SR 1 PAGE FIFTEEN

IT’S TESS! TESS RUBIKOV! CONTESSA NATALYA “TESS” RUBIKOV IS HERE!

I think a lot of people like Tess even more than Sera. Definitely more dynamic, at least. (Best name I ever came up with for sure.) The contrast is the point, just basic story-generation stuff. Every classic duo has contrasting personalities. Calvin and Hobbes, Ren and Stimpy, Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank, Bruce Campbell and his hand, etc. A quick and easy way to create conflict and stories and all that good junk. 

Without Tess, Sera would be a character that sits in dimly-lit rooms all day sighing at spiders, which sounds GREAT to me but probably not to anyone else. Tess’ purpose is to drag Sera out into the sun and start doing things people might actually want to read about.

Tess is the third character I came up with for this world, after Sera and Mary Ann. There’s actually a drawing of her taped to the wall of Mary Ann’s room in my second SR student film, Good Guys Wear Black. (Go ahead, impress all your friends with this knowledge!)

Huh…Totally forgot about that “Cousin Sera” business. Either this short isn’t canon or Mary Ann is very confused. Your choice!

NOTE: Tess’ six piercings are the four in her ears, the one in her nose, and the screwdriver shank accidentally driven into her skull at age 10.

SR 1 PAGE SIXTEEN

No lie, I for real spilled coffee on this one. The original page has a lovely tan patina.

Norman Huge is basically a caricature of a sculpture teacher I had back at the University of Illinois at Chicago in, like, 1996. Weirdly, we didn’t do a lot of sculpting in his class. We mostly found objects out in the world and arranged them in theoretically artistic ways. Some people even mixed in some performance art. (Mercifully, performance was not required.)

The class was a little too “fartsy” for my animation-industry-focused brain to take seriously at the time, so I probably didn’t have as much fun as I should have. I remember the teacher showing us a video of Chris Burden dragging himself over broken glass for what seemed like half an hour, and I wondered “Where did I get off-track here, exactly?” Should have embraced the weirdness more, wee Aaron!

I did like that the class took place in a crumbling, ramshackle high-rise we could pretty much do anything with. Students bashed holes in the walls, threw paint around, dangled stuff from the ceiling… Nobody cared! Real “Pleasure Island” scenario in that dump. (A few years earlier it had been a shooting location for Candyman!)

I remember four “sculptures” I did for “Norman”. 

• I brought in my family’s junk drawer and carefully arranged all the contents in a six-foot grid (teacher: impressed). 
• I shot five holes in a mirror with my old bb gun (teacher: unimpressed). 
• I tore a copy of Entertainment Weekly into one-centimeter strips, tied them together into six-foot strands, and dangled the strands out a window (teacher: confused – strands blew away before arrival). 
• I made a little rooster out of a spray bottle, rubber bands, and several fabric remnants (teacher: reaction unremembered – possibly confused by actual sculpture??).

Pretty sure I got a “B” in that class. Too generous.

Should probably note here that this page is the first time we get a tiny glimpse of Vicious Whisper. Imagine that, on the same page as Norman Huge!

Also “Programming” showed up in a lot of CD liner notes back then. Maybe it still does, but I haven’t encountered a “liner note” in over a decade.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

Let’s see… This week I had to do some surgery on my SHOCK CITY cover… wrote up an outline for another spooky book… OH! Henry Kissinger died! Remember to celebrate responsibly this weekend, planet earth!

NEXT WEEK: ENTER STATICKLAND!