Tag Archives: comics

Nov16

Mara Page 10

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For a change, I’m not going to track my visual influences here, In most of these blog posts I show people what inspired me, but I can’t really show you what inspired me because… it’s illegal to give you all DMT, I don’t have any DMT (and haven’t for 2 years), and I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to give you all DMT.

Whenever I talk about these pages I’m always asked, especially by students, “Should I take DMT?” and I answer that with questions, questions and strong warnings. Though I am a big believer in the beneficial properties of entheogenic substances, plant teachers and medicines, I’m also a big believer in responsible conscious use and timing. The timing of tripping is very important, take it before you are ready… and it can be a big disaster. I never took psychedelics at all until I was well into my adult life and knew what I wanted from them. I took psychedelics as a seeker, as a follower of Shiva, as a fellow sufferer, and I think you can tell, I did not take them lightly.

The page below is an impressionistic attempt to somehow convey in a black and white line drawing, what the DMT experience is like… which is an utterly impossible goal, other than that perhaps I have met the goal of showing what it feels like to have so much information coming at you so fast that you can’t take it all in.

Barefoot Justine Mara Pencils Page 10

Barefoot Justine Mara Pencils Page 10

Additionally, since Mara’s world is not a future world, or a dystopian vision of the future, it’s an alternate reality, the DMT in her reality resonates not only on the visual and reality shredding spiritual level, it also resonates at the erotic level, hence the entrance of the substance through her navel and the pulsation of her nipples.

This image is highly personal, the ring of panthers are from a dream I had while I was not on DMT, but that I know happened due to DMT. DMT changed my dreams, they began to hold messages, began to reveal things to me that I needed to see and to know. The central ring of jesters are similar to the ones I saw in the DMT realm, but that I later discovered had been painted on cave walls! And the center ring focuses on the toad, its eyes, it’s third eye, and the pouches that contain DMT… though I never had toad 5NMEO DMT, I thought the toad was a better visual symbol for the Mara story. The only other thing I think I really captured here is the way reality shatters once the DMT takes hold, or at least the filtered reality we are all familiar with.

One of the BIG stresses of this page was that I did not want to lose the looseness of the panther drawings, and needed to maintain the tightness of the panel borders, which were numerous and a nightmare to ink. I have to say that I always ink panel borders with a ruler, but in this case, it got so messy, I inked most of the borders freehand with a brush.

As it turned out, the inks came out better than I could have hoped for!

For the first time in this blog series, I am going to share with you the final inks!

Barefoot Justine Mara Page 10 Inks

Barefoot Justine Mara Page 10 Inks

Lastly, when I tell people that DMT forever changed me, people then ask, “for the better or for the worst?” And I don’t have an easy answer. Most definitely having your concepts of the nature of reality shredded is a difficult thing to deal with… would I want to go back to my limited notions of the nature of reality? I tell people the truth, it’s been challenging to readjust, but I have no regrets and I would not want to unlearn what DMT taught me, and I would not want to undo how DMT changed me.

My advice, proceed wisely, carefully, do your research, and really think about whether or not DMT is right for you. It was definitely right for me, and it sent me further down the spiritual path, and far faster than perhaps I thought myself ready for.

If you love what you are seeing, please note that I am creating these pages with a return of NOTHING, so I am seeking patrons. Monthly patronage would really help this project come along, and my patrons get all manner of cool exclusives: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

Oct26

Mara Page 9

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Become a Patron of Barefoot Justine’s: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

I usually like to load my blogs with visual references, but to tell the truth, the story I am telling on this page is more about philosophical, political and spiritual references than visual ones. However, there is one major influence, or series of influences I can trace through for you here.

One of the things that has kept me interested in Mara as a project is somewhat hard to explain. I often have an idea, so I go seeking reference for that idea, or some film or comic that has the mood of that idea, and what I find rarely hits the mark, rarely sates the needs of my eyes as a viewer, of my mind as a reader. I then realize that the ONLY way what I want to see and feel is going to be seen or felt is if I make it. In other words, dare I say it, I feel that Mara is truly and genuinely unique. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Light Years

All that said, one obvious influence, perhaps even swipe, was from the movie “Light Years,” which contained an understated eroticism, but also was where I got the idea for a civilization of mutants that had been created by the power structure of the above-ground world. That whole concept really got stuck in my imagination and I began to riff on all the possibilities this contained for Mara’s world. In truth, in the original Mara, done a long long time ago, those mutants played a lesser role, but now they have become a driving force and in a way her guardians, guides, and often victimizers. For me I find the seeds of my ideas in the corners of other works, very often I respond most to a character, concept or aside than I do the major thrust of the story being told, and I think, “More could be done with that.”

In the end, though I was influenced by the mutants in “Light Years,” my mutants serve a different purpose and come from a different perspective, but to be fair to me, my mutants are not merely different in narrative purpose, but in that they are mostly composed of Frankensteinian pieces parts of animals and humans, thus separating them one degree further from “Light Years.”

In a sense my mutants are no more influenced by “Light Years” than by “Frankenstein,” and just as notably, by “Island Of Lost Souls,” MGM’s 1932 adaption of “The Island Of Dr. Moreau,” which is a “must see.” No less influential than the mutants was the concept of “The Panther Woman,” who has influenced not only Mara, but my own inner self.

Island Of Dr. Moreau

No less influential than “Island Of Lost Souls” was the 1977 film version of “Island Of Dr. Moreau,” in which, again, the animal-human mutants are very obviously seen, but what might not be immediately obvious is that here again, as in “Island Of Lost Souls” we see a return to my favorite fairy tale influences, “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as “Cinderella,” in that both contain barefoot beauties surrounded by beasts, filth and squalor. That contrast for me is as fascinating as that of the mix of pain and pleasure in sadomasochism.

So I think you can see that even something as simple as a “swipe,” once analyzed becomes far more complex. I have not merely “swiped” the ideas I loved from “Light Years,” that was merely the spark of inspiration, then came in other influences like “Frankenstein,” and “Island Of Lost Souls,” and “Island Of Dr. Moreau,” and it all mixed together with my own observations about how politicians use religion, and enslave God to serve their own perverted needs. In other words, once I get past the self-effacing notion that I have “swiped” something I begin to see the domino effect of numerous other influences just as important as the initial inspiration, then that all gets filtered through me, my life, and my output as an artist to become something that, in the end, bears very little resemblance to “Light Years” or any original source of inspiration. In a sense, all art is collage, we gather influences, ideas, passions, cut a bit from here, paste a bit from there, move things around, and create our own worlds from the ones we love. And hopefully in the end our collage looks more like us than it does our influences.

If you love what you are seeing, please note that I am creating these pages with a return of NOTHING, so I am seeking patrons. Monthly patronage would really help this project come along, and my patrons get all manner of cool exclusives: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

Oct11

Mara Page 8

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OK, group, so here’s another case where I have to openly talk about the evil world of “DRUGS!” Ooh… sounds so sensational when we say it that way… something BIG pharma, politicians and exploitation documentary makers (and NOT the divine type of exploitation of the cinema) know all too well. Rather than referring to marijuana as a plant medicine and DMT and Ayahuasca as a plant teacher, we use the word “drugs” to shut down dialog and vilify… but enough of that rant. This page was partially inspired by the one (of 15 or so) DMT trips that went bad, though I get more specific on that later. In the trip, the floor under my bare feet became quite menacing, so here I mixed that with a scene from the original Hans Christian Andersen story “The Little Mermaid.” Note how Mara’s feet are enjoying trodding upon mushrooms, that soon turn into vile polyps, then eyeballs.

Below is the passage from “The Little Mermaid,” which seems to me to emphasize if not somewhat eroticize her bare breasts.

“Beyond this stood her house, in the centre of a strange forest, in which all the trees and flowers were polypi, half animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. The branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon, and held fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches. The little mermaid was so alarmed at what she saw, that she stood still, and her heart beat with fear, and she was very nearly turning back; but she thought of the prince, and of the human soul for which she longed, and her courage returned. She fastened her long flowing hair round her head, so that the polypi might not seize hold of it. She laid her hands together across her bosom, and then she darted forward as a fish shoots through the water, between the supple arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which were stretched out on each side of her.”

Edmund Dulac Little Mermaid

Edmund Dulac Little Mermaid

Were these hallucinations, the physical reality of this space? Does it matter, isn’t all maya, all illusion? Anything that is real to us in a moment is the reality we know.

While in the panels below I reached for a balance between the old world I loved (Gollum from the Rankin Bass Hobbit), and what is to me the new world of stylistic abstraction and the raw looseness I am chasing. First with the old world I know, I recall in the Hobbit cartoon just how magnificent the anatomy of the Gollum was… those fabulous hands!

To be honest, I have to confess that the Rankin Bass Hobbit had more of an influence on me, my mind, my art, the velocity of my life, than anything up to that time, and perhaps anything after, potentially including the earth-shattering influence of Star Wars. What that Hobbit did for me was first introduce me to fantasy of the highest order! And, more importantly, if you look carefully at the backgrounds and the lines, the entire design of the movie was based on the work of an artist who, many years down the road, was to become the biggest influence on my art and style, Arthur Rackham. Seriously, look at Rackham, then watch the Hobbit and tell me you don’t see it!

And, though I say somewhat new territory for me, the abstraction and stylization, as is still my path, it is based on the work of a master. Though I was not looking at this image, Klimt was very much in mind.

Gustav Klimt
Judith I, 1901

But what is coming on the next page is not merely a return to the reality of erotic texture that was always a part of my Mara work, but most definitely pushed many steps further than I had been capable of all those years ago… but that, will have to wait until we get to page 9.

If you love what you are seeing, please note that I am creating these pages with a return of NOTHING, so I am seeking patrons. Monthly patronage would really help this project come along, and my patrons get all manner of cool exclusives: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

Sep7

Mara Page 5

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This page is, perhaps, the simplest one to break down regards visual influence, yet probably the most complicated to break down spiritually and metaphorically.

While looking over “Idyl” and “I’m Age” by Jeffrey Catherine Jones, I was taken by the extreme shift in line quality as Jeff transitioned from brush to pen. Though this page was influenced by Jeff’s work with a pen, I will ink it with a brush. Below I have included 2 examples, one from “Idyl” inked with a brush, and another from “I’m Age’ inked with a pen.

Notice what a distinct difference in line quality, Jeff having chosen to change not only the over all style of the work, but to fully engage in the possibilities of each tool, perhaps even exaggerating the qualities of each tool to their extremes.

I’ve lost a lot of people, and I don’t know why this is so, but the loss of Jeff Jones haunts me like no other loss. It has cut deep. Knowing and learning from Jeff was a profound experience, and I doubt I’ll ever have the likes of it again. All I hope to do is, one day when the right student comes along, pass it all on to him, her or all of them.

Back to me and my work, to tell the truth, I am intimidated by Mara page 5 page, while the pencils came out with shocking ease, I fear the inks may not, that I might become stiff… only time will tell. It will be my goal to ink with the same wise hand Jeff Jones had.

The real meat of this page comes from a trilogy of dreams I had in which spirit guides, 3 different animals, came to me on 3 different nights of prophetic dreams. Rather than reiterating all that here, if you are interested, I have written extensively about those dreams. As Mara is a mythologized autobiography, I will be incorporating all 3 of those dreams into the story.

The first dream, about the Panther, you can read about by following the link below:

https://barefootjustine.com/2017/07/28/the-three-dreams-dream-1-the-panther/

The appearance of this panther has since become an important aspect of my internal and spiritual life. Once, when hounded by a territorial dog, I manifested the panther in my eyes, allowed it to possess my body, and frightened the dog with the panther’s stare, so much so that it literally slinked away with its tail between its legs. The Panther woman in me is strong, and I should call on her more often.

Prior to this dream I had been obsessed with The Panther Woman from “Island Of Lost Souls,” the fabulous film starring Charles Laughton based on “The Island Of Dr. Moreau.” The Panther Woman in that film is a character I relate to at the deepest level.

Barefoot, beautiful, vulnerable and wild…

Aug31

In Defense Of Eros & Fantasy (parts 1 & 2)

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Here they are, by student request, parts 1 and 2 of my lecture on the value of erotic, exploitive and fantastic images. In a culture where R. Crumb is seen as a threat to “safe space,” it’s time to start speaking up. Below are my thoughts on eroticism, covering everything from the mystical to the Exploitation Cinema, comics, quotes all a lot of thoughts.

No, they don’t make movies for us anymore, the sorts of fantasies I love have fallen out of favor, but I’m going to keep them going, and do a little talking, too.

If you want to support my own erotic work, check this out: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

Aug23

Mara Page 4

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To help me make this dream come true, to help bring these visions and fantasies to light, become a patron of the arts: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

By this point I knew, without a doubt, that this entire book was going to be based on the work that most influenced me, the work from the Warren Publications, “1984,” “Creepy,” “Eerie,” and even “Vampirella,” and artists like Alex Nino, Frank Thorne, Esteban Maroto, and especially Jose Pepe Gonzalez. Though to be honest, I have only recently become obsessed with Pepe’s work. See below, Jose Pepe Gonzalez inking with markers (a rarity).

I became obsessed with Jose Pepe Gonzalez after viewing the brilliant “Love Strip” documentaries about him and his work, find those on Youtube, they are brilliant. I fell in love with his odd mix of easy looseness and tight perfection, and through the film, his tragic personality, innocence, humor and a childishness that contributed to his downfall. Flawed artists, it seems, are attracted to other flawed artists.

And as I said before, I do a lot of research, not just into the art I love, but into anatomy, animals, how fat works, how wrinkles work, all these things influence me deeply. I am a research junkie, and fear I sometimes use it as a crutch.

I think the things that have most deeply influenced me have been Exploitation films, so I will be talking a lot about Exploitation films and directors as these blogs ramble on. To tell the truth, those films probably had as much if not more influence over me than any comics or art, especially the work of directors like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin, both of whom created images so audacious that the have continued to haunt me, for example, the below image from Jean Rollin’s “Fascination.”

Jean Rollin "Fascination"

Jean Rollin “Fascination”

But perhaps the imagery that has most haunted my erotic imagination comes from the great Master himself… Libertine, Sadeian, and genius… Jess Franco!

His absolute fearlessness and willingness to explore his darkest deepest fantasies, and on the lowest of budgets, remains an inspiration. Jess was a visionary, a hack, a madman and a master. He loved to show his heroines in all their glamorous glory one moment, and in their greasy bug-bit misery in the next. He explored any fetish that crossed his mind, yet remained always true to his nature as a voyeur. His shots are so consistently voyeuristic, so often we view his films as if we were a pervert hiding behind the plants in the apartment, or peeping through a mirror or window. Come to think of it, I need to play more with those visual themes as this project progresses past the first issue.

I think you can see in the bedraggled beauty below, just how significant an influence Jess Franco has had on me.



And, last but not least, to help me make this dream come true, to help bring these visions and fantasies to light, become a patron of the arts: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

To take Justine’s classes: https://learn.sawcomics.org/collections/justine?q=

Aug6

Mara Page 3

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Become Justine’s patron: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

And introducing… MARA! This is where the truth starts to shine through, the influence of of everything, DMT, Exploitation cinema, and, of course the artists that influence me, and this is where all that merges into the real me.

Early on, Berni Wrightson had a huge influence on me, and in many ways, this page was a tribute to his beautiful mad scientist laboratories, only mine is more organic, and I wanted to get away from Wrightson’s Gustave Dore obsession to remain true to my stylistic preferences. But that’s always the way with the things that influence me, once they are filtered through me, they end up looking little like the source from which I took inspiration.

…And this was also all merging with my love of research. I wanted this image to have the feel of an opium den. For me Mara is very much a “Beauty and the Beast” or “Cinderella” story, in that I am excited by the vision of her beauty surrounded by the foul and beastly, whether that foul and beastly presence be a place or an entity. Plus, at this point in the story, Mara has to be at rock bottom… or at the very least is traveling in that direction. I also have a fascination for things of the past, so a good old opium den setting was far more interesting to me than a rave.

Funny, but the truth is, my fascination with the opium den setting goes back to a fantastic old penny arcade machine I saw in San Francisco at the Musee Mecanique, I was lucky enough to find a picture of the very machine that fired my imagination… wish this was a video and we could watch it move.

I’d like to note also the “DMT toad” in the upper left. Now here is where I have to be totally straight, the entheogenic drug Mara is on is NOT actually DMT, let alone 5-MeO DMT, but a FANTASY version of DMT. Below I have included a photo of a DMT toad… the DMT is NOT activated by licking the toads, but by extracting the fluid from the sacks on the toads.

I’ve never actually had DMT from the toad, but since this is a fantasy, that seems irrelevant. The toad was more picturesque.

At this point I’d like to point out that Mara’s world isn’t so much a future world of any particular time, Mara’s world is another dimension, an alternate reality, and its logic runs on the logic of that reality, as dreams run on dream reality and fairy tales run on fairy tale reality, and Exploitation films run on Exploitation reality.

And, last but not least, to help me make this dream come true, to help bring these visions and fantasies to light, become a patron of the arts: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

To take Justine’s classes: https://learn.sawcomics.org/collections/justine?q=

Jul10

Mara Intro.

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In this video I’m showing you how I live, where I work, and a little bit about who I am. Who is this madwoman creating Exploitation comics in this day and age? Just me… Justine Mara Andersen.

You’ll be seeing my room, my “psychedelic pad,” my “little slice of paradise.” Eclectic as the setting may be whenever I watch Bollywood movies in my room at night… the movies just seem to settle right into the decor, and at times it’s hard to tell where the movie ends and the room begins, especially when watching Sanjay Leela Bhansali films. At night, when the curtains are pulled, the room takes on an exotic magic that feels quite different from the vacation in paradise setting of the daylight hours.

And definitely the forest around my room has been integrated into the decor. The yellows and greens play about on the walls creating a seamlessness between the interior and exterior.

In fact, the below photo was taken directly from my room. My nearest neighbors are animals, deer, bald eagles, hawks, alligators, wild turkeys, and lots of little lizards and gorgeous green tree frogs.

I took this picture from my window, a great view right into the forest. (pic by Justine Mara Andersen)

Mara Medievalist (by Justine)

Mara Medievalist (by Justine)

And here, in this setting, in this room, is where I do my work, my drawing and my dreaming. In many ways, this relaunch of Mara seems like an exercise in madness.

Many might ask, why return to a project that was wholly ignored, sold poorly, and has been ultimately forgotten?

There is no logical answer, other than the one French exploitation director Jean Rollin gave me when I asked him why he kept creating under such adversity, he told me, if I don’t write or make films, I die.

When I began Mara back in 1989 (or so) I knew nothing about her or her world, nor did I know how to draw or tell a story. Of course the image above is from one of the last Mara books, and is quite accomplished, but in so many ways Mara has never left me. Even if the rest of the world chose to ignore her, and ignore me as an artist, she and I have always been one.

And even if many want to call me out for “sexualization” or being somehow anti-feminist for drawing good old fashioned romantic erotic fantasy, Exploitation, I no longer care because that, too is part of me. I don’t do this for money, I don’t do this because “sex sells,” or to be a “sell-out,” I do this because it’s the truth of who I am.

Be careful when judging a person’s art, when assuming their motives. Very often the anger of the viewer is the only lens through which they can see art that does not conform to their ideologies.

I guess if you don’t like Mara, you don’t like me, and you know what, that’s fine by me. As deep as I am into this incarnation, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I no longer expect to be loved by all.

All I can do is love what I do and tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.

Oh, and funny note about the above Mara panel… that word balloon “I feel like a Victorian” was a direct reference to how dismissive David X Cohen was of my work when a friend delivered it to his desk in the hopes that I might be able to find work with the Simpsons (by the way, I had sent in cartooning samples, not just Mara), he tossed it aside and said, “It’s too Victorian.” Well like when Lennon said all McCartney did was write silly love songs and Paul wrote “Silly Love Songs” in response, I did the same here.

What’s so wrong with being Victorian anyway?

And, last but not least, to help me make this dream come true, to help bring these visions and fantasies to light, become a patron of the arts: https://www.patreon.com/barefootjustine

To take Justine’s classes: https://learn.sawcomics.org/collections/justine?q=