Not your old Claus> Bar Harbor artist starts own company to publish dark com magazine

BAR HARBOR — When John Kennedy Bowden was a high school senior in Alton, his guidance teacher told him to forget the idea of surviving as an artist in such a rural place.

“You won’t make it around here,” he recalled the counselor said.

Today, at 26, Bowden is making it, or at least trying to. Ignoring words of caution from doubting Thomases, the Bar Harbor man has started his own comic book company, Draco, out of his home this year. This month he released 12,000 copies of his first magazine, “Claus.”

Bowden, who gave up his former occupation as a signmaker in New York City to pursue comic book drawing full time, has spent the last year designing, drawing and marketing the 32-page color book. He describes his final product as raw and hard-edged and admits it’s not for everyone.

“My book is anything but wholesome,” Bowden said recently with a mischievous grin in his company’s living room headquarters. “It’s a little bit politically incorrect.”

Bowden’s retelling of the Santa Claus myth is original. Santa Claus, his wife — a few hundred years his junior but with a sexy domestic edge — the elves, Eskimo guards, flying reindeer and a high-tech workshop are attacked by hulking green beasts called “Nazi Orcs From Hell.”

The first installment of “Claus” begins with archaeologists — all dressed in parkas save for the scantily clad Kara — searching for a subterranean route to the Arctic Circle used by ancient Indians to populate North America. Meanwhile, using knives, guns and missiles, the evil Nazi Orcs wage war on Santa’s helpers, beheading his Eskimo guards and gunning down his elves. Their demand: Santa’s elves must use their talents to produce side arms, grenades, assault rifles and ballistic missiles to bring “a shadow of despair to the human race.” Decked out in swastika emblazoned fatigues, the orcs try to take out Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and the approaching archaeologists.

Bowden is not worried about controversy. Though both his female characters are barely clad (“Sex sells,” he admits), their characters are among the strongest in the book. And because of his true hatred for the real Nazi regime, he chose their symbol for his evil guys. “I just wanted a bad guy and you can’t get worse than a Nazi,” Bowden said.

“Some people are going to like the book, some people are not,” he said.

If early local sales are any measure, some people are liking it. At Comics Plus in Ellsworth, where a display by the cash register touts Bowden as a local artist, owner Stacy Gaspar said she sold the first five copies she ordered immediately. She ordered 20 more.

“The art’s quite good and the story is pretty good,” said Gaspar. “People also like the idea of supporting someone who’s local.”

That’s good for Draco (Latin for dragon), Bowden’s company. Over the next year, the company plans to release seven more magazines and compile them into a single volume.

In his endeavor, Bowden has set his sights high, noting that successful comic books can turn into huge successes at the box office. Bowden points out several recent movies based on comic book characters: “Men in Black,” “The Mask,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Batman.”

Bowden and his editor and partner, Corinne Guichardan, believe “Claus” is better than many magazines on the market today.

“There’s nothing new in comic books. Everything’s been done,” Bowden said. “This is new. It doesn’t have a superhero in tights, and it does have a character that everyone is familiar with.”