The Frog Prince

CLIENT: Ken Wehage aka Kenji San, Playboy Magazine Japanese Edition.

CLIENT LOCATION: Tokyo, Japan

RENDER LOCATION: BRIGHT STAR Exercises, Inshas, Egypt,

PUBLICATION SETTING: Post-Diluvian Europe prior to the dawn of recorded history in a lost realm circa 4000 to 6000 BCE.

RENDER DATE: August 1987

MODEL: United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Monica Long, originally from Long Beach, California serving an active duty contract within the Black Knights Squadron, VMFA-314, MAG-11, 3RD MAW home-based out of MCAS El Toro, California.

MODEL: A captive albino Rana catesbeiana (Or Lithobates catesbeiana) American bullfrog weighing around 1.4 lbs who was owned and maintained as a beloved pet by a high school opera singer named Sheena Sonada Szekeley.

FROM BILL'S FACEBOOK: August-September 1987--Inshas, Egypt--Pen&inks sketch rendered during the Bright Star '87 joint Egyptian, Israeli and American Exercises. The temperatures east of the Nile Delta averaged around 97 degrees Fahrenheit with a humidity of around 97%. The drawing is entitled "The Frog Prince." I had been in the desert Egyptian air force base of Inshas for over three weeks and this young Woman Marine LCPL Monica Long was looking better and better every day. Per regulations, no makeup, hair in a really tight bun, long sleaves.

I got her to model for me in one of the supply tents where we were doing the United States Marine Corps version of the whole "Ferret Face" and "Hot Lips" Houlihan thing. LCPL Long was an American by birth with a WASP surfer dad and a naturalized Iranian (Persian) mother. The bullfrog belonged as a pet to my very dear girlfriend Sheena and was an albino. Sheena had her bullfrog model for me in San Juan Capistrano when we returned from the Egyptian Desert.

THE STORY: This four-color mostly pen & ink drawing was rendered within a system of supply tents erected and operating in the Egyptian Desert east of Cairo and the Nile River Delta during the eighteen-day BRIGHT STAR 1987 Exercises between the Egyptian Airforce, the Israeli Air Force, our United States Marine Corps' F/A-18A Hornet Strike Fighter squadron, the United States Air Force and assorted European allies. Monica Long worked as a Lance Corporal serving with the Ordinance Shop, where she and her fellow team mates loaded and unloaded missiles, bombs and 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan nose mounted 6-barrel rotary cannon, 578 rounds per plane.

Ken Wehage, who functioned as my agent in Japan, had notified me at the end of July that I had a page for a "Cartoon" (Like I wasn't going to render a realistic graphic novel vignette page!) and that perhaps a medieval or fairy tale drawing of an occidental woman would be appreciated. I sketched Monica, who was and is an American surfer girl of half-Iranian and half-German heritage, as a real person being a "Real" fairy tale princess while we were both actually deployed out in the eastern deserts of Egypt where the North African sands were of a pale salmon color.

Imagine making a drawing like this and then watching episode one of the First Season of HBO and George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" all those many years later on April 17, 2011.

From 1977 to 2011 The Egyptian Air Force saw virtually no combat, but has participated in numerous exercises, including Operation Bright Star. Since 1992 the EAF has also provided aviation support for the police and other national security organizations engaged in the war against terrorism.

Back in 1987 our F/A-18A Black Knights' Hornets were battle tested and proved themselves to be exactly what their designers intended: a highly reliable and versatile strike fighter. The F/A-18 played an important role in the 1986 strikes against Libya. Flying from USS CORAL SEA (CV 43), F/A-18s launched high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs) against Libyan air defense radars and missile sites, effectively silencing them during the attacks on Benghazi facilities.

NOTE: The original poetry in my hand-written caption was composed/created by me and was Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling approved.