So why did I change Life’s hairstyle? Because I forgot Life was a rip off of the Metabaron. Kind of… 

In 2011, I participated in a local group art project, where someone drew a three panel comic strip and then handed off only the last panel to the next artist, and they had to come up with the next three panels based only on that last panel they were given, and then so on to the next artist.

At the time, I was really getting into Moebius, and I wanted to draw my contribution to the project based on Moebius’ style. In the above picture, the first panel is a character named the Metabaron from Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Incal. The second panel is the last panel from my strip for the art project from December 2011 where I created the Life character. The third panel is from my first actual Life The Necropolis comic from September 2015, and the fourth panel is from May 2020. 

Life is actually a composite of some of my favourite ideas from various comic characters and designs (more on that another time) and the head is obviously taken from the Metabaron, with stubble hair instead of a totally smooth head. I’ve always loved this hair cut since my angry teenage punk rock days, but it also meant I didn’t have to draw hair, which was a plus. 

So Life was always meant to be an intentionally obvious tribute to Moebius. I also thought it was really funny that this was the panel that was going to get handed off to the next artist. Deliberate jerk move on my part. 

I ended up working on other things, but I kept thinking of ideas for this Life character, and I eventually decided to do my own comic four years later in 2015. Problem was during that time I actually just forgot the head was based on the Metabaron. I was so busy thinking of a story, it just slipped my mind and I forgot to change it.

Then, in 2016, they started publishing new Metabaron comics in English and I thought “Oh right. Crap!” I played around with the design; Life wore his bandana as a headband for awhile, but I thought maybe I was just worrying about nothing. I mean those Metabaron comics are REALLY good, and I can barely draw elbows.

At some point, someone commented on one of my Reddit posts that Life reminded them of the Metabaron and I realized I did need to change it. So for a year Life had white bandages over his eye, and then I did the Problem storyline to create a reason for the change in hairstyle.

So yeah, I forgot it was a rip off.

Also, I started shaving my head again, and I think it’s weird when people draw themselves. 

-Love Nick