BY HAGBARD'S BEARD
This was my first drawing of Hagbard Celine, the earliest version dates all the way back to 2007, commissioned by Nick H-L!
Eric Wagner broached the topic of Hagbard's visage during our Winter Solstice Maybelogues discussion, but I somewhat dodged the question, mostly just because we were in mixed company, including many people not necessarily interested in Illuminatus, so I'm circling back here!
When I first started developing Tales of Illuminatus! one of the big questions I had was "does Hagbard Celine have a beard?"
I based my initial depiction of a bearded Hagbard on this passage from Illuminatus:
Hagbard Celine was the hairiest person at the table. His fingers, hands, and bare forearms were black with hair. The stubble of his beard came high up on his cheekbones, just below his eyes.
Though it later occurred to me that this may merely refer to 5 o'clock shadow and not the big bushy beard I gave him.
Returning then to first principals, the initial description of Hagbard, which mentions no beard:
He bore a striking resemblance to Anthony Quinn; he had thick black eyebrows, olive skin, and a strong nose and jaw. He was big and burly, powerful muscles bulging under his black-and-green striped nautical sweater.
Based on this description, reinforced by Eric Burza's interpretation from the original comic book series, I decided to give Freeman Celine a shave and a haircut.
Though one small problem remained. A few years back, another drawing I did of a bearded Hagbard got incorporated into a permanent display at the Deutsches Museum. (The display is about Karl Koch, the Illuminatus influenced hacker who used “Hagbard Celine” as his pseudonym.)
So I have a drawing of a bearded Hagbard in a museum, in the capital of Bavaria, delivering lines from the climax of the trilogy, in close proximity to where Woodstock Europa takes place. Seemed like a data point too good to waste, but I already had a beardless Hagbard on the cover of issue #1...
The answer, of course, was to be found in the Maybe Logic of Illuminatus itself!
It turns out I'd unnecessarily trapped myself in a false dichotomy. Having a beard isn't really an absolute yes or no thing. I mean, personally, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, and often times it is indeterminate!
The solution became obvious: Hagbard, being of especially hairy and vigorous stock, grows a beard throughout the events of Illuminatus!
As you can now see in the time skip in issue #2 where a bearded Hagbard is seen in attendance at Woodstock Europa :)))
Also! I must concede, as Eric pointed out, that Hagbard's attire does indeed look very similar to classic Spider-Man villain The Sandman!
ITEM! THE TRIUMPH OF HAGBARD CELINE by Eye Flys
Great track from a local Philly noise rock band all about Illuminatus!
https://eyeflys.bandcamp.com/track/the-triumph-of-hagbard-celine
ITEM! Working Process
Work on the third and final issue of Agnosis! goes well. 11 pages of finished art from Marcelino, and I'm working on a dozen of my own as well, but it's really the captions on those that are such a bear.
Obsessive research condensed down to brutalist fragments, organically arranged on the page until everything clicks. The idea is to condense down weeks of reading into a few seconds worth of fossilized/holographic prose. Write straight/edit stoned and vice versa. And then! It has to sit for weeks, sometimes months, to remove recency bias. Sometimes phrases only work because of how I'm feeling in the moment they were written. Easy to spot the imposters after I let it all cool down.
I do the opposite of killing my darlings, I clear away everything else until only the darlings remain. Maybe not the most commercially successful writing strategy, but so it goes!
ITEM! Danny Patronage
Speaking of darlings, I highly recommend following along with Danny's Patreon, where he's sharing demos, shop talk, lyric sheets, background lore, and vegetarian recipes as he endeavors to get his forthcoming album pressed on vinyl!
Subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/DannyRobinson
ITEM! Odds & Ends
• Brainstorming with GM
• Inside baseball with OG
• Skeleton Key to The Living One
• RAW Illumination on Maybe Day 2026 in Berkeley
• TESTAMENT Reading Group #10
Re: Team Human Ep 353 - "Politics Are Newtonian"
Jonathan Larsen convo was great :))) Human tactics on the ground! I think maybe in terms of the underlining biases of our actions, this regime makes itself an easy target for resistance, because anything we do that involves inclusivity, compassion, and joy implicitly undermines their enforced reality. When the opposition's modus operandi states "if you're not with us, you're against us," that seems agreeable to me. Not that the task is easy, or success assured, but when was it ever!?
ITEM! More rave reviews!
• The Toxic Avenger Team-Up
• 2000 AD - Prog 2468
Until next time!
<3<3<3
bc
https://www.etsy.com/shop/WeirdoverseGiftShop
And for UK/EU orders of Tales of Illuminatus!
