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About the Cover
The inspiration for this cover came from my nephew Levi. On one of my visits home, Levi (age 4) drew me a bee (it's the one with long antenna directly above Stan Sakai's bee). I thought it was so cool I decided I wanted to use it on the back cover of Clan Apis #2. It didn't take long for me to realize that a whole swarm of bees drawn by different kids would be really cool for the Swarm issue. So, I started to pester my nieces and nephews and then the kids of my friends. I didn't want to force them to draw anything, but if they were willing and inspired I was delighted to take the anything they gave me. In the process of getting bees from the little nippers, I got it into my head that it would be cool to have bees by comic creators added to the mix. So, I contacted some creators that I admire and was excited to receive bees from Paul Chadwick, Stan Sakai, Tara Tallan, Mark Crilley and Marc Hempel. I'll leave it to you to figure out who's bee is who's. Finally, I talked my wife Lisa into drawing a bee. Her's is the one with eyelashes in the upper lefthand corner of the cover.
The five creators that contributed to this cover have been significant influences on the way I try to write stories. I have always been inspired by the elegant honesty of Paul Chadwick's Concrete. His characters are real and believable, reacting to extraordinary situations and saying things that real people would. His work never seems forced or contrived. It is a remarkable accomplishment. The idea for Clan Apis can be traced back to an issue of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo. One issue opened with a fascinating sequence on the forging of swords in feudal Japan. Now, I already loved Usagi Yojimbo, but I was thrilled by the way Stan wove real history into a story without being teachy. He does that all the time with Japanese history and mythology and I realized I might be able to do it with biology. Tara Tallan writes one of my favorite adventure series called Galaxion. She is a talented writer and artist that has developed a delightful, fully realized grand adventure in space. Her ensemble cast is engaging and her writing sharp. Mark Crilley's Akiko has captured the essence of wonder and awe that is absent in so many comics these days. Each issue is an adventure into a marvelous unknown world which inevitably has me, at some point in the story, stopping and saying "gee-whiz!" Finally, Marc Hempel has a sense of humor and a perspective on life that cuts to the bone. His work on Gregory and Tug&Buster are running commentaries on the absurdities in life written with such style that they leave me Breathless (which is another comic Marc drew).
That's all for now. See you next issue.
– Jay Hosler, Ph.D.
“Usagi
Yojimbo” and "Space Usagi", including all prominent characters featured in
the stories and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Stan Sakai
and Usagi Studios. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai.
Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or
locales, without satiric content, is coincidental.
"Clan Apis" is copyright Jay Hosler, Ph.D.