Sunday, July 12, 2020

Fan Art: Hazard Pay?

More years ago than I care to remember (1975, I think), a friend named Jim Glenn (now known as Teel James Glenn) and I published two issues of a comics fanzine called Factors Unknown. My major contribution was a character called Chris Sheridan, the Hazardman. (Our major claim to fame as editors and publishers is being one of the first places to put George Perez's work in print.)

Anyway, skip ahead about five years, and as I'm working on stuff for Star Trek and Star Wars fanzines, I was asked by one editor (Anne Zeek, I think) to come up with an original idea, as she was expanding what she wanted to publish. I returned to Hazardman and revamped the concept as "H is for Hazard". The character was much the same--a human raised by aliens and returned to  Earth as their agent. He operates in disguise, under the name Hazard, and in pretty much the same outfit I drew him as when he was a comic-book superhero. I added to the regular cast his girlfriend, Caroline, who knew his secret.

I needed models for those characters in illustrating the stories, and I chose Parker Stevenson (The Hardy Boys) for Sheridan/Hazard and Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time) as Caroline (admittedly, she was something of a crush of mine at the time). Again, that art is long disappeared, but here's a recreation of it:


A side note: Chris Sheridan's name comes from a subway stop on the Number 1 line in New York: Christopher Street/Sheridan Square.


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