Comic Book Art

I tried my hand at comic book art many years ago. I found myself using the Monty Python method of casting - all the characters look oddly like my group of friends (we called ourselves "The Wombats" - don't ask why. 'Cause I don't know). The comics were mostly for our mutal anjoyment. With the eventual breakup of the gang, interest waned and the projects were dropped. They're mostly not finished 'cause I'm a lazy bastich.
All art copyright John Payne


WOMBAT COMICS
A planned 6-issue series, chronicling the adventures of my group of friends surviving together after the usual global thermonuclear war. Contrary to my usual record, I actually finished the mutant-bashing isuue number one, POST-HOLOCAUST WOMBATS, but not the rest of the series. In issue two, SPACE WOMBATS, we're recruited for the crew of mankind's first interstellar spaceship (Well, the rest of humankind was either dead or mutants). Further stories would have involved our mishaps as we traveled blindly through time. Titles suggested were WESTWARD THE WOMBATS (1880s); WOMBATS ON THE NILE (4,000 BC); ROCK WOMBATS (1967 San Francisco); MEDEIVAL WOMBATS (1600s AD) ...

The bear with the little round face is Noddy, the Wombat group mascot. Noddy is copyrighted by founding group member Jim Canavan, who I've never met, and used in the comics by general group agreement that Jim wouldn't give a crap. I hope.


NEIL THE BARBARIAN
The adventures of average New Jersey guy Neil, thrown back in time by a power chord at a Who concert, to an age of evil wizards, marauding barbarians, undead hordes and scantily-clad damsels in distress, with nought but the clothes on his back and Gibson without a case! A planned 6-issue miniseries, written by my friend Kevin G. Shinnick.


SPARROW HAWK!
I was in a SWAT team mood for a while. I think Mike Grell's "Jon Sable" comics inspired me at the time. This is me as a member of an elite anti-drug task force code-named after birds of prey. "Sparrow Hawk" was my CB radio handle in the 70s, so what the hell. I always thought it was a cool name for a spy.

In the pencils for the first three pages (which is all I got done), Sparrowhawk interrupts a drug deal with extreme prejudice, and politely asks one of the bad guys where his boss is.


THE WOMBAT HERALD
Every time our-of-state Wombats visit I try to take pictures and whip together a little one-page newsletter, usually in the form of a comic. This one features Bo the Wonder Dog, who loves to eat little plastic alligators...


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