ZEITGEISTS

And how to hunt them...

Sorry.

The truth is, you simply can’t.

A zeitgeist is very much akin to the Questing Beast Sir Thomas Malory wrote of, that Arthur’s knights would hunt, in utter futility, seeing the beast forever off in the distance, but never being able to catch it. (I wrote about a similar entity in my Conan story, ‘The Wuthering’ funnily enough!)

You cannot hunt a zeitgeist.

To which -

Going back over 35 years, ‘Death's Head II’ gave me a huge hit out of the blue. I became known in the US overnight. And off the back of it I got to work on books like ‘The Hulk’, ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Venom’, before my star began to slowly fade. I did some interesting work after that - some of which I'm very proud of - but the name recognition was largely gone. Shops did not stock my back catalog based on my name being attached to anything. The honeymoon was over.

Much later on, and ‘Wonder-Woman’ changed everything for another seven years at least. And again, I got to do ‘The Brave and the Bold’, and ‘The Green Lantern’. And after that, I again did work I'm very proud of, but far fewer people bought into.

I kept busy, and continued to push myself forward, artistically, but the magic moment - when you feel like your work is somehow new and exciting - had passed. You can always tell when it's happening, despite outside appearances and general industry respect. Things just slowly cool a bit. It's inevitable.

And now, I may be wrong, but it feels like the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ work is giving me a third big shot. I just get the sense that 'maybe' it is landing. That it is hitting home in the kind of way you truly cannot ever plan.

And that's wonderful to me, (if it proves true,) because this is THE book I've dreamed of drawing since I was nine or ten years old, more than any other. And as such, it matters more - carries more heft in terms of my own huge expectations - than any book I have ever worked on. There are many reasons why that's the case, some deeply personal, but I'm hoping I'm reading the runes right here... That this is the third time lucky that seals the deal.

It’s true.

You cannot hunt a zeitgeist.

But every once in a while, if you’re very lucky, you might stumble into one... :-)