Juliet Prime 25th anniversary

I first drew my characters Juliet Prime and Seymour (no last name) 25 years ago today. Usually when you create a character you don't imagine drawing them many years later. At the time, I was a 20 year old uni student who got the idea to start a comic strip about some sort of evil corporation taking over their fictional island homeland, and these guys were the protagonists. 

The first strip was drawn the next day, and I tried to follow a schedule of producing one full-page colour strip, nine panels to a page, on the first day of each month from then on. As you can imagine, this deadline often got ignored due to assignments.

Incidentally I visited my old uni campus two days ago and walked through building 13 where I used to have multimedia classes, and where I used a battered old scanner to scan the early Juliet strips which I would also photocopy, hand out to friends, and pin up on noticeboards around the campus. This was nothing new in the early years of the internet. A few of us had our own web pages on Xoom or Geocities or something, but scanning things in the classroom was tedious and slow (especially if you had to do it on the QT lest anyone notice it was for non-course-related purposes), so it was often more practical to just stick something up in case someone might see it. I remember dubbing off some of my songs I had recorded onto cassettes, putting them in plastic sleeves and taping them to trees in nearby Alexander Park.

 

Over the years, the focus of these characters shifted a little. Before the Juliet Prime graphic novel came along in 2023, there was the original comic strip in 1999–2000, a full-length comic in 2002, another full-length comic in 2006 and the beginnings of a third around 2011, all of which were also called Juliet Prime. The hidden colony scene is taken from the 2002 comic, and the villains being clowns comes from the 2006 one. The 2006 comic ended with Juliet being forced by the clowns to walk a tightrope while juggling bombs, a cliffhanger ending that was never followed up.

 

One good thing about planning the 2023 graphic novel however was cherry-picking the elements from the two previous comics that worked and fit the structure of the intended new story. Thus, Juliet cutting off the arm of the colony gatekeeper that had turned into an eyeless green monster, seemed an obvious bit to keep in! It's the only part of either of those two comics that was included. 

The designs of Juliet and Seymour haven't really changed much over the last 25 years, although some things took time to evolve. Eventually you reach a point when they get suited to their costumes and hairstyles and so on, and just look strange when drawn any other way. At that stage you can call the designs final. Depending on the number of characters, it can often be confusing telling who's who in a comic, so it helps drawing them wearing the same clothes all the time, even though that doesn't really happen in real life.

Still, if you've created a character that's many years old and you still want to draw them, it can be interesting trying out other art styles, colour schemes and ways to keep them interesting for you. Of the artists I follow on Instagram, I might see Tintin hanging out with Indiana Jones one day, and a Simpsons character painted as a realistic human the next. Personally I enjoy re-creating well-known images with my characters. In the above image you can see Juliet and Seymour on a high ledge just like Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters.

To finish, here's one last photo edit featuring Juliet — this is the uni lecture theatre where I did my first drawing of her during a Film & Video 3 lecture on April 30, 1999. And I'm pretty sure that's where I was sitting, too! I always used to sit on the left side, five or so rows from the back, in an aisle seat. Those aren't the original seats. I remember them being red. And they seemed a lot closer together then, too. It's like visiting your old school. You swear it used to be bigger...