Honey West #3 with Ronn Sutton art hits comic shops March 9

Honey West vs. evil robot in #3 - Art by Ronn Sutton

Ready for some super-cool retro good-girl action?

On March 9, 2011, Moonstone Books releases Honey West #3, the first part of the trilogy story "Murder On Mars" by writer Elaine Lee and artist Ronn Sutton.

 

As reported earlier this year, this three-issue story arc features fictional detective Honey West joining the cast of a mid-1960s low-budget science fiction B movie (Amazons of Mars) to investigate the murder of the film's starlet, Zu Zu Varga. Honey must find out if the culprit is a scheming ingenue, a down-on-his-luck director, a jealous agent or an aging teen heartthrob.

 

This storyline runs through Honey West issues #3, 4 and 5, after which artist Ronn Sutton will be penciling and inking some other Honey West projects in 2011.

 

"I'm currently wrapping up the artwork on my third issue," comments Sutton. "I've spent a lot of time drawing these issues, so to speed things up a little I've brought in a model with a belly dancing and burlesque background to help me create all the major Honey West poses in issue #5."

 

The character Honey West was created in the late 1950s by Gloria and Forest Fickling for a series of detective novels written until 1971. In 1965, Anne Francis starred in a Honey West TV series, after the character first made a brief appearance on the Burke's Law TV show. 

 

Honey must find the murderer!

 

"I'm having a lot of fun working on these issues," Sutton says. "In the original novels, Honey West was a much sexier character than she was portrayed on television. So I'm trying to re-instate that."

 

Ronn Sutton captures 1960s style

"The story takes place in 1965 and I've worked hard to visually recreate that era: the hairstyles, clothes, furniture, etc.," the artist says. "The mid-60s was also probably the last hurrah for that very girly-girl sex kitten image. That's what I'm trying to bring to my version of Honey. She's very alluring, well-built and she's always on the verge of spilling out of her clothes."

 

Sutton knows a fair bit about drawing sexy women after having drawn issues of Claypool Comics' Elvira, Mistress of the Dark for nine years. Prior to that he had worked on a number of other female protagonists such as Draculina, the vampress Luxura, a Vampira movie comic, and She-Dragon (for the Savage Dragon animated TV series).

 

"I'm attempting to portray a very specific look, something that was fleeting and now is long gone," he says. "But you see a certain sexiness in the way women dressed then, the way they walked, a particular sort of sexy sophistication that disappeared when go-go, hippie and unisex styles invaded."

 

Honey West is published by Moonstone Books. Each issue is 32 color pages for $3.99. The comic ships with three variant covers including one photo cover of Honey West actress Anne Francis, who passed away on January 2, 2011. Script by Elaine Lee, pencil and ink art by Ronn Sutton, colors by Ken Wolak.

 

Ronn Sutton’s new femme fatale is Honey West

It’s no mystery why artist Ronn Sutton loves drawing Honey West for Moonstone Books.

This lady P.I. is hot.

Sutton has a comic book art resume full of drawing sexy women, including nine years illustrating Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (Claypool Comics), a Vampira promo comic (for Vampira: The Movie, 2006), the vampress Luxura (Brainstorm Comics) and She-Dragon (for The Savage Dragon animated TV series).

Sutton’s newest femme fatale is Honey West, a female detective based on the 1950s novels by Gloria and Forest Fickling and the 1960s television show of the same name (starring Anne Francis).

Sutton is working on a three-issue story arc for the comic book series published by Moonstone. The script is by Elaine Lee (Starstruck, Vamps) and is titled “Murder on Mars.” It features robots, aliens and murder in 1960s California.

“Drawing this stuff is a blast,” Sutton says, adding, “although it’s kind of ironic that this story has Honey West on the set of sci-fi movie, considering I spent nine years drawing Elvira, which featured sci-fi and macabre themes in every issue.”

In the three-issue Honey West storyline that Sutton is penciling and inking, Honey is hired by an anonymous employer and goes undercover on the set of low-budget sci-fi film Amazons of Mars to investigate the mysterious death of Zu Zu Varga, queen of the B-movies. Honey must find out if the culprit is a scheming ingénue, a down-on-his luck director, a jealous agent or an aging teen heartthrob.

Sutton enjoyed doing the research so he could accurately portray the 1960s in his art.

“I bought a DVD with all the Honey West TV episodes so I could watch them and got ahold of a 1960s Sears catalogue so I could get the ‘period look’ of the fashions, furniture and equipment like telephones just right,” he says.

In addition to making the switch to drawing a sexy blonde like Honey West from drawing a sexy brunette like Elvira, Sutton also adjusted his art technique because Honey West is a color comic book.

“I’m used to drawing for comics printed in black and white,” Sutton says. “While I’m still using blacks for shadow dynamics to create mystery and suspense, I’m actually leaving a lot of areas of the art more ‘open’ so that the color can be used effectively.”

Sutton is delighted by the work that’s he’s seen from colorist Ken Wolak so far. “It’s vibrant,” he says. “The colors are really making the action jump off the page.”

The pages previewed here are from issue #3 (the first of the three-issue story arc). Sutton is currently working on issue #5.

Issues #3 and #4 will be available soon at comic book shops. To find a comic book shop near you, visit www.comicshoplocator.com.

To see more of Ronn Sutton’s art, visit www.ronnsutton.com.

Anne Francis (Honey West, Forbidden Planet) passes away at age 80

Anne Francis, who won many a fanboy's heart with her sultry portrayals in the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet and the 1960s TV show Honey West, has passed away at age 80 from complications related to pancreatic cancer.

Interest in Honey West re-emerged in 2010 with the publication of a new Honey West comic book (Moonstone Books) featuring the adventures of the blond detective and her pet ocelot. Artist Ronn Sutton is currently illustrating a three-issue story arc for the comic book which, in the tradition of Forbidden Planet, has Honey investigating mysterious circumstances on the set of a science-fiction movie.

An obituary of Anne Francis by Dennis McLellan, published by the Los Angeles Times, can be found here: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-anne-francis-20110103,0,2031697.story.