Chelsea and Millie

Holy stromboli, guys! Wanna hear something cool? Chelsea and Millie have been spotted out in the wild, and by that I mean they make a guest cameo in the talented comicker and genuine sweetheart of a soul Jon Esparza’s Mushrooms comic. Click here, then click on the comic’s thumbnail in the journal entry there to see what manner of mecha-malarkey Chelz and Millz be getting up to over there.
I really enjoy reading Mushrooms updates, and it’s an honour for me to see mine and Tom’s lil’ ladies featured within it. Thanks so so much Jon! My week’s sure as hell made!
Jon does a few comics, his latest creation is the anthropomorphic-animal cavalcade of semi-calamitous comic-strip comedy Bubble Fox. And my personal favourite, Mike and Mindy, but I’m going to let you find that one for yourself. Because I’m not here to link you to EVERYthing in this world.
Your brains will get both fat and atrophied if you don’t use them to become masters of your own impetus ya know.

Now, about this comic page:
One of my biggest cartooning influences in my childhood/adolescent years was Mad Magazine, specifically the old “Super Specials” anthologies from the 1980’s (basically old material from monthly issues repackaged and sold to ignorant bumpkins like child-me who never got to see the material in its original incarnations).
Mad Magazine‘s roster of adroit-to-the-point-of-real-genius contributing artists — such as Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Sergio Aragones — really opened my protoMaxwell eyes to all manner of possibilities, approaches and stylistic ideas hitherto completely outside my sphere of reference as a kid growing up in rural Aotearoa.

Even though what I’ve done with Millie’s shadow on this page is 100% drawn to the directions Tom wrote in the script, my contributions to the look and general attitude of this rogue shadow are strongly influenced by Sergio Aragones’ The Shadow Knows, which would regularly crop up in those aforementioned Mad “Super Specials”.

Added stylistic influence (on my part) is derived from the neo-Wayang general design asthetics of The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, and one of that short film’s spiritual antecedents, Lotte Reiniger’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed.