Flying Glory Flashback: 15th Anniversary Edition: Celebrating 15 Years of the Lyrics, Words, and History Behind the Webcomic Flying Glory and the Hounds of Glory

By Shannon Muir

For fifteen years, the webcomic FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY continues to feature the adventures of super powered teen Debra Clay, known as Flying Glory, and her backing band the Hounds of Glory. She's mentored by her grandmother Elsie Stokes, who served as Flying Glory during World War II. The webcomic launched in the summer of 2001 with a four page short, soon followed by a twenty nine page first issue. Artwork is drawn by Kevin Paul Shaw Broden, who co-writes the adventures with Shannon Muir. Currently, each issue is twenty-four pages in length and generally posted as one page weekly in black and white. As of June 2011, the tenth anniversary of the webcomic, the website features roughly 350 comic story pages.

Now for the first time, every "song" from within the comic appears complete and with one volume, accompanied with introductions to each section explaining the creative development behind the storylines from each period. In addition, get a rare opportunity to read material written by Shannon Muir before the inception of the concept as well as material from the FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY Christmas story THE GIFT, including details about it actually being released and additional lyrics. New features include character bios and a timeline listing. This text-only volume includes a special introduction by artist, co-writer and FLYING GLORY creator Kevin Paul Shaw Broden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shannon Muir
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311271952

Shannon Muir

SHANNON MUIR's short stories include suspense and mystery elements such as those found in her first full-length story from Pro Se Press, CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS DOC AND SALLY IN "THE DEATH OF BUDDY TURNER". Additionally, she's written short stories for Pro Se Press such as “Tragic Like a Torch Song” in THE DAME DID IT from Pro Se Press, "Pretty as a Picture" in the anthology NEWSHOUNDS, “Tropical Terror” in CRIME DOWN ISLAND and “Hidden History” in EXPLORER PULP. She’s also written the Single Shot New Pulp tale “Ghost of the Airwaves,” a short story offered in electronic format only from Pro Se Press.From her personal self-published projects, her best known titles in this area include the rural crime series THE WILLOWBROOK SAGA.In other genres, Shannon's published short stories include “Meeting the Monster” in the Emby Press anthology SUPERHERO MONSTER HUNTER: THE GOOD FIGHT and "Cover Story" in ARIA KALSAN: MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE.Shannon holds a BA in Radio-TV and English from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, which she considers to be her hometown. She also holds an MA in Communications from California State University, Fullerton, along with additional education in screenwriting, project management, library technician studies, and most recently a certificate earned with distinction in General Business with Emphasis in Marketing from UCLA Extension. Currently, she is working on a Masters of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.She is married to FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY collaborator and fellow author Kevin Paul Shaw Broden. They live in California in the United States.She is a member of Sisters in Crime (national, Guppies, and Los Angeles, where she also served on the Los Angeles board for a two terms beginning in 2018), as well as the Toastmasters4Writers Chapter of Toastmasters International (where she serves as chapter Secretary), Women in Animation, and a Professional member of ASIFA-Hollywood.

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COPYRIGHT

FLYING GLORY FLASHBACK 15TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION: A COMPANION TEXT CELEBRATING THE LYRICS, WORDS, AND HISTORY BEHIND THE WEBCOMIC

Collection Copyright 2016 Shannon Muir

Portions of this collection originally Copyright 1984, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016 Shannon Muir.

ENCHANTRESSHAWKE appears with permission of Shannon and Lesley Muir. Featured in the story Enchantresshawke Comes Alive Copyright 2006 Shannon and Lesley Muir. All rights reserved. Excerpts from this material appear in the web comic FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY at http://www.flying-glory.com by Kevin Paul Shaw Broden and Shannon Muir, Copyright 1997-2016 Kevin Paul Shaw Broden and Shannon Muir, All Rights Reserved.

Cover Illustration and Author Photo courtesy

Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or a vendor partner and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

10th anniversary publication: September 2011.

15th Anniversary Smashwords Edition: June 2016.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION FOR THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

DEDICATION FOR THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

NOTE ABOUT THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHARACTER BIOS

TIMELINE

FOLLOW THE COMIC ADVENTURES OF…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE WEBCOMIC

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DEDICATION FOR THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

To Kevin Paul Shaw Broden,

For being the one to make Flying Glory soar.

I've always been along for the ride.

Also, a big thank you for being my editor and beta-reader for the 15th Anniversary collection.

In memory of Grandma Jeanne Muir,

For all you did to help me fly.

Also a big thank you to all our fans for giving us the encouragement to continue for over fifteen years and so many stories.

-Shannon

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DEDICATION FOR THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

To Lesley Aeschliman,

For creating Enchantresshawke with me.

I would never have started doing lyrics without you.

And most of all

Kevin Paul Shaw Broden,

Without whom there would be no Flying Glory.

Also a big thank you to the people who have stuck with me and believed not only in the web comic, but in everything I’ve done.

-Shannon

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NOTE ABOUT THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

After the 10th anniversary edition was completed, I’d talked to Kevin about doing a follow-up volume that featured a basic reader’s guide, with finalized character biographies and a timeline. We’d had character sheets on the web, but they were never easy to navigate and as I later came to find horribly out of date.

That separate project for various time constraints never came together. Soon it became apparent our 15th anniversary fast approached, and we needed to decide how to approach that. We made the decision to combine the two projects into a more comprehensive 15th anniversary edition.

In terms of content from the 10th anniversary edition, little of that content has been edited except for the chapter about the holiday special, The Gift. In 2015, we made the decision to start the 52-page graphic novel online because we’d reached a point that knowing that story in full was crucial to our tale. New songs have been added to that chapter, as well as changing some text to indicate that The Gift is now in print. There is also an added chapter that covers the last five years, including song lyrics from issues 15, 16, and 17 as well as the first FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY prose story that is slated to go on sale in late 2016 entitled Masquerade.

On a personal level, a lot of this content is my own poetic work. It not only serves as an insight to the evolution of the comic, but also my growth in terms of depth and breadth of my poetic skills for over twenty years. I hope you find that part of the journey insightful as well.

Since 2011, we’ve come to find a larger following of our works largely through the New Pulp community and are very grateful for that. This made it clear that a revamp of our companion guide needed to be comprehensive to allow newer fans help to approach a large body of work. We hope you find it helpful.

We’ve done a lot to cut costs in recent years, such as downgrading our hosting plan to get rid of extras we didn’t need. More accurately, I should say I’ve done that, as I am the editor and publisher in the sense I operate and maintain costs for the hosting.; the actual creation of the pages has been under a partnership agreement. Projects such as this one are designed not to turn a profit, so much as to help me pay for hosting costs and continue to make the web comic available to you.

There has been discussion of taking some of the older FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY material into print, possibly by using Kickstarter or some other method. For now, we plan to continue on the web as long as we are able to manage, with your continued support.

Shannon Muir

Glendale, CA

June 2016

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INTRODUCTION

By Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

When Shannon asked me to write an introduction for this collection of her songs from our online comic book FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY, the television network called The HUB was just beginning to air the 1980s animated series JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS. Though used to promote the Hasbro dolls of the same name, this music based action adventure show was never a girls only series. While originally watching, I would have no idea of how that series would impact my life, both professionally and personally.

As Shannon will tell you elsewhere, she got in contact with Christy Marx, the creator of the show to be able to learn more about writing for animation. I would first meet Marx through early fandom of the science fiction series BABYLON 5 while attending the San Diego Comic Convention. I had been following her work for quite a while, and learned from it on my own. We would all get to know each other further through the now defunct online bulletin board known as GEnie.

When Shannon decided to follow her dream of working in animation, and move to Los Angeles; she asked Christy her opinion of me. The answer must have been favorable because we’ve been together ever since. I mention all this to pay homage to Ms. Marx and the influence she has had on both Shannon and I.

FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY is by no means a rip off of JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, just it has little to do with its predecessor JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS. All three are about rock bands and the adventures they have, but are also completely different. But the influence is there.

It was with Shannon’s direction that we made our comic book different; not about super heroes, or about a rock band, but rather struggles of teenagers just trying to survive. When I decided to update my comic book FLYING GLORY with the granddaughter of the original Golden Age heroine and give her a supporting group of friends, the Hounds of Glory; it gave an excellent opportunity for Shannon to show off the skills she had learned from Christy Marx, as well as display her song writing talents to successfully match the stories we are telling. Though sometimes I have to struggle to design the comic page to fit Shannon’s lyrics, I believe they have always been a special and integral part of what makes FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY.

Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

Fullerton, CA

August 2011

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CHAPTER ONE

BEFORE FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY

Long before Kevin Paul Shaw Broden and Shannon Muir met on the now defunct BBS GEnie, Shannon Muir wanted to be an animation writer who had aspirations of creating her own animated series. Along with her sister, Lesley Muir (now Lesley Aeschliman), they tried their hand at creating their own music-rock animated show after being inspired by the animated television series JEM and contacting the series developer who has remained a longtime family friend. Given that JEM just went off the air at that point in time, they didn’t see themselves selling it anytime soon, but decided it would be a fun exercise to plot out a sixty-five episode animated series and its accompanying lyrics. Of course, even if the concept sold, someone else professionally would be hired to write all the lyrics – but that didn’t cross the minds of two teenagers back then.

The band’s name was Enchantresshawke. Shannon wrote some lyrics on her own, as did Lesley, and some were collaborated upon. Later on, it was decided the series couldn’t stand alone, and the characters then became folded in as secondary characters (mentors of a fashion) into another series that the sisters started working on. Yet things remained set up in such a way that other than minor modifications to the origin story, the original sixty-five-episode development could play as a spinoff series.

However, life took things different ways, and in the end with collaboration not being practical, only Shannon came to Los Angeles. Development on Enchantresshawke was not pursued further until a yet as unpublished short story about the band’s origin was completed in 2006 and filed with the Library of Congress entitled Enchantresshawke Comes Alive, featuring additional songs that do not appear in this collection.

Enchantresshawke still is very much acknowledged by the sisters. More recently, a short story featuring the band was written and may be used at some future date. A tribute to Enchantresshawke exists in the FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY storyline where the band fills in for Flying Glory’s missed appearance in the park due to several of the lead characters being grounded. See the reference in Issue #2.

The following nine sets of lyrics are a selection from the library of material written for Enchantresshawke by Shannon Muir, which should give you a pretty good vision of the series. Her sister Lesley penned some of the lyrics as well, but this collection only includes ones written by Shannon. Sixty-five storylines were envisioned for Enchantresshawke originally, with a multi-part pilot and episodes visiting all 50 states and Washington, DC. It was very much the goal with Enchantresshawke to be educational as well as capturing the popular music, fashions, and more of the time.

The included lyrics are Enchantment (written for the New Mexico episode and based on the state motto), Find Your Heart, I Remember (which is one of the characters visiting her old hometown), Rock ‘N Roll Fantasy, Salute to Liberty (performed near the Statue of Liberty), Life Gets Hard Sometimes (which radically evolves into a version of Sometimes Life Gets Tough for FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY as you will see in Chapter Three, but is included here due to the radical differences), Time-Bomb Life, Two Caring People (Shannon’s personal favorite duet), and Wedding Blues (a song where the female half of the two leads faced a crisis over getting married, by the same female singer featured in Two Caring People).

Remember, these were written when Shannon was a teenager and not revised since, so expect some rough edges. Enjoy this glimpse into a world pre- FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY and note the changes in styles over time!

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