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ARMAGEDDON BLUES
© Max Douglas 1990

When I was around 19 I started working on a few book ideas that were directly influenced by Los Bros Hernandez Love and Rockets. This was defiantly one of those. It was also inspired by a number of books I had read at the time, in terms of tone and pace. In particular I was thinking a lot about Lewis Shiner's Slam [a book I have always thought would be great fun to adapt to comics form].

Armageddon Blues was the story of two punk girls, Liz and Al, who were templated on an assortment of nice young ladies I knew at the time, hanging out as I did quite a lot in the bars of Kensington market and elsewhere where punks congregated in the late 80's in Toronto.

Liz is the one with the big hair and war paint, a bike courier she was meant to be the more emotionally secure, angry 'genXer' of the two. A nice smart girl from a good home who was pissed to find not all was fair and light in the real world as she was lead to believe. For her, aside from her relationship with Al, the plot of the story was to be essentially about her political awakening.

Al is a few years younger, 17 maybe. She's a bit more twisted inside, confused about her sexuality, and with some serious scars from her abusive past. Not at ease with boys or girls, she's infatuated with Liz. She's a the whirling dervish here, a bomb going off a few times a day.

There was more to all this but after 15 pages I stopped working on this book feeling totally uncertain about my abilities to competently write the story.

The pages here have always been some of my favorite early efforts, and I've cannibalized some of the art from them for other stories twice over the years.

Maybe one day I'll find my way back to Liz and Al and tell their story. It's a bit of a hart breaker in some of it's early aspects, but then every one like a good love song they say...

Max