My Cosmos production during October and the majority of November 1999 is, for whatever reason, pretty patchy – apart from a few isolated bits of artwork and two ‘Sunday’-style comic strips, I did not contribute much toward the growth of the Cosmos-verse during this time. Still, what I did create is certainly worthy of note:
First is an example of me thinking ahead (perhaps prematurely, based on how many – or how few – comic strips I had at that point) and considering the potential future applications of Cosmos as printable media: I crafted a title page for a putative Cosmos book, ala the collections put out by Jim Davis and Charles Schultz for Garfield and Peanuts respectively. The ‘copyright info’, unsurprisingly for me, contains several in-jokes – Polyphex and Hydrus Four are locations in the Transformers universe, as is Iacon; whereas ‘Futuron City’ is a key setting in my short-lived superhero comic ‘Toon Squad’.
A bit of one-off artwork is next, which graced the front of an envelope of comic strips I sent to some friends of mine at Freelance Animation School in Auckland, to introduce them to the world of Cosmos. The ‘Merchandising-goldmine-superweapon’ spiel on the slab Artie and Gene are carrying is a reference to a Godzilla parody I did in the same year; the star of which rampages alone at the top of the artwork. And those are some…. interesting shoulders Artie and Gene have there….
Star Trek vs. Iron Man? I posited this imaginary slugfest on a piece of birthday card art for a fan of both franchises. Could a phaser out-zap Iron Man’s repulsor-blasts? In this case, it seems so!
Is it just me, or did Gene have a rather nasty sense of humour back in the old days? I can’t see him doing something like this to Artie (or, in fact, anyone) these days…. Let alone Artie being foolish enough to fall for it! Oh, well, he will learn…. he will learn….
I must have been busy for most of November, surely. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for A) this being the only strip I did between the 15th of October (see above) and the 26th of November (see the next chapter), and B) it being a Halloween strip that came out nearly a month after Halloween had been and gone! Still, it works pretty darn well (there is a definite Garfield influence, once again) in and of itself. And the fact that is virtually dialogue-less really makes the humour flow smoothly. Good work, 1999 Jon!
TO BE CONTINUED….
When Nonsense Collides! 