THE ARTIST KNOWN AS LUCAS

And so we take another look at a member of the cast of the Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild Graphic Novel.  Thus far we have met the star of our story, his boyfriend-to-be, the tomcatting hunk, and the water-loving dreamboat.  Next, say hello to the artist in residence.  This, then, is Lucas.  He's from Hawaii and is moved to break out the old paints, pencils, papers, and canvases whenever he finds something beautiful.  On the mysterious Island where our story is set, he's the right guy in the right place.  The Jungle Jon Portfolio is available at this link.

SKINNY DIPPING WITH SPENCER

Another friendly arrival to the Island in the Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild Graphic Novel is Spencer, who never met a body of water into which he didn't want to dive and swim.  When we first encounter him, that's exactly what he's doing--and that's exactly how he catches the ever-roving eye of Mark.  Are these two destined to be a couple--or will Mark's eye go roving someplace else?  You never know.  Go here to order The Jungle Jon Portfolio, and keep coming back for more previews of the characters and pages of the Graphic Novel.

HARK! IT'S MARK!

Continuing our look at the cast of the Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild Graphic Novel, here is another of the inhabitants of the wondrous and sexy Island.  Mark, the first person that Jon meets after his encounter with the mysterious "Voice of the Island" (whom we'll get a look at in a future post), is a gym rat.  What time he doesn't spend in the gym, he spend with the guys whose attention he catches with the body that gets from being in the gym all the time.  Mark is a testament to the adage that "hard work pays off".  As you can see, hard work can also make you pretty "hard".  You can order The Jungle Jon Portfolio and get a preview of the Graphic Novel in progress here.

THE PRINCE'S CONSORT

And now, another look at a character from the Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild Graphic Novel.  This is Tom, another lad who appears on the mysterious Island and will become a most important part of young Jon's life.  He's featured in The Jungle Jon Portfolio, which of course is available at this link.  Keep coming back for more previews of the Portfolio and the Graphic Novel in progress.

PRINCE OF THE WILD!

Here's a quick look inside The Jungle Jon Portfolio.  These are the master drawings of Jon himself that I'm using for reference in creating the pages.  As we go on, we'll see the masters of the other characters and a sneak preview of the first pages of the graphic novel itself, in pencil form.  The Portfolio is available as a PDF online right here.

AND NOW...THE JUNGLE JON PORTFOLIO!

A while ago I dropped a hint about what I've been up to since the holidays.  Over the many weeks since then, I've had to deal with not just the holidays but a whole host of other things that have badly slowed me down and completely thrown the wrench into my works.  But now, at long last, the new project is up and running, and you can finally see
--and buy--THE JUNGLE JON PORTFOLIO!

In deciding to switch to a new project for a while and give a rest to the other things I've been working on, I decided to go for what is surely the simplest (though of course not simplistic) of all my creations:  the illustration and graphic novel project from which I derived Wild Jon.  Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild is the earlier creation that I adapted for the Wild Jon concept.  

The Jungle Jon Portfolio is an introduction and preview for the graphic novel.  Here's an excerpt from the introductory text of the Portfolio:


"Our story takes place on a mysterious but beautiful tropical island.  The Island is a place where there can be nothing but warmth, sunshine, happiness, contentment, and pleasure--for it also happens to be a living intelligence and that is what the Island wants.  That, and to be someone's home.  The Island seeks out someone to be its master, someone who needs a better home and a better life; someone good and kind and beautiful.  It finds a boy named Jon and brings him to live on it, to enjoy all that the island has to offer--to be its Prince.  For all Jon's spectacular youthful beauty, for all the love and kindness in his heart, life in the world outside the island has made Jon sad, lonely, and despondent, filled with heartbreak and the fear of living in a world that truly loves nothing but greed and wealth.  Communicating through a being called the Voice of the Island, which takes the form of a stunning, exotic young man, the Island thus invites Jon to cast off everything in his life--even his clothes--and live there, wanting for nothing, removed from all hurt and harm.  It makes him truly the Prince of the Wild.

This Portfolio serves as an introduction to the story of Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild:  the initial designs of its cast of characters and a first look at the opening pages of the story in a "Director's Cut" form, prior to inking and coloring.  All are welcome on the Island, so keep visiting there and see all the sexy fun unfold with the story of Jungle Jon."

The Jungle Jon Portfolio contains material that is Not Safe for Work.  Download and enjoy it, but beware of where you open and look at it!

The Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild Graphic Novel is now in production.  The final work will be released first as two individual issues, then as a collected Graphic Novel edition.  The Portfolio is now on sale at https://jafludd.selz.com/item/54cea15fb7987202a806250d?mode=edit

In future posts, we'll be seeing more of the Portfolio and new pages of the Graphic Novel as they're completed, so stick around.  You've got a passport to the Island!

JON AND TOM

When we look for love--or even friendship--we tend to look for the one with whom we have the most in common.  Which makes perfect sense; compatibility is a highly desirable thing.  But such are the curious twists of human nature that sometimes what pleases and charms us most in others is the thing that we are not, as witness the most unlikely lovers who make the most perfect sense:  Jon Wilde, nicknamed Wild Jon, and Tom Tierney.

Consider the tale of Tom.  His father, attorney Kevin Tierney, wanted a son with whom to share all the typical Dad-son things in life.  He finally got one after two daughters--but Kevin was surprised one day when he walked in at an inopportune moment on Tom and his high-school boyfriend.  Bewildered, Kevin got into his car to think and drive and ran afoul of someone who had chosen to drink and drive, which left a world of things unsaid between Tom and his father.  Bereft of his Dad and fearing that Kevin was ashamed of him, Tom embarked on a life of denying himself love, dumping every boyfriend and sabotaging every relationship out of a need to be unhappy and punish himself for what happened to Kevin.  He even went so far as to move from California to New York and enroll at the same Manhattan law school his father attended, as if to keep Kevin’s ghost with him forever.  And it’s while he’s a student in New York that Tom meets Jon.

Jon couldn’t be more different from Tom.  Jon’s father is a wealthy Englishman; his mother was the Princess of a tribe of shape-changers from an alternate Earth called Greenworld.  The son of a captain of industry and a noble werewolf, young Prince Jon is a hybrid belonging to neither of his parents’ species and is effectively the child of nature itself.  Possessing superhuman strength, senses, and reflexes, animal-like powers, and a communion with the natural world, Jon is a creature of  instinct:  intuitive, uninhibited, innocent--as “wild” as his name implies.  He recognizes Tom as his destined mate by Tom’s scent!  Tom is Jon’s 180-degree opposite.  While handsome and athletic (as the boyfriend of a gay comic book hero should be), Tom is thoughtful, circumspect, analytical, intellectual--everything that is “civilized”.  The two should not get along and should even repel each other, and yet they prove to be the perfect fit, each possessing the qualities that the other lacks.  It is under the influence of the wild and primal but sweet and innocent Jon that Tom’s carefully guarded heart finally melts and he accepts his need to love and be loved.  In the bargain Tom gets the responsibility for helping Jon’s father protect him and all his secrets from the world.  In effect, the civilized Tom takes up the cause of conserving the part of nature that is most precious to him:  the wild and innocent boy he loves.

Jon and Tom together are an old song lyric expressed as two boys in love:  “Wild thing, you make my heart sing...”

WHEN WE RETURN...

Quantum Comics Blog will be back soon with the color version of this drawing and some story notes about it.  Keep checking in!

TRUE IDOL

If you lived in Los Angeles in the world of Quantum Comics and you happened to look up and see rainbow-colored trails of light in the sky, you could rest assured that any villains or evil-doers in the vicinity were in big trouble--because you’d know Idol was on the job!

Just one look at Idol tells you exactly who he is:  He’s out, he’s proud, and he’s got more than enough power to back it up.  Even when you see Mark James Worthy out of costume, his Human Rights Campaign “Equal Rights symbol” tattoo and his fuchsia triangle ear stud put his identity right out there.  Idol’s costume takes its inspiration from the ACT UP “Silence Equals Death” graphic--but there’s even more to it than that.  Idol is a character in the spirit of another character for whom some people remember me.  I used to be the artist of a series of super-hero strips in Gay Comics that starred an All-American gay super-hero called Sentinel (later called Pride).  Though I didn’t create the sensational Sentinel, I always liked him and considered him my “beloved stepchild”.  (You see him below on the cover of Gay Comics #20, penciled by me and inked by George Perez.  He’s the star-spangled blond hunk at the center of the composition.)  I wanted to do another character who would symbolize the strength and pride of gay America and embody it in a classical super-hero.  That character, then, is the intrepid Idol.

The origin and intro story for Idol is one that makes me smile to think about it.  One warm night in Santa Monica, an engineering student named Mitch McGrath meets the most perfect boy he’s ever seen--young fitness instructor Mark James Worthy--browsing in the CD section of a bookstore.  They head for the cafe where they drink and talk and quickly fall in love.  Mark takes Mitch home to bed.  They lie together afterward, deliriously happy.  Thinking Mitch is dozing, Mark decides to step out for a bit in just his tighty whities and enjoy the cooling night.  Mitch wakes up, spies Mark slipping out to the side of the pool, thinks his new boyfriend is going to take a dip, and is ready to join him--when suddenly Mark lifts himself into the air and flies off in a rainbow streak!  A stunned and disbelieving Mitch at once realizes that he is sleeping with a super-hero!  When Mark (who’s been giving LA’s night life quite a show, clad only in his underwear with his aerial celebration of new love) flies back home a short time later, he has some major explaining to do.

Thus Mark shows himself to Mitch in costume for the first time, and Mitch calls him “some kind of costumed idol”--a name that will stick.  Mitch learns his super-powered lover’s origin.  Mark is the only child of Evan Worthy, a realtor who came out to himself only after marrying heterosexually; and Carol James Worthy, a caterer with bouts of depression.  Evan was prosperous but miserable, finding happiness only in an affair with another realtor, Patrick Sayers, who encouraged him to come out--and he did, ending his marriage and sending Carol into a tailspin.  The embittered and depressed Carol did everything to poison the mind of their son Mark against his father, railing against the “selfishness” of gays and their supposed agenda of destroying and tearing apart families.  Carol’s manipulations came to nothing when Mark realized his own gayness and Carol attempted suicide with pills and alcohol.  Still loving his mother but unable to live any more in a toxic home, Mark went to live with his father and Patrick while Jenny went into therapy.  Then a car crash claimed the lives of Mark’s Dads, leaving Mark with their money and property, his budding fitness-trainer business, and a life filled with grief.

Reeling from his losses, Mark felt himself being bombarded with the conflict over gay rights in the media (a painful reminder of his mother) and began to shut himself off from the world until he couldn’t stand it any more.  One fateful day he felt the need to run--not to any specific place or destination, just to run.  Pushing himself to his physical limits, he tripped and fell off a trail, rolling down a hill into a wooded area, and sprawled unconscious in the brush.  There he lay--until IT appeared.  It was something incredibly ancient, older than humanity, shaped like a large, hollow triangle.  It called out to Mark’s mind and he stepped into the center of the strange object.  There he was charged with immense power, and a costume and a set of wristbands with a symbol identical to the mystery object fashioned themselves onto his body.  (The wristbands enable him to switch back and forth from common clothes to his costume.)  Mark had been chosen for a purpose that he would understand if he used his new powers in the way they were intended.  His mission was simply to protect the world and humanity and be a force for good.  What was the mysterious object that endowed Mark with powers almost like those of a god?  What was he meant to do?  All this he would learn if he simply returned to the world and lived the full measure of his love, his pride, and his power.  Free of the despair that had overcome him and ready to engage with the world again, Mark returned home, recommitted himself to his business, opened his eyes to new adventure--and met the boy with whom he now planned to spend his life.  And that’s where a wonder-struck Mitch came in.

Idol is one of the most powerful beings ever to live on Earth.  He occupies the highest percentile of strength and invulnerability of all superhumans, a category that he shares with the Bearcat and some other characters you’ll be meeting in the weeks ahead.  He can fly faster than a supersonic fighter jet in Earth’s atmosphere and reach near-light speeds in space.  He can live and travel in space without a spacesuit.  The telltale signature of Idol’s presence in an area, as we noted earlier, is the rainbow-colored trail of bent light that he leaves behind him when he flies.  He can create force fields to protect others, and generate force beams capable of demolishing buildings with one blast.  He can sense energy in any form in any place.  He can emit a light so strong that it seems to turn night to day, which he does at Mitch’s suggestion during an adventure that happens later on their first night together.  Idol is as super as super gets.

Silence may equal death and action may equal life--but pride, power, and valor add up to Idol! 

ONE GIANT LEAP FOR THE QUANTUM

I often think about questions of identity and self-image.


For instance:  Some people think the desire for physical beauty is shallow and superficial.  Is it really?  And some people I've known have seemed to believe that everyone else in the world is "pretentious," or that any attempt to distinguish yourself in the world or to stand out from other people is just a neurotic bid for attention or merely a pose.  But is that actually so?  Can there be nothing sincere about it?  Not according to some people.  To some, personal distinction is not a legitimate concern.  You have no business believing you are, or wanting to be, any more special than anyone else, regardless of your mind or your gifts or anything you may have to offer.  Anyone who wants to be anything more than another sheep in the flock or another brick in the wall (apologies to Pink Floyd) is pretentious.


And who are we, really?  Are we the selves that we present to the world?  Or are our real selves, our truest and most legitimate selves, the people that we are inside?  I tend to think it's the latter.  The real "you" is the "you" of your dreams.  Much of the business of living is, or I think should be, the attempt to peel away the falsehoods of the people we are in common life and expose the real self within; or to turn ourselves inside out and release the people we carry around inside us.  That's why we go to the gym and go on diets and patronize plastic surgeons and follow the latest fashions.  I'm sure it's also one of the motivations for going to school (or going back to school), for taking classes and pursuing degrees and keeping ourselves in growth.  Part of it, a very significant part, is the quest to transform the self.  Remember what Yoda once said to Luke Skywalker:  "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!"  


And that's the way I see super-heroes.  The super-hero is a metaphor for our dream selves.  He is an ordinary person turned inside out.  He's the person who has reached inside and woken up the "luminous being" sleeping within him.  In his physical beauty, in his superhuman powers, he is the human who has shed the shell of the mundane and become who he really is.  And that's one of the reasons we've always loved super-heroes.

The character of the Quantum is based on this theme.  I originally called him Wonder Boy and he originally had a different costume.  I renamed and made him over because in Wonder Woman in DC Comics there was once a teenage character to whom the Amazons gave the honorary title of Wonder Boy, and on seeing this I thought at once, Now all DC has to do is trick out this kid with powers and a costume and have him recruited by the Teen Titans or Young Justice, and I'm going to have to scramble for a new name.  So I decided to be proactive about it.  And besides, having a hero called the Quantum in a brand called Quantum Comics makes the same kind of sense as Marvel Comics hanging onto the name Captain Marvel (and creating a succession of characters to keep the trademark in play, forcing DC to call any comic book starring the original Captain Marvel "SHAZAM!")  


The Quantum is a character that I created to address issues of identity and self-image.  What you're seeing is one character with two distinct physical forms, one of them super-powered.  Corey Lonigan is a college student majoring in computer game design.  He is handsome but not the athletic "jock" type and frequently feels invisible in the presence of such boys as well as attractive girls.  But he acquires a power that complicates the "game" of his life quite a bit.  Corey is a metamorph with the power to become...well, the taller, even handsomer, wondrously muscled figure you see in the costume here.  And in this other form, Corey is not only super-strong and invulnerable; he can fly and can assimilate, process, and shoot energy from any source.  Corey takes to calling his other physical self "The Quantum" and embarks on a secret life as a super-hero who gets the kind of attention and respect that at times eludes him in his original form.  But because he's a smart boy, it all makes him wonder what it is that people really see in him when he's "that way," and whether it's all for real and whether it's all really worth it, and whether the Quantum could ever have what people think of as "a real life."  He even wonders whether the nature of his transformation might be a message he's unconsciously trying to tell himself.  Does the Quantum being that kind of specimen mean that Corey is gay and trying to come out?  Yes, in the Quantum we have a super-hero who is a questioning heterosexual!


Corey Lonigan/the Quantum, more than any other costumed champion, is a character who questions himself and everyone and everything else--because when you're one boy who is two boys, you have to assume that nothing in yourself or the world around you may really be what it seems!

WILD JON!

I don't know how I managed it, but somehow I actually forgot to create a new post for this week!  Well, let's make up for that straight away, shall we?


Before you stands the simplest, yet perhaps the most complex, of all Quantum heroes:  WILD JON!  He's a character who will be introduced in one of The Adventures of Lucky Vega, but there's enough to him for adventures of his own to go on forever.  Wild Jon is an example of how I sometimes don't draw inspiration necessarily from comics but from media and entertainment outside of comics.  The inspirations for this character actually come from the movies--in particular certain Walt Disney movies and, if you can believe it, the musical Across the Universe!

Jon actually dates back to a series of illustrations that I created, that I sold on eBay:  Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild.  After I saw the movies Across the Universe and Enchanted I was so touched and moved by them that I wondered if I could capture some of the feelings that I got from them in super-hero form.  Across the Universe, if you'll recall, was a musical incorporating Beatles songs, telling the story of a boy named Jude who came from Liverpool, England (natch) to find his natural father in America, and in the process found true love and the social turbulence of America in the 60s.  What touched me was the purity and simplicity of Jude's spirit.  All he really wanted was love.  He wasn't a screwed-up, neurotic character; he was a boy with very pure motives.  No one has greater trouble in this world than people with pure motives, a fact well illustrated in the story of young Jude.  (And with great music to boot!)  


Enchanted, the long overdue self-parody of the Walt Disney company, was another story of a character with pure motives, and one that shrewdly tore down and rebuilt everything that people have ever loved about Disney movies.  It was also one of the very essence of Disney-style romance, and I especially admired how they made Manhattan seem like a magical storybook kingdom.  I tried to take that feeling on board for my own creation, as well as using elements of other Disney flicks such as the Disney Tarzan (obviously) and Bambi.  All of that went into the mix of creating Wild Jon.


Our young hero, Jon Wilde, is more than he appears to be.  He is in fact the Prince of a race of human/animal shape-changers from an alternate, perhaps future, Earth that is modeled after those shows you may have seen on cable TV that imagine what Earth would be like if all the humans disappeared.  His father is a wealthy Englishman who traveled to that world by means I won't reveal (because it's one of my cleverest ideas!) and became the consort of a wolf/human Princess, giving her a son, Prince Jon.  Unlike the rest of his tribe, Jon is not a shape-changer, but he possesses a unity with the natural world, a range of animal-like powers, and the ability to befriend and command all beasts.  Through other twists I won't tell you (which include the death of Jon's mother in a twist inspired by Bambi), Jon's father brings  him to this world and raises him in what the narration will call "the enchanted kingdom of Manhattan," where he grows up to be the wild but princely boy you see here.  (I imagine the whole thing being narrated in the style of an ongoing bedtime story, complete with "Once upon a time...")  Jon's one true love, whom he recognizes by scent alone, is Tom Tierney, a law student who represents everything that Jon is not:  rational, intellectual, analytical, methodical, orderly.  Tom and the animal-like, instinctive, emotional, spontaneous, wild Jon are total opposites, but theirs is a love of two individuals who complete each other by being what the other lacks.  And basically, there is a purity and innocence of spirit about Jon that the world cannot touch no matter what it does, which melts Tom's skeptical, clinical heart.


There's a lot more to the stories of Wild Jon:  the Museum that his father builds in Manhattan with a penthouse at the top where Jon lives; the evil, jealous Queen Cynbar of the world where Jon comes from, who can become a terrifying harpy; her enforcer, Shaag, who can morph into a murderous Sasquatch Bigfoot with immense strength; the means of travel between the two worlds that I'm still not going to tell you...  I'm still working out a lot of it, but the saga of Wild Jon will be one of the most fascinating parts of Quantum Comics.