CAPTAIN LOTHARIUS
Music and vocals GM produced and arranged by Jay Ruin
The planned Seaguy trilogy was my take on the infantilization of culture I saw occurring, at least in the consumer West, after the turn of the century. In allegorical, picaresque style it depicted the internet’s transformation of everyone into a star in their own bedroom, complete with superheroes in onesies with validating AI ‘familiars’; a world of mind-numbing, recycled kids entertainment aimed at adults, pervasive anxiety, and a warrior woman named She-Beard - where a terrifying authoritarian dictatorship hid its wicked depredations behind a screen of dazzling lies and pacifying illusion.
The name ‘Seaguy’ was conjured on a holiday in the Maldives in 2000. Kristan, now my wife, and I had only been together a few months when I challenged her to come up with a great superhero name that hadn’t been used yet and she delivered what I considered a perfect riposte worthy of development into a comic book character and story.
The world of Seaguy is our own world in a twisted Wonderland mirror; overseen by the ubiquitous cartoon character Mickey Eye, figurehead for an empire of artificial plastic tat, frightening theme parks, and mind-numbing animated TV reruns. Citizens inhabit bright and colourful ‘Comfort Zones’ where even Death is just a synthetic playmate, and everyone is a special unique little star, yet somehow alienated and afraid, shielded from the environmental catastrophe beyond and the hideous foundations of their society in slavery, cruelty, and deception.
Against this backdrop, we played out our lead character’s journey over three stages of a human life.
Book 1, published in 2003, was Seaguy and the Wasps of Atlantis, where Seaguy is depicted as an innocent, callow, childlike character trapped in cartoonish experiential loops, in a world of recycled entertainment and pervasive monotony – a superhero without an adventure - until he wakes up to the truth.
In volume 1, we witness Seaguy’s coming of age as he begins to suspect the horrible reality behind the benign lies he’s been sold to keep him ignorant. He sees through the spectacle that has blinded him. In the end, he’s shocked back to compliance, but a spark of rebellion still survives into Volume 2 where he progresses from childhood’s inexperience and compliance to the questioning, fierce resistance of adolescence.
In 2009’s Book 2, Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye we depicted Seaguy in the role of defiant teenager – seeing through society’s bullshit to the hidden power structures beneath. He deals with mental health concerns, identity, and gender issues, and finally becomes the revolutionary boy hero of YA fiction, overthrowing the stale ruling elite of Mickey Eye. At least until he’s asked to lead a new version of the same old system and instead declines, in favour of a relationship with She-Beard.
The never completed Book 3 Seaguy Eternal would have closed out the trilogy with the story of an ‘adult’ Seaguy facing mid-life crisis, betrayals, loss, disillusion, mortality, and transcendence. The story followed our hero undertaking a mid-life ‘Ship of Fools’ voyage to the forbidden 10001 Islands of Lostralia (the shattered remains of what was once Australia, following the destruction of the moon and the impact of Anti-Dad’s fall from orbit during the superhero ‘crisis’ that ended the world).
Seaguy winds up alone, hallucinating Chubby Da Choona as he confronts the gigantic, shattered head that’s all that remains of the dying Anti-Dad…
GALLERY artefact #050
Seaguy Eternal Issue 3 cover sketch by GM
It’s here that he learns the final truth of his world – it’s not just that Anti-Dad and his legions WON the war between Good and Evil and are responsible for the shape and texture of the synthetic reality Seaguy grew up in… but something sadder, more terrible, more poignant, and pointless is revealed…
The series had and perhaps still has in some quarters a reputation for being difficult or oblique but it’s a very straightforward linear narrative as I hope the above summary conveys.
Be here tomorrow for the never-before-seen opening sequence from the script pages for this thunderous treatise on mortality and meaning! Featuring the Seaguy/Doc Hero team-up you’ve been dreaming of! It’s time to clear the cellar!
The complete series as envisaged and written was shaping up to be the best superhero comic book I’d ever done. I felt it was my ultimate marriage of the superhero story and real-life concerns. I completed the script for Issue #1 of Seaguy Eternal and wrote precisely detailed plot breakdowns for issues 2 and 3. I know exactly how it ends, with a tear-jerking, perfect farewell at the limits of being!
Artist and co-creator of Seaguy, Cameron Stewart was given the script for issue #1 of Seaguy Eternal in 2013, ten years ago, but was reluctant to commit to drawing it and the dream died there.
I am very sad it will likely never be finished.
SONGS
The Seaguy stories featured a few songs sprinkled throughout. In comics, songs are suggested by lyrics, bouncy lettering and often some graphics suggestive of musical notation. Lacking a soundtrack, readers must imagine from the rhythm, the lyrics and the context what kind of music they’re hearing. When I compose songs for the comic page (like the George Formby pastiche Mister Wu’s A Superhuman Now from Zenith. Gregg Sanders’ The Heart of Texas Never Beat So Lonesome in Seven Soldiers or Warm Heart, Cold Town, the torch song Lumina Lux sings in Batman Incorporated, for instance) I usually write a whole song complete with melody just to make sure it scans properly. So it was with Seaguy.
To soundtrack a Saturday morning cartoon culture, I imagined condensed, flattened, post-apocalypse memories of Disney songs, or repetitive, degraded, cranky, and broken ad jingles – copies of copies of copies - rather than the 3-or-more minute pop songs we’re used to. Attention spans are far too short for extended content in Seaguy’s ‘Comfort Zone’ of New Venice!
Drained of meaningful subject matter, super-brief, naggingly familiar and short on the emotive, performative, confessional approach to a pop tune that consumers currently value from the likes of Lewis Capaldi or Adele, this kind of music represents the exhausted pinnacle of human artistic expression across the Comfort Zones.
Most of the songs are based around an urgent mee-maw rhythm like a police siren – or the Beatles I Am the Walrus - emphasising the subliminal paranoia and secret state undercurrent.
The theme from Mickey Eye was intended to feel like an onslaught of cheap neon popping candy. The hyperactive corporate rave anthem for a bubblegum brainwashing cult that reduces people to childlike vulnerability and turns them into slaves. The song of a cartoon that won’t let you think for yourself even for a moment! It’s the first and last thing you’ll ever hear if you’re born into Seaguy’s future world.
The Mickey Eye theme is Xanaduum Studio artefact #003 and can be examined in full at your leisure, in our 19th December newsletter.
The songs had never been recorded until Kristan introduced me to the talented pop buccaneer Jay Ruin (more on Jay soon…)!
Jay came up to Scotland for a weekend in June 2022 and we created these demos as a taste of Seaguy’s world.
This is our first musical collaboration, with more ambitious work planned!
CAPTAIN LOTHARIUS
A brief snatch of shanty from Seaguy Eternal where it provides the theme song for the villain, Lotharius Lee, otherwise known as Sea Dog, leader of the Sea Dogs (a marine take on Quality Comics’ Blackhawk character and his squad of aviators). Although Lotharius cannot be trusted and appears to be a gibbering shadow of his former self, he’s the only man to have survived a trip to the shattered islands of Lostralia, and therefore becomes indispensable when Seaguy decides on one last existential voyage in his newly renovated boat, Bumble-B.
When Seaguy and a crew of misfits, including an increasingly senile Doc Hero, must undertake the perilous voyage to Lostralia and the Island of the Dad, to confront Anti-Dad himself and save the world, the deranged ex-supervillain might be their only hope of survival!
A strained and airless vocal performance suggest a singer who has barely breathed unrecycled oxygen let alone smelled the sea breezes!
This tune would ring out as the deranged Captain Lotharius recovers his wits and returns in full costume to save the voyagers during an apocalyptic storm…
Round Cape Horn with Captain Lotharius!
Riding the teeth of a storm like a jockey
I asked him why he wanted to marry us
‘Men, you’ll be brides of this ship and the sea!’
Hey-ho! Captain Lotharius!
Hey-ho! Lotharius Lee!
Hey-ho! Captain Lotharius!
Lord of the Deep and the King of the Sea!
Hey-ho! Captain Lotharius!
Hey-ho! Lotharius Lee!
Hey-ho! Captain Lotharius!
Lord of the Waves and the King of the Sea!
Do not reproduce without permission etc or else…the Kraken wakes
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