In order to get references of Ancient Egypt, I looked at both the live action and cartoon movie versions of Asterix and Cleopatra. I didn’t much use either, since very little background shows up in today’s comic, but it was fun watching the movies. Interesting differences. Since its animated, the cartoon version really goes all out for depicting ancient Egypt. The movie version is big budget, but you can really see how a small set can go a long way. Much less reference there. However, it gave me a good lot of ideas for cutting corners. I shouldn’t cut corners. But I’m a lot like my student, Kyle Parisi. Kyle usually puts out between six to ten finished pages of comic book in one two hour class. He’s a good artist, but the work gets messy. Finally, I said to him that he should aim to do quality work even if it means only finishing two pages in a day. Instead, he developed some incredibly cool looking stick figures so he could draw fast AND have the artwork look nice. Like Kyle, I can’t seem to get my story out fast enough. If only I’d thought of that stick figure thing years ago, like before Kyle was even born. Oh well, I’ll just pump things out my way.

I love science fiction. My favorite TV shows include Star Trek and Dr. Who. The entire success of these programs resides upon the given fact that everyone in the universe speaks and understands the English language. When I put my Goth Scouts into the ancient Egyptian environment, I couldn’t bring myself to extend the perniciousness of such pretense to the distant millenium, even though time travel itself poses some fairly intense questions. Fortunately, however, the Goth Scout manual has a vast array of merit badge selections. Even more fortunately, Tammy has completed the vast majority, being somewhat of a genius.
See, there is a solution to every problem. It has to do with preparation, study and extraordinary luck.

I had no idea how I was going to get the Goth Scouts to Ancient Egypt. Falling into the Nile seemed apropos since the river lies at the very core of why such a brilliant civilization rose up on its shores. Of course, that can’t be the end of it. Stories need bumps and rough spots like a white river ride, so I threw in a crocodile. When you’re the creator, you can do stuff like this.
Now I have to figure out the next part. Not only how these guys escape, but how they get from this situation into the palace of Queen Hatshepsut.
Perhaps I should have her finding the four Goth Scouts in a basket hidden in the reeds…hmmmm…nah…it’s been done before.

Okay, so the Goth Scouts have traveled back in time. Queen Hatshepsut’s life is in danger and Madame Gothskaya has volunteered her scout troop to go and save her. Of course, she didn’t figure that the time machine would eject the scouts high above the river Nile.

A note about the river Nile. By the time this story takes place, Egyptian history already spanned more than two thousand years, all of it taking place along the banks of the river. The Nile flows northward from the mountains of present day Ethiopia. Upper Egypt therefore is located in the south while lower Egypt is in the North. During Hatshepsut’s rule, the two parts of Egypt were united, kept together by the might of the eighteenth dynasty, of which she was the only female pharoah.
One of Hatshepsut’s great achievements was the expansion of Egyptian trade. Believe it or not, there is evidence of cocaine use in Egypt at the time of Hatshepsut. Why is this so strange? The coca plant from which it is derived is only found in South America.

The Goth Scouts have always been my attempt at reconciling my Russian upbringing with the general creative zeitgeist. Unfortunately, it’s been an impossible task. My upbringing doesn’t quite have an equivalent. I was raised by immigrants who considered themselves perfectly modern, surrounded by strictly middle class Americans while in the background, a very traditional Russian Orthodox Church with its very traditional Russian parishioners. When I was eleven, my parents sent me off to Russian Scout Camp. That I suffered severe culture shock is to put it mildly.

Protecting the Vampire is my version of what we used to do as Russian scouts…keep the tsarist faith. I had been raised by thoroughly modern parents, with very little religion or history, although I did get a good dose of World War II stories punctuated with anti-nazi as well as anti-Stalinist points of view. I think if the Tsar had survived the Revolution as a Vampire, the scouts would have figured out a way to protect him and everything he represented. The Revolution did to rich Russians what the current banking crisis is doing to the middle class…squashing them like little bugs. A tsar-vampire would have had with him the hope of a return to how things were, at least if you were one of those unfortunate nobles who lost everything. Of course, at this point, no one is alive to remember how things were.

Now, of course, I’m tackling a point in history which even history itself barely remembers. Fortunately, the elements of storytelling are themselves timeless. Perfidy, bravery, the strange coincidence, the sudden stroke of bad or good fortunes…

I have several students who are huge fans of Dr. Who. I’ve been wanting to do a Dr. Who type story for a while, so I figure this is my opportunity. Instead of a phone booth, the Goth Scouts have a carboard box. There isn’t a Doctor character per se, but there is a vampire. The general premise of every doctor Who episode is the fate of the universe hinges on the doctor’s impressive knowledge base of what is essentially science fiction claptrap. I don’t know if I can do science fiction claptrap per se, but Egyptian claptrap, yes, there’s definitely a possibility there.

Hatshepsut reigned as Pharoah in Egypt from 1479 B.C. to 1458 B.C. She was one of only a handful of women who managed this, and by far the most famous. As daughter of the Pharoah Thutmose I, she easily took over since the next in line for the throne was in fact her nine year old stepston/nephew, Thutmose 3. I say nephew, since Hatshepsut had in fact married her own half-brother, Thutmose II. The third Thutmose was her husband/brother’s son by a minor wife. These pharoahs had lots of wives. Except for Hatshepsut, of course. She never married after Thutmose II died.

It’s been speculated that Hatshepsut had been murdered by Thutmose 3, since all her statuary had been defaced by him after her death. However, once her mummy had been positively identified through DNA testing, it turns out she had severe bone cancer, although in all probability it was an absessed tooth which led directly to her death. Thutmose went on to be one of the greatest Pharoahs, no doubt having learned much from his aunt.

Learning the details of the life of Hatshepsut made me think of family and responsibility. What if Thutmose 3 had actually been trying to kill her? What if he did this while he was a kid? Could he learn something from the experience? Could Lola learn something? She hasn’t quite accepted her place in the Goth Scout “family”. Could something happen during their adventure in Egypt that might bring them together?

So I began tackling all of these questions by concocting the present story.

Lola thinks this is a dream…ha!