Who Killed Round Robin?

From the online comic Who Killed Round Robin?
Characters depicted here created by INJ Culbard and Craig Conlan

In between paid work, I've been (intermittently) taking part in an online game of comics consequences. Who Killed Round Robin has been running on Blogger since January, with seven comics creators participating - I.N.J. Culbard, Dave Taylor, Woodrow Phoenix, Craig Conlan, Colin Fawcett, Nigel Parkinson and yours truly.

The blog is here and the finished pages are here - I've only managed a shameful three contributions and none since February, but it has given me a chance to try out some stuff for my next project for 2000AD - but more of that anon...

Stickleback: England's Glory Part 12 References

Page 4: The Empress

The Empress of the White Lotus is a female analogue of Sax Rohmer's Eastern über-villain Doctor Fu Manchu - a character of singular purpose and unlimited cruelty, she's the only person we've so far encountered that Stickleback actually fears.

The "White Lotus" refers to the Hong Kong martial arts film Clan of the White Lotus (aka Fists of the White Lotus/Hong Wending san po bai lian jiao/Hung Man-ding saam por bak lin gaau). The film features the "white eyebrow priest" Pai Mei who was used by Quentin Tarantino in the film Kill Bill 2.
The lady bodyguard marching before the throne of the Empress is based on actress Reiko Ike.



Pages 6 & 7: Dragon

In Western folklore, dragons are straighforwardly monsters, usually voracious and destructive, though recent fiction (notably Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels) sometimes puts them in a more positive light. In Chinese and Japanese mythology, they are often portents of great power or good fortune.

Physically, our dragon is halfway between the Western model of a kind of bat-winged dinosaur, and the graceful Eastern long-bodied variety. The second pair of wings that hold up the tail are a nod to the exotic multi-winged giant insects of the Rotwood in Hiyao Miyazaki's seminal manga and anime Nausicaä Of The Valley Of Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika, manga: 1982-1994, anime: 1984)




Page 10 Panel 2 Erratum:

The blank sheet of paper on the sewing table in front of Rose and Bob should have been the same copy of Titbits as seen in panel one (with the headline about the Wild West Show burning down .)
I'll see if I can get that page fixed for the collection (due August 2008, apparently).







Page 10: Windows

In the final page of this story, Ian wanted Stickleback to be seen staring out of an exotically-designed circular window reminiscent of the one found in the attic of the Greenwich Village home of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's sorcerer supreme, Doctor Strange (Marvel Comics, 1963-present). Rather naughtily, I added a square and an arched window, in tribute to the classic BBC TV pre-school children's programme Play School (1964-88). Although studio-bound, each episode of Play School featured a short segment filmed out in the real world; these were viewed through either the Round, Square or Arched window, the audience being invited to guess which window would be used before the segment ran. This format has been borrowed by other television programmes since, most notably Teletubbies (1997-2001).

Stickleback: England's Glory Part 11 References

Page 2: Buffalo Bill Transformed

Physical transformation as the result of contact with extradimensional entites is a trope of the "Cthulu Mythos" strories of H.P. Lovecraft. Bill here is not based on a particular instance from Lovecraft's stories, though the general tendency for Lovecraft's extradimensional thingies to manifest themselves in our dimension via tentacles, suckers, claws and slime has been followed.





Page 4: Cannibalism in the Old West

Possibly the most famous tale of cannibalism among the American pioneers is story of the Donner Party. In the winter of 1846-7, a party of American settlers consisting mostly of the families of George and Jacob Donner became snowbound near Alder Creek in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The episode became famous because it is thought that some members of the party resorted to eating the dead in order to survive. There is now a memorial at the site of the disaster at Alder Creek, and the surrounding area has been designated the Donner Memorial State Park.
A further source of inspiration was Antonia Bird's 1999 feature film Ravenous.




Page 5: Lovecraftian "Elder Gods"

In H.P. Lovecraft's stories, the Elder Gods (sometimes referred to as Old Ones, though his terminology does not appear to be consistent; in some tales this refers to a very specific alien race from out dimension) are extradimensional entities of unimaginable age and unguessable power.

When designing the creature, Ian asked me to base the body shape on the work of modernist sculptor Henry Moore (hence the convoluted organic form with a hole in the middle), and to make it transparent and "full of stars and galaxies" - a phrase that reminded me of the classic line uttered by astronaut Dave Bowman in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001 (and the 1984 film sequel 2010, though not the 1969 Stanley Kubrick film). On discovering that the second giant monolith TMA-2 is in fact a hyperspace conduit, Bowman manages to utter the words "Oh my God, it's full of stars!" before being swept off into the unknown.

Stickleback: England's Glory Part 10 References

Page 2: Gordon of Khartoum and "Dicky" Sharpe

Major General Charles George Gordon (1833-1885) was a real British army officer, famed for his military campaigns in China and Africa. He was killed by the army of the Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed when they broke the ten-month siege of Khartoum; British forces arrived to support him only two days after his death.
"Dicky" Sharpe is intended to be a descendant of Bernard Cornwell's fictional napoleonic-era British army rifle officer Richard Sharpe (1777-?), who appears in a series of 24 military historical novels published between 1981 and 2006. In the UK, Central Independent Television network has produced 15 television series based on the books, Starring actor Sean Bean as Sharpe. A 16th series is due to be broadcast in the autumn of 2008.


Page 2: Cyclops

This guardian monster was inspired in part by the Cyclops monster created by animator Ray Harryhausen for his classic 1958 fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Equally, certain of his attributes (including the shaggy legs, random suckers sprouting from skin and the upright vulvoform eye) belong to the final mutated form of character Wilbur Whateley from H.P. Lovecraft's story The Dunwich Horror.