5.06: There be monsters! (Character genesis/evolution)

I mentioned a few posts ago that both Good-Guy and the monsters being used in the Chapter 5 opening sequence had their origins in a comic I was working on many years ago... 1993 to be exact. This was pretty early in my days attempting to be a cartoonist and certainly in the dim dark days before the internet had any real accessibility (they might have invented Netscape v1 by then but I don't think so)... so this early effort has remained unseen by other eyes... until now that is!!

I don't know if it's ill advised of me to share this early art, story and character design, but what the hey, I'll do it anyway. In those days I was big on scratchy detail, worked in B&W and only had the attention span to enable me to produce two pages before I lost interest. Actually it was less than two pages - as you'll see some parts of the two pages remain incomplete. Oh, well! Also, I've censored out the names of the characters... I'm not sure if I'll be using those names in this version of their story and I want to keep my options (and any potential mystery about their names) open.

Finally, you'll notice this story starts in the countryside and in very early musings about this new Magellan story I had considered doing the same. But the story became something much, much more than the 1993 version could or ever would have been and for that reason it's been moved to the city.

Anyway, there are three characters in the 1993 story that bear some passing resemblance to three of those in page 5.06... I have modified and evolved their appearances for Worst Field Trip Ever - quiet extensively in two cases. For reasons unremembered, the fourth character in the 1993 story was never drawn and I've indicated where he was meant to have been with some grey shading in a couple of the panels. At any rate, that fourth character hasn't made it to Worst Field Trip, the fourth one in today's update (the ssspiky one) is a new character. Enough rambling - here are the pages...

• page 1
• page 2

Whatcha think?? I should stress (very, very strongly) that despite assertions by the farmer, the characters aren't necessarily 'aliens'... and I can assure you that, unlike claims made on page 2, the updated characters definitely won't have gained their appearance/powers through the consumption of 'radioactive beer'...!

My favourite part is that 'Captain Good-Guy' has a yellow pages listing under 'Superheroes'. If you can't read the small print it says: "No crisis too small! * From catastrophe to cat in a tree!! * Prompt service * Package deal!!" I still think the 'from catastrophe to cat in a tree' is pretty witty. Other superheroes listed include Captain Dynamic, Captain New South Wales (oh brother!) and Duperman.

OK - moving on...! The next update will take us back to the Academy on Magellan Island. I'm pretty sure you're as excited by this as I am... despite the recent Mindmistress/Rochelle story it seems like ages since we were there last - it's certainly been some months since we saw Kaycee last. That will be remedied from next week!