Blue Milk Special

We have a saying in English, “Three’s a charm” and it certainly applies when there is a running gag. More than three variations on the same basic gag is overkill, right? So Monday we will be moving on. Also, speaking of charm, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, albeit belated.

I mentioned the Facebook fan pages of T. Gatto’s Blue Milk Carton as well as John White’s Star Wars: Age 9 in my previous blogs. Today I’m plugging Leanne Hannah’s website and the FB fan page for those of you not aware and interested in learning more about Blue Milk Special’s resident artist and the originator of the distinctive noseless Blue Milk Special style.

Leanne grew up on a diet of 1980s animated shows, toys, movies and comic books and those interests stayed with her to adulthood, reflected in her art. She decided she wanted to be a comics illustrator and completed a Bachelor’s degree with that goal in mind. She worked first as an editor for MVCreations on the 2003 Masters of the Universe comic revival and Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, illustrating her first ever published comic: the origin of Stratos as well as pinups for both titles.

As those projects came to their conclusion, Leanne and I moved back up to Maryland and after a hiatus from comics she got back into the game with a number of one shot projects and backup stories for Perhapanauts, After School Agent, Pulverized, Lava-Roid, Casper and the Spectrals, and Rob Zombie’s new comic Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock?

While Leanne and I both had Star Wars in common, I introduced her to the classic British sci-fi shows Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 in the early 2000s. She quickly became a fan and that fandom naturally spawned into a number of illustrations. This is important to the origin of Blue Milk Special because it’s the cute cartoony style that she developed for her Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 pinups that ultimately inspired the webcomic you are reading today.

You can see two early examples of what I now call the BMS style on the right. Both were drawn as seasonal celebrations around 2006. The first features the 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane and the second features the original cast of the first and second seasons of Blake’s 7.

These were soon followed by newspaper style gag strips, two examples can be seen below. You can see more of these on her site and at her Deviant Art page. I started to get ideas for an ongoing webcomic at this point, but Leanne just didn’t have the time…

As you can see, it wasn’t long before the idea crossed into the realms of Star Wars, propelled by our idolization of Peter Cushing and the disservice done to him in the Revenge of the Sith.

It all led to Blue Milk Special. You know the story by now. Leanne and I were watching Star Wars around November, 2008 and poking playful fun at each beloved scene when the idea hit me that we really should share the twisted commentary with the world in her cartoon style.

To make it possible for Leanne without her having to draw every single strip from scratch I came up with the paper doll process and a lot of prep work. You can read an earlier blog where I explain the process Leanne and I use to turn her roughs and inks into finished webcomics here.

However, I wanted to highlight Leanne’s work outside of Blue Milk Special and make sure everyone who is interested knows where they can go to check out more. The comics industry is a tough field to make a decent living and we both have traditional children’s book ideas in mind for the future. In the meantime she can always use a bit of support.

You can view her work and blog at the Leanne Hannah’s website and you can support her on the FaceBook fan page.