Here is the last (well, almost) of the Captain Powerchord posts, this time showing the two posters I drew for the Captain Powerchord Special in May and September 1996, plus a Battle of the Bands poster I drew for a friend in 1994. The first from the Special features Agent O-U-R-A-1 (what a totally horrible name 'The Castrator' is, even as a joke I wouldn't choose that now) with a few of her favourite quotes, while the other features all the main - and a few of the minor - characters from the eight strips.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. There might be one further CP-related post this weekend.

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This was one of the extra pages I made for the Captain Powerchord Special in 1996, a little fun page of puzzles for the reader to do in a few spare minutes featuring characters from the strips.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. Coming up next will be some Captain Powerchord posters.

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I hunted through some old folders to find the original artwork for the Captain Powerchord History of Rock'n'Roll Board Game (1996) and was delighted to find it again. It's been great fun looking over it and remembering that is actually great fun to play as well!

The game takes you from humble beginnings to stardom via 1950s rock'n'roll, the swinging sixties, the progressive and punky seventies, the MTV eighties, and up to the mid nineties, while all the time you must accumulate hits and avoid obscurity. I do remember the first part of the game, where you have to escape your roots, can be quite difficult, so feel free to make that a little easier if you wish - but the frustration can be part of the fun!

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In the next few days I will post the fun page from Special.

Click to open printable PDF (1.1 Mb)

The eighth and final Captain Powerchord strip was drawn for the Captain Powerchord Special in August and September 1996. I knew this was going the be the last one I'd draw, so made it a four pager and included a number of characters from previous episodes.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In the next few days I will post some of the extras that appeared in the Special.

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Today, February 12th, is Darwin Day, a day very much worth celebrating, I think! Reading On the Origin of Species I'm just astounded by the ideas Darwin developed and then confirmed, not to mention all the stuff he wasn't sure about, but which have been proven in the 150 years since. It's true there have been things he didn't get quite right, but they have been small and have not altered the fundamental theory ('theory' in the scientific sense) that has explained how life developed on this amazing planet.

For me, Darwin's bravery in the face of a theocratic establishment, his open-mindedness and realisation of new ideas, his brilliance at communicating those ideas and his genius in general make him the greatest contributor to the understanding of what it is to be human, or to be alive at all.

Below is a quick drawing of Mr Darwin taking Indohyus for a walk. Indohyus fits somewhere very early on in one of my favourite evolutionary tales - that of the whale, a mammal that went from the land back to the sea and of which the fossil record, including some stunning examples of the intermediate stages, tells a remarkable story. Look at a whale or dolphin skeleton today and you will see one of the many irrefutable proofs of evolution - vestigial organs, for sea mammals retain rudimentary bones that were once hind legs, though they don't do a lot now they have become fully aquatic.

Another fascinating clue to the whale's terrestrial origins is the manner in which it swims, not like a fish, waving its body side to side, but in the same way that a dog or a cat runs, with the spine undulating like a ripple.

Spines... that brings me to a completely different topic, but something I thought I'd share. That drawing of Darwin above is the first thing I've drawn in over two weeks, a rather miserable couple of weeks if I'm honest. Two weeks ago I leant down to pick up a leaflet that had come through the letterbox and did my back in. Big ouch. My back is susceptible for a couple of reasons and I'm used to having a bit of a stiff back every other month or so. But once in a while, maybe every two or three years, it really goes, and this has been one of those times. The piercing muscle spasms render me almost immoveable to begin with, and the trouble this time is that after I started to get some freedom of movement back, I became over-confident and it went again, this time worse, prolonging everything.

Another big ouch. But in time, as it always does, things got better - the remedy beginning with a bag of frozen peas and lots of rest and moving on to heat patches, a back support and light movement as soon as I could. Interestingly, as things improve, the pain moves around, from the middle left, to the lower right, to the left side and eventually up to my right shoulder (just to make sure I really couldn't draw even at the end!). Today is the first day I feel virtually pain free, though sitting too long at the desk still produces an ache or two - so I'm being careful. (Of course, sitting at the desk for too long was the cause in the first place, picking up the leaflet was just the accurately proverbial straw (it broke the camel's back, you see, and the camel, being an even-toed ungulate, is a paraphyletic cousin of the whale - just to keep things Darwinian). Anyway, a regime of daily walks is now on the schedule.)

This, unfortunately, has consequences for the Rainbow Orchid publication date, though I'm not sure yet to what extent. In addition, none of this has done much for my mental attitude, and where the intense work ethic required for graphic storytelling is concerned, that is a hurdle to overcome - which I will, as I get back into things (so don't worry).

I do have one other remaining symptom of my back going, and that is an irregular sharp pain in my right heel. It's slowly fading, but I often have such hurtiness in my foot arches and just yesterday I realised that this may well be related to the state my back's in at the time, so I'll keep an eye on that.

Hm... and that brings me back to Darwin. An article in Science this week has shown how Australopithecus afarensis, an ancestor of modern humans who lived over 3 million years ago (the most famous example of which is Lucy), almost certainly had arched feet, evidence for bipedality - standing and walking upright. The thing about walking upright, wonderful as it is, is that we have not fully adapted to it - as with the entire evolutionary process, it's a matter of compromise after the fact. I became interested in evolutionary medicine after I saw Richard Dawkins interview Randolph Nesse, especially when he talked about how the spine is a mechanism that developed horizontally and is just about ideal for that kind of creature, but when it is moved into an upright position, a recent development, the internal organs that once hung perpendicularly now drape down, causing a few problems - for instance entangled intestines, a number of issues relating to pregnancy and, not related to the organs but to the new posture, good old back ache. Understanding evolution shines a very illuminating light onto all kinds of things - thanks, Mr Darwin!

The seventh Captain Powerchord strip was drawn for the Captain Powerchord Special that was eventually published late in 1996. Unlike the previous one page episodes for 5D, I allowed myself the luxury of two pages, though page one was drawn in April 1995 and page two over a year later in May 1996.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In the next few days I will post the eighth and final strip, a four-pager called Caught 'Napping!

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The sixth Captain Powerchord strip was drawn for the local entertainments guide 5D, but was not published - I think the magazine had closed down by the time it was submitted. It was written and drawn in August 1994. Note the cameo return of Lampshade Man!

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In the next few days I will post the seventh strip, a two-pager called The Really Rather Strange Thing That Came From Another World!

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The fifth Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in August 1994 (issue 25) and was the last to be published (I'm not certain, but that may also have been the final issue of 5D). It's one of my favourites, with more groan-inducing jokes per panel than any of the previous strips, I think.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In the next few days I will post the sixth strip: Super Goth!

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The fourth Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in July 1994 (issue 24) and is me poking a bit of fun at the portrayal of women in superhero comics. Not much has changed over 16 years later, though I'm a little embarrassed by this strip now and think the point rather clumsily made. Still, here it is!

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In a couple of days I will post the fifth strip: The Chickens! (Sorry if it takes a bit longer - I've pulled a muscle in my back and can only sit at the computer for a very short amount of time at the moment.)

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The third Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in June 1994 (issue 23). Can you name all the comic and cartoon characters that appear in the first panel?

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In a couple of days I will post the fourth strip: The Castrator!

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