Contact page 1

This may be the earliest of the Nimbus stories. It is a four-page wordless story called CONTACT. It was published in Heavy Metal magazine in Spring 1998, when Seth was still living in Japan for the first time, making it his first published work, I believe.

This first page is set on earth, which is inhabited by people who are less technically sophisticated than the ones who have taken to the skies and are living in blimps.

The llama on this page is an indicator that this was drawn at a time when Seth was still partners with his friend Langdon as A Better Lllama Graphics. He often included llamas in his work then. He was just starting to draw full pages, and though the size and shape of the frames are varied, in this story they are all rectangular.

The native sort of earth person sits beside a stone wall as his backpack leans against a rock which has a clothesline tied to it where a shirt is drying. He sees all the airships flying overhead and takes a shot at them with his long, long rifle.

I am including a later drawing Seth did of the Nimbus airships, for comparison. I think they are pretty close to what the ones in this story look like, though in the later drawing we see them from above instead of below. Even though Nimbus was percolating for several years, the elements in it are quite consistent from one period to another.