 1997 sketches –

In blue pencil and in the center, Beastie makes her return. At this point the character had acquired a fairly complex backstory. She was Dorothy Gale, post Oz, post marriage and widowhood. In this version Dorothy lived the life you read about in the Oz books, let herself age and finally, sometime in the sixties, came back to America, got married and had a kid. Her husband and kid were killed so Dorothy, in the depths of depression, had herself returned to childhood. She grew up in America this time, though she still had an unusual childhood. She became a child actress and, for a while, starred on the most popular sitcom on TV. When that ended she joined the military, spent time as an MP and, after an honorable discharge, she set herself up as a fixer. Since she was rich from her acting career she didn’t need to work for money and could take any case that interested her. Now that I’m working on Oz Squad, Beastie has become someone else again.

The guy with his tongue sticking out is Archie Andrews, the brunette is Veronica Lodge. When I draw corporate comic strip/book characters I rarely make an attempt to present them in the corporate house style. It’s more fun for me to see if I can make them recognizable in my own style.

The dude with the pompadour and the goatee? No idea.
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Got back from the Lovecraft Film Festival about mid day yesterday. It was a lot of fun. Derek handed out about ninety copies of The Unspeakable and the Inhuman, the comedy audio serial he co-wrote and produced. Ramsey Campbell kindly autographed a copy of one of his books that I’d brought with me. I met Scott Glancy and very briefly discussed doing work for Pagan Publishing.

Derek and I decided to concentrate on watching short films, the sort of material that we’d be unlikely to find at the video store. Most of what we saw was interesting, though not all of it was good. One of my favorite pieces Old Time’s Sake had some of the best acting but suffered from poor sound and no budget special effects. There were three versions of The Music of Erich Zann, a story that I’m not so fond of to begin with. There was a very icky claymation version of From Beyond. And, as they say, many more.

Tonight I’m planning to go to see a block of short films by Seattle area film makers. Specifically I’m going to see Little Red Riding Hood by my friend SJ Chiro. Who knows what other little treasures I’ll see?