Bill Ward began drum as a completely blank figure, with no history, starting coming out in a gay bar and starting on a trip – sexual, spiritual, and perhaps more than a little psychedelic. We see throughout his work the theme of a voyage, a trip, an adventure and fantasy repeats in endless variation. Classical Western mythologies supply many templates for the travel, Bill certainly uses the Trojan hero Aneas and his decent into Hades as a starting point.
Of course for gay man, coming out at this time, and today, is in itself the main sexual trip they begin, for a life, complete with surprises, perhaps dangers, and the creation of complex and newly fulfilling relationships both with friends, tricks, and with family as we shall see later.
The themes in this section will be replayed throughout Bill’s work – the leather club, masters and slaves, violent men, the watching crowd, kidnapping, body fluids and naked vulnerability, disorientation, phantasms, monsters, frightening ecstasy, safe return, the empty city, the lone traveler…
These panels are almost the first made for Drummer Magazine, and through time you can see Bill’s technique change and mature. These are the grittiest and most crudely shaded of his published work, which improves dramatically through time.
