It’s been a long time since I’d seen ‘The Last Unicorn.’ I remembered it vaguely as a child, mostly the part at the end with the bull and the unicorns coming up out of the sea. Turns out, there’s this other part, earlier in the movie, where a witch is exhibiting a caravan full of exotic mythical creatures! Even a damn harpy. Besides the harpy and the unicorn, all the creatures were fake, but the idea was very interesting, I might have to use it in a comic strip sometime. I’m serious about that, I might use it.  I’ve mentioned earlier that that was the initial plan for Merunga, a wandering caravan, which has really only been in the strip once, we’ll get back to that kind of story shortly.

It was crazy, I was shocked, my wife was shocked, my daughter said “Is that Merunga?” It was a surreal kind of experience, which made me wonder what else I’ve forgotten that I’ve still been influenced by.

Of course I remember some stuff, Prince Valiant is an obvious choice. My Buck Rogers collection, and too a lesser degree Flash Gordon. I’ve got six long-boxes of Superman comics that besides engendering a love of comics, they have no influence on the strip. Some Alan Moore, some Jack Kirby, the complete Marvel Micronauts (including their late 90s appearance in Cable,) that’s the stuff I know about.

But ‘The Last Unicorn,’ out of nowhere I see this thing and aha! Maybe years ago is when the idea first took root? I don’t know. Another recent rediscovery was Thorgal, a classy Euro-comic. I found two collections as a kid in the library and loved it, and now that I’m old enough and smart enough to use the internet, I can find more it, and it’s all great, and I feel like there’s a little bit of that in there as well, (and there will be more, finding my old copies I’m now kicking around an idea for a full sized 8-pager about Merunga, at a time before the Caravan.)

Crazy stuff nostalgia, throws you for a loop. I’m in this trap where I’m pouring over all this old stuff and not getting any new stuff done, which is never a good thing. But I’m filling up more than one legal-pad with sketches and ideas for the years to come, so I can still justify it as work-related research.