"Savage Land Kari"("Year One / Land of the Lost")
Not many people know this but when I first designed the character of Kari, she was a brunette with a patch of white on top of her head. My reasoning was if I was going to give Erik a distinctive hairstyle, why not do the same for his girlfriend? I thought it was cool and so for the first year or two that was the template for Kari. But then it slowly dawned on me there was another character in comics with the same trait: Rogue from “The X-Men”. At first I thought that was okay. After all, another one of my characters had a flaming head of fire like “Ghost Rider” but that’s all they had in common. It wasn’t like Kari and Rogue both wore leather jackets or some… wait, they did wear leather jackets. Okay, but it’s not like the two of them had the ability of flight or… damn. They could do that too. Well, Rogue had a thick southern accent and nothing like Kari… who had a thick Minnesota accent.
Needless to say, after that revelation Kari became a 100% brunette with messy hair, sans accent and not able to fly.
Which brings us to this picture. Garrett Blair has grown a reputation on various website (as well as his own at www.garrett-blair.com) for not only his unique style, but also pin-ups he does for several particular series. In “Children of the Night”, he depicts his own original characters with a horror or goth theme. “Videogame Galz” is a collection of famous heroines and villainesses throughout the history of video games. And then there is his largest and most popular series: the “Savage Land”.
The Savage Land is inspired by a story arc in the “X-Men” comics when a powerless Rogue was marooned in the prehistoric corner of the Marvel universe for several months without any means of calling for help. As it goes for most tales about beautiful women having to survive in dangerous jungles, it didn’t take long for the character to be sporting a crude bikini. Only instead of the fur of animals like the clique goes, Rogue’s bikini was crafted from parts of her own costume. It was a very enticing visual and became such a cornerstone of the character that more than a decade later, her time in the Savage Land is still referenced every so often. Garrett’s series of pin-ups is inspired by that idea: taking well-know female characters from movies, comics, television shows, and even current events and showing what they would look like if they had to spend some time in the Savage Land.
So when it came down to homage the films “Year One” and "Land of the Lost" (both which were released weeks from each other), it just felt right to get Garrett to do the same for Kari. Whether it was the prehistoric theme, the nod to Kari’s earliest template, or having Garrett do what he does best - it seemed like the best, most logical decision. Plus it tackled two movies at once. - Jake