Creating Duster, Part 1

Those of you who know me know Duster.

The Mistress of the Winds, High Plains City's hottie heroine.

You may also know how she came to be. Or maybe you don't, so here's a little bit on that.

Duster began her life as a drawing by Vladi the Wizard, the creator and original webmaster of The Wizard's Lair. The Lair has been a beloved spot for those of us who like superheroines and like seeing them get captured, bound, and into all sorts of trouble. Way back in 1991 Vladi created the artwork at left.


Many years later he selected this image (along with two others) to be the basis for his 2003 short story contest. He had no information about her other than her name: Duster.

While I'd been actively following Vladi's site for some time I had not noticed this particular image among the plethora of artwork he hosted there. But when he highlighted it for his contest it struck me like a thunderbolt. Why? Because I thought the heroine depicted looked a lot like my favourite Playboy Playmate of all time, Candy Loving—Miss January 1979 (the 25th anniversary PM). If that dates me, so be it. At right is Candy's centerfold. I think you'll notice the resemblance pretty quickly. Both her body and her hair look like Duster's.

Well for me, this was the convergence of two obsessions: superheroines and my favourite PM. When I was a young, impressionable lad there was no Internet (yeah, there I go, dating myself again). So scantily-clad female crime-fighters and the girls in the magazines they quietly sold to you in plain brown paper bags became my sexual archetypes. Inadvertently Vladi had inspired my creativity by tapping into both of these.

I wrote a story about Duster for Vladi's contest: "Duster versus the Motormaster". I didn't win, but in my imagination Duster just couldn't keep herself out of trouble. To date I've written sixteen stories about her, many of them novel-length, including some now for sale at Amazon and Smashwords. I'm currently in the process of refurbishing the older stories and supplementing them with new ones and publishing those for sale as well.

But Duster doesn't just exist in written form. Several talented artists over the years have been inspired by my stories featuring the Mistress of the Winds and they've paid homage to her in their art. You can see pretty much all of these if you go to my Deviant Art homepage and browse through my Gallery and my Favourites. Here's one example by my friend EXitZero at left. I used this for the cover of the first collection of revised Duster stories, titled Beginnings: Duster Volume 1.

I'm continuing to write Duster stories but as my previous post explained I've also embarked on a new adventure of creating my own digital art. Of course one of my main goals in doing so is to eventually be able to create my own images of Duster. Slowly but surely I'm getting there. I'll share my progress thus far in Part 2...