Ninja High School Mimi & the Unnamed Witch: A commission so nice it got published twice!

So once upon a time Ben had a blond witch show up on the cover for NHS #130, only to have the character never appear in a story before the series temporarily ceased publication with issue 175. At one point a description of the story arc intended for the character was published, but that contradicted what I’d picked up from Ben about her.

Anyway, since I have a soft spot for witches, I commissioned Ben to do a picture of the blond witch with Mimi, the idea being that Mimi was returning her umbrella after the blond witch lost it to a strong breeze; I’ve had a few misadventures when it comes to bad weather and umbrellas, which no doubt inspired the concept.

Like the last commission I posted, there was drift between what I asked for and the final art piece. I’d asked Ben to have Mimi riding sidesaddle, in part as a nod to the splash page that was her first appearance, but as you can see that did not happen.

Several years after I commissioned this, Battlefield Press Incorporated published a NHS RPG, producing one edition for the Savage Worlds ruleset and another for one iteration of the D6 ruleset. It was a few years after they were published that I laid eyes on them, and found my commission had been used in them; I’ve a total of three pieces in my collection that ended up published in them

As can be seen in the additional images the piece was broken up into two separate images, spread across two pages in the D6 version, while being split apart on the same page in the Savage Worlds edition.