And that wraps it up for another Galaxion Retrospective! I promise we’ll start seeing more of this guy in the main storyline soon.

Fan service at last!

This is one of my favourite con sketches! A fellow came by my table with a theme sketchbook with the title, “Let’s Get Naked!” He encouraged all the artists he purchased sketches from to make of that theme whatever they wanted. This was my contribution.

(The line about the cheetos, by the way, was swiped wholesale from an old Bloom County strip. As I recall it had something to do with how Opus came to be running for President.)

One more click and you’re done!

You know how Zan started out as the character with the moppish, longish, I-just-fell-out-of-bed manga hair? One day I got to wondering what would happen if he got a haircut.

This, apparently.

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Haha… he looks about 15 years old in this picture. Which, actually, is kind of ironic, since it was about this time when we were finally coming to terms with the fact that all of our characters would have to be a lot older than we’d previously been thinking of them as being. You know how the typical hero in an anime or manga is no older than about 20? We’d been imagining the Galaxion cast to be somewhere in their early twenties, which to the teenage mind seemed plenty old. But eventually we realized… these characters are supposed to be scientists, and have careers. Twenty-something is not old enough to work your way up through the ranks! Slowly, reluctantly, we made them older.

But for some reason, they still look like they’re a bunch of twenty-somethings.

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It sure is odd, to look back and remember that Zan started out being molded on the manga/anime heroes, with the unkempt, too-long hair and the rash loose-cannon attitude that the average male manga hero sports. Zan used to be that way, although he always had to share the main-character spotlight with the array of Galaxion characters of whom we were also pretty fond. It’s a rough job trying to stick to your stereotype when the rest of the cast isn’t cooperating!

Although part of me still wants to think of him as the hero of the story, he really isn’t. He’s kept some of the guy-with-the-hair attributes, such as the need to move to the beat of a different drummer, but these days he’s really a geek at heart.

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This is cool– because here was the very moment when I adopted the Macross style for Zan! These two pictures are dated one day apart. I told the story in an earlier retrospective of how my cousin brought a gift of a certain anime book back from Japan for me, and it totally changed my art. Clearly, this was the day I got it!

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Well, nearly all cartoonists begin their careers by copying what they love, and around 1985 what I really loved was Macross. Since I patterned early Zandarin on the heroic main characters from the anime shows I liked, the changes in my art style are most evident in him.

… I just had this scary thought pop into my head about what might have happened to all these characters if I’d been five or six years younger, and had fallen into the Sailor Moon phenomenon instead. Whoa.

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First colour picture of Zan, also from 1983. It’s odd for me to see a picture like this that has all the basic elements that make up Zandarin’s appearance– uniform, messy brown hair, expression of a guy who’s in his own little world– and yet not look anything at all like the current character. It’s like looking at baby pictures, except, you know, not.

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First ever drawing of Zandarin, from 1983! As you may recall from earlier retrospectives, the various members of the Survey Contact Team used to be able to boast the hilarious job title of “Scavenger.” Sure is weird to look back on what sounded good when you were a kid.

This picture is evidence of one of my earliest anime influences, Battle of the Planets. Is that not totally Jason hair? Sadly, I gave up on this rockin’ hairstyle pretty quickly in favour of my next and more lasting craze, Star Blazers.

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August 15th is Zandarin Wilder’s birthday! How shall we celebrate? Oh wait– I know! A retrospective!

Poor Zan… he’s another one of those characters who’s gotten short shrift in the new webcomic regime. He has an important role in the story, but so far he’s been in only a small handful of pages! Well, pretty soon he’ll be around a lot more often. In the meantime, you can enjoy this collection of Zan history.

(If you’re new to Galaxion and are wondering where the actual comics are, you can go to the beginning or you can see the latest installment.)

This is the seventh in a series of Galaxion Retrospectives, celebrating 25 years since Wendy and I first began telling the story of these characters, and also 15 years since the Galaxion comic first appeared in print, in the pages of our minicomic Salmagundi. The first six retrospectives were: Fusella, Alex, Darvin, Aria, Scavina, and Galaxion itself.

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