Commission Inks: Phil From The Marvel Bill & Ted Series

Still needs colors and little touch ups. 

Fun fact: The customer for this piece is the person who the character of Phil was based on, waaaaay back in 1991 or so (thank you, Boy genius!). Wyld Stallyns needed a bass player because in my (comic) book, Death just wasn't going to cut it (har har) and that's why Phil entered the scene. He was the only applicant that had talent, but Bill and Ted were also impressed that he spoke in coherent sentences, unlike the others who answered the ad.

This scene is based on events from the fourth issue of the Marvel comic. The Stations came down with a cold and instead of combining into one giant Station they broke down and multiplied into several dozen mini-Stations. It wasn't until sometime after I started drawing the issue that I realized it was a little like Gremlins. 

I still haven't seen either Gremlins movie (don't ask me why, in the 80s I tried to see every SF/horror/monster movie and I really liked Joe Dante's "The Howling") but they multiply from Gizmo after he gets wet or something like that, right? 

Hold on, I'm going to look it up. 

...

Okay, it's not the exact same thing but it's similar enough. They don't multiply immediately but they hatch from cocoons after Gizmo gets wet, and then the villain gremlin creates more and more of them. The main thing, both stories have a lot of little monsters that are created accidentally and then go crazy. The gremlins are bad and need to be killed, while the little Stations are morons and need to be collected to reconstitute the original Stations. 

Anyway, it drove me nuts and I was worried people would say I ripped off Gremlins but almost no one ever mentioned it. I can't even remember being called on it. I was super uptight about that sort of thing back then. 

"Back then" being up until a few years ago.