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| The Applicant (Cerebus #91, October 1986) Art by Colleen Doran, Dave Sim & Gerhard |
As Neal Adams said of Stan Drake -- he knew how to put
expressions on girls' faces and they would still look pretty. Colleen
has also had that remarkable skill, which was a big reason that I asked
her to tight pencil the unnamed Colleen clone in The Applicant over my
layouts. The emotion -- complete rage -- was there in the text and I
just did very rough faces and figures. Sure enough, the tight pencils
came back -- COMPLETE rage -- but still cute as a button. Inking those
faces was both a pleasure and an education in pencilling female
characters that came in very handy, particularly on JAKA'S STORY.
Colleen seemed to me to be a natural for self-publishing. She
certainly had the sales figures on A DISTANT SOIL to sustain a regular
title. And as Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld concluded about the
pre-Elaine SEINFELD scripts: 'This show needs some estrogen'. That was
-- and is -- certainly true of self-publishing. Elaine always reminded
me of Colleen. When she did make the leap to self-publishing, joining
me and Martin Wagner of HEPCATS, I made a point of the three of us going
out for dinner with Colleen's Mom. 'There's no way to EXPLAIN Colleen
-- better to just let Martin experience her for himself.' He spent the
whole dinner sitting there with his mouth open, looking back and forth
between Colleen and her Mom and me. He adjusted beautifully.
Of course, Colleen ultimately opted for the mainstream success that
is so justifiably hers and 'co-publishing' with Erik Larsen's Image studio. In retrospect, sticking with self-publishing would have
constituted hiding a very bright light under a very small bushel.
I would certainly encourage any CEREBUS fans with a few dollars to
throw around to visit Colleen's website and buy a 'Colleen Collectible'
or two to help finance the mammoth project of reconstructing all of the
material she's now missing as a results of her printer ditching her negatives. I mean, don't forget about CEREBUS, but
let's make sure that Colleen is in good shape to cross the A DISTANT
SOIL finish line!
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