Creative Process of " Lord Unikorn " Metallic Comic. (By Edgar Franco)

The idea of speaking about the creation process of this comic appeared due to the series of intuitive, aleatory and rational procedures that involved its development, even for me who for a long time has been trying to work with new forms for the traditional concept of comics, it worked as a break of some paradigms. My usual process is to get an initial argument, the key content of the story, and to leave the images flowing from that argument, this way it's modified, but it will always be a key to unmask the" Big Bang " that produces the process.

In LORD UNIKORN the things were very different, to start the conversation, it didn't exist an initial intention of creating the comic. I was invited by a friend, a plastic artist, to participate in a "Books of Author" - exhibition, a very wide concept involving that artistic category ( one more among so many categories created by the academic rationalism). Than I opted for a kind of scratches notebook as being my "Book of Author", I bought a book of notes, of those old ones, with 500 white pages and I decided to treat it like a "Intuitive Grimoire of Author". I started then to create free images to fill the pages of that album and I adopted total freedom to develop them, for the making of the pictures I used one of those very soft Japanese paintbrush, leaving the initial line to address the image without censoring it. Many of them had been made directly with ink, another ones had a scratch done with 6B pencil, but without using the rubber, because the act of turning off removes the cosmic-archtypical spontaneity of the image and bringing it for the rational processings on the left side of the brain. To draw it I always listend diferent kinds of music that changed depending on how my spirit was at the moment, something like progressive rock until doom metal. In a short period of time I already had ready about 50 images, but due to the commitments of the mundane "life" I had to stop. As I had as an aim to finish the book, to complete it with images, I decided not to present it in my friend's first exhibition, and I promised to include it in the next one.

I kept the "Grimoire" and I was without looking at its images for almost 3 months, returning to it, I discovered very strong images of sense, an certain lyricism that transcends in force good part of my comics production. I decided then to photocopy them to use them as layers or back covers of friends' fanzines, I selected about 20 images that I thought to be more symbolic, I consider my selection a mutual action among the right side (intuitive) and the left side (rational) of the brain. After that an interesting fact happened, I was invited by a fanzine editor to do the layer of his new production. When I saw the proposal of his fanzine I decided to send one of the images that I had photocopied and a rare fact happened in the fanzine's universe, I had the drawing censored by the editor, that in an interesting way tried to tell me that the image was "a little too" aggressive to represent in the layer of his zine. I am already tired of receiving magazines editors refuses that use millions of arguments and subterfuges for not publishing my work ("is it dated", "is it from seventies", "is it a Metal Hurlant comic?", "but it is not a comic!", "it is beautiful, but is illustrated poetry", "but where are the balloons?", "it has a lot of naked woman!", etcetera...), but in the fazines world the censored image was really a surprise, mainly because the editor in subject was an open-minded guy with whom I had already made several partnerships. Important detail: the censored image is the seventh page of the studied comic in this article.

That event made me thinking of the value of those images and I started to show them for some friends that always got scared or laughed about some of them. I take a risk to say then that some of them work like "Koans", a concept detailed in the postgraduation paper "Is there a picture in the emptiness between two pictures? (or: The Koan in the Adult Authorial Comics)", developed by the designer and researcher Gazy Andraus, where he makes clear what a Koan is: "The koan, is a kind of question, in form of undecipherable enigma for the effective rational logical patterns. A kind of question, which doesn't have a rational immediate answer, that looks for to knock down the whole conditioned structure of the rational mind. Actually the koan would just be a challenge to the ingrained habits of our mind, to its way of thinking and then to act". In the paper Gazy demonstrates that Koans can appear in the form of philosophical questions, poems, problems of the quantum physics and it is clear in comics. In my opinion some of those images created for my "Book of Author" have the potential of provoking certain displacements in our rational logic.

With this conclusion I decided to do one more selection, choosing the images that for me seemed to be more "Koanics", and then to create a comic. I got finally 9 images, however one of them had already been used for another work, as layer for a demo-tape of my friends' Death Metal band, the most interesting of this fact is that besides being invited to develop the drawing of the layer, I had to choose a name for the band. I chose LORD UNIKORN when I read a dictionary of occult sciences, the name drew my attention for its sonority and surprisingly for reminding me of the images of my "Grimoire" (not for its meaning: it is a demon that leadership 29 legions), immediately I looked for the image and I drew the logotype that I created for the band on it, my work pleased my musician friends a lot. As the demo-tape layer was part of the 9 selected images I opted for using it as the first page of the comic, adopting as its title the same name of the band, LORD UNIKORN (with my friends' concession of the homonymous band). To impede that the rational side could create approaches for logical ordering of the other pages, I gave them to my wife and I asked her to shuffle them and give them back to me, and then this "aleatory order" had been used in the comic. And it became full of synchronicity, an order generated in the chaos of the creative process.

The comic skript appeared after a few minutes and it was written directly on the pages, in the first page it is just a descriptive sentence, but in the following ones it flowed melting itself to the images and doubling its meanings, with the central focus in questions about eternity, ego, emptiness and allusions to Koans, to the Taoism, to Zen and the Chinese milenar oracle I-Ching. What seemed to be without a sequence of logical connections, ended up generating interesting aleatory sequences - see the first 3 pages - the characters are of profile and looking at the right side of the page , besides everybody has an object in the hands (cranium, clock and sword), the two last pages present symbolic relationships with the sexuality and the genital.

All those synchronicities, coincidences and intuitive convergences take me to think about the artist's concept as vehicle of transcendental forces, the artist perhaps is the paintbrush of the Universe and the art is the deepest form of science, involving the unassailable and wonderful intuition. The creative act is a pure and eternal cosmic orgasm!  

Caressing the death contained in the pointers of the hourglass, I felt the final blade hurting me the essence and I coveted the eternity. My ego, like a small insane Lucifer, cried and screamed against the inevitable fall of the five senses, as if the eternity only had a form, as if the ego went to truth, as if god just had a face, as if the emptiness didn't go one in the ways of the eternal, as if the opposites didn't go complemental, as if the stars were not alive.

See the Edgar Franco's LORD UNIKORN comic:

www.oocities.org/ritualart.geo  

66 albums in 6 words ( soundtrack for the end of the world!).
By Oidícius Ettelig  (Bass, Guitars, Synth and voice of MALDOROR).

1 - WhiteAlbum (Beatles) - The beginning ...and the end...
2 - Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath) - The witch bewitched the 4 horsemen...
3 - Who's Next (The Who) - Urinating in the monolith of 2001...
4 - In the Court of King Crimson (King Crimson) - Drinking in the emperor's same cup.
> 5 - Brain Salad Surgery (ELP) - Even Giger can be sweet...
6 - Dark Side of The Moon (Pink Floyd) - Oniric Soundtrack for magician of Oz.
7 - LA Woman (The Doors) - William Blake reborn...
8 - Benefit (Jethro Tull) - A dream of the anciet piper...
9 - Demons and Wizards (Uriah Heep) - Elves take me to a new dimension.
10 - The Turn of Friendly Card (The Alan Parsons Project) - Feeling that the life passes.
11 - Radio Kaos (Roger " Pink Floyd " Waters) - Searching old drawers of the soul.
12 - The Madcap Laughs (Syd Barret) - Only the mad can feel.
13 - Holidays in Eden (Marillion) - To love and to see the rain...
14 - Ride the Lightning (Metallica) - When the storm scared a boy!
15 - To Mega Therion (Celtic Frost) - Obscure kiss, friendship with the chaos!
16 - Obsessed by Cruelty (Sodom) - Drinking wine with the black side.
17 - Gates to Purgatory (Running Wild) - Prisoner of the time.
18 - Under the Sign of Black Mark (Bathory)- Sacred -sexual intercourse with dark desires.
19 - Reign Blood (Slayer) - Pure Hate, virgin for sacrifice...
20 - At War With Satan (Venom) - The insane turbulence of the evil.
21 - Seven Churches (Possessed) - Inverted Crosses inviting to the abyss.
22 - Pleasure to Kill (Kreator) - New urban barbarians nailing their axes...
23 - Hall of the Mountain King (Savatage) - King without crown, cannot invisible...
24 - Walls of Jericho (Helloween) - When the guitar is stormbringer...
25 - Operation Mindcrime (Queensryche) - The sweetness of the rain powders dictatorship..
26 - In Útero (Nirvana) - The nihilism of new dead Lautreamont.
27 - Serpents of The Light (Deicide) - Expected Suicide...
28 - Bark at the Moon (Ozzy Ozbourne) - Everybodies are lost wolves.
29 - Balls to the Wall (Accept) - The magic irritating scream .
30 - The New Order (Testament) Dominated for the pain and for the time.
31 - Entrances and Wandering on The Seven Zones (Zephirous) - God and Greek demons...
32 - Fruits and Flowers of the Spectral Garden (The Equinox Ov the Gods) - The deepest dimension..
33 - Whoracle (In Flames) - When the balance comes from the chaos.
34 - Battle Magic (Bal Sagoth) - Warring powders black metal.
35 - Tales from the Thousand lakes (Amorphis) - Navigating in a lake of eternal sadness..
36 - Un La Naissance Reviews (Lacrimas Profundere) - The cry of a sweet violin.
37 - Cruelty and the Beast (Cradle of Filth) - Vampires in the eternal night...
38 - The Call of The Wood (Ophera IX) - Cadaveria is the muse of the goat!
39 - The Archaic Course (Borknagar) - A sigh of ancestral hate.
40 - Mors Syphilitica (Mors Syphilitica) - A mermaid in the cathedral.
41 - i-Ching (Uakti) - Shamans of the post-human era...
42 - Suartalvhein (Ancient) - The call of the ogre.
43 - Prince of the Poverty Line (Skyclad) - The pagan violin of the old world.
44 - The Hangman Tree (The Mist) - Father's pain that buries son.
45 - the the Vigorous and Lustful represents (Medicine Death) - A fable about the Humanity.
46 - The Deeper Kind of Slumber (Tiamat) - eternal Fractals.
47 - Images from the Shady Gallery (Imago Mortis) - Philosophizing with guitars...
48 - Ultima Thulée (Blut Aus Nord) - Images of the center of the Hollow Earth.
49 - Krapakalja (Temperance) - mundane mantras for the recommencement.
50 - The Pillorian Acts (Abysmal) - Stories of a coming time.
51 - Consumed by Slow Decay (Gore) - To be a banquet for the worms...
52 - it dances of December Souls (Katatonia) -To wake up in the cold tomb.
53 - Live! (Vulcano) - The monsters of the third world.
54 - Remembrance (Silent Cry) - The lamurious wait for the end.
55 - A Ferro e Fogo (Harpia) - On shipwrecking in the soul.
56 - Into The Strange (Mutilator) - Penetrating in the fog of inexplicable.
57 - The Search (Necrosis) - The truth on the Inca mystics.
58 - Bateria e Baixaria (NyxBelzebu) - To laugh of the end...
59 - Warning of Danger (Omen) - The best and final point.
60 - INRI (Sarcofago) - To profane the thorns.
61 - vomito (Vomito) - The pleasure to melt.
62 - Amorica (Black Crowes) - Sex and magic hippie...
63 - After Antichrist (Kandor) - To hear after the end!
64 - Sen Ohraniceneho Zivota (L'ahka Múza) - Shines of the Kabalistic sound.
65 - D' Essence (Essence) - Dadaistic mystic retro sound from space!
66 - Amusical Lament (Maldoror) - My amalgam of that everything...

E-mail me your 66 albums:  OIDÍCIUS