A Giant Search; the beginnings of the first AA comic

CP003 small10-21-2014
As the members have been able to see, Coco has finally embarked on a mission he has long wished to fulfill: a complete comic about the AA, the Amazon Army. The first four pages have now been completed and published (under New-Comics New), and more will follow, so that our members can watch first hand, as the story unfolds. A word from Coco on his history in comic creation.

From a very young age, I have been a huge fan of comics. First memories go back to the Disney characters, of course, followed a bit later on by the sixties Batman and Superman, and even a bit later still, by the Marvel titles like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the X-Men. And Spiderman. Those titles became my absolute favorites. I loved those Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stories, and have been following those titles ever since. In those early years, in Holland, where I grew up, we only got to see the black and white versions of those comics, mainly line art, and in retrospective I'm very happy about that, because as I now know, the original US versions were colored in very, very bad. Nowadays, that's a whole different story, of course.

In my early high school days, I encountered my first bondage magazines, and apart from photographs, which blew me away of course, I found out about the work of artists like John Willie, Eric Stanton, Gene Bilbrew: all these great pre-Bishop draftsmen, and I immediately knew: this is what I want to do. I remember those early years, sitting in my small room, right after school, making one drawing after the other, ideas overflowing, huge excitement, in an almost feverish atmosphere. I just couldn't stop, having to draw every single day, filling map after map with these hastily drawn, very crude and unfinished pieces. (Those efforts that have survived all of these long years, you can find on the site under 'Nostalgia'.)


After this initial phase, I managed to calm down a bit and made the discovery that made me look at bondage art in a way I still embrace these days: beware of instant gratification! I discovered that, the more time I put into a drawing, the bigger the satisfaction and excitement was in the end. It was in those days that I first found the rest of mind to try, for the first time, to make an actual comic. Of course, I tried and didn't succeed, started over again and failed again, but the seed was planted.

After high school I went to University, and moved back to Amsterdam. Just before that I had discovered the work of, to me the greatest one of them all: Robert Bishop! I had collected all his albums, and filled with new inspiration, in my little dorm, I kept honing my skills. And I started to send in some of my work to various publishers. House of Milan sent back my work with some constructive criticism.

But then: success! Harmony Communications, another big player in those late seventies, actually wanted to publish my work! I was over the moon! For many years, this was to become a very pleasurable working relationship. But still, no comics, only seperate drawings.

To be continued.


CBAP