"Children of Woe" commentary track

[jkcarrier]

An idea shamelessly stolen from Carla Speed McNeil and Layla Lawlor: Background notes on some of my comics, broken down page by page. Think of this as the DVD commentary track. First up is the Glorianna story, “Children of Woe”.

 

(If you haven’t read this particular story, you can remedy that situation by sending me a measly buck via snail mail or Paypal)

Glorianna: The Children of Woe

 

This storyline was originally published as 4 minicomics: Glory #1-4, published between December 1991 and December 1992. It was reprinted in 1995 as a single minicomic called The Glory Omnibus.

 

And yes, some years after that, Rob Liefeld came out with his own sword-wielding heroine named “Glory”, published through Image. I was annoyed, but just kind of shrugged and kept on doing what I was doing. I figured, on the remote chance he ever stumbled across my obscure little mini and wanted to kick up a fuss, I had sufficient evidence that I was there first.

 

But then in ’97, Dan Nauenburg and I hatched a scheme to publish a full-size, direct market-distributed Glory one-shot. Since, unlike the minicomic, this book would be sitting on the shelves right next to Liefeld’s, the name became an issue. If I were a little more ballsy, I would have sent Image a “cease and desist” letter, and maybe gotten some free publicity out of the deal. But, being a wuss, I decided to just change the title. My character’s full name was always “Glorianna”, with “Glory” just being a nickname that looked nice on the logo. So we dropped the nickname and titled the one-shot Glorianna. Not a big deal, all things considered, but I couldn’t help but smirk a bit when Liefeld’s Glory (and the rest of his line) sank into oblivion.

 

Chapter One

 

Cover (aka Page 1): The Glorianna image is actually a painted animation cel, done for a college class. The background photo came from National Geographic magazine. I didn’t own a scanner in those days, so I sandwiched the two pictures together and shot a halftone with the photostat camera at work. I did all the production work on my early comics on that camera. It was a cranky, elderly wreck of a machine, but I got some nice results with it in those pre-Photoshop days.

 

Tim Kelly used to tease me that Glorianna was a dead ringer for Peg Bundy from Married With Children. Let’s hear it for big hair!

 

Title Page (aka Page 2): The original version of this was hand-lettered; I did the typeset version when I reprinted the storyline in The Glory Omnibus. Fantasy Cliché #517: The Ominous Prophecy. At least it doesn’t say anything about Glori being destined to be a queen or change the world or any of that stuff; it’s strictly about her personal satisfaction. Incidentally, I’ve changed my mind at least once about the identity of Glorianna’s “twin”, and reserve the right to do so again, up until the moment I finally put it down on paper. I’m bad that way.

 

Page 3: Fantasy Cliché #518: Fighting The Big Phallic Snake. It slides between her legs, even. I was definitely conscious of the sexual subtext here (although I have to admit that one reason the monster was a snake was because it was a lot easier to draw than a tiger or some other complex quadruped). Right from the start, I intended sex to be an important theme in the series. I have always been annoyed at the comic book “bad girls” who are drawn in a highly sexualized manner, and yet never seem to get around to having any actual sex. I find that dishonest. If you’re going to use sex as a selling point, then follow up on it.

 

The mixed-case lettering was an experiment, one of those “How come nobody does it this way?” things you have to try for yourself. I wasn’t satisfied with it, and ended up going back to traditional all-capitals in #2. In retrospect, though, it doesn’t look all that bad.

 

Page 5: Glori stopping to catch her breath. Just a grace note to establish that she’s tough, but not superhuman.

 

Page 6: Another tenet of my beliefs about sexuality in comics: If you’re going to have the ladies running around in ridiculous, skimpy attire, it’s only fair to do the same with the guys. Mike Grell’s Warlord (one of the big influences on Glori) was always very egalitarian in that way.

 

Portai is named and modeled after actor Sidney Poitier. I only wish I could’ve done justice to those intense, penetrating eyes of his. Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Teemis is named after Mr. T (although he doesn’t look much like him aside from the mohawk).

 

Page 7: The big Planet of the Apes moment, where I establish that Glori’s world is not some medieval past, but a post-apocalyptic future. That’s meant to be a huge cargo plane that they’re living in, but it’s so poorly drawn that I don’t think everyone got what I was implying. I had originally toyed with the idea of making this even more overt, with Glori scooting around on a battered old motorcycle in more of a Mad Max style. But in the end my love of fantasy won out, and the sci-fi elements stayed mostly in the background.

 

Page 8: Fantasy cliché #519: The Evil Queen. Idonta was partly inspired by a woman I used to work with, who had one of the best “sinister grins” I’ve ever seen in real life (no, it wasn’t Karen, although she has a pretty evil grin herself). She was also a big fan of Erté, and his fashion designs were an influence on Idonta’s elaborate outfits.

 

Chapter Two

 

Cover (Page 1): Having liked the cel + photograph effect on issue 1, I resolved to do the rest of the series covers in the same fashion. But I immediately ran into trouble coming up with appropriate photos. Remember, this was back in ’92, before the internet and Google made it easy to dig up images on any topic imaginable. I finally settled on this airplane image, which came from a book on the history of Boeing. It’s the wrong kind of plane, and the angle doesn’t match up with the foreground at all, but it works well enough on a symbolic level, I guess.

 

Page 2: Ladies and gentlemen, the inking magic of Karen O’Donnell. I had originally met Karen about a year earlier, when we both contributed to a locally-produced anthology comic called Nuance. Later we ended up working in the same office, and we formed a sort of two-person support group, each of us prodding the other to keep creating and publishing in the wake of Nuance’s cancellation. The fact that Glori exists at all is the result of her encouragement, and asking her to ink issues #2-4 is probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Not only is she a much better draftsman than I am, I think her lush, romanticized style suits the character better than my pseudo-Kirby ink slashes.

 

Page 3: Some smartass called this my “Mandingo scenario”. I was really trying to be as color-blind as possible when it came to my treatment of the various characters here, but the black man / white woman combination inevitably has certain baggage associated with it, especially when there’s an element of coercion involved.

 

Page 4: I really should have spent some more time dealing with the women of the tribe, and how they felt about their roles as wives and mothers being passed off onto foreign slaves. And I ought to have established more clearly that there were, in fact, other slaves… as it is, it looks like Glori is supposed to repopulate the area by her lonesome.

 

This particular outfit of Idonta’s was inspired, not by classical illustration, but by something Sybil Danning wore on the tv series “V”.

 

Page 7: Glori’s first on-panel kill (not counting the snake from #1). The other guys are probably just knocked out.

 

Page 8: I like the ambiguity of Portai here. He thinks he’s “saving” her by pulling her out of the general slave pool. But he’s still essentially claiming “dibs” on raping her. (And he’s a cheat besides… he never could have taken her in a fair fight).

 

Chapter Three

 

Cover (Page 1): The very first bit of “fan art” I ever received was this terrific illo by Steve Roman (creator of Lorelei). A quick transfer to film, a little acrylic paint, a photo of a church swiped from Connoisseur magazine, and I had a cover.

 

Page 2: Eight years before, Idonta predicts Jennifer Lopez’s infamous Grammy Awards dress. I’m still waiting for chaimail bikinis to trickle down to the mainstream.

 

Page 6: And here we see the first example of one of Glorianna’s biggest character flaws: she’s an absolute sucker for a pretty face and a smooth line. She has serious self-esteem issues. You can decide for yourself whether Portai is at all sincere, or whether he’s just sweet-talking his way into her pants. Either way, he’s still a sleazeball, because she’s really not in any position to refuse.

 

Page 7: I don’t know about you, but whenever something I’ve been dreading finally happens, regardless of how it turns out, I get this sort of moment of zen clarity immediately after – like a switch has been flipped and I can suddenly think straight again. That’s what Glori gets here – with that Big Looming Fear out of the way, the wheels start turning and she can formulate an exit strategy.

 

Adventure cliché #520: The Conveniently-Placed Trap Door.

 

Page 8: The second tip-off about the nature of Glorianna’s world. What exactly is in those barrels, you ask? Weird toxic sci-fi mutating goo. You know, like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It makes women sterile and turns babies into monsters.

 

Chapter Four

 

Cover (Page 1): And I totally crap out on the last cover. The beautiful illo is by Karen, and I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a good background. I tried to find something fiery and apocalyptic, but nothing usable turned up. In desperation, I went with the op-art effect you see here. It’s actually the inside of a big domed ceiling, which I found in an old art textbook. The original version wrapped around to the back cover.

 

Page 2: Damn. Just sit back and admire that amazing cross-hatching for a minute.

 

Page 5: “Mommy!” In case it’s not clear, that big warty monster is the child that Idonta was pregnant with in that flashback in Chapter Three. Poor guy is at most 3 or 4 years old. Idonta is assuming that any other children born in this “cursed” land will likewise turn out to be giant beasts, which she hopes to turn into an army. Hence her eagerness to capture as much foreign “breeding stock” as possible. As with other aspects of this story, this probably could have used more pages to spell things out better.

 

Page 7: Portai tries to redeem himself (albeit, conveniently, after he’s already gotten his rocks off). I really don’t like this guy, in case you hadn’t noticed. I think some readers latched onto him as the “love interest”, though. Because, you know, there’s always a “love interest”.

 

This is probably a good place to explain my views on romance (as opposed to sex) in fiction. In most comics, books, movies, etc., “the guy” and “the girl” meet, and you know that they were “meant” for each other, and 9 times out of 10 they will end up together in the end. Because I am mean and cynical, I didn’t want it to work that way for Glorianna. She meets guys (who may or may not be worthy of her), sleeps with some of them (usually for the wrong reasons), and has to deal with the emotional and other fallout when things go sour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Glorianna is young and kind of stupid (at least in this area), and she has some growing to do before she can start having healthy relationships.

 

Not that I’m claiming to be particularly bold or innovative in this area. What it comes down to is: I’m a fan of sword & sorcery fiction, so I have no problem swallowing most of the tropes associated with it. On the other hand, I’m not that big on romance tales, so I tend to thumb my nose at those traditions. The opposite would be something like Spaceballs, which cheerfully deconstructs sci-fi clichés, while featuring a very traditional “hero gets girl” romantic arc. We all have our own sacred cows, and our sacrificial lambs.

 

Page 8: I swear to God, Glori’s last line is not supposed to be some ironic inversion of Martin Luther King’s “Free at Last” speech. Even I’m not that cynical. I just needed an extra “beat”, so I repeated her line about being free, without thinking about the accidental allusion. Nobody ever called me on it, but it still makes me wince.