Continuing Visions of Lorelei, a 13-part artistic event that celebrates the recent publication of Lorelei: Sects and the City, a Mature Readers graphic novel that reintroduces the soul-stealing succubus. Yesterday we featured a convention sketch from Catwoman and Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose artist Jim Balent, so what better time than today to feature a Lori illustration by his wife, Holly Golightly?
I first met Holly in 1994, back when she was drawing adult-film-star biographies under the name “Fauve” and I was pushing the original Lorelei comic series. She was looking to get into more mainstream-oriented work, and it just so happened that I needed an artist for a project already under way. Uriel Caton (co-creator of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback) had had to give up his commitment to a full-color miniseries called Heartstopper that he and I were working on for indie house Millennium Publications. We’d delivered the first issue before he left, but without a replacement artist issue two had been stuck in limbo. Holly quickly stepped in to complete it.
(Note: This was the comic that introduced Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, who now works as monster-hunting mentor to teen Goth adventuress Pandora Zwieback. You can download the first issue of that miniseries, retitled Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa, for free from this very Web site.)
She was well on her way to fully penciling the third issue when Millennium’s publisher told me about a feature article the company was about to get from The Comics Buyer’s Guide, one of the industry’s leading news magazines. Could we provide CBG with some cover art that promoted Heartstopper?
What you see here is the completed cover art; Lori was included because I was negotiating with Millennium to pick up her series as well (also because Holly had been wanting to draw her). However, the cover was deemed too bloody by CBG’s editors’ (wussies!), and the article never happened, but that was all right—not too long after, Millennium and I parted company just after Holly had finished issue three’s pencils and cover (read the afterword in Heartstopper #1 for why that happened).
Still, that’s a pretty sweet drawing.
