Remember when Regulations, USCC, said you could only have one poster on the back of your door? Well, I had five. Yup, and nobody ever wrote me up for it, because whenever someone came into the room to inspect, the door was left open, and that side of it was out of view.
The point is, I really like posters. I like hanging them up, admiring them, even occasionally using one as a dartboard. But most of all, I like drawing them.
So when I had a little bit of time on my hands recently, I decided to create a couple of pin-ups of my old friend, Peter Parsec, Space Cadet, and his First Captain, Carrie Sabres, stars of the satirical comic-book-style adventures that ran in (and out of) The Pointer from 1977 to 1980.
In addition to the two starmen from Highest Point, each of the posters also features exchange students Buster Crab, of the United Space Navel Academy and Monte Zoomie from Air Farce. I drew each character separately in ink on paper, then scanned them in and arranged them on my computer before creating the titles and coloring the whole thing in Photoshop (Oh, to have had that capability back when we were putting together The Pointer!).
But wait, that’s not all! I also threw in several of the major characters and villains faced by tomorrow’s tomorrow’s leaders, but with a bit of a twist. The trend in recent years has been for comic books to re-boot their franchises, with updates on the main characters and, in some cases, at least, deeper storylines. I could not resist at least updating the design of the characters themselves, even if I don’t have time to totally re-write all the classic adventures.
It occurred to me that, with just a little more thought, I could have done a better job of playing up certain aspects of the villains. General Sna-foo, for one, is head of an invading army from Regulus. So why not build on that, and say that he represents the Regulan Army (one letter away from the Regular Army we were all fated to join)? What’s more, I could have emphasized the “regulations” aspect, which was hardly touched upon until I had to come up with a title Against Regulus for the graphic novel on the Classic Adventures CD. So for this poster, I added a couple of telling details along those lines. Sna-foo now sports a head of quills, much like a porcupine, and the symbol on his belt buckle (the seal of the Regulan Army) is a quill pen. And if that’s not enough to get the idea across, he now wields a giant, energized fountain pen as if it were a light saber (the brand name is RapierMate). He’s even got an officer’s sticker on his saucer’s windshield.
Killjoy was the bad guy behind the final ten-episode series, to which I belatedly bestowed the title Get Sirius! I wish I’d paid more attention to the main theme -- the Academy staff putting a damper on anything that the cadets might think was fun – but the story kind of got away from me at the end. So here, I’ve reimagined Killjoy as the party pooper he should have been, complete with a cape that is actually a wet blanket (cadet blanket, naturally), and he has a staff topped with a frowny face.
I did similar things to other characters. Calculus now has a pair of x and y axes, with hyperbolic curves that approach infinity, and his herald the nerdy Slipstick Surfer now has a pair of black-rimmed Ted Baxter glasses welded to his face. The mysterious Unknown Cosmic received only a couple of cosmetic changes, although his gong now sports a twisting Oroborus (self-devouring snake that is the symbol of eternity) and a galaxy with a grinning core. Meanwhile, the dreaded Triple-Ape is armed, and armed again, with a selection of deadly sports equipment.
You can see the posters up close by clicking on the links on this page. And, if you have a bit of room on the back of your door, you can even order one. Or order them both together, and save a few bucks. Trust me: nobody will write you up for having too many posters on display.
