Xena & Gabrielle share a table with a grateful dad & his kids
I’ll wrap up the Laurel Tree ep from the #Xena Virtual Season I worked on 21 years ago with its closing image: a dad & his kids grateful to our heroes Xena & Gabrielle. I gave them a distinctive Little Nemo look here. Little Nemo was drawn by an animator, & pretty much any comics artist who worked in animation (like Walt Kelly, of Pogo) is a huge influence on me, as I also studied animation. One of the things I loved doing on the #Xena vs was visualizing the supporting characters: that’s where the artist can expand on the story.
This drawing from the #Xena Virtual Season ep, The Laurel Tree, shows iirc a soldier with a gorytos, an ancient Greek quiver. (actually Scythian). It was specified in the script, but I came across a pic of an ornate one found in Philip of Macedonia’s tomb.
Generally, when I illustrated a teleplay, it was given me by the editorial staff. I didn’t really interact with the author. This was how they did it on the show as well. I would try to discover the author’s intent, while expanding on it using my own research.
I would also try to look for any patterns in the story that could influence my choices. It didn’t matter whether those patterns were intentional: if they were there, for any reason, I’d use them. In this case, I did hear from the author, afterwards, who told me I picked exactly
the right design for the gorytos. So I was very pleased. She was very nice, & would later write another ep in season 8 I was looking forward to illustrating, but wasn’t able to, as I had other commitments by then. Btw: you know this character is evil by the off-kilter angle!
Gabrielle and Xena ride away on their faithful steed, Argo II
This is another drawing from the #Xena virtual Season ep, The Laurel Tree. Gab leaps onto Argo II’s back as Xena rides away. I like this one as well, as it gives you an idea of motion despite them just sitting on a horse, due to the progression in their poses.
More Virtual Season drawings from The Laurel Tree, this time #Xena wrestling with Alti. This has a rotoscoped Ralph Bakshi cartoon look. Tho Xena is an action show, it’s a challenge capturing that in comic book form. Emotion is key, & I tried to capture that at least.
Another Laurel Tree sketch for the #Xena Virtual Season. Gabrielle confronts Alti. I was pleased to have the chance to draw Alti. I think I designed her look, but am not sure. She definitely looks like a Little Nemo character here. Gab’s costume was designed by the staff, the AFIN tattoo is covered by tattoo-shaped armor.
This is one of my favorite drawings, also from the #Xena Warrior Princess virtual season episode, The Laurel Tree. Xena has been injured & blinded (blindness is a common motif on the show), & Gabrielle is valiantly carrying her to safety. Gab is often the rescuee, so I loved the idea of turning that around.
This is the first drawing I contributed to a #Xena virtual season in late 2001 I believe. I joined it halfway into its “7th season”. The name of this ep was “The Laurel Tree,” a beautiful elegiac tale. This particular vs had a number of eps like that, which suits my mood.
It was influenced by the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird. You’ll notice Gab’s outfit is different than the tv show. Keep in mind this is after A Friend in Need, so she still has her tattoo, & she’s more armored, due to having wielded the chakram.
I didn’t design the costume. The vs had an editorial team that designed new costumes, etc for the main characters, as needed, then supplied the models to guest artists (like me). I think I made her hair slightly longer to show passage of time from AFIN.
I’m currently preparing the drawings for my project, but in the meantime, I wanted to show examples of the last time I attempted a comic book approach to #Xena, when I worked on one of the virtual seasons which popped up just after #Xena ended, in 2001.
My work was inconsistent (putting it charitably) due to my wrestling with artist’s block. Years later, I overcame it, a process I’ll talk about later, but I’ve always found #Xena friendly territory, regardless. Like a lot of fans, it’s always been my safe space.
Over the next week or so, I’ll talk about that experience, & what I enjoyed about the process, which was very different than working on my own. I’ll spare you my worst efforts, though; not every drawing needs to be immortalized!
Eve & Aphrodite chatting at the end of The God You Know
I want to go back to this fascinating moment in season 6 of #Xena, at the end of “ The God You Know.” Eve & Dite are sharing a friendly moment despite Eve being the harbinger of the end of the many gods. Of course, Aphrodite is not actually a god at this point:
Caligula had drained her of her immortality. But Eve herself was never a champion against them, just the object of their paranoia, & the catalyst for their self-inflicted downfall at #Xena’s hands.
I mentioned in an earlier blog post that Dite has a future despite the coming of the one god of Eli. I felt strongly about this, & set this up this concept in my story, but is there any actual truth to this? Did the show’s powers-that-be feel the same way? After all, the original plan for the Twilight of the Gods storyline involved killing off Dite, with only Ares surviving. It makes sense, after all: with Eve & Eli’s God of Love arriving on the scene, having another love god(dess) around seems redundant. Thank goodness Rob & R.J. overruled this when they returned from managing their spinoffs to rectify this.
Why did they do this? As explained in You Are There, set right after Eve & Dite’s scene, we’re told it’s necessary to have both Dite & Ares to achieve balance in the world. So the God of Love is therefore not sufficient to balance out Ares. Why not? Because I suspect the God of Love represents a different kind of love, a more selfless & non-transactional kind of love. Dite’s love is more incarnate, & in a way, she kind of balances out the selflessness that the God of Love inspires by adding a necessary amount of desire that physicality demands
if the species is to function properly. This desire could range from pure carnal lust all the way to the energizing feeling of being in a crowd, & this can actually help supplement the spiritual love that Eli preached about. Without it, we might feel an intellectual compassion for each other, but feel irritated & even repulsed by other’s’ unnecessary proximity.
Is there anything in the show itself to indicate that this is how the writers saw it, though? I believe there is. In You Are There, we see a world without physical love, now that Dite is mortal.
People quickly lose their tempers with each other, & visit brothels to pay for what they can’t naturally feel. But the Elijians should be immune from this, since their god of love is doing just fine, right?
Wrong!
Eve & her prayer circle are fully concentrating on their meditation, but clearly can’t hold onto their feelings of love. Eve quickly loses her temper with a journalist, & her followers grimly crowd around him. They haven’t forgotten Eli’s teachings, they just aren’t feeling it!
Eve & the Elijians make a peace offering
After Dite gets her powers back, however, it’s a different story. Eve’s prayer circle appear as friendly guests on his tabloid show, & offer a very physical & downright carnal peace offering. They’re a bit off-balance, in other words, as their commitment to Eli’s spiritual love is suddenly flooded with an unexpected rush of physical desire.
I’m guessing they all felt a bit silly afterwards about their lack of self-control, but given how everyone else was knocked off-kilter without Dite’s moderating influence, the Elijians handled themselves pretty well, I think. I suspect the future of the Elijians involves a lot of negotiating between the powers of the GOL & Dite, with varying degrees of success.
There is so much more to talk about when it comes to Elijian beliefs & how they’re intertwined with the show, but I’ll just make 2 more points. First, my belief is that had #Xena Warrior Princess continued on several more seasons, we would have seen her story move more into a gothic sensibility, something more resembling the roots of the Evil Dead series. We kind of see something like this in the 6th & final season of #HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys. The most recent RenPic series to date, Ash Vs the Evil Dead, is a bit like how I imagine it, except with more elaborate cosmology after Paradise Lost, & other sources. The Olympians would still play a role, but would look different. I think the God of Love causes a paradigm shift in human affairs, & this reverberates with them, because as people change, so do gods.
Exactly how do I imagine that? That’s a story for a different time, but I see a colorful future for a revival, if it happens. A more colorful Olympus, & as a Valley Mom rather than a Valley Girl, I’d love to see Alexandra Tydings return as a wiser Queen Aphrodite!
Finally, I’d like to talk about the Elijians’ pacifism. I’m fairly certain that doesn’t sound appealing to anybody, but I disagree. A lot of the action on #Xena is nonviolent in nature. Most of the Indiana Jones movies are nonviolent. Violence is only a small part of action, & suspense. I’ll talk more about this next week, but my research into the roots of violence, & the treatment for it, was key to my understanding of Livia’s nature, her backstory, & her recovery. This whole project is like an illustration of her journey.
To end this week’s topic, I’ll post a music video that to me represents the ideals of the Elijian movement. I needed something I could listen to everyday that invoked their community, its simplicity & its majesty. It’s an orchestral piece that comes from the 1985 movie Witness, starring Harrison Ford as a big city detective who’s protecting an Amish eyewitness to a murder. He goes to their village, & doesn’t seem to fit in, nor does he seem welcome. One day, a couple marries, & the community gathers to build them a barn, in just a few hours, by working together. Ford is asked to join in, & since he’s a carpenter in real life, he does rather well. As the day progresses, he bonds with the others, & starts to realize their simple way of life makes a lot of sense after all.
Maurice Jarre wrote the score, with synthesizer for the scene, but he also wrote a version for full orchestra, which I think sounds much more like how #Xena composer Joseph LoDuca would arrange it. Australian director Peter Weir used Pachelbel’s Canon in D as the temp track for Jarre’s score.
First, I’ll post the link to the scene itself, the most famous one from the film, if you want to see it in context, with a light synthesizer arrangement. Then I’ll post the orchestral version:
And now the full orchestral version used for this project (I never get tired of listening to it!):
