Okay, I swear, last real splash page for the book. (Please don't hate me) I’m sorry, I just adore doing splash pages… I don’t have to draw things teeeeeeny tiiiiny, and it works swell for 'lumpy' dialogue like this... since Seamus... well, if you've ever read any of my 'Seamus-y" artist's discriptions, he talks a lot.
Speaking of talking a lot... oh man, hold onto your TL;DRs folks, Nash is about to go on tangent time.
Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by the possibility of humans or animals being something entirely different from what they appear. Personally, I suspect this was brought on by too many viewings of The Flight of Dragons, and The Last Unicorn. However, it is a theme that I’ve seen now and again throughout my life.
I think the first place I came across humans with inhuman lineage was in simple ol Greek mythology. Hercules was sired by Zeus, a Greek god… In some stories, Zeus also sired Minos while getting it on with Europa while in the form of a bull (Furthermore, Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, bore the minotaur by mating with a bull given to him by Poseidon). Zeus also went after women in other forms, like that of a swan. I guess this Zeus guy had interesting kinks. But themes like this pop up throughout mythology… thankfully, I had more than just ancient myths to entertain me.
Later, I found myself to be an avid fan of a show called Gargoyles. Fox, a character I rather liked, turned out to be of fae lineage, and that was passed onto her son. By this time, I was quite an avid reader and was already interested in werewolves and shapeshifters. I was learning about how ancient werewolves weren’t almost always bitten like today’s Hollywood-wolves, but how entire villages and clans could carry lycanthropy. There were so many stories and variations!
As time wore on, I came across more of the same themes… humans with supernatural lineage. This ranged from Luck Of The Irish, a silly Disney film where a boy discovers his leprechaun lineage, to damphyrs, which are the offspring of a human and vampire, to learning that some native American tribes believed they were related to animals, to a game called dragon storm where dragon heritage causes all sorts of magical mayhem (Including lycanthropy, woot!). It was also this time that I came across the Otherkin community, where plenty of people discuss the actual possibility of being descended from mythical origins!
And then, there was college (when I started this comic, woo-hoo), and ancient art history class. It was here where I learned even more of mythology than I had anticipated, or had guessed at. Sure, it was the first time I came across creatures like sirrushes (though I did not know what they were called at the time), but I also learned more about mix-breeding between mythical creatures and humans. I was at first shocked to find out that according to some depictions that centaurs were extremely promiscuous, and would actually carry women off to rape them, like in this image: [link] but when comparing that with what I’d already known of satyrs and nymphs… it suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched.
And today, oh man, we have all sorts of media regarding and including magical lineage, ranging from good ol Harry Potter, to American Dragon, to the Emily Windsnap books (I have yet to read them… I know they’re for kids, but has anyone here read them? Are they good?) to Percy Jackson (Loved the movie… haven’t read the books though *bad Nash*), and, hopefully sometime soon, Song of the Sea by Cartoon Saloon, which looks like it’ll be about a family of humans and Selkies! *squee*
When I was young, It seemed there was such a lack of fantasy media, and today, there is so much, I don’t have time to watch and read it all! I feel so lucky that there has been such a glut in the science fiction and fantasy genres…
God bless the geeks!
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