Sunday, September 6, 2009

Westbury Detectives - 2004 to 2009

I'm planning another comic, but given how many projects I've had since 2001 and the sheer volume of some of them, I need to choose one that'll be fairly easy to remake. I'm either going to go with a 20-page booklet of four-panel strips revolving around a group of kids (Quinn), or a science fiction parody based on the Japanese super-girl genre of the 1980's (Hyperspace Traveller Bunny/ ハイパースペースバニー). I made a webcomic called Skipper the Robot Kid, but dropped it two years ago in favour of remaking it completely, so I think it's time to bring out something I haven't touched in a while. This is...



L-R: Jack Arthur, Bearis Grizzley, Mara Martin (now Wright), Becky Byrd, Dr. Byrd, Princess Tahara, Queen Maga, King Byar (these three are all defunct)

...Damn.
Westbury Detectives is a massive and bizarre project that has unsuccessfully been trying to come out for the last five years. It centred around Jack Arthur, a young detective, and his coworkers at a bizarre detective agency. Originally, they were a planetary defence force. Just imagine Darkwing Duck, Duck Dodgers, and The Great Mouse Detective, all rolled into the worst proverbial sushi ever. There were random animal people because I may have been a furry from ages 12-13.

I need to explain the frequent prescence of Dr. Edward Byrd and his daughter Becky...I've been thinking of having Dr. Byrd, when he was a non-anthropomorphic child, be put through a "humanizing machine" and raised by a researcher as her son. Then years later, they put another chick into the machine and made it his daughter. More later...


These are the villains, which in 2005, included a self-aware hand puppet and a talking chicken. They briefly changed to the West Maulers, which is just as bad. Basically, four of these people are remotely re-usable to me. The bat girl (Batricia) was a thief who later joined the WDA to pay back the city. Pollenatra was a rip-off of Bushroot, whom was a Poison Ivy parody, and I've only now remade her:


Dr. Byrd's mother Laura, top righthand corner. I decided that Pollenatra would be a Dr. Polly Nathan, who was pushed into that machine by her fiance whom was opting to murder her. She got blended with a plant, thought Jack Arthur put her in, and she steals the machine. She's probably too legally-risky to use, but I like her better now.
The boy is "Birdbrain", whom was the second guy in that earlier picture. BB has gone from being a midget with a bird living in his head, to an amnesiac teenage midget with patchy hair, to a naiive orphan with a full head of hair. I've redesigned both Pinhead and Birdbrain, due to the fact that I stole them from
a Little Audrey short. Neo-Birdbrain is sort of based on Sludge from the Astro Boy movie; he was raised by his pickpocket uncle, then inducted into Pinhead's gang. This Pinhead is indeed the same guy from Cinderelliot.


Behold Emma Bishop, a normal-seeming woman who occasionally pulls of high-tech robberies while dressed as Haut Kunstlich, a supposed cyborg man. Cain/Elliot and Arbrook/Miles are her assistants. She's my favorite new character in Westbury Detectives.


Here's the updated cast! Bearis Grizzley, I'm cutting you out. Mainly because you're a damned talking bear.

Mara Wright's new design came to me in an abrupt vision, and when I tried drawing her as the above, her personality developed in a day. Keep in mind that she had existed for five years prior. Jack's new personality is coming in, but the problem is that I don't know at all how to give him a brilliant, original design. I'm planning to somehow blend Black Jack, Spike Spiegel and the Tenth Doctor...

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