It’s an odd experience when I find a piece of art I’d completely forgotten that I’d drawn. As soon as I see it again I recognize it as mine and I may even remember some of the details of its creation. This page and the six pages that follow are really vague in my memory. I suspect that a big part of the reason for this is that I didn’t write the story that’s being illustrated. When I’m illustrating someone else’s story I don’t feel the same attachment to the characters that I do if I’m the writer. It’s not that I put any less effort into the art, it’s just that the characters usually don’t stick around in my head after the job is done. They didn’t originate with me. I draw their portraits and they move on.
In 1993 Brave New Words had shut down. I was still friends with the publisher. We talked on a regular basis and he brought me projects to work on. One of those was a miniseries about the apocalypse. I think. He was going to write the script and I was going to draw it. I think he intended to shop it to a publisher. I don’t think he planned to publish it himself.
The series was called Wonderland. I’ve found parts of the script for the first issue. There’s a lot that happens off stage with characters reacting to things that the reader hasn’t seen. I believe it concerned a group of people who were out to prevent the end of the world. A lot of stories are about that. I remember that he wanted to the art to be high contrast black and white. If I remember correctly, he didn’t send me a full script. He faxed me the script in pieces. This was in 1993. I had a Mac desktop that I was sharing with my room mate. There was no email or internet.
The project didn’t get any farther than a script for the first issue and seven finished pages on my end. We moved on to other things.
It’s an odd experience when I’m shown a piece of art I’d completely forgotten that I’d written. How cool you found this!
I do believe I wrote a full script to the first issue, though I remember faxing it to you in pieces. I don’t believe I scripted more than that, though I know I had a twelve-issue outline I’ve long since forgotten. I have no idea who most of the characters are or what their role was. I do remember that we had a series of photographic covers based on the Tarot planned.
This was literally half my life ago. How thoroughly embarrassing and awesome.
Instead of “full script” I probably should have written “complete script, all at once”. You did fax the script in installments. From the script pages that I’ve found so far, it looks like I either didn’t draw all the pages sequentially or we decided that I should draw certain pages first. I don’t remember.
And speaking of things forgotten, somewhere in these boxes is the 24 hour comic that you, me and Pia did. I haven’t found it yet but I’ll let you know when I do.