Not that anybody's asked, but just in the event someone gets curious, I'll tell that little story. Back when I started writing seriously, back in high school, I decided that my stories would look more 'official' if they sprang from a company. As a joke of sorts, I decided on 'Python Lord' because it combined elements of two things I was fond of ('Monty Python' and 'Time Lord') and it sounded good. As I wasn't likely to come up with something better, I kept it. I started putting copyright notices on my stories, mostly to continue this gag, and to date the stories (primarily to keep track of what came out when). While I admit to not understanding copyright law at all, what little I've read seems to indicate that, by my doing this, I did protect my work in a limited way, but I've no idea if that belief is true or not, nor is it important to this story.
After I'd had the company name for a year or two, my best friend Luke and I would occasionally discuss creating a logo. The picture I had in my head was of a snake wrapped around a crown, somewhat trapped by it, and looking uncomfortable. My mental image was cartoony, and meant to look somewhat silly because, after all, this was a joke. Some months later, as we were preparing for a night out, Luke told me he'd been thinking about my logo idea and, grabbing a felt pen, quickly sketched out on his wall the idea he'd been working on. I'm always pleased when someone contributes to an idea of mine with their own creative juices and Luke's drawing, while not exactly what I had originally pictured, was perfect. As we left, we agreed that, someday, we'd have to get a copy of that picture to reproduce elsewhere.
Luke's room at that point in time, was in the basement of his mom's house. His walls were unpainted drywall and he was allowed to write on them, so don't feel that Luke's sketchwork damaged his room beyond belief. It had taken him a minute to find a clear spot on the wall. His walls were littered with notes, phone numbers, sketches, and bits of things I would write up there now and then. It allowed his walls to look as cluttered and unkempt as his floor, which tended to be covered with poorly organized piles of things.
At any rate, that sketch stayed on his walls for over a year without us doing anything with it. Finally, the day came when Luke was going to move out. Luke, myself, and another of our pals, Jesse, were helping Luke with the last of his stuff, digging through it, deciding what he should take, what should be thrown out, what we wanted of what he didn't. We took pictures of the stuff that had been written and drawn on the walls, to keep it, as his mom planned to redo the room once he was gone. In a moment of uncharacteristic destruction, I took one of Luke's knives and, as carefully as possible, I cut that snake sketch from the drywall. Carefully, I took it home, and later photocopied it onto a transparency for use with my printed works. So, that's how we got it for use on the web page; it was scanned from a 'practice' book I did a couple years ago, cleaned up on the computer, and saved for use here. Looks good for something peeled off a wall, doesn't it?
I still have that piece of drywall in the collection somewhere. May never know when I'll need it again.
The Python Lord logo was done by Luke A. Gaudynski.
