When Pigs Fly Returns 500th Post Spectacular!

As the title implies, this is my 500th (published, existing, non-deleted) post on When Pigs Fly Returns. I consider that quite the landmark—it’s not a number I ever considered reaching. WPFR is a blog I write for when I find the time to do so. You’ll note that the first post was back in March of 2007, but even that number is dubious. Longtime readers may remember the original “When Pigs Fly” blog that was abandoned because my then-current Gmail account became corrupted and I couldn’t sign into Blogger anymore. So I started another site called “When Pigs Fly: Part Deux,” but then I forgot…the new password. Brilliant, right? Well, it’s a miracle that hasn’t happened during the almost three-year history of WPFR, but here we are, right at 500 (published, existing, non-deleted, current blog) posts.

So even though this concept is a very long time from completion, I thought I’d share with you readers a Very Big Step I’m taking. This is an idea I’ve been developing since I started doing sketches for the Silk Succubus, and probably even before that, subconsciously, seeing as I’ve struggled to develop a female character for a very long time. Meet Lilem Beatrice Mephistopholese, who will (someday) star in a page-length weekly comic called “Life on Leather Wings.” I have more of a vision for Lily than I’ve had for any iteration of Selena. I can see what she does from morning until night, and the adventures she has. Her social interactions, family life, and unique role are all crystal clear in my mind. Like Mr. Craven said before, we dream in fire but work in clay. I can see it in my mind, but hopefully that art class next semester will help me mold the clay myself. Having said that, I certainly wouldn’t mind collaborating with another artist out there.

Lily is a Lilem, a daughter of Lilith and fathered by Mephisto. Lilith, of course, is the mother of all Succubi, and all of her children are known as Lilem. The children take their father’s name as a last name to differentiate themselves from each-other. Lilith gives all her daughters differentiating middle names and addresses them by that name. So Lily would be “Beatrice” to her family members. However, she prefers “Lily.” She has seven paternal sisters.

Their job is to tempt human men on Earth and then steal their souls through physical (not necessarily sexual) contact. Fresh souls sustain the Lilem and end up in Hell where they become part of Satan’s ever-expanding army. Lily’s sisters take their jobs seriously, but Lily herself has a stronger sense of justice than most Lilem and tries to only steal souls that she believes are corrupt or deserving of eternal damnation. Mortal food provides no sustenance for Succubi—only a diet of souls. Luckily, a single soul can sustain a Succubus for several weeks (like an anaconda). Lilem inherit demonic features from their father. In Lily’s case, that means enlarged canines (some of her sisters can protract/retract them) and large bat wings. Other Lilem are decorated by bony spines or cranial horns. All Lilem can “turn off” their demonic features on the mortal plane.

…Except Lily.


Her father (Mephisto) disapproves of her “freewheeling” lifestyle, and has cursed her to not be able to hide her wings or canines. Lily lives on Earth despite this handicap, though she is mostly active at night in the public sphere. Unlike her sisters, Lily’s wardrobe is hampered by her omnipresent wings. In fact, I’m still working on her costume(s). When out and about, her wings present some degree of inconvenience. Obviously, Lily flies whenever possible, but when she has to walk among the people, she wears a large overcoat or a cape. She lets her wings out on Halloween, though, and usually gets a lot of compliments on them.

Lily is 5’6” tall, about 120 pounds, and her measurements hover around 36-24-38. She has black hair and sea-blue eyes. I haven’t nailed down her wingspan, but it’s a bit more than 10 feet. The wings originate over her shoulderblades. Like a bat, she can fold them up pretty tight. Unlike bat wings, Lily’s are tetradactyl. Her first wing-finger is short, semi-opposable, does not contribute to the wing surface, and is tipped by a large recurved claw. The other three wing-fingers are connected by a strong cheiropatagium and end in long pointed claws. A narrow propataium extends between the wing-shoulder and wing-wrist.

Lilem are immortal, and most wounds heal on their own—even torn-off limbs. However, Lilem will “die” if they are starved of souls or the head is removed from the body. They can also be killed if injured by certain holy weapons. Killing a Succubus by starvation merely sends the demon back to Hell, where it recovers. Beheading or killing by holy weapon actually does “kill” the Succubus: they disappear from the mortal plane and end up on the shores of Purgatory, where escape on one’s own is impossible. Curiously, Succubi are not a major concern of Heaven. Exactly why is currently unknown (but will be explored). However, high-ranking demons—individuals who originally participated in Satan’s rebellion especially—are the target of immediate retaliation from Heaven’s Vanguard if they should ever cross into the Earth Realm. Hell’s generals live in the dread City of Dis, and train Hell’s army for the inevitable second war with Heaven. Satan does not reside in the 9th Circle but moves between them at will, overseeing military operations and obsessively planning his vengeance.

So that's the basis of the story. The comic will open with Lily showing her younger half-sister, Gwendolyn, "the ropes," as it were, to introduce the reader to Lily, her world, and her role in it. After that, I'll examine how Lily hunts her prey, explore her relationships with her sisters, and introduce more fiendish characters like Incubi and my vision of Hell's geography. Like I said, I'll be taking art classes in the near future to hone my craft, and I'm very excited about this project, having gone so far as to script out the first few pages. I'm also not against collaboration, so if you're a talented artist out there who's interested in helping out, drop me an email. Either way, I think this will be an awesome project.

The Long, Involved, Ever-Changing History of Selena Isley

Our journey begins with an excellent manga series by Johji Manabe called "Outlanders." Back when I was a freshman or sophmore in high school, I was just beginning to discover manga comics. In general, I didn't care for them. The art was, most of the time, unappealing to me. Manabe's work, however, blended more traditionally cartoony styles with ridiculously detailed background work and menacing bad guys. Although I never read the entire series, the basic plot was: Boy meets alien warrior girl whose father wants to destroy the Earth. Boy and girl try to stop evil father but fail. Earth is blown to smithereens by a Death Star-like weapon. The library's collection ends right there, so I never found out what happened after that.

Anyway, I decided right then that I really wanted to learn how to draw people (I don't know exactly why) and expand my artistic talents beyond "various members of the Dinosauria." So I set to work trying to duplicate Manabe's work but add my own take on the form, something I've been doing ever since (I call it "assimilation"). But Manabe's art didn't work on some level for me, and I began looking to other sources of inspiration. One of them was Bruce Timm. I noticed this excellent book at a bookstore one day and promptly bought it. I'd always loved the Batman Animated Series, and now I could assimilate it!

Thus, my character was named Selena Isley, a combination of Selena Kyle (Catwoman) and Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy). That remains her name to this day, but she doesn't really look like either of her namesakes. The Bruce Timm approach didn't really stick. At that point in my artistic maturation, it was almost too simple. Does that even make sense? I suppose anatomy is kind of like writing--you can't start breaking the rules until you really know them. The beautiful, simplified outline of Catwoman did not give me enough information to really build on. Thus, I virtually abandoned the Batman approach and stuck with Manabe, to questionable results:

The resemblance to Outlanders is kind of painful now, but at least I tried to do my own thing with it. For one thing, Selena is wearing a tank top (or something) behind her breastplates. She's got cool gauntlets, and I have no idea to this day where those came from. Additionally, she has jeans and tall leather boots. The jean design actually comes from the awesome, but short-lived, modern Turok comic book series. Back at her inception, the idea was that Selena was sucked into an interdimentional vortex (or something) and wound up on a parallel Earth where most dinosaurs had not gone extinct and had instead evolved into essentially human roles. The dominating race was derived from Psittacosaurus. There were rock-people called the Groxen, and a bunch of aliens called the Morphae. The Morphae were trying to take over the planet, but their big roadblock was the dinosaur-people (whose name escapes me now), and Selena fulfills some prophesy of being the "chosen one" and develops psionic powers. Thus, the fire around her hands. I HAD a really freaking awesome picture of Selena (at this stage in her development) standing waist-deep in water with a green bikini, pointing at the "camera" with blue flame around her hand and saying something like "It's not polite to stare." Truly epic work, kiddies. I miss that picture, though. It was the best of her from her anime period.


And then you've got these wierd attempts to change her costume, including the Fire Emblem-inspired outfit to the left. I actually like this look more given her parallel Earth setting. Where's she going to get a breastplate and jeans? Dinosaur people don't wear jeans. They don't even know what jeans are. Another disturbing aspect of this look is that Selena doesn't really have breasts. I mean, she does, but not to the extent that she would later develop. Some part of my brain must not have switched on yet while Selena was in her manga phase.














And then there's the full catsuit, inspired (blatantly) by Samus Aran's Metroid Fusion suit with Metroid Prime Phazon Suit colors. I think. The colors may have been of my own design. I really need to play the original Metroid Prime again. God, that's a good game. Notice that the hair is changing--diagonal tendrils of hair are now framing her face. I think I got that idea from Dead or Alive 3 (this was during the launch of the Xbox, or perhaps just before it). If I recall correctly, Helena's hair is sort of like that, and I thought the "face-framing" was kind of cool. I have since abandoned the idea.

I did get a lot of good material from that era, though. I slaved over expressions for hours, but the manga style eventually began showing its limitations (for me) in that there were only so many expressions I could successfully pull off. Squinting and understated rage were beyond my abilities. And holy cow--look at that little mini-headshot in the bottom right. I was trying to develop some kind of cheat sheet for headshots. I was, and still am, obsessed with figuring out why something works. Around this point, Selena's life story began to change.



I had just seen The Matrix and I was really getting into the Silent Hill series. In what can only be described as a bizarre episode of "Will It Mix?," I slapped the two together, imagining Selena as a sort of paranormal investigator who gets stuck in an abandoned town where demonic creatures have consumed the populous and are now looking to escape their confines. I had a great opening shot worked out in my head--I may still use it (someday). The plot, though, of Selena's introductory story was boarderline idiotic, though. A maniacal cult had resurrected a bunch of demons from The Pit (as I called it) and then...are you ready for this? Genetically and mechanically manipulated them to make...super demons. I had a lot of concept art for the beasties. I think I was more interested in the creatures than the heroine. All of these critters were heavily inspired by Silent Hill, but with a disturbing cybernetic component. Anyway, Selena's head began to change, as did her outfit. She took on a blonde Lara Croft look:




See, I kind of like this version. The hair isn't nearly as poofy, the bangs aren't spikey, and I like those cool shades. I clearly had (and have) no idea how to draw guns. Notice that while the jeans remain essentially the same, Selena has graduated to a black tank top and has gone from a B-cup to a D. I think her pointy face was just me screwing around with a different face shape. Our girl is starting to move into the modern period! The paranormal thing remained the same, and I actually dropped all of Selena's psionic tendancies in favor of straight-up run and gunning. And this is about where Selena stayed for the next few years...








And then two things happened. First, I discovered my favorite comic artist, Frank Cho. I rapidly consumed and assimilated every piece of Cho art I could get my meaty hands on, and I actually began to understand human anatomy. Let me just say, as a brief aside, that people are ridiculously difficult to get right, and that's because our anatomy is so horrifyingly different than every other mammal on the planet. We're upright. Our backs and shoulders are wierd. Our legs attach to our bodies vertically instead of horizontally. We have waists and inward curves in our backs and...humans are nightmares to draw.

Now then, I was also playing a lot of Metal Gear Solid at the time, and I'd just finished Portable Ops, so I tried drawing a Cho-esque Selena with Big Boss' FOX gear. I actually really like this version, but it was a bear to draw, and the pencil sketch looks a lot better than the final inked version did (that's actually the case quite often). I still draw Selena like this for the most part, although from my last post, it looks like I'm experimenting with Tim Fischer's style. Selena's backstory is now somewhat in disaray, although I've always liked the paranormal investigation angle. But I like her sneaking suit, too, so maybe she could be some kind of paranormal investigation spy?

Selena is continuing to evolve, and it's absolutely maddening, but it's fun, too. Someday I'll finalize her design and come up with a competant backstory for her. But it's probably a ways off.

Ten bucks says this post won't come out right! I WIN!

Selena moves toward the Abstract

I really wish I could link to my old blog right now, but the long, ever-changing history of my female comic character is now gone thanks to that blog's inactivity. So one of these days, I'm gonna have to fill you all in. Anywho, for those who've been reading this blog since its inception, you might know that my female comic character, Selena Isley, is constantly undergoing revision, both in terms of design, personality, and universe. Last time we checked in on Selena, she was looking a bit like Frank Cho's Brandy, but right now she's leaning more toward Tim Fischer's Powergirl. Now, before you accuse me of plagerizing, you should know that this is a normal part of my artistic growth.

I generally stumble across an artist I really like and proceed to devour every scrap of art they've ever published online or anywhere else in an attempt to figure out what makes their style "work." Why do I like Frank Cho, Tim Fischer, Bruce Timm, Mike Mignola, Mike Krahulik, Jim Lee, and the people behind Kim Possible and Clerks: Animated, but I don't like Eric Larson, Jim Lawson, Ashley Wood, the whoever did the art for The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again? Figuring out how to imitate someone's work is not entirely difficult. If you study enough of a person's art, you can whip out a respectable likeness without much trouble. What really bugs me, though, is figuring out why some things work and others don't. Personal preference, I'm sure, goes a long way, but the art styles of Fischer and Cho are on seemingly opposite sides of Scott McCloud's Picture Plane.

I think I must be drawn to the "Meaning" side of the Picture Plane, with a few exceptions (Cho, Lee). Simplified art really strikes a chord for me--so few lines and such simplified features, but it's so powerful. Look back at Fischer's Powergirl picture, then check out Alex Ross' version. Both respectable, but I get more meaning out of the more simplified version.

So anyway, Selena Isley, who I will post the history of one of these days, is now drifting back toward the more abstract corner of the Picture Plane. Hopefully she'll stay there, but I find that I'm never satisified with her design.