Thread by @JordanCollver

I'll be tweeting about the process, inspiration, easter eggs, etc. from my Hocus Pocus comics today, with a focus on the most recent issue about GHOSTS because it's the freshest in my mind and I'm the most excited about it.

Come peer beyond the mortal veil with me! #TBF20

Let's start with CAMEOS! It's been really fun sneaking in guest appearances from friends of the comic & people we admire and casting them as suitable characters.

My favourite so far is the inimitable @ReeceShearsmith & Steve Pemberton @SP1nightonly in the Borley Rectory story.

@ReeceShearsmith @SP1nightonly Here are Reece & Steve as Mabel & Rev. Guy Smith, moving into the haunted Rectory.

It just so happens that Reece also appeared in the 2017 indie horror film "Borley Rectory" imdb.com/title/tt383232…

In fact, let's just take a closer look at that box, shall we? #InsideNo9

The next guest appearance we have in the Borley Rectory story from Hocus Pocus #3 is author and Borley buff Paul Adams, here appearing as a gardener conjuring mysterious "ghost bricks".

Moving onto the Pepper's Ghost story, audiences are the perfect spot to slip in some familiar faces...

Here are magician & Dickens historian Ian Keable, Jim Steinmeyer who wrote the definitive book on the Pepper illusion, and Paul Kieve who's used it lots in West End shows.

Here they are again chillin' with Chuck Dickens.

Incidentally, Steinmeyer has showed up @RikWorth's and my comics before - another interactive @RichardWiseman collaboration about Houdini's baffling "Jenny the Vanishing Elephant" trick.

Ahem, might be useful if I actually showed you what these folks look like IRL for reference. Otherwise how will you know whether or not to be impressed with my cartooning?

Left to right: Keable, Steinmeyer, Kiev

Our last cameo in this issue is Maria Cork, enduring the unpleasant experience of a visitation from the Sleep Paralysis Goblin in this issue.

Maria is a magic aficianado and special effects artist (including STAR WARS!), hence the poster and wee Chewie photo of on the wall.

Okay, before showing you the cameos in Issues #1 and 2, let's take a break and look at other references in #3 GHOSTS!

Tipping my hat to Gustave Dore's "Adam & Eve Expelled from Paradise" to show paranormal investigator Harry Price being rejected from academic circles. #TBF20

Floor plans and photos of Borley Rectory before it burned down were invaluable references in constructing the layout of pages like this. Long have I haunted those corridors.

The tint of the photo montage below happens to be what inspired the colour scheme for this story as well.

The margins of the Borley prologue were inspired by medival illuminated manuscripts.

The figures at the bottom in particular were adapted from the frontpiece illustration to Dickens' "Haunted Man" which is the play being performed in the Pepper's Ghost story later in the comic.

This same illustration was a point of reference for the little imp from the sleep paralysis short at the end of the issue.

(Reprising his role from a strip from a few years ago by @RikWorth & me about Ockham's Razor, which you can read here: hocuspocuscomic.squarespace.com/extra-comics)

...and used AGAIN in the actual stage performance of "The Haunted Man" in our Pepper's Ghost story. Just goes to show much inspiration (theft?) you can get from one good illustration.

I've long been an admirer of Eyvinde Earle (a background painter on Disney's Sleeping Beauty), so when it came to drawing a gnarled tree I knew who to turn to.

Seriously, look up this man's art, it is staggering. I sometimes have to avert my gaze from its sheer aesthetic force.

For whatever reason this guy's eyes from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in Fantasia (huh... another Disney reference) were imprinted on my psyche as a kid, so they came out the end of my pen when drawing a disapproving bishop.

Speaking of disapproving religious figures who did a number on my childhood brain, it seems apt to jump to the Seance issue (#2) for a second to point out the "Dr" James Dobson cameo I snuck in - emphatically NOT a friend of the comic.

Back to Issue #3 and on a cheerier note, here is my favourite panel from the Pepper's Ghost story. I was chortling as I drew it.

The horrific creature being projected is a louse drawn from Robert Hooke's 1665 landmark illustrated tome "Micrographia".

The cover to Henry Dircks' lengthily-entitled book was too cool not to include somewhere... although check out how awesome Pepper's cover was! Always one-upping Dircks, it seems.

@RikWorth and I even considered adapting it for the comic cover but went in a different direction...

The concept for our Ghosts cover went through many iterations, but I landed on a "skull illusion" which has a long tradition in illustration - two famous examples being Salvador Dalí's "Skull of Zurbaran" and Charles Allan Gilbert's "All Is Vanity".

These illustrations exploit our brains' predisoposition to see faces everywhere, even where there are none - a psychological phenomenon called PAREIDOLIA.

Draw in just enough "facial" cues and our brain does the rest of the work in conjuring a ghostly human skull. BOO!

I made a short comic a few years ago explaining the science behind pareidolia in a bit more detail.

It's a bit small below so you can read a larger version here: hocuspocuscomic.squarespace.com/extra-comics

I enjoyed drawing the machinery in Vic Tandy's late-night lab, where he said "there was always some piece of equipment wheezing away in a corner.”

I had some handy video footage from an old documentary on YouTube (helpfully overdubbed in Polish), which I freeze-framed A LOT.

Two more art references from Issue #3 before turning to some more cameos in #1 & 2...

Firstly, who can resist some heavy Eisnerian rain?

And @RikWorth had the brilliant idea of setting our sleep paralysis vignette inside Henry Fuseli's 1781 "The Nightmare". #TBF20

Time for another deep-dive into Hocus Pocus cameos and references!

Master mentalist @DerrenBrown and his loyal hound Doodle appear in the tragic story of mentalist Washington Irving Bishop.

Jack Nicholson/Torrance from The Shining also shows up as a deranged audience member.

Stan Allen runs the biggest magic convention called @MagicLive2020. Here he is being (lovingly) pushed off stage by an overly-enthusiastic young mind reader. And note the poster!

Not exactly a hidden detail, but it was nice to get to draw Arthur Conan Doyle again. @RikWorth
& I have come back to this whistling walrus several times over the years, starting with a short comic about his relationship with Houdini (read it here): hocuspocuscomic.squarespace.com/extra-comics

A slightly younger Doyle shows up AGAIN in Issue #2. It's hard to tell the origin story of strange paranormal beliefs without the "Saint Paul of Spiritualism" being involved somewhere.

PS: re. "whistling walrus" earlier... just LISTEN to his voice!

The woman in the bottom corner of Doyle's lecture is inspired by a (possibly dirty?) sketch by one of my great-relatives (either Agnes or Ruth Collver according to the inscription) in their Canadian history schoolbook from the 1920s. I guess doodling in class runs in the family.

This is admittedly the most obscure "cameo" ever. I'm not even sure why I put her in the audience, but I've always though it was kinda neat to have this character that one of my ancestors kept absent-mindedly returning to, and plopping her in one of my own creations felt right.

Back to a more sane reference, here is Richard Kaufman @RichardatGenii performing some sleight-of-hand. In addition to being an excellent card magician, Kaufman is editor the largest magic magazine called Genii, hence the wee poster in the background.

@RichardatGenii For this panel, @RikWorth's script just said: "a wall
of card designs -- none of them should be the actual design used but we can have a lot of fun here."

And fun I had. They're not all super meaningful, but I'll let you have a chance to guess first before revealing later. GO!

I've left you in suspense long enough. The inkblot on this board of imagined Zener Card prototypes is from Rorschach's psychological examination scene in Watchmen (upside down).

The deerstalker hat peeking out is another reference to Arthur Conan Doyle via Sherlock Holmes.

The little frog fellow's name is Mr. Croak and calls back to the very first comic @RikWorth & I made together - a short horror story called "The Land of All Sorts".

The goat at the top is a Richard Wiseman/Quirkology joke (and occult icon, of course).

I worked on a nifty cutout goat illusion with Wiseman a few years ago which follows you around the room:

Download the template here: quirkologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/goat-i…

And as @ashpryce has astutely guessed, the 3 o' Clubs card is a @pennjillette & @MrTeller joke (it's often the reveal card in their tricks), as well as a secret trick option embedded in the comic for magicians. Shh!

https://twitter.com/ashpryce/status/1329332449260802048

Finally, I drew this page during the height of @ExtinctionR's protests and wanted to work in the @extinctsymbol since it was on my mind. We're ruining our Home, folks.

And in the noble tradition of self-deprecating cartoonists, I cast myself as the smarmy and pretentious artist.

Actor and magician @andynyman (of @GhostStoriesUK & @DerrenBrown etc.) shows up at a seance in Issue #2's Ouija story with his illustrious Fiddler On The Roof beard.

Marie was the name of the ghost in a seance show he did with @RichardWiseman, communicating with her again here.