Many many many years ago... In fact just before I took up the pencil on a professional level, I was working as a 'roadie' for Climax Blues Band during their '71 tour of the UK, while I waited for my agent to find me my first illustration work. During the casual banter in the band van, Pete Haycock, the lead guitar, used the phrase: 'a bucket of frogs'.
The bizarre image stuck with me for some reason. And years later, when dreaming up stories, it popped back into my mind. So I visualised a heavily equipped, in all senses of the phrase, amazonian heroine carrying a bucket of alien frogs. Triumphant in having purged the planet of the plague -or some such. And so the story of Holly and Maudie was born. Two young women having just graduated some galactic university and looking for things to do with their 'education'. And Holly comes up with the notion of a 'detective agency'. Galactic trouble shooters.
I never took the idea anywhere as I was so busy doing a thousand other things. It was just for the 'back burner'. Until I met John Ostrander, and in swapping ideas, I mentioned the characters. It wasn't long before John and I had reshaped the story to become something vast and, quite possibly, unmanageable. We do have a habit of taking it to the limit when it comes to imagination!
It took John quite some time to come up with the first few pages of script. After all, he was busy with Star Wars comics and a host of other projects like GrimJack and Munden's Bar. So, who can blame him? It has also taken me a long time to reciprocate on the image side of the equation. But here on display are the first suggestions of the look of the story.
If it ever gets any further,I'll let you know. ;)