Elementals 22 p3

A little (true) story about these four old Elementals pages: Way back when, my pal and co-writer Jack Herman and I cooked up a story about an evil evangelist and how he tapped into the power of the supernature to create his own wicked "heroes." We decided to base the character visually on the popular televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who was all the rage at the time. We did this for two reasons. First, there was no TV evangelist who was as dubious and smarmy as Jimmy Swaggart. Sure there were plenty of contenders, but he was the pick of the ugly litter. Second, because, due to his notoriety, there was plenty of photo reference to find on the fellow, in newspapers and news magazines and such. Remember, there was no internet then to simple dial up helpful images of anyone. Then an odd bit of timing occured. After the issue was written, drawn, inked, colored, lettered, and printed, and after the issue had already made its way to the distributors and was on its way to the various comic shops, the big Jimmy Swaggart scandal broke. Look it up. It was a doozy. It turns out the semi-respected preacher had been consorting with (really ugly) prostitutes, among other low deeds. The day after the scandal broke, our issue, featuring a Jimmy Swaggart lookalike, hit the comic stands. Do you know what happened? Several comic shop owners and even some distributors called us at Comico to complain we had taken advantage of the man's downfall. Even when we carefully explained we couldn't possibly have gotten the issue written, drawn, printed and to their stores in one day, they thought it was a cruel turn on our parts. Am I proud of this bit of serendipity? Yeah, a little bit. That's why I held onto these following four pages for so long, long after all the other Elementals original art pages had been sold. But now, at last, it's time to let go.

Yes, I swear on my CS Lewis annotated Bible, the above is a completely true story.

11"x17" Bristol board

Purchase does not include publication rights

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