Sorry,…What Was Your Name Again?”

Hm. Where to begin to explain this one?

This orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out intend­ed to be just a sketch, done for John Pierce. But as these things some­times hap­pen with me, it sort of took on a whole life of its own. John is a friend, an email cor­re­spon­dent, a long­time comics fan and writer. You may have seen his work in some mag­a­zines about comics like Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego/FCA (the Faw­cett Col­lec­tors of America).

Any­way, John has a char­ac­ter he cre­at­ed called Jon­ni Star. Her sto­ries have appeared in a few small press comics here and there, usu­al­ly illus­trat­ed by Brazil­ian artist Emir Ribeiro. (I even took a crack at draw­ing Jon­ni myself once, and you can see the result here in my Gallery). John had an idea for a com­ic book char­ac­ter that John­na (Jon­ni’s civil­ian iden­ti­ty) liked to read about, called Mara­cana, the Invin­ci­ble Eagle. Which I guess makes Mara­cana a com­ic with­in a comic.

Most comics fans will like­ly be able to sort out for them­selves which char­ac­ter arche­type Mara­cana’s descend­ed from. But John has some inter­est­ing twists in there too, like hav­ing her root­ed in a more Celtic-influ­enced cul­ture instead of the Gre­co-Roman type one might tend to usu­al­ly expect with a char­ac­ter like this. Like I say, this start­ed out intend­ed to be just a sketch, but I guess I got car­ried away and could­n’t help myself. I thought the end result was fun. Seemed like I might just as well go ahead and post it here, while I’m at it.

Mara­cana the Invin­ci­ble Eagle is ™ and © John Pierce.

6 thoughts on “Sorry,…What Was Your Name Again?”

  1. John G. Pierce

    A sto­ry is being pre­pared for Mara­cana. I’ve also spent some time work­ing out her island’s lan­guage, and that’s been a lot of fun to do. Mark’s help has been invalu­able in launch­ing this char­ac­ter into her own fea­ture. What start­ed out as a mere pas­tiche has grown into some­thing more than I ever envi­sioned when I dreamed up the con­cept. Inci­den­tal­ly, her hero­ic name, the Invin­ci­ble Eagle, is based on the title of a less­er-known march by John Philip Sousa.

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  2. joe musich

    Although I am very late to find­ing out about this char­ac­ter I find the idea fas­ci­nat­ing. I thank the John Pierce trib­ute in the lat­est issue of FCA/AE for the infor­ma­tion and of course the accom­pa­ny­ing photos.

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