When writer and artist Guy Gilchrist appeared at Hill Country Comicon outside San Antonio, Texas, in early March, he expected to draw plenty of characters from a variety of series and properties he¡¯s worked on, ranging from ¡°Muppet Babies¡± to ¡°Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.¡±
Yet Gilchrist¡¯s most memorable sketch that weekend wasn¡¯t one of the characters he¡¯s drawn thousands of times ¡ª as the author of the ¡°Muppets¡± cartoon strip that ran in newspapers across the world in the 1980s ¡ª but instead a character he created more than 30 years ago for a newly formed Japanese soccer club preparing to take part in the country¡¯s first professional league.
The request, from fellow guest artist Hiroshi Kanatani ¡ª a tokusatsu illustrator who¡¯s worked on the ¡°Ultraman¡± and ¡°Godzilla¡± franchises ¡ª was for Pul-chan, the long-beloved mascot of the J. League¡¯s Shimizu S-Pulse.
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