Barbelith Underground > Conversation > Lateshift XVIII: In which our intrepid hero finds clues in a glass of white wine.

Well these were the 'serious' annotations I was going to include with the comics....
Comics by me...
spelling mistakes by Molson

1. Cthulhu. This is the first one I did. 3 simple characters, each made from 4 simple shapes. Think of the possibilities...THINK OF THEM!!! The idea for Chthulu came to me after reading either a friends diaryland entry or email where she said she was looking for someone who played bridge. This was an old entry and I thought..'What if she's still looking for a fourth for bridge...How far will one person go to play a game?". I wanted Cthulu to look cute...like a puppy waiting to be petted. My friend said it got really funny when he noticed the cards in Cthulus hands. One day I want to do a strip with a big Lovecraftian Cthulu..one day.

2. The One Ring. The idea for this one came to me after watching the 2 two towers. '91 is when I graduated from high-school and one of my friends was in the highschool jazzband. (I was in the Environmental club if you must know). Even now im still not sure I made the right decision in giving mage 1 a mouth.

3. Successful Love Spell. It never fails to amaze me the amount of people who claim to be mages and go to any lengths to proove how amazing they are.

4. Chainsaw. I loved the Evil Dead movies and wanted to incorporate them into a strip. When I come up with the ideas for the strips I usually picture a short scene and then try to find the most important elements to narrow that scene down to one image. Here I could see the two mages on the right preparing for weeks, chanting memmorizing and casting only to have the last mage walk in with the implements he has here.

5. Monkeys. Its insane the amount of adds there are for magic and psychics and the ilk. Especially money spells. They never work (after all if you could get major money through magic would you share the secret?)

6. Stupid Hat. One of my favorite cartoons as a kid was Dungeons and Dragons. In it these kids from our world would go travel a different world (the realm of Dungeons and Dragons) and be chased by Venger, the main baddie, who wanted their Weapons of Power. One weapon was a green mages hat. This is my little tribute to the joy this show brought me every saturday morning.

7. Nothing Up My Sleeve. The idea was one of the magelings drank too much and started acting like a drunk guy at a party. The hardest part was making a convincing set of drunk eyes without using irises and pupils.

8. Polymorph. I like the look of the polymorphed mage. It was a large departure form the simple design I had for Cthulu in the first cartoon and it took a while for me to decide to go so detailed. Looking back I think I made the right decision as later cartoons would suffer had the creatures been kept as simplistic as in the first one.

9. Ugly Hat. This one came to me after seeing a book (I think it was The Eye In The Triangle) in the local magick shop with a picture of Aleister Crowely on the cover wearing an egyptian style hat.

10. New Hat. The funniest thing to me is when I pictured the first mageling putting the hat on for the first time. I also like the magick effect which I got by photographing soapbubbles in the kitchen sink when I was washing the dishes then a little photoshoping and voila instant stream of power. (for those of you counting...yes, this IS my third hat strip...I like hats. Not on me. But I like hats.)

11. Learn To Land. I have no idea where this one came from..it could be the pidgeons downtown.

12. Source Of All Evil. You know your reaching beyond your capabilities when this is what you end up you summonning. (The wings were also a soap buble derrivative.)

13. Ghost Or Angel. I dont know what possesd me to do this one. Although I do plan on bringing the ghost/angel? character back.

14. JUMP! I could imaging if the broomstick lesson from Harry Potter took place indoors. All nervous about their first attempt when someone yells and they over react thus launching themselves into the ceiling.

15. Magic Mirror. There's just something about a magic mirror that screams BigBrother (the tv show).

16. Hotels. I have a friend who always wins at monopoly (and almost every other game we play). I want that creature the next time we play.

17. The Closet. The idea for this one came from watching SNL repeats and one epidsode had Gilda Radner playing a child worried about the monster in the closet. When your whole life is dealing with monsters and other ghoulies you have to imagine they'd be everywhere around the house.

18. How Do YOU Like It? I like the idea that one of the mageling gives Death a taste of his own medicine. The pop-out eyes are good but its the looks on the magelings face that I love.

19. Heh Heh Heh. Im not sure about this one. Its supposed to be a fire demon. maybe it needed flames. So far this is my favorite creature...reminds me of Where The Wild Things Are.

20. Smuggling Squid. I dont know what I was on when I came up with this Idea. Very Dada. But strangely enough this one makes it to alot of peoples favorites lists (originally started as an image of a spider)

21. Snot Golum. Another favorite creature because of the amount of work that went into its creation. The texture is from some liquid in a pot on the stove that the fat in it had risen to the top and taken that pattern. I love the idea of these mages spending months memorizing spells and incantations, making sure each and every sylable and inflection is perfect..only to sneeze.

22. Don't Mix. Spellbooks sounds alot like cookbooks..thus a joke was born.

23. Hot Potato. I wanted to do something with Frankenstein. I love his face but the body could be better.

24. Fireball. If you have a younger brother you just have to torment him. In this case it means making him the brunt of you spells. My brother used to grab my legs and run down the stairs....but im not bitter.

25. Whale. I wanted to do a whale joke after rewatching The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. The whale in Hitchhikers is just wonderful. (careful observers will notice the texture on the whale is the same as on the snot gollum.)

26.Gong. I just REALLY hate boy-bands.

27. No More Disguises. If you're going to do a strip about mages you start thinking about other magic users. And how you're going to bring about their demise. I love the look of the scarecrow costume. Im planning on doing a short mini-series in OZ, there's just too many good jokes there to pass up. Incidentally this is the first strip in a bunch that have to deal with the mages Oz adventures....

28. Using a computer to do these cartoons you think of ways to combine magic and computers...and dso we have the integration of the word 'spell'....one word..two meanings...

29. Originally I was just trying to draw a creature and it turned out looking like a frog so I thought of the Bollywug episode of the great Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Then it occured to me that I couldn't just rip-off th ebollywug concept...and so the clone army idea. This is also a tribute to how much I hated new Star Wars. (I say new star wars because I consider it along the same vein as the New Coke concept.)