When you are reading a good book, it is hard to stop even though you know you’ve no reading time left. It is hard to put the thing down. My comic book, Hidden Kingdom, is absolutely nothing like that. I am doing five pages today, and no more. I am adding them also to my vault. So maybe today’s the day you would be better served to go look at the whole thing (so far) in the vault.
Here are today’s five pages (along with another look at my goofy cover)
In my book The Magical Miss Morgan, the teacher, Miss Francis Morgan, has to deal not only with a crisis in her personal teaching world, but a crisis brewing in the magical fairy kingdom of Tellosia. The fairies have come seeking Francis’ aid because she, as a teacher, has direct access to children and can affect what they believe in. You see, the fairies suffer from a general lack of belief in fairies, something that has been plaguing them more and more as the modern world makes it more and more difficult for children to actually believe. Soon they will wink out of existence for lack of believers. Francis’ younger brother, Milt, is a wizard. He knows some fairies personally, and he has told them that Francis can help them. So, because Milt revealed her to them, the Erlking, leader of the fairies of Tellosia, has sent three chosen representatives to plead for her help.
The leader of the trio is Donner. He is the dragonfly-winged pixie who is a leader of the wasp-riders. At three full inches in height, he is one of the biggest and most leader-ish of the fairies, the reason he was chosen to head the mission. He speaks very much in the old style and has a hard time getting his ideas across to a creative teacher-type from the 1990’s.
Silkie, the Storybook, is a beautiful fairy who, because she is a Storybook fairy, is immortal. She has been immortal since Hans Christian Andersen used her adventures that she had related to him to create the story of Little Tiny or Thumbelina in 1835. Any time a fairy is immortalized by a human author, that fairy becomes a Storybook and is destined to live forever. She is very old and very wise, but also very human-looking and very-very small.
Garriss, the third fairy, is a wisp. Wisps are elemental beings made of fire, water, stone, or air. They are rumored to be incredibly stupid, because their little brains are composed entirely of one element. Garriss is a fire wisp. He has a temper because his brain is made of fire. Torchy, also pictured, is also rather stupid and foolish. But fire wisps prove to have a very warm heart.
So, if you can stand fairy tales at all, I hope you will clap your hands and believe in the fairies in my book. I intend to submit it to the Chanticleer Book Reviews’ YA Novel Contest in April of 2015. The hand clapping should definitely help… unless James M. Barrie lied to us in his book Peter Pan.
In the novel I just recently finished, The Magical Miss Morgan, there are several different kinds of fairies. The fairies in the book may or may not really be there. They are a part of the magic the teacher, who is the main character, uses to be a superior teacher. She engages the imaginations of her students and they love her for it. Still, an important part of the plot revolves around a small group of fairies intent on a quest meant to save their fairy kingdom called Tellosia from a take-over attempt by evil fairies. One of the main character fairies is the fire wisp, Garriss, seen here with his little brother Torchy. Fire wisps are fairies made of elemental magic, so they can be fire, water, wind, and stone. They are made of the element they represent, and so, with a brain made of fire they are not terribly smart. They do, however, have very warm hearts, which Garriss proves to Miss Morgan, to Blueberry Bates, and to all the school children who dare to believe in fairies and fairy magic. Garriss is totally contained by fire magic, and therefore doesn’t set the teacher’s desk on fire when he walks on it. In fact, the only way he can burn anything is through the cone of fire spell written on his hands. And even then, since he is not very bright (in a mental capacity), he has to be allowed to use it by his fairy friends, Silkie, the Storybook fairy, and Donner the Pixie.
This Paffooney is the first one I drew of any of the fairy characters in Miss Morgan’s story, but it is not the last. I intend to draw more of them in the coming days.
Catch a Falling Star 